Oh Canada! (yep!)

Alyssa emailed the director to accept the program and inform them of her intent to attend, meanwhile I sent off the applications for housing and child care. So we're going to Vancouver, BC for school for 2-3 years.

There's so much to figure out. The housing isn't too bad; we just wait to hear from them and in the meantime look in to other apartments around the city. Childcare is the same, either we get it through the school or another private place. But there's tons of other stuff. Do we need our car and should we bother bringing it? Where will the grocery stores be? How do we get medical care? Will we be able to work or will there be a student visa issue? How are we going to afford moving all our stuff up there? Will our phones work or do we need new wireless carriers for Canada? What are the laws/rights like up there? It's a lot to figure out. We're taking it one step at a time, but there's a lot to do.

Odin and Freya have both had some kind of eye thing going on. They got really red and a little pussy but the doctors didn't think it was pink-eye, just some kind of infection or irritation. Gone now, but weird.

We've all been sharing illness, and now I've finally got it (though nowhere near as bad as they all had it). This term of school is starting to wrap up so we're focusing on studies.

Speaking of which, time to get back to it....

(Seems like all I ever do, doesn't it?)

Oh Canada! (eh?)

A few days ago (I think) the Director of the Music Department at UBC called Alyssa to say they'd love to have her! It's really exciting news because that is the school she wanted to go to the most, and it is in a place we'd love to live (Vancouver, BC). We've been talking about it all week and we're 95% decided to go! They're also giving Alyssa a scholarship so our expenses will be way down, and she might be making some extra money being a teaching assistant for some of their classes. The plan is for her to go for three years (normally it'd be two but she might extend that by adding an additional area of interest, necessitating more classes), I wont be in classes the first year (didn't apply on time) but the last two years I'd like to be in their Mediterranean Archaeology program, so we'd both finish at the same time. We'll see how it all works out! Still have to apply for housing, child care, etc. Lots to take care of first.

Freya's favorite word is "No" right now. She learned how to use it and now uses it so often she sometimes says No when she means Yes. She's also finally over her cold, and back to her old self again.

Odin woke up this morning and started throwing up. No idea why, he's just been lying in bed all morning, which is very unlike him. I feel bad for the guy. He still seems to be suffering.

Alyssa is at a birthday party with Freya right now, and I'm taking care of Odin. I should start studying for some tests I have on Monday....

Sick

Posts are pretty far apart lately, aren't they?

An illness has been going around the house. Right now Odin seems to be over it, and Alyssa has finally hit the downhill slope, but Freya is warm enough to heat a room. Miraculously, I still haven't caught anything, despite everyone else being sick twice, but maybe I just jinxed myself....

It dawned on me that we have way more pictures and videos of Odin when he was a baby than Freya. This is mostly because we've not had a camera in ages. So I'm finally gonna get ours fixed or just buy a new one this week.

We're still waiting to hear about all the Grad schools Alyssa applied to, but it will probably be quite a bit longer. I've been working on one of my mid-term assignments most of the weekend, and I'm a little behind in my other classes as a result, but I have the rest of the night to pick it up, right? I may have found a couple of grad programs I'm interested in, so I'll have to look into those.

Right now, we're feeling the pain of having to drive to school a lot, especially now that next term's schedule has been released and it's really not being nice to us. Will have to do something about that. When we move for grad school, we're only willing to live less than a mile from the campus so we can just walk everywhere....

Look! An update!

That's right, I have a second to sit down and type something up. Well, really, I don't, but Alyssa asked me to and I figured why not.

Freya's vocabulary has been rising off the charts lately. A lot of the time there are discernable english words, but sometimes it's still just Freya-speak. She's been taking a dance class which has been enjoyable. I haven't been to it, but Alyssa takes her while I'm in class and she likes to do some of the dance moves at home. She's been having some trouble with her teeth lately, it seems like a new one comes in every time a painful one is just about done. Hopefully they'll all be in soon.

Odin is still in swim lessons and having a fun time. We haven't been in a while because he missed a week when he was sick, but his instructor says he'll be swimming on his own soon. We took his crib down because he decided he didn't like it after all and changed back to his big bed. He seems to be liking it a lot more (he slept on it for months before, but we had to move him to the crib for some reason this last few months). He's been having some behavioral issues, but we've pinned it down to structure and diet, so we think we'll have it under control in a matter of days.

Alyssa's been more prolific than ever lately (regarding compositions) and her professors seem very impressed. I'm sure she'll put some of them up on her website soon enough, they need some final polishing. She got an email from the director of the music department at one of the grad schools she applied to saying that they were very impressed with her application and just needed a little more information to be considered for scholarship. We're trying to take care of the paperwork, and we'll see what they finally say. Other than that, she's been pretty busy watching the kids while I'm in class, and taking classes of her own. We recently switched which days Odin is in class to balance things out a little better.

Right now I'm looking around at post-bacc programs and grad options. I may just end up taking some classes at the school Alyssa picks, and maybe they'll let me in to the post-bacc. I have extra classes keeping me busy this term, and next term wont be a cake-walk either, but it's good for me. I should probably get a little work done right now.

Oh, and we got a bike trailer and took it for a test-run yesterday. We did about 10 miles (I pulled 80lbs of kid and trailer, I'm tired) and discovered that the only difficulty was the kids needing entertainment (like books and such in the trailer with them). The weather is only going to get better, so this is our new fitness activity. We've even planned out the route to school and we're going to spend the next few weeks building up the endurance for that distance, which will also cut out some car use.

That's all for now, I should get to some homework or something.