That Honeymoon Link is fixed

It was brought to our attention that the honeymoon link on the side there wasn't working. After countless hours avoiding looking at it, and given the choice of thinking about ties and suites, I've fixed the link.

As mentioned, we have blessed with an incredible life of happiness, laughter and dirty diapers which we are going to be happy to be finally rid of in the next couple months as Kennedy graduates to full-time potty usage.

As such, the best thing you could give us is your presence on our wedding day. Ha, nice pun...

Anyways, if you would like to avoid the hassle of going into a store and wondering what we might possibly need, you can always contribute to our honeymoon fund. We will determine the destination after the craziness of the summer and will keep people informed of our adventures via this blog.

Thanks everyone who has RSVP'd or declined. We will be chasing down the rest of you for firm answers in July so we can arrange our food budget accordingly.

-jay and jaime

Our Homes through the years

Westwood 2008-May 2009

Sanderson June 2009- September 2010

Calgary September 2010  -Aug 2011

L&A Road Sept 2011 - April 2012

Lavington Way April 2012 - Jan 2014

Glendora Way Jan 2014 - ongoing..

On Fighting

Fights. We've all had them. We've all won some and we've all lost some.

This isn't going to be a list of our Top 10 fights (that's next week) because unless something relates to a particular instance or circumstance you are going through our disputes are between ourselves and I'm not going to tell you about them. Unless maybe I find something about a certain argument funny. Sometimes Jaime finds things I am mad about funny and she laughs and seeing her laugh makes me laugh although I am still mad, it's no longer as important to me as seeing her laugh.

Whether you personally think this or not, I believe all relationships are based just as much on the fights as it is the make-ups. In some relationships, in only takes one fight to destroy everything you've built together. In others, it can disintegrate into unhealthy relationships based on fear, disrespect and dishonor.

This was a casebook bad relationship...

Jaime and I have had our share of fights. I think it's impossible not to be in a relationship you care about and not have a heated exchange or two. It's how you choose to react in these times that define your future. I'm not going to speak for Jaime on this matter but I don't think she will disagree with me on too much of what I'm saying.

If so, we'll fight about it later.

I honestly believe that you need to have a few disagreements under your belts before getting married. Get it out of the way now before it's too late and you're riding the Divorce Train to Single Town. Just like we needed to experience moving to a big city with very little in the way of a support network to address any compatibility issues we had.

I'm not ashamed to admit it but we did have some bad patches in Calgary. We went to a couple marriage counselling sessions. To be honest, I wasn't impressed with it or the counselor - we vented our mutual frustrations to our therapist, who said nothing, offered no feedback, and then promptly told us she was taking a two week break and for us to come back after her holidays. She didn't even offer a band-aid solution. We were on our own to try and figure stuff out until our next appointment but she had no problem taking our money. I doubt she even went on vacation. She may have thought we were more trouble than it was worth, Or she knew something we didn't; we will either fix this on our own or one of us will be gone in two weeks. It was up to us to figure out where we wanted to go.

But here's what I did get out of that experience; Reflect what you heard your partner say. It's pretty simple - your partner says "blah blah blah" and you repeat back "What I hear you saying is blah blah blah". That allows your partner to either confirm or rearrange their thoughts into a more coherent concern. I use it often, at home or at work. I think it helps.

My other take-away; What's the Win-Win?

In hindsight, that might not have been from that counselor. But the theory is simple - what solution can the two of us arrive at where we both felt we 'won'? It involves compromise and finding a middle ground. It might feel good to be in a situation where you win and your partner loses but in the end, one day you're going to be on the losing side and it will suck. All I can say is try to be graceful in your loss, humble in your win.

I am grateful to Jaime that we try to find the Win-Wins. I think that is very important. Although I said I wouldn't dig into our closet of arguments, I think she's okay with this one 'minor' disagreement we had a few years ago.

The Case of the Ugly Utensil Holders

Ugly

Awesome

I absolutely hated a utensil holder we had - it was a wire bar thing you'd see in an IKEA kitchen display. The handles would poke out and basically it drove me nuts. Of course, there was a lot of other stresses going on in our lives but that utensil holder, at that time, represented all that was evil in my world. I loathed it more than the when Messier and Keenan became Canucks and destroyed all I held true to hockey (okay, not that much). 

I tried to replace it with a Heinz ketchup can because I thought it was 'hip' and 'retro-cheap' but that became the bane of Jaime's existence (probably for the same reasons I preferred it). We fought with way more passion and intensity that would be expected over a utensil holder. In the end, Jaime bought a decent looking cookie jar which we now use. Win-win.  

Anyways, I guess I'm saying is that another reason why I love Jaime so is our ability to have these disagreements and at the end of the day or week, we are able to apologize and move on with our lives. Sometimes in the heat of the moment we might forget about the Win-Win or the 'what I hear you saying is...' for a couple of days but with time, I think we get to it. Sometimes I have no idea what she is mad about and I am sure she feels the same towards me sometimes. I've since learned not to keep my issues bottled up and not think things like 'if i just don't address it, it won't bother me'. I've learned that from Jaime.

And as the day gets nearer, we will be arguing a lot more. I am apparently not allowed to man the BBQ after the ceremony nor can we have a magician. And for her part, she promised to ... well... I'm keeping that story in my pocket until another day.

In the end, as long as we continue to grow and parent from a position of love and respect, I'm happy, which sure as hell beats that other option entering a marriage.

Okay, 70 days to go...

Our year in Calgary 2011/12

Calgary. 2nd worst. winter. ever.

So we moved to Calgary, found a decent little house central to the main highways that crossed through the city. We lived across from a closed school, our view was the school field with a playground so we had that going for us.

I remember receiving some advice from a friend who had been married for nearly 10 years. They thought the best thing they ever did was make a big move together. To be taken out of your comfort zone, to go on a great adventure together and experience the joys, trials and tribulations that come with that can either forge a relationship or strengthen it. We were lucky in that Calgary definitely did all of that for us.

It wasn't easy; we worked hard at overcoming schedules, distances, and disagreements. The winter was horrible, made doubly so because of our jobs driving to and from appointments or home visits. We both worked in family services in some way; Jaime helped families work on plans to reunite, I was predominantly shuttling children to and from family visits and/or schools and foster homes. I put a lot of mileage on my little PT Cruiser and soon learned a lot of the back ways to avoid traffic congestion the Deerfoot or #1. But it was still a lot of time on the road. I was involved in only one accident, with minimal damage to my car when someone ran a light. I got three speeding tickets in a month (2 were those sneaky ones, where the cops hide about 30 yards down from where the zone goes from 60 to 50 km/h and another was a photo trap. Not cool.). 

By late Spring we had enough. We were shuttling Jordan over by plane from Vancouver 2x a month and I was steadily paying for that via credit cards. The winter was long and traffic awful on those mornings when snow was in the forecast. We would never be able to afford a house. If we stayed where we were, Avery would never have had a baby brother. All our friends lived too far away for a simple 'let's just pop over and visit X'. It was an all-day excursion if we were to attempt that. I really missed the mountains and trees and native Calgarians would say 'Oh, you can just take a short drive to Banff.' But if we couldn't find the time, money and energy to go to visit friends, we sure weren't going to drive for an hour just to look at trees. But we did take a few trips up north to Mike and Sonia's which gave us the opportunity to catch up on some lost years where we only saw each other at Christmas dinners at our parents' homes so that was nice.

Calgary was amazing for other things though - wind being one of them. We did go to a cool piano bar once and it was a lot more multicultural than you would have thought. But maybe that was the area of town we lived in.

Oh, and there was an Olive Garden.

Wedding Update - 3 months and counting.

Okay, so it's really like 2.5 months away.
August 27th. August 27th.

It's gone past the point where I can be a passive observer as Jaime kicks it into 3rd gear...maybe 4th. I'm not sure if she's one of those people that have 5th gear, like Cole Trickle. I guess I will find out in August.

Anyways, as it's now June 11th and here are some things I am to start thinking more about. She would prefer if I already had an opinion which earlier I thought I did (for the record, it was 'whatever you think, Jaim'). But now, I'm expected to have an idea.

Here are some of the questions I have yet to answer this week/month/engagement;

What do I want to wear?
What colour is your tie going to be?
What are your groomsmen wearing?
What do you think of these centerpieces?
Have you read the wedding vows yet?
Do you have an opinion of the wedding vows?
Read the fucking wedding vows already.
Have you got an RSVP from (basically any of your friends)?
Do you need to get new shoes?
Who is going to be the DJ?
What is our first song going to be?
What about the second song?
What song will be playing during the processional and the recessional?
Me - What is a processional and recessional?
(Jaime rolls eyes and sighs. Closes her wedding binder and walks away)

And those are just the questions I remember. All I've been doing is trying to speed along with this 'This Is Our Life' blog and all the other maintenance on 'This Is Really Our Life With Kids' non-blog we have going on. It's been hard. Like today, we went to Lumby Days to watch the kids have a blast at the fair and for us to see how quickly a $100 can go when you are with 2 kids under seven. Answer - very fast.

But here's one update;

I've changed the guest list to reflect those who have confirmed they are coming. I know a lot of you had said 'maybe' and so I put you all in italics and if it was, your names are now gone. Why did I do this? I don't really know. But it's too late to fix it.

But if you are getting this email, you were (and still are) invited. If you aren't sure if you confirmed already, head to the Guest List. If your name is there in bold, we are expecting you. If you aren't, expect a phone call or more personal email in July. We need to have a true body count by the end of July for the food order.

Any questions?

Thanks, Jay and Jaime

The Big Moves, 1 and 2

Off to Calgary... August 2010

So we were settled in at our house on Sanderson Road for about a year. Our new home was just around the corner from my 1st house on Westwood. It was a nice little set-up, about 700 feet in total if I remember but not really conducive to 2 dogs, a cat, Jaime and a baby. There was only 1 bedroom on the main floor and a steep (today we call that slant illegal) staircase going up to the two small bedrooms upstairs.

But so it goes, I sold that for a healthy profit and let it ride into our second home on Sanderson. There were some troubles with the previous owners who decided to leave a broken motor home and a shed full of junk behind (use those subject clauses and demand penalties in the sales contract people). A few calls to the Realtor to get them to move it and hey, a month later we finally had the house to ourselves.

It was a handyman special but had lots of floorspace, nearly quadrupling in size from the Westwood home. I saw lots of potential but I also encountered a lot of problems as I realized the person who renovated it before had less experience than myself and a drinking problem. The house was painted completely primer white inside, the best feature being a fish tank situated in the wall above the entrance room and in what we made the kids' bedroom. It was a weird floor plan, like a bunch of boxes all linked together.

We repainted everything, Jaime worked hard on preparing the baby room, with help from my Mom. The colours were nice. During this time, I was working a couple of jobs (as usual) - I worked for Carrier Sekani (as did Jaime) providing family visitation support/supervision. I also worked 24 hour shifts at Taborview and graveyard shifts at ENCAAS. It was sad situations I was going into but over the years I have normalized it.

The burn-out in social services personnel is incredible. I can't believe Jaime picked this incredibly hard life as a career and I respect her so much for choosing it. I've worked with people whose only education was they knew how to play second base and were great at the job. I worked with others who I believed did more harm than help and they have their degrees. I've worked with families where I could see no reason why the kids were in care and with parents who should not have their children near them at all. I worked in gov't approved homes you would swear were crack houses, not foster homes. I supervised one mother who would later turn out to be one of the victims of that Ft. St. James serial killer and then went on to supervise visitations with the father and their two young kids two and three years old. Imagine them asking in later years whatever happened to mom. I talked in my blog about that kid who committed suicide in Abbotsford just days before aging out of care and the problems inherent in a system that hides these problems so I won't really go into it here. This is supposed to be a 'good memories' blog.

So we needed a change and wanted to be somewhere optimistic but still close to family and Jordan. Jaime applied to an agency in Calgary. She was offered a job over the phone. When we moved there, I applied for a job in their group home division and was accepted. I don't recall much of that time, can't even recall our trip over there to house search. I just knew I was getting out of Dodge, finally heeding the call of Alberta like my brother had done fifteen years before me. The new job was still graveyard shifts but honestly after PG, I couldn't imagine it being any worse.

Typical Mt. Robson picture

So we let my family know and Mom tried not to cry. After all Avery wasn't even a year old yet when we made this decision. We had another garage sale, managed to rent out our home to two nice ladies, one also a social worker, packed up a U-Haul with a car hauler on it for the PT, threw the cat in the CRV while the dogs came with me and we headed out east...

Even the sewer manholes showed some pride

Our little rental of $1200/month, I believe.

1st week exploring the city