J: it’s been a while since we added some reasons for looking forward to moving into our house…

Reason #83 – being able to tell Johnnie to go play on the trampoline when he gets too much (we bought the kids a trampoline for their anniversary present in May, but we don’t have anywhere to set it up yet)

Reason #82 – having a fire at the flick of a switch

Reason #81 –  bed time will be a lot easier!!! Right now it’s a bit of a musical comedy – kids go to sleep wherever we can get them to go, and then we want to go to bed we move them around appropriately.

Reason #80 – all of my clothes will be in the same room!

Reason #79 – Rosie can listen to Beyonce in her own room, and I can listen to The xx on my stereo, which should be a Beyonce-free piece of kit.  Or indeed Avril Lavigne, who is arguably worse than Beyonce.  I’m still deciding about that.  But Avril is also definitely banned from my stereo. (At this point Rosie hits her Dad reasonably hard!!)

** We’re working on the whole hitting thing, it’s SO immature.  And DON’T get me started on Leona Lewis **

Reason #78 – being able to say we live at Number Ten

Reason #77 – the mudroom… come in from garage (connected to house BTW).  Dump bags.  Go into house.  Done.   Did we put that already?  If so – it’s good enough for two reasons

Reason #76 – that first G&T tastes so much better in your own house.

Hey teacher…

Some more photos – R got a chance to go inside again today (we don’t have a key right now) and got a few shots – PLUS our house now has a number!

J:

Reason #85 – only 5 minutes to the KH (and only 3 sets of traffic lights) instead of 20 minutes and 15,000 lights.

Reason #84 – we will have two cookers, but only one of them will be in the kitchen

To elaborate, we had to buy our cooker in advance because the kitchen designer needed the specs.  And we had nowhere to put it, so right now we have two in the (small) kitchen – one old electric one, and one gleaming gas cooker.

12 weeks tomorrow, and this last one has actually gone by fairly quickly.

Reason # 88 – Having a REAL breakfast bar!

Reason # 87 – Having a HUGE closet

Reason # 86 – NO MORE SHARING ROOMS! Done with that for the rest of my (single) life.

Reason #90 – being SO much closer to Twice the Deal Pizza (and the Lancer)

Reason #89 – having our own phone number

Reason # 92  Being local to everything I do.  All my activities (apart from the school) are located in the south of St Catharines, and right now we live at the northernmost point in the city.  (about a 3 minute walk from Lake Ontario).  So I spend a good amount of my time travelling – to the Kingdom Hall, to the ministry, to see any of my friends, and 3 times a week I teach at the gym at the Penn Centre, which is south as well.  If you take the Government Road, which runs from north to south along the Canal, it is a very pleasant drive, but I am looking forward to being around the corner from everyone……

Reason # 91  Being able to pop in to see my friends for coffee (or have them round to mine) any time.

J:  So R promised that I would upload some photos of her parents’ visit on the weekend.  Well somewhere somebody is enjoying a long weekend, so I’m only technically late.  Enjoy…

# 98 Everybody has enough space to hang all their clothes

# 97 A whole room for bags, coats and shoes Woo hoo!

# 96 Space in my kitchen to store food for a week

# 95 Being able to buy a book and not have to get rid of one to make space on the bookshelf

#94 The kids being able to run in the back garden without crashing into the fence!

# 93 Room to store 6 bikes

R: The end of another week. Four children in bed and asleep by 8pm on a Friday night. The definition of good parenting.  Please allow the smugness.  It will have evaporated by tomorrow morning by which time there will be four children running around the house causing kaos and at least one of them shouting “But I don’t WANT to go on the ministry!!!!”

I am feeling better today.  Yesterday I was distinctly morose.  Caused by, I believe, a combination of a severe drop in weather conditions, and the amount of daylight available, and the realisation that 14 weeks is actually quite a long time.  Thank goodness (and Steven) that we have been able to stay here until the house is ready, and not had to move twice, but as time goes on, it becomes more difficult.  It feels even more temporary as the boxes start piling up around us, waiting to be transported onto a Uhaul van on  The Day.

Everything else is fine.  Work is going well for both of us (I haven’t updated you on mine – note for next post) and the children are doing well.  I promise to upload some photos this weekend.  (Correction, I promise to make Jason upload photos this weekend.)  Have a good weekend.

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