Feliz Navidad!

Now Playing: Plumb, "Chaotic Resolve"

Merry Christmas from Mexico! We offically arrived in San Carlos on Dec. 23rd. It was a looong trip to get down here - the airports and bus stations were so busy. But we made it, and it is absolutely beautiful down here.

We celebrated Christmas yesterday in ~ 27 degree weather. My dad deep fried the turkey in a huge canning pot - it tasted really good.

My whole family is staying in my parents RV, but Frank & I are staying in a little motel room that is, um, 'authentic'. Maybe a little too authentic - we're using the RV park's bathroom instead of the one in our room...

Anyways, here's a few pictures:

Snowing...

It's sure been a couple of snowy days! Well, this morning our car got stuck in our alley. I think we misjudged how much it had snowed overnight, and when we backed out we realized our car didn't have enough clearance to make it down the alley! Great. And we couldn't back up into the garage, 'cause our driveway is on a hill and it was icy. So I guess another guy from down the street tried to make it down the alley and got stuck behind our car (I was at work by this time - I had to get a ride from a co-worker) and helped Frank get un-stuck. Then him and Frank had to push out another guy that was stuck at the other end of the alley. Wow. The roads are pretty bad too. On monday it took us 25 minutes to drive from our house to my parents place in Heritage. The traffic was backed up so bad!

None of this really compares to when I was in Chilliwack last week, though. I was down at the RCMP training center for a week taking a class in Linux, and of course the class ended on the Sunday when the Lower Mainland got that huge dump of snow. So me and one of my co-workers from Terrace took 4.5 hours to drive from Chilliwack to Richmond in our little rental Suzuki Swift. We saw tons of cars in the ditch. Yeah, people down there don't really know how to drive in the winter - it's really scary to be on the same road as them! And then, when we finally get to Vancouver my flight was cancelled and they re-booked me on Tuesday night! Well, I didn't want to stay in Vancouver that long and I was afraid that they would cancel the Tuesday night flight, too, so I called up the RCMP plane and they came to Vancouver just to get me (they usually fly out of Abbotsford). So I was at least only 1 day late.

Anyways, no pics of the house yet, sorry. I'm at work - they're switching out the backup power supplies and all the servers and switches are down, so I'm bored. I will try to get to it - the house is starting to look good! We're even beginning to move furniture upstairs. It's such a relief to be sleeping upstairs and not in the basement anymore, I was getting really sick of it.

On that note, we are having a Christmas Open House doo-dad on the 17th of December at 2:00pm. Give us a call or email us if you want directions. We don't guarantee that the house will be "finished" by any stretch, but we're sick of not seeing people. Feel free to stop by, even if it's just for a couple minutes.

--Sharon

Whoa, Time Speeds By

It's November already? We are so sorry for how long it's been without any new posts! Life has been so crazy, we've hardly had time to breathe!

So, what's new with us? Well, at the beginning of October, we attended Frank's brother Yori's wedding. It was also the baptism of our little niece, Tea. The wedding was in Calgary, so almost all of the clan was there. On the way there, we managed to drive through a crazy snowstorm with bald all-seasons on, it was nuts.

On the house front, things are progressing quickly, and it's starting to actually feel like a house! Since the last time we updated, we completely insulated the house, vapor barriered the whole thing, finished all the electrical and plumbing, had a (really stupid and expensive) crew of guys come in to do our drywall, Sharon's dad spent over a week painting, we installed tile in the bathroom and are almost done in the kitchen/dining room - still a little bit of grouting to do, we've had a proper garage door installed on our garage so we can actually park our car in there, we've blown insulation into all our attic spaces (that was a messy job!), and we've started building our kitchen cabinets. We get tired just thinking about it all... We will post pictures ASAP, 'cause a picture is worth a thousand words, right?

The bad news is that we were broken into last Thursday. They took all our DVDs, a DVD player that didn't work (we laughed at them for that), and Sharon's camera. They must have been pretty stupid, considering we have huge security stickers everywhere, but they were probably in and out in a few minutes. They kicked our back door in, so we have to replace that. The insurance company is being really good to us, so we're lucky that way. And at least they didn't trash the place or steal anything we'd really miss (like the computer that hasn't been backed up in months). It's really unsettling, though, because it feels like an invasion of our privacy.

On a happier note, we are offically going to Mexico this Christmas with Sharon's family! Almost 2.5 weeks of nothing but sun and beaches! We are staying in a RV park near Guymas, Mexico (which is in the northern mainland part of the country). It should be great.

We promise to update more in the future...

Updates

We've updated the blog a little bit - added Celia's mySpace page to our links, and posted both Matt & Scarlett and Aaron & Amie's wedding pics under "Photos".

Sometimes it seems like this house is moving sooooo slowly. We've been puttering around, finishing small but absolutely necessary jobs that need to get done before we drywall (which will hopefully happen at the end of September/beginning of October). We've put in our built-in vacuum, which is great because it's the only vacuum we own and our little basement suite is carpeted. We had our new, wider shower put in (the original one we ordered was so skinny that Frank's shoulder's didn't really fit too well). Most of the electrical is done, and we're hopefully having the inspector in to look at it next Friday. The most excitement this week was that our new furnace ducting was installed. We had ripped out all the old stuff - it was installed poorly, wasn't balanced properly and all the ducts were in the center of the house and not on the outside walls the way they should have been. We have now seen first hand that getting your ductwork cleaned is a necessary part of home maintenance - you should have seen how gross and dusty all the ducts we pulled out were. Yuck. Oh, ha - plus, we found an old (1970's) "girly" magazine in one of the old cold air returns. Some kid must have thought that it was a good hiding place...

I thought I should post a few more pictures of what we're doing to our house, so that people who haven't seen it can get some idea of what we're always talking about.

Here is our house's current main floor plan. (Click on the picture to make it full size).


This is an estimation of what the main floorplan looked like when we bought the house. The area by the bathroom was just wasted space, and there were many little closets:

The upstairs is hard to draw, because it's a 1/2 story...but there are 3 bedrooms, one of them being in the dormer that was added on to the back roof of the house, plus a bathroom with a very sloped celing and no windows. The floorplan upstairs has not changed very much. The rooms are about the same, but we've added a closet in each room by bumping into the attic space and we've made a bump-0ut in the bathroom for a shower (there's only a tub in there now). The upstairs bath is not being remodelled as of right now - that'll be a project for next year (we needed a working bathroom!).
And here is a rendering of our kitchen, that we've already ordered and is in our garage:
The kichen cupboards are from Ikea (way better than the junk at Evil Orange - I mean, Home Depot). I am beyond excited about my kitchen sink (sad, hey?). It's a single bowl, not a double, and is HUGE - big enough to fit cookie sheets and my big electric skillet flat in the bottom.
It feels good to post these pictures - gives me something to look forward to, and helps me see how far we've come in 4 months.

Love & Marriage

So, last weekend was crazy busy. We took a couple days off, and with our flex day and the long weeked, that meant that we had 6! days straight to work on the house. We finished the electrical on the main floor, and we managed to move back in finally. We had been living at Sharon's grandma's house for about 2 months while she was in Germany - we had moved out when we didn't have plumbing. It's nice to be in our own place again, but we miss some of the conviences we had at her place - a satellite dish and actual shower being one of them.

The weekend before that, we were in Victoria for Frank's brother Aaron's wedding. It was a full Catholic mass, and there was some excellent music. Aaron & Amie just strike us as one of those couples where you sigh and think, "they were meant to be together". They're so cute :) And since a picture is worth a thousand words:

Hammers and Nails...

Our house is slowly shaping up - it feels like we've been working on it forever! Anyways, here's some new pictures, taken just yesterday:

Looking from the kitchen into the dining room (of course, because there's no walls, you can see into the master closet & bath)...


The master bedroom, already partly insulated!


The "workshop" also known as the living room...


The new garden doors to the very large deck - it's going to be awesome in the summer!


...and this is our pile of maple flooring. We bought it at a flooring auction they had in town - it's basically the same stuff that's already on the floor - which is incredibly hard to find at a cheap price. We were pretty excited!

AND, we have some pictures from Matt & Scarlett's wedding on the July long weekend. It was in Chase, BC, and it was absolutely beautiful:




We will post some more under the "photos" sidebar on this page soon...

Love and Nonresistance

"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it. (Matthew 13:44-46)

The sermon at church today was based on the above 2 parables. This is an incredibly challenging teaching of Jesus! It's hard to even understand the huge implications of it. The men sold EVERYthing they had to by the treasure they had found. Think of the man with the pearls. He had probably been a merchant for a long time, collecting many many valuable pearls in his travels. Then he finds this ONE pearl that is so valuable that he gives up ALL of the other pearls he had found just so he could buy it. This goes so completely against our society - why would he want only one pearl when he could have many others?

Garth really challenged us to search our hearts on this issue. Do we truly value Jesus and the Kingdom of Heaven above everything else? That means above our posessions, above our relationships, above our reputations... Imagine what the world would look like every Christian truly believed this teaching and practiced it!

Sigh. Speaking of values, the escalation of violence in Israel and the reports in the news of so many Canadian soldiers and civilians killed in the middle east makes me so sad. I really don't get it - will we never learn from the past?. I'll leave you with this:

and this: http://www.mbconf.ca/believe/confession/love.en.html. I am still struggling with the implications of pure Christian pacifism, but I love that my church stands up as an almost lone voice on this issue when so many others are silent.
--Sharon

Life happens...

There's been so much talk on here about the house, I should really update everyone on our actual lives...(yes, somehow our lives keep happening even when we eat, breathe, and sleep house renovations).

Frank has officially started his job at the RCMP as of last Monday. He works in the Major Crime department (i.e. murder and rape cases) and is an "information administrator" - which basically means that when a cop doesn't know how to do something with their computer, they ask him to do it. It's a pretty good job, though the subject matter can be a little disturbing at times...but we work in the same building, meaning we can carpool to work.

My job is going very well. I have officially become the helpdesk support person for the whole building, so I am always up and about and talking to people - which is exactly what I want to be doing. It can be frustrating at times, considering the RCMP is full of type "A" personalities that want their computer to work NOW...but I really enjoy it.

My sister has been in town for 2 weeks - she's leaving on Saturday. It's been really fun seeing her again, though it always sucks that she has to go home. She brought home some of the video she's created at school, and they are really awesome. My sisters and I went to go see Cars last weekend, and man, what an awesome creative movie that was! Take that with a grain of salt, though, because I am terribly partial to animated movies. We're having a little family party to celebrate my sisters' 19th birthday tonight, even though their real birthday isn't until July 3rd. *sniff* they're all grown up and everything :)

We are leaving on Friday to go to Matt & Scarlett's wedding in Salmon Arm. I'm so excited for them...I love weddings! I'm going to take a million and a half pictures with my new 2GB SD card I just got! I'm a little worried about Frank, though - he doesn't take too well to the heat, and it's an outside wedding, and he has to wear a tux :) I hope he'll be okay.

On a sadder note, our small group leaders for the past year and neighbors, Kyle & Kirsten, are moving to Saskatchewan this weekend. We are incredibly sad to see them go - we've gotten very close to them and their 5 little girls in a short time. They've been incredible role models to us, also. We will hopefully be helping them pack tomorrow, we'll see how that goes.

Whew! I told you lots was happening! More pictures of the house to come soon, I hope.

Photos, finally...

Since we've lived here for over a month, we thought we should post some photos of our torn-apart house.


<- Front of the house - when it was being re-roofed...











<- Back of the house, with the 3! layers of old roofing exposed, and our huge pile of scraps (mostly the shiplap off of the interior walls).











<- Living room when we moved in.













<- Living room last week. Yup, that's sawdust all over the floor.













<-Back of the house. This room is the kitchen, then came a small bathroom, then another bedroom. It was a really bad layout.











<- Back of the house last week - there is now a double glass door to the back deck where the small window is in the pic. The kitchen is in the same spot, but there will be a large dining room and a walk-in closet/master bath in the far corner.







It's exciting to finally see things happening - we're hoping to be completely done demolition this weekend, so that Frank can do the plumbing and electrical. Tonight, we have no running water at all, so we're sleeping at my Grandma's house (she's in Europe). Hopefully tomorrow we'll have plumbing again :)

Creeping Along...

We have been the worst bloggers lately - it's been almost a month! Sorry 'bout that.

The house is slowly taking shape. Everything but the basement is gutted. Walls have come down, floors have been ripped up, we've jacked up joists in the basement trying to level the floors out, and we've started a bit of plumbing. Frank is still working all day everyday on the house. He might have some big news on the job front pretty soon, so he's trying to get as much done as he can!

Here's a scary story - the people at Home Depot all know us. They ask us, "what, you're back again? " yeah. We practically live there. Ask us about any product and we'll tell you if they sell it or not and how much it costs. They should have a frequent customer points program or something.

Pictures soon, we promise...like later tonight, maybe.

Yikes!

Well, we're moved in. Moving is exhausting. We don't recommend it :) If you helped us move - thanks so much!

We started packing our boxes into the moving van on Thursday night, and had everything moved into our place by Friday afternoon. We got our dumpster on Monday, and by Tuesday morning we had filled it up already... We just got our phone & internet back this morning. You never know how dependent you are on technology until you don't have it anymore :)

So, we're currently living the basement of our lovely old house. It's actually pretty good - we've got our fridge & stove hooked up down here, and the majority of our "necessary" belongings are crammed into one room. It's kinda like camping in an RV. Or something like that.

We've started ripping apart the main floor of the house. It's so interesting! Under the 1970's fake wood panelling we found 1950's wood fibreboard panelling (painted really cool colours). The ceiling had like 3 layers on it - our roof is about 6 inches taller now than it used to be. There is a beautiful hardwood floor in the living room with mahogany inlays that we hope we can rescue. The walls are filled with wood chips - very well done, but not exactly the best insulator. And then the garage - OH MY. The dude who owned the place was the hugest packrat! We filled our dumpster 1/2 full with just crap from the garage! And that was after we pulled out anything we could possibly sell or give away. He had tons of scrap wood, old bike tires, pieces of the crappy wood panelling from the house, old doors (not the original ones to the house, unfortunately), ancient paint cans, tons of junk. We really don't now how he fit it all in there.

So if you ever feel the need to smash something, come visit us and we'll hook you up!

Impatience...

Sorry it's been a while...

We've been impatiently waiting for the day that we get to move into our house. It's really hard to plan what you're going to do if you're not physically in the house looking at it. Of course, we haven't even started packing yet - we should really get on that. We helped my parents install a laminate floor in their family room this weekend, though.

Oh! So we go back the house this week to take measurements of the kitchen we're trying to plan, and what do we see? A bucket in the middle of the living room. You know why? The upstairs plumbing was leaking! Like, a lot! And it had been like that since just after the inspection! Good grief. Apparently the renter had problems getting a hold of his landlord. But anyways, there is plumber coming this week to fix it - courtesy of the current owners. Hopefully there won't be any problems with the ceiling joists. The ceiling itself is wrecked, but we're ripping that out anyways.

Matt & Scarlett were in town this week, and that was pretty good. We stayed up visiting with them last night till like 11:30pm, and then had to get up at 5:30am to do sound at the church because of the stupid time change. We were pretty tired! Sharon's sister Laura was here too, she's going to the Art Institute of Burnaby-Vancouver taking a digital effects program.

So we've been iPod-ized. It's so great to have ALL of your music with you wherever you go! We used to get in the car and want to hear a song, but we'd never have the CD. And now Sharon doesn't have to listen to the one crappy Vancouver "soft hits" radio station that comes in clear at work...

Crazy Things on the Horizon

Uh, well... we sold the townhouse. For a little lower than we had maybe thought (not by much), but it sold before it was even listed, to someone who just saw the sign when they were driving by. The deal should be final on Friday, hopefully their financing goes through. As sort of a farewell to our pretty little place, we made a "before & after" picture page, here: http://frankandsharonphotos.blogspot.com/2006/03/our-townhouse-reno-befores-afters.html
And THEN, oh my. That other offer we put in (from the last post) fell through - lady countered at her asking price and said she wasn't going any lower. Well, I hope she's patient, 'cause it was kinda a piece-o-junk for the price she was asking.

So, we decided that maybe our first instict was the one we should have gone with anyways, and visited this house for second time, and then put an offer in on it:

It's pretty much exactly what were looking for: the perfect character home, and it's almost 1600 sqft! It really doesn't look like it, but it's 1.5 stories, and has 3 bedrooms upstairs and the master bedroom is downstairs. It has a big living room, a huge kitchen for this age of house, and 2 bathrooms. And, uh, we got it for less than we just sold our place for. Yeah. It, um, needs some TLC. Or maybe a lot. ALL of the walls are 1970's fake wood paneling. Every single one. Even the bathroom. And it only has 70 amp electical service. It has ONE gutter. It's been rented for years, poor thing - and the renters who just moved out let their ferrets run loose in one of the upstairs bedrooms (let's just say Frank can't even go in that room without almost passing out!). But is has sooo much potiential - it has a new roof, furnace, hot water tank, and many new windows. It has hardwood floors under the carpets, and is as solid as a rock. And we can just imagine it completely drywalled with refinished hardwood floors - it is going to be fabulous, and cost a lot less than any similar house we could buy. But it is going to take a lot of work. Either we're brilliant, or off our rockers. Pretty sure it's the last one - but hey, we enjoy it - and we figure we might as well do this while we're young and get it out of our system, right?

Anyways, we're moving in on April 15th, as long as the home inspection doesn't bring up anything SUPER huge that we don't know about already...

Of houses and wood paneling...

Sorry it's been so long...

So, the townhouse is on the market. Should be on the MLS listings today or tomorrow. The market is crazy HOT right now. We still can't believe how much we were able to list our townhouse for. But then, all the houses we are looking at are very expensive piles of junk.

We're probably going to put an offer in on a house today, hopefully it's not sold already :) They're kinda flying off the shelf if they're priced okay. Don't really want to post the picture, in case we jinx ourselves or something, but here's the description:

Sturdy, clean 3 bedroom home with finished basement. Rock fireplace in family rm with wet bar, OSBE (suite potential). Well maintained home with good layout. Call me about recent updates. Fenced yard. Good location within walking distance of elementary school, DP Todd secondary school, shopping and transportation. Room for RV parking plus 2 more vehicles on concrete driveway.

"Sturdy" - that means the inside looks like it came straight out of 1969. It's rented, but it's been well taken care of. Just never updated. Yummy wood paneling and everything. But the basement can be turned into a suite, which would mean extra income to help pay the mortage (which is good, because it costs a lot more than our current one).

This real estate stuff is all very stressful.

So, Sharon's job is going pretty good - it's a very relaxed work environment, and the people are really nice. There's been a lot of days with not much to do, but it's supposed to get busier soon... And Frank has been frantically trying to fix the townhouse up for selling, take a class at the university, TA a class, and work 30 hours a week for a prof. Suffice to say that we're both pretty tired...

Weeee're Baaaack!

Okay, probably most of you didn't even know we were gone, but we were out of town this weekend. We randomly decided to leave on Saturday for Edmonton - we were there for 3 days. It was great to take a break and just do whatever the heck we felt like. Did a bunch of shopping (to Sharon's great delight and Frank's dismay...) and met up with Matt & Scarlett, which was really great. We totally can't wait for their wedding in July - Frank is a groomsman, Sharon's reading, and the wedding is in Salmon Arm...and weddings are so much better when it's your friends getting married and not like a cousin you hardly know or something.

So anyways, we took the obligatory trip to Ikea and bought a double bed and bedside tables (yes, the bedframe and mattress both fit in our car, with all of our other junk - we love Ikea!). The sole purpose of this double bed is to make our bedroom look the size it actually is - our honking queensize bed took up the whole room. Plus we will use the double as a guest bed in our next place. So if you want to come visit us, you will now have some place to sleep.

And, when we got home, there was a message on our machine - Sharon officially starts her job a the RCMP tomorrow at 8:00am!

On to the laundry...

We're finally done the laundry room! It's really girly. Haha. Check it out:



It's so awesome, there's no spiders or anything! Sure took long enough, though. Note to selves: hire a drywall guy next time!

So, my dad got a new car...it's a Porche. He bought it from a Australian living in Japan who's name is Lucky. Don't ask :) It's an awesome car! I want one.



So, we just had a "chat" with our real estate agent, and it looks like we'll be selling our place in March or April. So, on with the final renos! Nothing big left to do, just a few baseboards and a closet for our bedroom.

And then the house hunting starts again. Oh boy.

Prayers Requested...

Just a quick note to ask for prayers for some friends of ours from church. They just adopted a family of four children that were in foster care. The oldest is 6 and the youngest is 3 months. We can't even imagine how hard it is going to be for both the children and the parents to adjust to this change! We really admire them for what they are doing (they couldn't have children on their own) and we really pray that their family will be happy and healthy...

By the way, the oldest has flaming red hair - we totally feel for them. Or at least, Sharon does :)

Drywall Dust, Oh My...

Well, we promised to update you on the laundry room remodel when we were done, but it's going slower than anticipated - so here's a picture to tide you over. Haha!



It's going slower than anticipated because Sharon got a temp job at Canfor and is working 8 hour days, while Frank is back at school (with one class, but also a TA job and probably a funded project with a prof). But we should make some great strides this weekend.

The election is coming up fast (but not fast enough)! We only have peasant vision (ie 2 channels), so most of the time ALL we hear on TV is politicans bashing each other - we're getting pretty sick of it. But make sure that you get out and vote! Even if there isn't really a political party that you like (which is pretty easy this election...) Traditionally, the Conservatives are the automatic choice when you're a Christian, but man - Frank has issues with their social policies and Sharon's pacifist views really throw a wrench into things... But who else is there? The lying Liberals? Or the NDP who would put us into crazy debt? Hm. The Conservatives do have some interesting ideas about tax breaks for students and subsidized transit, and they seem to actually care that some mothers choose to not send their children to government daycare. Sometimes the lesser evil is the one you have to choose, even though it seems a crummy way to choose who to vote for. 

Learn to Trust...

Well, things are looking pretty awesome right now. Yesterday I got a call from the RCMP - I have a job! And a pretty awesome one at that. My offical title is "Senior Technical Analyist"...sounds snazzy, eh? I was almost positive that I wouldn't get the job, the interview was very intense (they gave me an hour long exam on my technical knowledge, and many of the questions I didn't know) and then I didn't hear from them for over a month. So the phone call yesterday was certainly a surprise. The only thing is that I can't start work for about 2 months, because they have to do an extremely long and expensive background check on me. You should see all of the paperwork I have to fill out!

Sometimes God really slaps me in the face with the knowledge that if I just relaxed and trusted Him, I'd be a lot better off. The days since Christmas were some of the most stressful days ever, with me freaking out about finding a job. And then along comes this perfect job, and I get to take a 2 month break before I start and finish up all of the various side jobs I have going on (webpages, etc.). Wow. Remind me of this when I start freaking out about whether I'm good enough for this job in about 2 months, okay God? Ha.

Sharon

2006 is here...

Well, it's 2006. 2005 sure left with a bang - what a busy Christmas! We've picked out a couple of photos above to tell the story...we ate tons of food at Sharon's aunt & uncles (saw a ton of family), ate dinner with our small group, saw Frank's brothers (& Tea!), Sharon caught up with some high school friends at Second Cup, we spent some time at Camp Morice at a young adult retreat, opened lots of gifts (we're waaaay too spoiled), and just recently started a major reno of the laundry room. And that was just some of what went on!

We really enjoyed the retreat at Camp Morice - though being the only married couple at a retreat about Theology of the Body made us somewhat of an anomaly. Some really good discussion happened, and we gave a talk about our experiences with married life, which seemed to go over pretty well. One of the biggest differences we've noted between the people we know from our 2 different church groups - at Westwood, we know soooo many married people our own age, and in the Catholic circles we're practically the only ones even in a relationship! But we learn a lot from everyone, regardless of relationship status, and really enjoy hanging out with all the people we are blessed to be friends with.

Well, the never-ending laundry room reno beckons. We'll post pictures when we're done...