Dusted off the gloves this week

I've finally decided that it was time to dust off my kickboxing gear one more time and start trying out some new gyms. After two classes this week I am more than just a little bit sore. I can't even laugh without a bit of a whimper afterwards. It was interesting to see that although my technique is still okay, my cardio and flexibility is....well...let's just say sad. I thought jogging was getting me back into shape, but it clearly wasn't kickboxing shape!

Tim has been doing a great job at taking care of Amber while I'm out getting back into shape as well. The first night Amber slept the entire time I was gone. The second night, however, she had a meltdown for the majority of the time I was out, but Tim persevered and was able to get her to sleep before I got home.

In other news we now have daycare set up for Amber when I have to go back to work in January! There is a woman with an in-home daycare really close to our house with two kids of her own, one of which is only one month older than Amber. After visiting/interviewing her and introducing her to Amber we decided that it would be a pretty good fit :) That's one last stress off of my mind!

mmmmmm.....blackberries!

Amber update

It seems like it's been a while since Amber graced our blog, so I figured it was about time to do an Amber update :)

This past weekend we went to our Mt. Cain cabin on north Vancouver Island. It was Amber's first trip and she did quite well considering the travel time there was quite long. Somewhere along the way she has become quite a great little car traveler!

Hanging out at the ferry terminal

When we first arrived it was late at night and the fire in the cabin had not been lit in quite a while so the house was freezing! Poor little Amber was looking like the the Michelin Man when I put her to bed wearing a big sweatshirt, two pairs of pants and 3 blankets. Luckily the wood stove quickly got things toasty warm and I was able to peel a few layers off of her.

Hanging out with Dad at Mt. Cain

Tim, Amber, Glen and Little Noah (other cabin partners)

In other news, I'm already itching to get Amber into the Halloween spirit. I decided to gently coax force her into her new costume.....just to make sure it fit of course ;) To my delight she actually seemed to enjoy it. Or maybe she was just giggling because I was making funny noises at the sight of how cute she looked in her dragon costume. As can be seen in Exhibit A:

Cutest little dragon ever!

And a grainy Exhibit B and C:

Dragon mug shot!

Amber seems to put up with my dress-up games quite well. Hopefully she'll still be just as willing when Halloween actually gets here!

Another construction success

Well, some plans got botched for the Labour Day weekend and so I decided to dive into another project that's been sitting idle for a full year - grouting the backsplash. Of course on Saturday when I started I thought it could perhaps take the full day but that was it. It turned into a labour of love. When I tiled, I used adhesive instead of mortar, and way too much of it. Everywhere around the mosaic tiles that was supposed to get filled with grout was already full of fully-cured adhesive. So it became as much work as scraping out old grout to re-grout. It basically took near 2 full days of prep before any grout could be mixed. I wore a hole in my forearm.

There's still lots more work to do but this was a milestone. It also means another stopping point for now as it's time to get this defense exam scheduled and defended. The ball has been in my court now for a few weeks.

2011 Construction Updates

Overcoming 1/2 jobs is awesome. Here are a couple of recent ones.

We've had a bare wire dangling out of the ceiling reminding us to finish the ceiling fan project but were finally motivated to do so. I built a little cedar box at the apex, sanded and painted it, so I wouldn't have to touch the drywall. The light we gave up can be seen now as a white cover plate but the new fan has 3 Halogen style spotlights. Considering we'd have to rent a ladder each time a bulb burnt out we got LED bulbs which ended up costing 1/2 the price of the fan. The fan has a remote so you can use the light independently of the fan and vice versa.




The other dreaded job was the last cabinet door. Doesn't look like much but it started as a standard size door and was broken apart and cut down to this size. This was the biggest labour of love ever but at least I can say they are now custom cabinets. Still plenty to do....