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