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.

Scarsdale Diet

So I'm on this diet. I've never dieted before in my life. What inspired me to diet? Being in Europe and seeing all the slim and healthy people there. I think that everyone does a lot more walking and they have this healthy diet. I don't know what it is. They eat at what we would consider weird times of the day. Although every country is slightly different, basically they eat lunch later in the day and then dinner between 8 and 10 at night. Maybe this helps them to stay slim. When we were there, I think we had wine with every meal. After awhile, I started just drinking water because I was getting sick of the slightly heady feeling that wine usually gives me.

Before leaving for Europe, I thought that I would lose weight while I was over there because of all the walking we were going to be doing. Well, we definitely did get our fair share of exercise or maybe more but we also ate very, very well. So all in all, I don't think I gained weight but I didn't lose any either.

So, not to bore you with the details but when we returned I was determined to become healthier in my eating habits and my weight. My mom had tried the Scarsdale diet before and it worked so she found the details again and she, my husband, Reuben and I all started the diet last Monday, June 4. The diet claims that you are supposed to lose 20 pounds in 2 weeks. That's a pretty hefty claim!

I now have only 4 days to go including today and I definitely haven't lost anything close to 20 pounds but I feel lighter, I think. I didn't weigh myself when it all started because the weight doesn't really matter as much as the way I look and how my clothes feel.

The good thing about the diet is that it tells you exactly what to eat for each meal but doesn't restrict your portions. The bad thing is you can't snack and there isn't a lot of dairy. They do say that you shouldn't stay on the diet for longer than the 2 weeks and this is probably why.
Our fridge has never been so stocked full of fruits and veggies and I haven't eaten so much protein in my life. So that's all good but I do miss the carbs and sugar tremendously. Although I haven't cheated at all. Even when my stomach is growling I just can't bring myself to have something that's bad for me because I know it'll go straight to my waistline. I'm not sure how I'm going to feel come Monday though. I don't know if I'll be able to stick to grapefruit and toast for breakfast instead of a yummy bowl of cereal. I think for our dinners we will stick with the diet only we will add some whole wheat pasta or brown rice. We definitely won't be eating such big portions of white starches anymore. We will be looking for healthy alternatives for a lot of things and our one sweet thing will be Sunday coffee time because it's really hard to have carrot sticks after church in the morning instead of a gezellig piece of cake.

Well, that's the saga. Hope you enjoyed the journey.

What the World Eats

This is an interesting photo essay by TIME showing what different families around the world buy for groceries each week, what they spend and what their favourite dishes are.

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1626519,00.html

Funny!!!

Thought this was funny hope you do too!

Eurotrip 2007 - A Summary (for starters)

PARIS - The Sacre Coeur Church just outside Montmartre. From here you get a great view of the whole city of Paris.








ZURICH - Lobby of the Hotel Leoneck.
















GENEVA - Playing chess in the park which also holds the Reformation wall.













LYON - An example of a Romanesque church. Probably built in the 11th century. WOW.

















VENCE (Provence) - The villa of our dreams!!








BARCELONA - Picture to come. . . .

EUROPE MADNESS

I am finally going mad when it comes to having patience for the day to come when we leave for Europe. As you can see from the ticker, above, it's only 8 days away. Wierdly though, it feels like time is slipping away so fast and we won't be ready on time. What if we forget to do something and we're sitting in some sidewalk cafe going "shoot, I wish I'd remembered to pack that . . . .piece of green thread . . . .".

We have been planning this trip for over a year and now that it is finally here I am starting to realize that my procrastinating skills are definitely up to their old tricks. I was going to exercise so that I would have enough energy for all our long touring days. I was going to learn some Spanish in order to prepare for Barcelona. I was going to do lots of research into the places we are going. But I guess we'll just have to go unprepared and take things as they come.

Would you like to know our itinerary? Here is a short synopsis:

Friday, May 11 - depart from Ottawa at 3:15 pm
Saturday, May 12 - arrive in Paris at 8:40 am
Tuesday, May 15 - travel by train to Zurich, arrive at 2:05 pm
Wednesday, May 16 - travel by train to Geneva, arrive at ~ 9 pm
Thursday, May 17 - travel by train to Lyon, arrive at ~ 9 pm
Saturday, May 19 - travel by train to Nice, arrive at 1:25 pm
Saturday, May 26 - travel by train to Barcelona, arrive at 9:45 pm
Tuesday, May 29 - depart Barcelona at 9:10 am, arrive in Ottawa at 5:15 pm

I'm getting tired just reading that. We are definitely going to need a holiday from our holiday but it's also going to be fantastic!!! As long as we all get better before the trip. My father is having pneumonia-like symptoms and my husband has the stomach flu. So we're all taking it easy and praying for swift recoveries for both of them.

Easter

One of my co-workers said something this morning that really irked me. She was planning an Easter egg hunt for the staff here this weekend and wanted to make sure that everyone would want to play along. She said "Not everyone celebrates Easter" and I shuddered to think that her idea of celebrating Easter was all about bunnies and egg hunts. Does she even know what Easter is about? I think she might have some background in the church so she might but to promote this whole idea of the Easter bunny as a celebration of Easter really bothers me.

So, I did a tiny bit of research to see where this whole idea comes from. Apparently, the early church adopted pagan festivities to make Christianity more appealing to the populous. This is what About.com has to say about Easter. "Pagan fertility festivals at the time of the Spring equinox were common- it was believed that at this time, when day and night were of equal length, male and female energies were also in balance. The hare is often associated with moon goddesses; the egg and the hare together represent the god and the goddess, respectively." Ughh ... here we are trying to remember the fact that Jesus Christ died and rose for us with pagan symbols!!!!

Ok, so maybe I am being overwrought for no reason. I mean, people aren't really worshipping pagan gods by having cute little egg hunts, are they? I guess it's the same with Christmas too. And I don't really disagree with having a Christmas tree. Or do I? Well, I more disagree with the whole Santa thing than the Christmas tree.

Sigh! Such a dilemma. How do I reach out to my coworkers about the real meaning of Easter.

Our First Wedding Anniversary

Wakefield, Quebec - March 16-17, 2007

Motel Alpengruss ~ our room

The view from our balcony.


Snuggling in front of our roaring fire!


Restaurant Alpengruss - fine German food ... if bacon and eggs count as fine German food.

The Wakefield Mill ~ now a hotel and spa retreat.

The Wakefield Pont Couverte (Covered Bridge)

Le Mouton Noir (The Black Sheep Inn) where we were privelaged to hear Great Lake Swimmers; an authentic southern Ontario band.

The quaint town of Wakefield in all it's snowy glory!

Surprise!

Guess who came to visit me this weekend? Lorien!!! And guess what else? We both inadvertently bought the same scarf and we have the same shoes too!! Pretty crazy! But not surprising. I think we have a lot of the same taste in clothing. Lots of people in high school used to think we were cousins. Don't you think we look alike? Maybe we did more in high school.

To tell the truth, she didn't come down just to see me. She actually came down for the baptism of her new niece, who is named after her. Our friends, Chris (her brother) and Charlene, just had a baby girl whom they named Helena Rochelle. Rochelle is Lorien's middle name. That's pretty cool! I would love to have a niece name after me ... wink, wink, nudge, nudge .... just kidding. I wouldn't wish my middle name on anyone!! yikes!

Anonymity

You will notice that I have added some more links to the side of my blog. This is mostly for my use, easy access to blogs I read regularly but they could also be considered as recommended good reading for those looking for somewhere to go after reading my blog. You might be wondering why I have just added these links. It's not as though I haven't been reading these blogs avidly every moment I can, I just feel sort of weird about putting the links on my blog. It feels as though I am exposing a bit more of myself by doing it. There's nothing to be embarrassed about by these links, they are all fine upstanding citizens, friends or otherwise.

In other news, I finally started working on scrapbooking our Wedding. It's very nerve wracking because I want it to be perfect but it's also fun because I do love to scrapbook and when the final product is great, it makes me happy! Here's a reminder of our wedding day.

YYC

Another trip means another blog post. This time our trip was business not pleasure, well, business for me, at least.

I had a 2 day training course and Reuben got some time off work to accompany me. We left on Tuesday evening around 6:30pm. The cool thing was that we boarded the same aircraft that my parents had just deplaned from (they were arriving home from Tampa). But we didn't actually meet up with them because they had to go through US Customs although we did see them through a window. Our flight was fairly uneventful, no turbulence and a bunch of interesting shows to watch on TV, although by the time we were landing I was getting pretty antsy.

We grabbed the shuttle to our hotel, the Country Inn & Suites and checked in without any troubles. Our room was quite nice, but upon arriving I realized that I would need to book a taxi for the next morning to get me to the training centre and when I called the front desk, the agent was really hesitant about actually being able to book one for me, which we both thought was sort of strange, I mean how hard can it be to book a taxi for a Wednesday morning. Well, about 20 agonizing minutes later, I get a call back that he had managed to book me a taxi so that was a sigh of relief. We promptly went to sleep. In the morning we partook of the obligatory continental breakfast. We had been quite happy recently with the development of "make your own" waffles at every hotel we had stayed at in the last half year. But although they provided this service, the taste was quite mediocre. How disappointing!

After breakfast, Reuben called the transit company and figured out which bus and train to take downtown and I climbed into my taxi and was off to training. The training was interesting. I met up with some old friends from back when I was working in Toronto for the Maintenance department and the trainer was quite engaging so all in all it wasn't a bad day. The only interesting bit was at lunchtime. They had told us we would be able to pick something up at Tim Hortons, which was just across the street. Well, it was a little further than just across the street and there was no sidewalk or lane to get there. We had to walk through a field and of course, it had been snowing since the night before and we were not wearing adequate footwear. I say "we" because there was another lady there from out of town who also had to purchase lunch. So, at least I didn't have to go alone. Our feet got quite wet!!

The training was done by 2pm so we hitched a ride back to the hotel and I hung out and watched TV till Reuben got back. We had agreed to meet at 5 but, fortunately, he came back around 3:30pm. So we watched some TV for a bit and then decided to head out for dinner. Not having a vehicle made our decision quite easy because there was only 1 restaurant within walking distance, Chili's. It's a Mexican Grill place. We walked around the block to get to it and then realized that there was actually a gate in the fence behind the hotel and we could've got out right into their parking lot from there. We did that on the way back home. Anyway, so it was a pretty nice place, quiet and they were playing the Senators hockey game. Reuben had a hamburger and I had this scrumptious garlic shrimp pasta dish. I had leftovers, which I thought would work out well for my training class the next day so we put it in a container we had and put it in our ice bucket full of ice to keep it chilled over night. That actually worked quite well.

The next day, I got a ride to the training with the other lady who was staying at the hotel. And Reuben took the bus/train downtown again. He went up the Calgary Tower. The training, again, was quite painless and I managed to score a ride to the airport after it was done. I met up with Reuben at the gate and we had an uneventful trip home even though there was crazy weather and it seemed like every other flight was delayed or canceled except ours!!!

So that was our trip. Stay tuned for the next one . . .