Frank & Sharon's Blog

Concrete!

2008-05-23T19:27:00.000-07:00

Yay! Part of our concrete was poured today! Please ignore the shaggy grass, it's hard to mow your lawn when there are concrete forms in the way :)

I am so excited!

Spring has Sprung...

2008-04-30T08:41:00.000-07:00

It's starting to feel like spring! I really am starting to hate winter more and more every year. And it felt like winter lasted FOREVER this year. But, the grass is finally starting to get green and the trees are getting buds. And I'm really excited this year, because I can finally grow a vegetable garden again for the first time since 2005! I also have a lot of flower gardens in the front yard to fill up :) I have a lot of different seeds started inside already...corn, lettuce, broccoli, pumpkin, garlic, etc. And some flowers, too:

Hopefully this weekend we'll have the garden built so that I can plant them around Mother's Day (if it's warm enough...). And maybe the guy who is pouring our new concrete driveway/pathway (yay!) will build his forms this weekend. I hope it doesn't rain or snow :p

Well, I'm off to help Frank with his resume (he's applying for a programming job at the City). And I'm not really looking forward to work tomorrow - I have to recycle about a billion old CRT monitors and computers..

Lifehouse Skit

2007-07-19T19:03:00.000-07:00

I just stumbled across this great little skit on YouTube, done to Lifehouse's "Everything". Maybe it was just because I love the song so much, or maybe I can just totally relate with the spiritual struggle, but the video made me cry!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyheJ480LYA
The beginning is a little cheesy, so bear with it a while.

-Sharon

No More Trees...

2007-05-01T21:30:00.000-07:00

Our trees were cut down last week, and we spent the weekend hauling the branches away in our new little utility trailer. Isn't it cute?Perfect size to tow with our little car :)

Anyways, here's the before:

And the after:

And while it seems sad to cut down perfectly not-dead trees, they were very close to the house. We have so much more light now! It was kind of like living in a forest before, and they lost TONS of needles in our gutters and all over our yard...I picked them up right before it snowed in the winter, and I took out FOUR wheelbarrows full of needles this spring! Cutting them down was also integral to our plan for our yard. You see how there is a large slope on the left side of the house? Most of it is coming out (it is really a pile of dirt between our house and the neighbors) and what can't come out will be held up by a retaining wall. This is for two reasons: 1) The hill is slowly eroding and falling down more each year, sending large amounts of water to puddle around our foundation and 2) we will gain a side yard about 15 feet wide that we might be able to use as a driveway. Our current driveway is coming out, we hate how it takes up the whole yard.

An excavation company is coming next week to level our whole yard out, so there will be even more changes to come soon.

And spring is here! My lilacs are blooming:

And there are even some tulips the previous owner managed not to kill:

And just because she's so cute, here's a picture of my dog Pepper with a new toy we bought her (which is a neon pink monkey that left neon pink fluff all over my living room):

Best Way to London?

2007-04-20T11:10:00.000-07:00

Now Playing: Shrek Soundtrack

Take 60 seconds to do this, it's great.

1. go to www.google.com
2. click on "maps"
3. click on "get directions"
4. type "New York" in the first box (the "from" box)
5. type "London" in the second box (the "to" box)
6. click on "get directions"
7. scroll down to step #24

Hehe.

Good things on the horizon...

2007-04-05T08:51:00.000-07:00

Now Playing: "Paralyzed", Finger Eleven
Well, after months of searching, Frank has a job! It is only a 5 month paternity leave, but it's a job! He will be working for the city as a computer tech, very similar to my job. And while it's only 5 months, there are a lot of technical jobs at the city - maybe something permanent will come up while he is working there. What an answer to our prayers!

Life is chugging along...we have a dumpster in our yard again (what a familiar sight!) and we will be spending the long weekend getting rid of all the junk in our yard, ripping down what's left of our deck, and possibly pulling the crummy siding off our garage.

My sister is graduating from the Art Institute of Vancouver this month, I'm so proud of her. She does special effects on movies and the like. Her first job was working on the TV show "Fallen" which is coming out soon, I think. That job is ending soon, and she will then be working on Doctor Doolittle 4 & 5. I didn't even know they made #3! Hehe. Nothing like direct to DVD movies. Frank & I can't make it to her grad, but she is coming back to town soon, so we'll see her then.

Due to Frank getting his job yesterday, we went out and bought a Wii (that was the deal - if he got a job, he could have a Wii...). It's really fun! We only have Wii Sports right now, but it's cool. I'm pretty good at bowling, but I suck at putting in the golf game. I'll have to figure that out. We were lucky - we looked all over town for a Wii, and finally at Wal-mart we walked in, and there were 2 people ahead of us, and the clerk asked if we wanted one too! I guess they received a shipment of 15 Wiis at 2:30pm that day, when we got there it was 5:00 and there were only 4 left! And I made a Mii that looks just like Frank. Hehe.

I was introduced to facebook last week. It's online friend-finder sort of thing. I had originally not thought anything of it, because there are a million of those types of services online and I don't have time for all that. But, facebook is cool. And I couldn't believe how many people were on there! So many people. It's fun to catch up on what people are doing that you haven't seen in a long time.

And in other news, Jane is coming back to Canada! Yay for you, Jane! Give us a call when you're in town :)

Woo Hoo...

2007-03-06T20:32:00.000-08:00

Now Playing: Dixie Chicks, "Fly"

...we finished the floors upstairs, so it is liveable! Yay. We unpacked about a million more boxes:

And now we have an office:

And a guest room:

But, all is not perfect. We have another guest room, but the floor in there is still not finished. There are no baseboards or trim around the windows, and our upstairs bathroom looks like this:

Yup, all is not well.
But my dining room has beautiful panelling:

..and I received lovely flowers for Valentines Day :)
And I'm currently painting the kitchen island so that it doesn't look really weird anymore:

...everyone always looked at the island weird when they came over, and asked if it was supposed to be like that! It used to have a huge gap in the middle where the 2 cupboards met, so we finally got around to putting in electrical plugins and panelled the sides. It still needs toe kicks, as does the rest of the kitchen. We'll be working on this place for a long while yet :)

Still Renovating...

2007-02-21T13:10:00.000-08:00

Now Playing: Jars of Clay, "Good Monsters"

We're still renovating, but our house is starting to feel a lot like our home! We're currently refinishing the floors upstairs, they will be varnished by the weekend and then we can start moving the rest of the stuff from the basement up there! Plus, we're getting a couch donated to us this week, so our living room won't be quite so sparse.

Frank is still looking for work, but had 3 excellent leads this week...we'll see how they pan out.

We just found out that we're going to be an aunt and uncle again! Patty is pregnant, and due in September.

A new Lost is on tonight. I am really loving the new episodes. I was worried for a bit, the show was getting kind of stagnant, but it's really picking back up again. We also have recently given in and purchased digital cable and a PVR. It's really great getting to watch what you want whever you want. It's nothing like regular old cable.

We took an excellent course through our church on the weekend: the Good $ense Budget Course. It really opened up our eyes to how to manage our money. We are going to start paying a lot stricter attention to where our money goes, and how much we put aside for the future. What I really loved about the course was it's no-nonsense approach to consumerism: if you don't need it, don't buy it. If you can't afford it, don't buy it. I was shocked by the statistics they quoted on consumer debt, and the public perception that credit card debt is unavoidable. Anyways, we highly recommend it.

Blast From the Past...

2007-01-27T20:31:00.000-08:00

Now Playing: Switchfoot, "Oh Gravity"

Buy this CD! It's awesome. It came out the day after Christmas, and I looked everywhere for it after we came back from Mexico. I finally found a copy at London Drugs. Anyways, it's really good, a little heavier music & lyrics than their previous stuff, but still fun...

Wow, I was flipping through a bunch of old photos - it was fun! Want to see some?

Frank & I, in June 2003. Time sure flies...

And on our honeymoon, Sept. 2004...My friend Mary and I (and my dog!) in 2003 (this was before Frank & I were dating)...Our engagement photo, March 2004...

And if you want to go REALLY far back, here's me as a baby...

My sister and I (to be honest, I have no idea which one it is) in 1987 or '88...

If I had any photos on this computer of Frank as a baby, I'd show them to you in a flash, but I don't, sorry.
And here's one of my grad class in 2001. I'm front and center (don't ask how that happened) in the navy blue dress...

I love Picasa, it digs up all these old photos I'd forgotten about!

Some Work Laughs...

2007-01-16T19:45:00.000-08:00

Now Playing: Jet, "Shine On"

I've added our Mexico photos to the sidebar - enjoy :)

I love Dilbert.

Playing Catch-up...

2007-01-11T21:10:00.000-08:00

Now Playing: Jack Johnson, "In Between Dreams"

Well, I feel bad about how few house pictures there are on here. I mean, in the last picture all you can see is studs! So here's a brief cronological view of the kitchen/dining room:

September 27th

October 9th

October 14th

October 16th

November 11th

November 13th

December 2nd

December 17th

Here's a couple more of the rest of the house, in it's current state:

As you can see, the floors upstairs haven't been refinished yet. There's still a lot more work to be done...but Frank is home now (he quit his job - did I put that in here?), so hopefully lots will get done.

I also added some pictures of Yori & Patti's wedding in the "2006 Weddings" link under Photos on the right ->

Photos of our Mexico trip to come :)

Feliz Navidad!

2006-12-26T09:27:00.000-08:00

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...

2006-12-06T10:38:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-06T08:00:00.000-08:00

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

2006-08-24T12:58:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-10T22:27:00.000-07:00

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...

2006-07-18T20:33:00.000-07:00

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

2006-07-16T17:29:00.000-07:00

"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...

2006-06-28T12:40:00.000-07:00

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...

2006-06-03T20:33:00.000-07:00

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...

2006-05-12T13:56:00.000-07:00

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!

2006-04-19T15:25:00.000-07:00

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...

2006-04-02T21:08:00.000-07:00

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

2006-03-07T20:37:00.000-08:00

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...

2006-03-04T09:44:00.000-08:00

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!

2006-02-15T14:23:00.000-08:00

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...

2006-02-07T20:01:00.000-08:00

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...

2006-01-23T14:22:00.000-08:00

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...

2006-01-20T20:49:00.000-08:00

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...

2006-01-07T14:28:00.000-08:00

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...

2006-01-05T18:48:00.000-08:00

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...

Merry Christmas!

2005-12-23T21:46:00.000-08:00

We figured we'd better update this before Celia beat us up...

Chronicles of Narnia is awesome - go see it!

So, Christmas break has been super busy, and doesn't show too many signs of slowing down. But of course, it's fun busy - nothing like school busy! We had a bunch of friends over last night (more than we thought we'd able to fit in our house!) and had a great time (saw a bunch of people we hadn't seen in a long time) and we had Sharon's family over for dinner tonight. Tomorrow we're doing sound for the Christmas Eve services, and eating dinner with Frank's family (his brothers are home). Christmas Day we'll get up early, open presents at Frank's parents house, go to Christmas mass, then head to Sharon's parents for presents and dinner. Then we'll be going to the young adult retreat at Camp Morice. Then after that we'll be doing some computer stuff for both Westwood and the Diocese Office.

Sometimes in the middle of all this hectic craziness, it's hard to remember what this season is really about. Sure it's about family and charity and friends and all that, and it can be hard to take the time to reflect on why this holiday is here. But we need to take some quiet time and think about what Christ coming in the flesh really means. It's a time to celebrate the freedom we gained through Jesus being born on earth. Hopefully we'll be able to sit quietly in the coming days and truly thank Him.

We hope that everyone has a Merry Christmas!

Duh!

2005-12-13T12:10:00.000-08:00

So I was fooling around with my settings on Blogger, and I click this tab called "moderate comments" and I'm thinking, hmm.. what does this do... and I see a list of comments that I've never read before! Here I was thinking that no one loved us, but I just hadn't approved the comments yet. Duh. I had no idea what "moderate comments" was when I turned it on. Oh well, I have now read all of the lovely comments that people wrote us.

I now officially have a BSc Computer Science (GIS Minor). Freaky. Well, as long as I passed all my classes - but I'm pretty sure I had at least a D in all of them even if I got zero on the exam (although I would have only had 50.1% in networking if I got zero on the exam - cutting it pretty close, considering I probably did pretty horribly on that exam...)

Frank's last exam is today at 6:00pm, then I have a job interview Wednesday morning, then hopefully we'll be able to de-stress! Yay!

--Sharon

Almost Done

2005-12-10T19:59:00.000-08:00

Well, only one exam left for both of us. For Sharon, it's Databases (could be very, very bad) and for Frank it's Physics 120 - Astronomy (almost guaranteed to be bad). It's Sharon's last exam EVER. Frank isn't quite so lucky - he has to do a 4-credit course in the month of January, but then he'll be done. And then we're on to a whole new phase of life, supposedly. Freaky. Anyone know of any job openings? Job hunting can sure be a daunting task. But at least we'll have more free time - no more staying up till 2am working on projects. Or at least, we hope so :)

So, we're already planning more house renovations for Christmas break. On the list are: tiling the fireplace, building a new mantle, putting handrails down the basement stairs, and hopefully installing a floor and putting up some drywall in the laundry room. We'll see how much time we have.

And we've put up our tree! Christmas is coming...

No Wonder...

2005-12-05T13:14:00.000-08:00

Well, one exam down, 4 more to go. We've gotten almost all of our Christmas shopping done, just a couple more presents and we should be good. St. Nicholas at Frank's parents was great, ate too much sugar, though.

We just got the funniest email from Vonage:

We would like to inform you of a system error that we have observed that has affected your account's billing. Unfortunately when you subscribed, the rate plan reflected a U.S. pricing in stead of Canadian pricing. We have corrected this error and your account now reflects the proper billing for your rate plan. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you we are therefore crediting your account for 1 month of service.

We were wondering why we were only paying $15 a month when the website said $19! Ha. We thought maybe we were really special or something :)

Busy busy...

2005-11-28T21:50:00.000-08:00

This week is pretty hectic - Bioinformatics presentation tomorrow, GIS presentations Wednesday, and Sharon's Database presentation on Thursday. Then all the reports to go with the presentations are due on Friday! Plus, we have our small group coming over on Thursday evening (which probably means we should clean our place up a little bit...) and then it's St. Nicholas @ Frank's parents on Sunday, plus we're doing sound and lights @ Westwood Sunday morning. And exams start on Monday! Good grief.

In other news, we're now VOIPing with Vonage. They finally added PG to their list, so we didn't have to change our number. $15/month for 500 minutes a month, anywhere in North America. Plus caller-id, call-waiting, voicemail, basically everything you ever wanted for no extra charge. Considering we were paying $25 a month for Telus with no long distance, we thought this was an excellent deal! And we got the router practically for free from Radio Shack with a mail in rebate. So our mission now is to convert people to Vonage - if you call long distance, it'll save you a ton!

A New Beginning

2005-11-26T18:20:00.000-08:00

Well, here's to a brand new blog. We've decided to do this blog together - you can visit Sharon's old blog at http://www.xanga.com/cling_and_clatter. There's over 2 years of interesting (or not...) thoughts over there.

Hopefully we can keep everyone up to date on the goings-on in our lives here. Glad to have you along for the ride!