4.13.2008

Hello Spring! - 04/13

I had better not end up jinxing us, but I think today was our "hello" to spring, finally!
It hit 20 degrees this afternoon!!! We were out in the yard with just t-shirts! Well, except Isaac who 'wuvs' his jacket and wouldn't leave the house without it on.
Hurray!

4.11.2008

back from spring break - 04/11

No, we didn't actually go anywhere for spring break - at least not home for visits or anything big like that - but we sure weren't at the house and having a break very often!
The Tuesday of break we packed everyone up and drove to Winnipeg hunting for a new van. Josh wanted to look in a town called Plumas - just a little way out of the way - which ended up being a lot more out of the way than we thought, and added another near 2 hours onto our drive to the city! There were a few vans there, but they all had higher (near 200k) mileage, so we continued on. We looked at a couple places in Winnipeg, stopped for a quick lunch, and ended up driving ALL the way around the city (did you know, even by taking the perimeter highway which goes around Winnipeg, it still takes the better part of an hour to drive from one side to the other???! That's crazy! Anyways...) to look at a van - which we ended up buying and driving back to Brandon!
It's the identical van to what we had - 1998 Dodge Grand Caravan. Just has a white "detailing" stripe down the sides, and doesn't have power windows (actually a good thing, as ours sucked in the old van). So, van's here, but there're crappy tires on it and no tether anchors for the kids' seats.
Wednesday we actually did nothing. Well, I guess really we all lazed around and napped well, as we didn't end up getting home until 12:30am Tuesday night (Wed morning, technically)!! Oh, I must mention that the kids were AMAZING that whole long day - they were stuck in their car seats most of the time, all in all... probably in their seats nearly 10 hours that day - but they were awesome. We did stop at Toys R Us and get them all a toy after we bought the van. They definitely deserved that!
Thursday morning we had to get into town to pick up Lukie (our friends' son, Zech's good buddy). He was coming for a sleep-over at our house! We hauled everyone, including Luke, around all day in town while we first got the tires switched over from one van to the other (so we kept our good winter tires ourselves), then went to the dealership to have anchors installed, then had to stand in the parking lot there and switch over and install all FOUR seats (!!!!), then go to Reg and Jill's where Reg helped us switch over the CD player to the new van, THEN to MPI where we got the old van written off. Yikes! Another full day. But we managed, even with an extra kid, and ended the day driving home, all of us, in our new (to us!) van.
Friday we packed everyone up and went in to the Winter Fair (livestock exhibition) in Brandon. Spent the afternoon and evening there, looking at things and watching the evening show.
All in all, a pretty good, though very busy, spring break!
On Saturday, I went in alone to get groceries and Josh stayed at home with all the kids. They all had a good nap, so I think it was the best choice!
Now we're back in the swing of things yet again - Josh back to work and the kids back to their activities. We start swimming lessons again this Saturday! Wish us luck - all 3 kids are in them this time, both boys will need us with them in the pool... at the same time!

On a good note - we haven't been dwelling too much on this whole Moncton thing. We don't want to think about it too much and get all our hopes up. We're trying really hard not to! Josh had done everything he could - putting together his resume, applying with all his transcripts and everything. Yesterday we heard from a lady with the division there. She'd emailed Josh about setting up a phone interview for April 21 (a week from this coming Monday).
So, this is one more step to us getting home. Everyone pray and keep your fingers crossed that Josh does well and we hear good news soon!