Measure twice, cut once, then call a carpenter

Well, at least we don't have to live by these words of wisdom (yet). As Carmen's post suggests, we're looking at putting a new door in our house to separate the basement suite from the rest of the house. To our dismay, the size of the opening doesn't match up with any standard door sizes...

Now the only questions left to ask are why is this the case and how do we fix it? As for the why, we have two complementary theories.

1. When the previous owners laid tile in the kitchen, the thickness of the new sub-floor plus the thickness of the tile and grout reduced the height of the door from the bottom
2. Perhaps there used to be a door in this peculiar door-shaped opening and rather than remove the old door-jams, they simply plastered over them, reducing the width from each side and the height from the top

So now we are left with a few different options:

1. Exploratory Surgery to determine if there are door-jams inside the wall, and where exactly they are.
2. Do some creative construction to make custom jams to fit an already cut-down door.
3. Give up on the idea of installing a door and put up a bead curtain

And in case it wasn't clear from this post, any comments or suggestions on how to proceed would be greatly appreciated.

I hate home construction

The only thing I have to say is "Why don't people sell 78" doors?"

Hello? Snow? Where are you?

Okay, I'm glad to see that I wasn't wrong about the snow being gone before Halloween, but to Carmen's credit, the snow did all disappear a couple of days after the fact.

But it's now mid November with no sign of snowfall in sight. That one foot teaser actually had me believing that we were going to get two white Christmases in a row, but I guess that there is still time for the white stuff to come back...

Who ever said that all nighters were for students???

One of the things that I looked forward to the most about finishing my degree was the knowledge that my days of pulling those fabled "All nighters" were now behind me. As of last night, that bubble has officially been burst. That's right, I was in the office from 6:00PM last night to 4:00AM this morning and all I can say is: "Thank god for coffee!"

Christmas shopping!

For the first time in my life I have got a jump on my Christmas shopping, and I have to say I am proud of myself. Only two more gifts to go. For my family anyways, we plan on waiting until boxing day to shop for Dan's family in order to take advantage of the sales. But until then I can relax and concentrate on stocking stuffers. :)

It's nice to be home

Well we are back after our very quick trip to Saskatchewan. Angela's shower was a success and I am glad we went as it was one of those once in a lifetime sort of things. I must say a huge "Thankyou" to Becky, the host of the shower, she did a great job and made sure it was a memorable occasion for everybody.

Despite having only been gone for one night I sure missed my new bed. I have been truly spoiled. It was especially nice to crawl into after traveling 5 hours in our van for the second day in a row. I must put in a complaint now that I think every rib on the right side of my body is out. I also discovered how much of an impact the position of the baby has on my bladder. The trip to Saskatoon took the expected 5 hours with no unexpected bathroom breaks. The trip home however took 7 hours and I now have a survey of acceptable and unacceptable bathroom stops between Edmonton and Saskatoon.

But enough of my complaining, the trip was defiantly worth it, and I am glad we went.

Hiccups?

So how do you get rid of baby hiccups? I am coming to the conclusion that while baby hiccups can be cute, they have more potential to annoy then anything else. I have recently discovered that when this baby gets the hiccups it really gets them. It can only be described as feeling like my stomach is being violently jostled from the inside. With about ten times more force then the average kick.

I have also decided that while this baby may have my toes, it defiantly has Dan's stomach. That is the only explanation for me eating a combo from Tacotime only an hour after eating a very hearty supper of mashed potatoes, chicken and vegetables.

I'm never wrong!

I continue with the belief that the snow will be gone by Halloween.

Yep, It's official

All last week we kept thinking to ourselves: It's too early for winter, this snow is going to melt and we'll have a another week or two of autumn. Guess we were wrong...

Goodbye summer - Oh winter, it's YOU again!

So much for having one last weekend to mow my lawn. It's under about 6 inches to a foot of snow :(

Wouldn't be so bad if there was a chance that it was going to melt, but with only a few more weeks until Halloween, odds are that it's here to stay :(

Guess I'm not the only one to wish that Old Man Winter wasn't really here yet though, our elm tree still has about 80% of it's leaves, despite every other tree in the area being almost completely bare :)

Remind me why we wanted cats again...

Well, Link (one of our two kittens) has finally come around and spends time with us! (Well after we go to bed, anyways...). The only question I have now is "What exactly were we thinking?". Since Link has decided we're not so bad, we have yet to get a night of un-interrupted sleep. Seems kittens, especially stray ones, are nocturnal and are most active between the hours of 2 and 8 am... So much for the new bed giving us a peaceful nights sleep...

Oh sweet piece of heaven!

Who could ever have imagined that a bed could be so GOOD!

First night in the new bed is now over (well for me anyways, Carmen may never get out of it...), and this morning is the first time in recent memory that I slept more or less through the night AND woke up without a sore back! Not to mention the fact that I got up after the FIRST ring of my alarm.

The moral of the story:

You spend approximately 1/3 of your life sleeping, it's worthwhile to INVEST in a good bed!

$150 a year for 10 years of good sleep? We'll take it!

Well, we finally broke down and got rid of our broken down old bed. :)

The new bed is gonna be GREAT! First of all, we've upgraded from a double to a queen sized bed, which works out well now that Carmen has a body pillow that shares the bed with us... Add to that the fact that it sits about a full foot higher than our old bed and you've got one sweet night's sleep.

More on how good it is in practice later :)

We've won the war!

I think our cats have finally decided we are not so bad after all. We can finally pick both of them up without fear of losing a finger, and assuming nobody makes any sudden movements they will let us pet them. Even occasionally giving us the much sought after purr. I have been anticipating this moment, as we have kept them locked in our bedroom, and their nightly prowl has been disturbing my sleep for to long now. Talking about sleep, we bought a new bed this weekend and it arrives tonight. It cost way to much money to even mention. I like to cover my eyes, plug my ears and pretend it was free. But despite the cost, I know by tormorrow morning I will have been willing to pay twice as much.

The turning point in the war...

Well, it looks like we may actually be winning the war against our two newest family members. On Monday night we cornered the more skiddish of the two and fed it kitty treats while petting it. Last night, one of them actually voluntarily jumped up on the bed and cuddled with us for a bit. Perhaps this thing will turn out okay in the end after all...

The wonder of children

It's a wonder that the human race has survived this long, with children being as inherently curious as they are. We were over at a friends house tonight, and watching their 19 month old try and do some of the things that our five year was doing was unforgettable (Remind me never to have an elevated/recessed area in any of my houses). Kurtis was running and jumping off of the two-step drop into the living room on and off all evening. All of a sudden, our hosts 19 month old decided to try the same thing. Needless to say, she bit the dust, quite literally. So the question remains, have kids always lacked a sense of self-preservation, or is this something that we have bred into our children?

I give in :(

I will finally end mine and Dan's stand off as to who has to post next.

We finally made our first big purchase for our coming baby. A $250 travel system, which comes complete with stroller, infant car seat and base for vehicle. I did a lot of shopping around and checking reviews on the internet before settling on this particular model. I was very disappointed by the quality that I found at some department stores that I had previously respected. I have added Sears and The Bay to my growing list of stores to boycott. I don't think I will ever make a major purchase again without checking out the small business in the area to see what they have to offer.

Active Kids = Cranky Kids

I don't know what the obsession with kids needing to be physically active these days is, but it is complete and total hogwash! We enrolled Kurtis in gymnastics yesterday and took him to the community league BBQ today and it has spelled complete DISASTER! He has been soooo tired and cranky that we are seriously moving bed-time up by as much as a whole hour, just to try and keep him civilzed. Any mothers out there with words of advice are welcome to give us ideas :)

Something to chew on

Here is a little something that Carmen dug up on the net:

9/11 Pentagon Attack

Now, I wouldn't call myself a conspiracy theorist, but I'm certainly not an American sympathizer either. This video in no way closes off all of the loose ends is exposes, but it certainly does raise some questions about what happened on that fateful day.

A week full of firsts, and it's only Thursday

What a week this has been, first and most excitingly, Carmen can feel the baby moving now (she describes is as something similar to little bubbles popping, I can't wait till I can feel it kicking too). Kurtis started gymnastics today and managed to profoundly shock both of us by remembering detailed instructions on what activities to do, despite have a total mental block about the number 6 with counting.

And last, and by far most disturbing, we had our first snowfall last night! Not that it stuck, but the fact that we got snow indicates that the end of summer is, without a doubt, drawing near. Too bad we didn't get a chance to get the rest of our apples picked, guess that means no apple jelly for everybody this Christmas, maybe next year...