Painting

We've had to do a lot of painting recently. We had to paint over all the bright colors we did in the old apartment. My dad and Reuben managed it in under 2 hours! While looking through our pictures, I found this.


Then we started painting our new place. This is our Master bedroom.

Finally, late Saturday night we were all done and ready for the carpet to be installed on Monday morning. Isn't the dark red awesome? We love it!

the Schriemers

Just a few pictures of our good friends, the Schriemers. When we're hungry they feed us. When we're in need of chicken wire, herbs or fresh veggies, they are always there to supply us. When we need an excuse to try out go-carting for the first time, they indulge us. We are ever thankful for their kindness and friendship, smiles and hugs.
Tessa

Tessa and Nelia (always showing great affection for Reuben).

Lydia loves to learn play the organ from my Dad
Victor

Marybeth and her new glasses.

Pictures

I've added some pictures to my move-in story post from a couple of weeks ago.

Sleepover

Well, we're finally in!! We slept at our house last night. And we used the shower for the first time too. Sleeping = great; shower = not so great. There is almost no water pressure in our shower. Maybe it's this silly water saving shower head. Well, it may be primitive but at least it's clean and it's ours! All ours ... to fix...

I can't wait to get some pictures loaded on here but we just haven't found the time to get them off of our camera.

We finally arranged the livingroom and diningroom furniture and it looks so homey and cozy and wonderful!

Dear Mr. Winter; Please don't come for a little while longer as our furnace needs half a thousand dollars worth of repairs done to it. Thanks the Helders.

That's the update. Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!

Moved In and Waiting ...

You're all probably very curious to hear about our move in. This is my first chance to write about it and I'm not even doing it from the comfort of the new house because we're moved in but not living there yet. Needless to say I haven't been able to download pictures either so they will be coming, don't worry.


On Friday night, I could not sleep. I worried and worried and worried and got so excited that I couldn't sleep. It didn't help that we packed the curtains and almost everything in our room so it wasn't it's cozy self anymore. I'm a light sleeper as it is, so things like that affect me.





We woke up around 6:30am and couldn't fall back asleep, so we got an early start on things. Around 8am, my sister, Karin drove me to the truck rental place where Chris, Dad,Rich and Emma were going to meet me. It was busy there. I went to the counter with my reservation #, the guy looks in the computer and gives me a sheepish grin and says "Your truck got stolen last night"!!!!!! Can you believe it? All I could think was that no wonder I couldn't sleep because I knew something was going to go wrong. Then my brother's girlfriend, Emma, says "this is what happens to people who worry too much." and you know what? I think she's probably right. So then I said "But you have another truck for us, right?" And he says " no, I'm trying to call our other location but I haven't heard back from them yet". So then he made me wait while he serviced the other people in line. Finally, he called another rental company and at first they said they only had a bigger size truck but when we got there they had the same size truck, which was good because I was already a little bit nervous about driving that one. Meanwhile, our friends are waiting at their storage unit with a fridge, stove and dining room table for us .... and .... Reuben does not have a phone so I have no way of telling him what's going on. Well, in the end it was ok because he didn't even really notice how long it was taking, they got all the other vehicles we were using piled high with boxes and various miscellaneous items.


Well, we got the truck loaded up by 11am! It was amazing! Thanks to everyone, Chris, Trevor, Josh, Karin, Rich, Emma and Dad who helped us and then to Fred who helped at the house.


Unloading at the house was quick and easy, except for the little mishap where Fred lost part of one of his front teeth! Sorry again, Fred!!! I think we were done by 12:30 ish. Wow!



Now, you might be wondering why we are waiting and why we aren't living at the house. It's under construction. We needed new carpet in all 3 of the bedrooms so when we got the house we went in right away and ripped them out. Reuben's dad and mom were down helping us. As they were ripping out the carpet Reuben and his dad decided that the Master bedroom closet had to be changed. They ripped out the tracks and the ugly metal sliding doors and proceeded to frame in and drywall a new closet which will have 2 openings for French doors; sounds nice eh? And then they had time to put new drywall up on the ceiling in our room. All this is great but it pushed back our carpet install, which is the reason we can't live there yet. Building walls and redoing ceilings is not a simple process. Did you know that you have to put mud and tape on all the drywalls seams and you have to do this 2 or 3 times before you can paint? You have to sand it all too. As we aren't able to take time off work to work on the house, this construction is happening in the evenings.

Thankfully, my brother is in construction and he knows what he's doing. He's also willing to help us out. Thanks Rich ... you're the bestest!! Apparently, we only need one more coat of mud and then the sanding and then painting and we'll have the carpet installed by Monday. The Helders are coming to stay over for Thanksgiving ... that gives me 4 nights. Lord, give me patience.

Danger!

So does anyone else feel afraid when they walk to work? Now you might think, right away, that I'm talking about walking down a lonely street late at night. But it's not that. It's that to get into work from my car I have to walk underneath a concrete overpass (it goes to the 3rd level of the airport). At the moment they are jack hammering that overpass for some unknown construction reason and it scares the dickens out of me!! What if a little chunk of concrete comes flying off and lands on my head?? From that high up, even a little peice of concrete is going to hurt ... a lot!! This is besides the fact that the noise of jackhammers before I've actually woken up is enough to drive me bananas.

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

It's begun. Although, making decisions together is a regular part of married life; now that we are co-owners of a house the decisions are coming at us fast and furious. Here are just some of the things we have to decided:

1. In our 3 bedrooms we need to pull up the existing carpet and replace them with something before we can live in them. Our Master bedroom window is leaking mould onto the carpet and the carpet in the other two rooms are very stained. It would be great carpet if it wasn't stained. So the decision to be made is whether to replace this flooring with more carpet or to go with laminate (hardwood being way out of our price range). I've always been partial to carpet only because of the way it feels on my feet. The other good thing is that someone comes in to install it so there is no work involved for Reuben. But the downside is that it's harder to keep clean, collects more dust and allergens and gets stained more easily. Laminate is approximately the same price as carpet but doesn't include installation, which Reuben, with the help of my brother or some other knowledgeable helper would have to do along with all of the other projects in the house.

2. To redo the kitchen or not to redo the kitchen, that is the question. It's a hideous shade of peach and cream. The counter top has a huge stain. The faucet is dangling in place. The cupboards, while fairly sturdy, are outdated and dirty. The tile leaves something to be desired. But redoing a kitchen is messy and costly, especially if we redo the floor too. I think we've come to some agreement that we won't be starting on that project too soon. We were going to try and complete it before we moved in but I think that would give us too much of a headache. Shopping for kitchen stuff is fun, though!

Other things to do around the house;
-scrub down all the walls and floors
-paint everywhere
-plant some bulbs so we have some nice color in our garden in the spring
-replace the Master bedroom window
-put facia up where it is missing (am I spelling that right?)
-mega-scrub mould out of the tile in the bathtub

etc, etc, etc ....

Answered Prayers

We didn't know what was going to happen with our apartment because we are supposed to give them 60 days notice. And when we bought the house that meant we would have the apartment until the end of October. This also meant that we would have to make a rent payment and a mortgage payment in September. That's a lot of money! So we called the landlord to see if we could get out of it and it didn't look like we could.

One of my colleagues overheard me talking about it and said, excitedly, "We're looking for an apartment, we want to downsize so we can save money for a house". I got super excited and we booked a time for her and her husband to come and see our apartment. We called the landlord and she told us that if we could find someone to rent for October 1 than September could be our last and "free" month. After they came to see our place, they realized that it would be too small for them. I was not totally surprised but started to worry again about having the apt until the end of October.

Then, yesterday, our landlady called and said there was someone in the building who was looking for a place (not sure why, maybe they wanted a river view or something) so could she show our place. I said sure and only after I hung up did I realize what a pigsty the place was, we hadn't done dishes or laundry in a few days! yikes! A few hours later, she called back and said they would take it starting October 1. So our prayers were answered and we are officially moving out on September 22.

33 Alberni St

As most of you have heard already, we finally bought a house!! Here it is.

It's an end unit townhouse in Barrhaven. Yep, I'm moving back to my old neighbourhood. It's not quite where my parents live but it's only about a 2 minute drive. It's within walking distance of Sobeys, Loblaws, Boston Pizza, Reitmans(yay!) and lots of other stores.
As you can see from these pictures, the house does need some work but this is what we were looking for and finally we found it, at the right price. We have already gone to Ikea to pick out cabinets, which was lots of fun! It has 3 bedrooms upstairs. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of them but the front window is the master bedroom. There are 1 and a half baths and a partially finished basement.

The livingroom/diningroom, stairs going upstairs and the landing upstairs are all done in hardwood which is an older style but is still nice looking. The bedrooms have carpet in them that all need to be replaced.

The backyard/garden needs some work too as there a lot of weeds but the deck is sturdy and nice and big.
So, you might be wondering when we are moving in. Well, luckily the place is empty right now and we have a closing date of September 14!! That's in 17 days!! I know, crazy!! But, we have our appartment till the end of September and we need to do the carpets and the kitchen before we move in so it's not that big of a rush but still quite soon. I am actually happy that we get it right away because I'm already going nuts not being able to just move and start going on things! We all know that I can be a little impatient...:)

Come on over later this year....we can't wait to show it off.

Our weekend

Pete Gelms, Joel Muis and Julian vanPopta(the Groom)

Lorien VanPopta (on piano)

Laura vanPopta (nee Dubois)

The ceremony.

Mom and Pops at the reception.

the 3 Muskateers

" Spoiled? I don't see a Best Before Date"

Sitting up on her own and shoving massive objects in her mouth.

So Precious! The best feeling in the world is having a baby fall asleep in your arms.

Champagne! Happy Birthday, Pops!

Inevitably, the drive home.

Pictures from Presqu'ile

Jared's fancy hammock.

Necessity is the mother of invention (motto while camping).

Dad Helder preparing breakfast.

Reuben filling up the water jug.

Mom Helder making coffee, outdoors-style.

Trying to find some shade on this shadeless beach.

Relaxin' on the beach.

Awesome sunsets.

Jared, Reuben and Karin.

Poking fun at Jared; by the lighthouse.

The Helder family hikes together.

My Captain Cheerio!

Driving home.

More Summer Ramblings

We haven't found a house yet, in case anyone is curious. We went through the offer process again on a semi-detached bungalow that needed a lot of work but the seller did not want to accept our offer and then it was sold within the week to someone else who ended up paying $9 000 more than we were willing to spend. sigh! oh well. I wasn't that excited about it anyway. That was about 3 weeks ago and since then we haven't seen anything else on the market that has peeked our interest until last night. We arrived home from our camping trip to Presqu'ile and there was a message on our phone from our real estate agent regarding a house he had seen that matched our profile. So we checked online and found another one. One is in Kanata and one is in Barrhaven. We hope to go and see them this week.

We were camping at Presqu'ile this past weekend with Reuben's family. It was a really nice campground. The water and beach were beautiful! Our campsite was nice, off the beaten track with a comfort station close, but not too close. We had 2 days of beautiful sunshine until the rain swept in on Sunday evening. We ate a dinner of spaghetti in Dad Helder's work van. That was an adventure! Thankfully, it didn't get too cool at night so I was warm and slept well both nights. My only worry was the 2 garter snakes I saw slither across my path ... I am deathly afraid of snakes but Reuben was close by to cling on to so I got through it!:)

This weekend we leave on Thursday evening for Burlington, again. We are attending Julian VanPopta's wedding in Cambridge on Friday. And hopefully, on Saturday, we'll be hanging out with Hadassah (and her parents:) and my parents because it's my dad's birthday and they will be down for the wedding as well.

I'll try to get some pictures up soon.

Our everyday life

You might be wondering what's been going on in the Helder household right now. Well, I'm here to inform you; absolutely, nothing. Ok, that's not true. But sometimes, when I am thinking about it that's what it feels like. And then when I really think about it, wow, we are busy!! Most of you, who are reading this, know what our day to day life is like but maybe there is someone out there who is curious (Vanessa!:P).


So, everyday we get up at 6:39am (I'm very weird about the time the alarm is set for, it can't be divisible by 10 or 5 for some reason) and are out the door by 7:20am. Reuben heads for the bus stop and I head for the deep dungeon of our parking garage. I flick on CBC as I manuveur through all the construction to get out of the garage and proceed to breeze through traffic while listening to interesting conversations, the news broadcast, weather and traffic report. Traffic is sometimes heavier than usual but never seriously stressful as I used to drive through Toronto everyday. I arrive at work at approx. 8 and after easing myself into the routine, work through the day until the clock clicks to 4pm and I swipe out and drive myself home. Driving home is always a bit of a chore. There's usually more traffic and the boringness of it makes me sleepy. When I get home I have an hour an half before Reuben walks through the door to make dinner and relax.



Our evenings are not generally too full. We really like to just stay home in the evenings. Ok, maybe I like staying home in the evenings. Reuben's a little more antsy; maybe it has to do with age;) Lately, we've been talking about buying a house. We have a real estate agent working with us who is super nice and helpful and also a Christian which is great! Last week Wednesday, we had a really exciting night. We went to see 2 houses in Kanata. One of them, I thought for sure we would love. But when we went in we realized that it kind of smelled musty or definitely like they had a dog. It needed a lot of work which at first we were kind of excited about. Then we went to see a similar house around the corner and it was 10 times better but they were asking the same price. The second house was also on a quieter street. It had a nice backyard and all the decorating was really nice. It still needed some work but nothing unmanageable. So when we walked out our real estate agent asked us if we wanted to sit in Starbucks and talk things over. When we did that, we decided to put an offer on that second house right away because we realized that the market in that area was pretty hot. So we drove down to his office, wrote out our offer, discussed the price, learned tons and tons and then faxed it off to the seller's real estate agent. She had till 11:30pm to get back to us. We waited and waited. We went to our real estate agents house in the Glebe and waited some more. Finally they called around 10:15 and said that they needed more time because the seller was in the hospital!!!

The next day we waited and then they asked for more time so we waited some more. Meanwhile, I'm trying not to get my hopes up but I am anyway because that's just the way I am. And then at 6, our agent calls and tells us that the seller decided not to sell after all!! Wow!! What a learning experience. So now I am kind of stuck on that house and am hoping she changes her mind soon so we can have it. We haven't been able to find another house yet to go look at until today. There is another semi for sale in Kanata that is asking a little bit more than we want to pay for it but maybe it'll be the one. Who knows. Well, my impatient nature is definitely taking a toll on me with this whole house thing. But in the end, living in an apartment is a lot easier than the responsibility of a house so maybe we can wait a bit longer.

Well, that's our life right now.