February 9/14: I am just getting around to completing this post….
Dec 31/13: Good-bye, 2013. I’m so glad it’s over. What a tremendously awful year it was.
In January and February we negotiated for a unique Frank Lloyd Wright-ish house on 40 acres. What I imagined our dream house to be. Tall 14′ ceilings, treed, small pond which would have been perfect for a skating rink. It didn’t work out.
I spent the next few months scouring the newspapers and MLS. There are some nasty houses out there folks. In May we found an acreage close to Sherwood Park. I don’t know if it was desperation to get out of our “too small for our family” rental or if it is really “the one” but we bought it. Intuition told me no but we went ahead and did it anyway. Now we have a house that is completely gutted. Just over five months after we took possession and it is finally getting insulated again. Chalk that one up to the worst real estate decision ever.
We hadn’t even removed conditions on the new house when I was prompted by my lovely husband to tell our landlord we offered on a house. She listed our rental in less than a week. They accepted an offer less than a month after the listing, evicted us at the end of September but the offer fell through and they have allowed us to stay. I hate cleaning for viewings. Despise it. We thought this arrangement would have been less stressful but we were so wrong.
May was also when a former customer of mine lost her 8 day old baby. A little over two weeks later my grandmother passed. There has not been a year where so many people in our life have passed. A friend lost both his mother and his grandfather. My sister-in-law’s mother. A friend’s grandmother. A former co-worker lost his young wife to cancer. My aunt’s mother. In November, my niece was stillborn.
Everything is not all doom and gloom. We had 2 great trips in 2013. We headed to San Diego and Phoenix in March and traveled west to Victoria in July. We have never been to San Diego and I always enjoy exploring a new city. We visited the zoo, the beach and a really amazing aircraft carrier. Even driving from San Diego to Phoenix was interesting. I have never been stopped by immigration officials on the hunt for illegal immigrants. Victoria was beautiful as was the drive up the Vancouver Island coast. Our house was right along the water and we had private beach access. Gooey Duck clams would spout water at us when we walked along the wet sand at low tide. We are blessed to have the ability to travel.
I did something amazing in 2013. I trained and completed a 150 km road biking tour. A year and 3 weeks after I had my baby girl and I did this. I amaze myself.
Our kids started in a new school in September. It was rough on all of us. A much bigger school. A new routine. We didn’t know anyone. It wasn’t long before we recognized some people from hockey or other activities. It wouldn’t say I feel entirely comfortable at the school but we are meeting more and more people all the time.
We were busy throughout October doing demolition on our new house. We were able to go to an old farm yard and grab some old barn wood and beams for the new house. October is when my mom moved out of the house I spent most of my childhood in.
Already 2014 is looking better. I am studying for my real estate license again (I did it when I was 21). There is an end in sight for our house. We will be in by April. Finally our life should be calm again after two years of upset and chaos.
R
