Emotional Real Estate Roller Coaster!

It's been way too long since I've posted on here, and a lot has happened since the last one. I had mentioned that we may start looking at real estate, and did we ever! We listed our house, a week later it sold, then we found a house, put on an offer, they accepted, and we would be moving into our new house on May 12! Then the day the subjects were to be removed, the lady buying our house had her financing fall through, and so both deals were off. We relisted our house, then on Friday we had an accepted offer (of course with subjects), and tomorrow morning we are going to be looking at houses again. It's amazing how many people I've talked to who have a similar story, where they had a house deal and then it fell through at the eleventh hour.
Other than that, life goes on, the girls are growing up fast and Verity crawled today for the first time at seven months old. Rachel and I are celebrating our third anniversary tomorrow, and Zion is still jabbering away in her own language, but Rachel and I understand her most of the time. She and Verity play together and there isn't any jealousy as far as we can tell. I think they'll grow up to be great friends.

Looking for a house

The housing market in Vernon is going up, and I don't think that will change in the future. As more baby boomers retire, the demand for homes in Vernon will grow, especially since this community was named one of the top 6 places in North America to retire to by Consumer Reports (see the details of the report here). I do have to say that Vernon is beautiful, and it's nice to live in a smaller place than Kelowna, where the traffic isn't too crazy. We live a ten-minute walk from the beach, and that's great, but it would be nice to have a place with a backyard for girls as they get older, and owning some land instead of just a townhouse would be good. No rush, but we're keeping our eyes open and checking mls.com periodically.

Verity might cry if we don't get a yard for Zion and her to play in.

Zion ist zwei!

Zion had her second birthday on Saturday, and we went bowling with some friends and their little ones. There were six pre-school kids bowling, and enough adults to help the kids try to knock some pins down (unfortunately, there were no bumpers in the gutters). Zion got some great gifts from her friends, and the one that she's become really attached to is her mini-stroller, complete with the little doll that she pushes around in it. Unfortunately, we opened the presents before the cake, so Zion wanted to push her stroller around instead of having some cake.
And apparently my mom hasn't bowled in ten years, because she found it interesting that the computer kept track of our scores instead of having to do it manually with a pencil and paper.
Also, Zion's new favourite word is ME!, which is used when she wants to do something herself with no help, or when she's saying that something is hers. Learning her independence at an early age. She's still great with Verity though, who slept right through the birthday party with the other infants.

Waikiki Beach

Well, we're halfway through our holiday, and each day has been better than the last. Yesterday we went to the Honolulu Zoo, where Zion saw some tigers and elephants and giraffes, and then today we spent five hours at Waikiki Beach. Sitting under the umbrella tent, we got a little burnt and watched people surf and may even give it a shot ourselves in the next few days. Rachel's brother Andrew and his wife Christine have been the best hosts, and this holiday has so far surpassed all our expectations. We'll be back in Vernon soon, and we can't wait to see everyone that we haven't seen since before Christmas. We miss you!

Bowling with Kids

I have to say that other than my cold, which has lasted over two weeks so far, I had a great time over the holidays. We spent time with Rachel's brothers and their wives and kids, and my sister and her husband from Victoria with their 3 kids. It was a good balance, and despite sickness, we still managed to do some fun stuff like going to the pool and bowling. You're never really too young to bowl, especially now that they have bumpers in the gutters of bowling lanes, and aluminum ramps for kids to roll the balls down.
Zion and her cousins Gabe and Heidi had a great time bowling, and it was even more fun to watch them them than it was to bowl. They had these really cute bowling shoes on, and we took a few photos to mark the occasion. Check out those smiles!

Life is a Potty!

At least it is right now at our place, where there is some intensive potty training going on with Zion. We started on the weekend, and Rachel has committed to spending a lot of time this week continuing to train Zion to use the potty. There have been some successes, and some failures (accidents), but hopefully by the end of this week Zion will be diaper-free. Meanwhile, Verity is continuing to be trained to be diaper-free at the same time, thanks to the strategy outlined in the book Rachel read, Diaper Free! The Gentle Wisdom of Natural Infant Hygiene.

There has been some great mother-daughter bonding going on throughout this process.

A Blustery Snowday

Growing up in Kelowna, in the sunny Okanagan, I don't remember there being too many snowdays, where school was closed. If I were a betting man, however, I would say that there would be a good chance of that happening tomorrow, since the snow is falling like crazy here in Vernon and it's -15 at 3 in the afternoon (unlike in India where Beth is, where it's a comfortable 23 degrees).
Rachel took the girls out this morning grocery shopping and bundled them up well, the brave woman that she is. She is pretty much a supermom, and I'm lucky to have her as my wife. In addition to her braveness, she is also an amazing cook, and I'm looking forward to trying out the vegetarian quiche that she's making tonight for our friends Rennae and Tasha who are coming over for dinner before Club.
Anyway, if you're a teenager who doesn't have school tomorrow, give me a call and perhaps we can hang out. Happy (possible) snow day!

Verity's all bundled up to go outside in the cold.

Family

With the new recent addition to our immediate family, I feel that I've ignored some of the other exciting stuff that is happening in our extended family. Rachel and I both come from families of 5 kids, so we have a lot of family. There seems to be a new birth every few months, with my cousin Sarah being the next one in line (see her blog here).
In other family news, my sister Beth is in India now, not going to be home for Christmas, and we're going to miss her tremendously. Luckily, she has access to the internet, and we're able to keep up with her adventures on her personal blog.
Finally, in family extended even further (bear with me here), my sister Anna's husband James has a brother, Michael Funk, who played his first NHL game with the Buffalo Sabres on Saturday. The next game, Michael recorded his first NHL point on an assist in the second period. Way to go Michael!

Bathing...

One of the hazards of baths is a lack of control of bodily functions. As I gave Verity a bath for the first time this week (she has had other baths from Rachel, but this is the first one I've given her), she decided that it would be a good time to pee when I took her diaper off. She was sitting on my lap and I felt a warm spot. It's funny how the bodily fluids of your kids, whether it be pee, spit up, saliva, or whatever, doesn't really phase you, when those things coming from other sources would be really gross. I just hope that Verity grows up to love water and baths as much as her big sister, who can play in the tub for hours.

Zion is a bath lover, and they always put a smile on her face..

We are adjusting to life as a family of four, and realizing that even in these last eighteen days, Verity seems to be growing up really fast. Zion loves to give her kisses and "hold" her on her lap, and give her five, but we have to make sure that she doesn't do that too hard.
Rachel is an awesome mom, and takes the girls to the library for storytime and shopped yesterday at Quality Greens with both of them. We're really enjoying this new life, and can't wait for our friends Bruce & Gin, Amber & Jason, and Brooke & Casey to have their kids, with all of them expecting between January 17 and 19. Then Rachel will have even more moms to go to storytime with.

A New Baby...

...and this one's ours!
Hopefully most of you have heard by now, since I'm so slow on posting to this blog. On September 28 at 2:19AM, we had a beautiful baby girl. Click on the image to see the birth announcement that I mailed out that very day.
Verity is doing very well, and her mother and sister and father are too. Being a family of four is pretty cool, and when we told my mom the other day that "the girls" fell asleep on the way home, it sounded pretty strange coming out of our mouths.

A New Baby...

...but not ours. We got a sneak peak at a new baby when our friends Matt and Jill came over with precious week-old Seth (who Rachel thought was called "Steph"). We thought that Zion was still just a baby, until we held Seth in our hands, weighing in at 6 pounds and change. Zion was delighted to see such a little one, and she was laughing and pointing and petting Seth softly. I just hope that she doesn't mind having a little brother or sister around permanently.
With our official due date of September 25 coming up on Monday, I have our cell phone on at all times now, in case I'm called home to make a trip to the hospital. Supposedly the Vernon hospital is great, which is good news considering that our last delivery in Kelowna was pretty disappointing in terms of the care we received.
Here are the meanings of the names that we are pretty set on for our baby:

Boy's name - means "fire of the Lord"
Girl's name - means "truth"

So there you are, we're just in limbo waiting right now, and we're hoping that that baby comes out this weekend! Stay posted for the announcement.

Return to the Real World

Summer is over, and we have only a few days to squeeze out the last remaining drops of summer fun before school starts again. What to do? You could check out the Armstrong Fair (has a much better ring to it than the "IPE"), or the Starfield concert in Kelowna on Friday night, or even the races at Sun Valley Speedway.
As for our family, we're looking forward to spending some time with family and friends as we head into the fall, and we are more excited than ever about the fast-approaching arrival of Zion's little brother or sister (3 weeks). Also this fall, I am going to be coaching the Kal Senior Boys' Volleyball team, we will be having our West Edmonton Mall trip in October, and Walmart and Apple seem poised to battle it out in the home movie market. So much excitement in store (online or real).

RockRidge Rising

Just back from our family reunion in the Shuswap, there are four days until we take 21 campers from Vernon to RockRidge Canyon. Now in its third summer of operation, the camp is in full swing, and people are talking about what an amazing facility they have there in Princeton.
Even on the web you can find stuff about RockRidge, from a video on youtube that shows how scary the Tower of Terror is, another one of a record-breaker, an article about RockRidge's state-of-the-art sound system, and countless blog entries.
What a great way to end the summer, and I wish everyone could experience it!

New York is big...but this is Biggar

So we're going to be on holidays starting on Tuesday until August 15, and it's going to be a great vacation in the Shuswap, the location of our honeymoon, and coincidentally where we vacationed last summer (things like that happen when you have generous relatives like Kathy and Bruce). My mom has thirteen brothers and sisters, having grown up in a Catholic family on a farm in Biggar, Saskatchewan (known for its famous sign). We're excited to see immediate family and extended family, but we'll miss some family that isn't able to make (Zion will most notably miss Zoe, my cousin Sarah's daughter who is the same age).
We still haven't decided on a name for the new baby and probably won't until the delivery. Speaking of naming, Hungary's Economy Ministry probably didn't know what it was getting into when it launched an Internet voting campaign to allow Web users to choose a famous person as the namesake for a new bridge to be built over the Danube in Budapest. At one point, Chuck Norris was leading the way, but he has dropped back into third spot. Anyone can vote, but you have only until September 8. It also helps if you can speak Hungarian.