On our way

I'm sitting in a mostly empty room. Outside is a moving truck packed and ready to go. Our kids are safely and happily tucked away at Grandma's house. We need only wake up, get dressed, grab our backpacks and get in the truck, and it's off we go (after a brief stop for Dutch Bros one last time).

The plan is still to head to Ikea in Portland first. Mom is going to show us around while we snack on waffles, and we'll load what we buy into the truck and head home. We're going to set up, see the sights, and come back for the kids and be in town for a few days.

Here we go!

T minus 1 week

A week from right now Alyssa and I will be going through Portland on our way to our new place in Vancouver, BC! It's crazy to think about, but, as one of Alyssa's favourite professors would say; "This is really happening!"

It's funny that I tend to have sparse posts during the school term because I am so busy with work, and sparser without school because I am even busier being lazy. I figured it was about time, so here goes. In no particular chronological order:

We did end up getting new shots for Odin. He needs do re-do his MMR, Pertussis, and Pneumococcal, but we opted to skip the last one and first one and just get the pertussis in the 5-year booster he would have gotten anyway, which was just one shot and included a re-vac for Polio since they weren't sure if he needed that again. It had tetanus in it so it hurt him a lot more than usual, but he took it like a champ.

Freya has been exploding with language. She understands all kinds of idioms and she's stringing together longer sentences. She recently expressed an interest in colors so we're teaching those to her right now, and she's getting them really fast. Everybody we meet asks us how old she is and is surprised when we tell them, they always say that she seems a lot older than she is. (Go us for advanced kids!)

Odin has been into Optimus Prime lately. We bought him a transforming action figure that he can almost get on his own (just needs my help with the last step). He's really liking riding his bike, which is good because that's how we'll be getting him to his school. Odin is going to have hockey lessons at the UBC arena (the same ice the T-birds play on!) and he's really excited aboot that. I've been wanting to get back in to hockey for years so I may join him (there's even parent-child hockey time on the rink). Speaking of which, right now the kids are obsessed with this video.

We got the kids a bunk bed that they are really excited about. Whenever we see it in the store, they both crawl in (Odin on the top, Freya in the bottom) and they said they really want to sleep that way. We've had them both sleeping in our room the past few nights (since the kids room is mostly packed-up) and they see to do well together.

Most of our place is packed up. There's just about an hour or two of work left, and then we're ready to go except for the stuff we need out until the last second. Its exciting and scary being this close to going. We look at expire dates on food and think that we wont be here, and we can see weather projections out 10 days and know what the weather will be like where we're going. We discovered that Alyssa gets a discount as a TA on one of the better phone plans up there, so we can get our phones for a little cheaper. Alyssa and I are going to spend our 2 or 3 days up there trying to wrap up loose ends like that before we go back for the kids. Have to get a bank account, find a cell phone plan, learn the neighborhood, stuff like that.

We sold our car to our friends Brandy and Jon. We needed the rent money and they needed to transport their two kids from where they live now. We were sad to see it go, but we started out living together without a car, and we knew we wouldn't be able to have on in Vancouver, so we're adjusting. We've been walking and bussing around this week without problems, it's just like old times.

Oh yeah, Alyssa and I had a good graduation. Mine was a little more pleasant owing to the venue, but both were fun and exciting. My professor said some very nice things about me, and Alyssa graduated cum laude which is nice for her. We both still forget some times that we have college degrees. Alyssa gets to register for her classes today, and she's scheduling an orientation with her professors for instructions on the class she'll be teaching. All so exciting!

I should get going and make breakfast for the kids. Our plans today are to finish packing our stuff so there's nothing left to do, run an errand or two, and enjoy the rest of the week with catching up on some favorite hobbies before we stir up a bunch of dust with moving. I've been taking lots of pictures with our new camera and I'll upload them soon. I also plan to take pictures of our new apartment (possibly a video tour so our parents and kids can see it), and some of the neighborhood, so look for that.

Breather

Well, I have just a moment right now, so here's a nice little update.

In the middle of finals week right now, and all has gone well. I had Greek at 10:15 and Latin at 3:15 on Monday, but my Greek professor allowed us to take the final Friday at 10:15 since he had another one then for his other class. That really saved me; I was able to study Latin over the weekend without having to cram in a bunch of Greek as well. Pretty sure I aced the Latin final, and I spent the last few nights typing away with bloodshot eyes to get the essays done for History today. Now I just have Greek but it's not 'til Friday so I have plenty of time to study with nothing else to prepare for.

That will be my last final for a little over a year until grad school. It's strange walking away from this without signing up for classes in the next term. We've always been in classes, even summer, so there's been no break. Now there's a nice breather moment.

Speaking of grad school, we got an email just today that Alyssa was chosen for a Graduate Teaching Assistant-ship! She'll make about $255 per week for 16 weeks when the term starts, only working 9 hours each week! It's really going to help our financial situation up there. I'm sure it will be hard, but she's really excited. She has orientation classes for how to be a TA and Grad student at the same time in September, just as the term is starting.

We took the kids to the pediatrician for one final check-up before we leave the country. In short, everything is amazing, as always. Dr. Dzubay is always impressed with how healthy and advanced our kids are. They're both growing great, developing well, and are really healthy. We have to take Odin to get his blood drawn to find out which vaccinations they screwed up so they can give him new ones, but that's all.

That's all for now. Time to study some Greek....