PLANS, PLANS, PLANS!!!

Actually, I don't have any plans at the moment other than a trip to Whitehorse. We are going to the Union AGM. Since I am the union rep for the school, I don't have much choice. I can definitely think of better ways to spend a saturday. Oh well, they are paying our expenses anyways. Brian is just coming for the free food! Actually, I kind of volunteered him to go since I am going anyway. At least a trip into Whitehorse means I can get my haircut, something it desperately needs. So, I will put a new post next week. Maybe there will be some new developments on the house by then.

O.K. ONE MORE POST BEFORE I GO TO WHITEHORSE

Proof that God is real from a 7 year old perspective:

We were in class today and the kids were colouring.
Tamara: "I know that God is real."
Alyson: "Really?"
Tamara: "Yes, Skye wanted something and she prayed and it happened."
Alyson: "Wow!"

(But it didn't end there...)

Alyson: "I have a new bike now. I prayed to God for a new bike and I got one."
Tamara: "Did it just come down out of the sky?"

(I should enter this in readers digest and earn some money off it!)

YOU WON A PRIZE FOR WHAT?????

As you may know, every year kids across the Yukon, including Ross River, enter a bridge building competition. They make these bridges from wooden stir sticks. This year was no different. The kids at school diligently worked on their bridges. These bridges are then taken to Whitehorse where they are weighed and tested to see how much weight they will hold before breaking. They have different age categories and cash prizes for the top three in each. This year Naomi and Hannah both built bridges with friends of theirs. They did o.k., but not spectacular. Josh decided to build his bridge all by himself. The problem arose when there was only a week left before the competition and all he had were a few pieces assembled - certainly nothing resembling a bridge. He just lost interest. But being the incredible parents that we are, he had to finish what he started. So, with much complaining and grumbling he finally completed a bridge. It was just a platform. Just long enough to span the required width (80cm). There was no extra support - just a plain platform. Can you imagine our surprise when a prize came for him? Can you believe he won a prize for having the lightest bridge in the whole competition. Guess what he won? A rotary tool kit and a $50 gift certificate from Walmart. I guess he basically got the prize for being the laziest entrant in the competition! Oh well, he certainly wasn't complaining after that.

PICTURES AS PROMISED

Here are the pictures that I promised you.

Here is "the pit". It sits right in the middle of the two pieces of land. As you can see we have a lot of trees and brush to get rid of before they come to put in the septic. It is hard to tell, but it is about 8 feet deep.

Our new shed! It is quite nice, for a shed. We will move it to the proper position at a later date.

And last, but definitely, not least, Mom is always telling me that we should have 2 bathrooms. Mom, this is yours when you come to visit! Hope you enjoy it! Apparently it has a styrofoam seat so your bottom won't get too cold. Is it staying you may ask? Of course!

WE ARE EXPANDING OUR TERRITORY

The saga of the house and property just keeps coming up with new, exciting and unexpected developments. Yesterday I phoned Clifford, the septic tank installer guy. He also happens to own the lot right next to ours. I wanted to talk to him about where and when to install our septic system. We wanted to use "the pit" to install ours and his too. However, as things in Ross River usually go, they turned out very differently than expected.

Clifford: "You could always buy my property too."

Me: "What???"

Clifford: "Sure, I'm offering to sell it to you."

Me: "Uuummmm, let me talk to Brian and we will get back to you."

Needless to say, we met with him tonight and bought his piece for $5000, including a shed. It is a really nice piece with lots of trees. The interesting thing is that the papers have not been signed from the original owner to Clifford, so we have to include Mike in the deal too, but only to sign it over to us. I will send pictures sometime this weekend. Brian says that he feels like the monopoly guy - buying property from all these different people. I should start buying graph paper in bulk since our plans keep changing.

TIME FOR MY WEEKLY BOASTING SESSION

I just thought I would remind all you poor unfortunate souls down south that we only have 7 1/2 weeks of school left. Believe me, when June 9 comes around I will be thinking of all of you still sending your kids off to school every morning. LOL. Actually if I do the counting like some of the teachers, it would be as follows: you don't count the week you are in (even if it is Monday morning) and you don't count the last week because it is just fun and games any way. So that would leave me with 6 weeks left. Hmmmm, I like that better. So, I guess it is settled - only 6 weeks of school left for us.

MY NEW BATHROOM

I am really excited. I was able to order something new for our new house. When we were in the house taking measurements the other day, we noticed that our bathroom, which is small to begin with, needed some changes. As it stands right now, the counter sticks out too far, so that when you sit on the toilet you would be cuddling tightly up to it. So, knowing how much time certain people spend in there, we decided that we would definitely make a change. I found what I liked and have added some pictures for your perusal. I'm think of getting some nice navy blue towels. Oh, if only I had that elusive money tree.

WINTER - WILL IT EVER END??????

This morning I woke up with excitement bubbling up within me. There are only 8 more weeks of school left. However, now I am wondering if summer will have arrived before school lets out. We are sitting in our living room all warm and cozy while there is a blizzard outside. Visibility is definitely limited. AAAHHHHH!!!!! I keep thinking that this has got to be the end of winter, yet the snow just keeps coming. Oh well, maybe tomorrow will be spring.

STALLED

We are almost at the end of Easter weekend - only 1 day left. It has been a wonderful weekend. It provided a much needed break from work. However, we were hoping to do work of another kind, but Mother Nature had other ideas. We woke up on Friday ready to go to work on our lot. When I opened the door to let Oscar out he just looked up and me and I had to help him out the door. Apparently he didn't like the idea of walking through snow. He, like us, was under the illusion that spring had already arrived. None of us were very willing to go back to winter conditions. We went out and did some work, but it was wet and snowy, so we didn't do too much. Saturday arrived with more snow and very cold, strong winds. It was a day only good for staying indoors. This morning when I opened the door for Oscar I was pushing snow with the screen door. We had about 4-5 inches of fresh, white, fluffy snow. By this point we had given up any hopes of working on our lot. By lunch the wind had died down so we were able to go for a walk. Of course we followed the usual route by the house. While we were going by we checked the doors to see if it was unlocked (the keys were supposed to arrive at our house yesterday). The owner's son has been working on cleaning it up before we take possession so he must have left it open. Anyways, we went in and had another look around. It turns out there is not as much work to do as we originally thought. Can you hear my wallet sighing with relief? Of course there are always things one wants to do, but some of those will come later. Time to get out the pen and paper and do some more planning and figuring.

WATER DISH UPDATE

Well, we felt sorry for Oscar because he was dying of thirst, so we emptied his evil water dish but left it by his food bowl. We gave him another dish to tide him over for a while. We were hoping that he would decide the dish wasn't so evil if it was just there and couldn't attack him with vicious gurgles. So today we decided it was time for him to take the plunge. We put water back into his evil dish, but removed the bottle, so it is just like a regular water dish for now. He is still not too sure about it though. I just observed him approach the dish for a drink. He was very cautious and only got close enough to stretch his head over for a drink before he backed cautiously away. Once again, who ever thought you could get so much entertainment for $15. It's better than the movies!

THE LULL

I think I am stuck in the lull before the proverbial storm. I made a few phone calls to lawyers today. Now I just have to sit back and wait. (I hate waiting!) Of course, all deals such as this are usually done just before a long weekend. Not just any long weekend, but Easter, which includes the extra day. Oh well, I've done all I can for now. At least we can do more work on the property this weekend.

THE SAGA OF THE HOUSE

Well, as you may know we have been trying to purchase a certain house for a while now. Here's the story of "the house". About a month ago I phoned the owner in Watson Lake and asked if he was interested in selling his house. He was very interested and said "I'll come to Ross this weekend and we can go over and have a look." We thought 'great, this will be easy.' However, that was not to be. He never came to Ross that weekend. So, I phoned him on the following Monday, but he was out of town on business. I kept phoning each week, but he was still out of town on business. It turns out he was in Vancouver for 3 weeks, then in Whitehorse for a week. Well, after all this time, can you imagine our excitement when a fellow teacher phones us that the owner is in town this past weekend. The teacher had talked to him and the owner was going to get in touch with us before he left town. We thought, 'finally, we can get together and buy this house.' However, again it was not to be. While I was around town doing school business yesterday, I made a couple extra stops to try and find him, only to find out that he had left town already. AAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!! Needless to say, we were starting to get frustrated, and a bit panicky. We had found out that there were a couple other people also looking at buying this house. Can you believe it? It has just sat there for about 5 years, and now that we want to buy it, suddenly everyone wants it. We were so frustrated that last night we sat down and started drawing up plans for building our own house from scratch. (It was very nice, I might add!)
Well, today I decided I am going to try his office once more and can you believe I finally made contact with the elusive home owner. I was ecstatic! We were able to settle on a price quickly and we are now the proud, and relieved, owners of a fixer-upper.

Nothing, some new siding and windows can't fix! Next step: hook Oscar up to the house and have him pull it to the new site!

HARD AT WORK

Well, today was the start of what will be a lot of hard work. We bought work gloves for everyone and headed out to our property. We have a lot of brush and old trees to get rid of. Actually we own half of what is referred to as "Tim Moon's Pit". Apparently at one time he owned our lot and the one next to it. He was going to build a house there and dug a pit for the basement right in the middle where the 2 lots meet. When it was dug a bunch of trees, etc were just pushed over into the pit. I imagine these were going to be removed so they could start building. However, for reasons unknown to me, the house was never built. So, now we own half of this pit. We spent the day pulling trees, branches and other miscellaneous items from this pit. We ended up taking 2 full truckloads of debris to the dump. We are keeping anything that can be used for firewood - we've got quite a nice pile started. The kids had a blast right along with us. Even Naomi, who is definitely not the physical labour type of person, was right in there - chopping branches off trees and loading up the truck. We only worked for 2 hours, but by then everyone was tired and we need another week for more snow to melt before we can continue.

FOR SALE...One dog water bowl!

I was trying to persuade Oscar that his water dish was not evil and would not attack him. So, I sat on the floor with him and his water dish and he was digging in his feet trying desperately to get away from this evil contraption. His little heart was beating a mile a minute. Finally, I put an alternate water dish out, which he gratefully ran to and gulped down a bunch of water. He is one stubborn little dog (he gets it from Brian.LOL)

THE CASE OF THE ATTACK WATER DISH

Last time we were in Whitehorse we puchased a new water dish for Oscar. If I had known then what I know now. How was I to know that this water dish might attack him. But apparently, that is what happens - at least that must be what he thinks. It is one of those automatic refill ones with the water bottle attached. I think that the gurgle sound it makes when the air bubble goes up has scared him. Now he will stand about 4 feet away and growl at his water dish. When he has to get near it for food he always keeps his eyes on it while he eats. He will get a drink from it, but very quickly. It has proved to be quite a source of amusement for the family. Who knew you could get so much enjoyment from a $15 water dish. If I was really cruel, I would also buy him an attack food dish - that would be one way to keep his weight under control.

FLOWERS FROM ANOTHER MAN...

I just thought you all might like to know that tonight I received flowers from a man other than Brian. I should just leave it at that, leave you all wondering. However, I am not as cruel as all that. Thomas, the school principal, just brought me 5 beautiful yellow roses. It is a thank you for the work I have done for Education Week. It sure feels great to be appreciated! Actually having bright, cheerful flowers to look at isn't so bad either. Now, to let you know how sad I really am - all I have to put them into is a mason jar!

PICTURES AT LAST!!!

I finally have the pictures I have been promising. As you will see it is just a lot. (Dare I say "city lot"?) We obviously have a couple more weeks before the snow melts before we can start any work. After that we will need to do some serious weed control. We have great plans for this place.

TIME FOR AN UPDATE

I haven't posted an update for a few days and I keep telling myself that I need to put something new. The problem is that I haven't been able to think of anything interesting to say. We are still waiting for Monday to come so we can phone about the house again. Maybe this next week I will have something new to report. In the meantime, we have been collecting a lot of the information we need - phone numbers for the building inspector, etc. We have also been making decisions regarding what we will do when we renovate. We have come to some great decisions, but I am not revealing all - you will have to wait for pictures. I am going to borrow the school camera and post some pictures in the next couple days. I guess this will be a diary - from start to finish of the house. It is only about 3 blocks from where we are currently living - on the street that runs along the back of town. It will be perfect for when we want to go skiing because our trails start right across the road. That's all for now - I will keep you updated.