Pictures of Our House

We are 100% unpacked now. Not everything has found its place, but the house is looking much more put together now.





This is our front room, aka the music room. It's also the room with most of our books. Our Christmas tree filled up the space by the window nicely. Eventually we'll have some comfy armchairs, to sit and enjoy the afternoon sun. The room feels so warm with the hardwood - totally worth the work of pulling up the carpet! We recently moved our rocking chair and television from the front room to the basement den, where our new futon will be delivered Monday. Once we have some actual seating (!) it will be much easier to enjoy our tv, and wii, and having friends to visit.



We also use the dining room when friends visit. In addition to the futon, a kitchen hutch will soon be delivered, to replace the credenza/mirror in this room. Those items will move to the empty wall in the front room, where the television used to be. There is still much shuffling and organizing to be done! A real blessing in this house are the closets and storage nooks everywhere. The closet in the dining room is full of dishes and boardgames.



This is our office/den/room of constant comfort. We spend many hours here! I am constantly organizing and cleaning it up, but it still just looks windblown at best. Paper management is a never-ending chore! Thank goodness we have a huge filing cabinet. This room also benefited from carpet removal, to reveal the beautiful hardwood underneath. The closet in this room is full of computer stuff and Chiropractic odds and ends.



This is our upper landing. I just like the way the light filters in, and the pretty heron picture. The wooden railings aren't particularly safe or reassuring, but they allow light into the upper hallway. It's hard to make out in this picture, but the light fixture is deliciously retro! The downstairs and upstairs hallways are basically the only areas still carpeted, which is nice on icy feet in the morning.





Not that our bed is so fascinating... but here it is! We'll be building a stationary bedframe, because the wheeled one was moving too much, causing damage to the hardwood. The dressers and closet in our room are Jo's clothing area. The wardrobe and closet in the second bedroom are Christopher's clothing area. The second bedroom is also where my various craftage supplies are scattered for now.



It took us two months of winter to finally clean up our garage enough to park a car in it! All the wood piled against the wall used to be the crate that protected my piano on its travels from Calgary. It was rather inconveniently taking up all the parking space - but it has been so cold, we found it hard to get motivated enough to shift things around. I'm sure the Honda will appreciate its new home.

-Jo

Happy Saturday!

Yay, my garage is useable! When we moved to Winnipeg, we had the piano packaged in a big box and moved out here. The movers unpacked the piano and put it in our living room and left the box in our garage. We kept meaning to dismantle it, but never got around to it. Then it got cold, and it was too cold to do it.

Well today we finally got around to doing it. Well, we didn't fully dismantle it, but we did make the garage useable for the first time since moving in! Yay us. So one car is now in the garage, and the other is parked outside. They will rotate depending on the timing of us getting home, but it will be nice.

I also got winter boots today! This means Jo and I can go for walks and such, which is exciting. Now to slim down so I can fit into my snow pants, and I'll be set! Good times!

We also bought a futon today! (it was a good day if you can't tell) We didn't move any couch-like furniture from Calgary, so it will be nice to have a place to sit! and watch tv! and play wii! Once everything is hooked up that is... We only have electricity on one wall in the basement, the opposite one from the TV. So I'm going to have to run an extension cord across the room as well as run a ground cable to that outlet. I'm excited about the futon, it's really nice, and they've made technological advancements in futon matressess so now they don't flatten out where you sit like the old ones. We also have a futon mattress from Jo's cousin so we have a spare/backup.

And we finally used our breadmaker! Our house smells wonderful right now!

-Christopher

New Year, New Employment

In particular, chiropractic employment! I really loved my time at Starbucks, and recommend it to anyone looking for stimulating, fun casual work. I miss my sbux friends in Calgary a TONNE and really value the new friends I made at my store on Pembina. After some much needed recovery time, I'm ready to get back to my career.

Shortly after moving here, I met an Activator doctor practicing in Lorette, a small town about 15 minutes southeast of the city. She runs a busy, three-doctor, community and family centred practice that I find an absolute inspiration. However, she has no room for a fourth doctor. I will be doing a locum for her during February and a week of April, while she takes some trips.

It quickly became clear, after speaking with several doctors about associateships and starting practice, that every Chiropractor has a unique and individual style of practice. It looked unlikely for me to find a place in an existing practice, so I started gathering information about starting a new practice.

I also knew one of the doctors was selling her practice in the Lorette office, because she needs to devote herself to her husband's practice in the city, as he is now on permanent disability. Once I've looked over the financials from the past few years, I'll be able to determine a fair value for the clinic. Starting a practice or buying a practice will both require considerable capital. The major advantage of buying an existing practice is walking into an established clientele. This represents a much lower risk, both to lenders, and to my potential income.

The major advantage of starting from scratch is the power to choose my location. Unfortunately, Lorette is far from where we live right now. I'll see what the drive is like when I do the locums. Nonetheless, I am very excited about my return to Chiropractic, and the prospect of working in such a dynamic practice, which follows my Chiropractic technique and philosophy. It will be a privilege to work with an office of likeminded doctors, because it is truly a rarity in this profession.
- Jo

August to December

So, if you hadn't heard (but since you are reading this blog, you probably know us and probably have heard), but in case you didn't get all the details, here is the Reader's Digest version. :)

We are in Winnipeg. we've been here for 5 months now. Wow, almost half a year. Winnipeg is in the grip of winter, with no warmth on the horizon until the spring, just like God meant it.

We sold our house at the end of June for slightly less than we had hoped, and were packed and ready to go for August 1st. we had lots of help loading up the truck and everything went smoothly.

The drive was long and rather uneventful with the exception of the truck breaking down on my parents in Medicine Hat. we each drove a car, and my parents drove the moving truck. The problem was fixed and the rest of the trip went by without any problems.

we moved into a little 1 bedroom apartment on Pembina (south end of the city). Jo started work at Starbucks right across the street and began the Manitoba Chiropractor licensing process and I commenced looking for a job.

I got a job at Convergys, a huge call center, where I worked for a month doing technical support for Comcast business customers across the states. While working there I was offered a 4 month term job with Great West Life which I took with great enthusiasm, as call center work sucks and doesn't pay worth shit.

Thus began my 1 month stay at Great West Life. It was a great company to work for, but I was working in the IMAC (install, move, add, change) department, meaning I was pushing papers, and acting as a coordinator all day. All-in-all a great experience, but not quite what I was looking for. After about a month, I received a call from the St. James School District where I went for an interview and was offered a job doing computer/network support for the schools in the division, a division which our new house is in.

During my job hoping, Jo and I spent a large amount of time house shopping. We aren't renting people, and after tasting the greatness that is home-ownership we wanted to snag a place out here. Our realor, Don B., was absolutely amazing and really showed us what Winnipeg has to offer. After a few un-accepted offers we found an amazing little place and our offer was accepted. It's a cute, 1100 sq ft, 1 1/2 storey place in St. James, on the west end of Winnipeg. It has a HUGE yard, and an attached single car garage. The basement is fully finished, and it had been freshly painted througout. The lady we bought from kept the house immaculate and it is in amazing condition. Shortly after we moved in we ripped up most of the carpet on the main floor to expose beautiful hardwood underneath in really good condition.

We moved into our new place on Oct 1st with lots of help from my awesome relatives and friends.

Throughout this time Jo had been working on her licensing stuff and was also looking for a clinic to work in.

So that brings us to December. Time for Christmas and all that fun stuff. We decided not to do presents this year as we are trying to get things going with a practice for Jo. She has a lead on a practice for sale so we are just waiting for the seller to get all the info together.

At the beginning of December we had the Dueck (my mom's side) family get-together in Rosenfeld. 88 people showed up this year, and there was lots of good food. I think it has been about 15 years since I was last at one, so it was cool to be back and see all the people that couldn't make it to our wedding, as well as all of those that were able to make it.

We also took a drive out to Altona to see my grandparents old house. It was a nice trip down memory lane. :)

We didn't go home for Christmas this year, and had a wonderful Christmas dinner at my Aunt and Uncle's place. They even suprised us with a few presents which was fun.

So Christmas is over, New Year's eve is upon us and Jo is done at Starbucks at the end of the week. She is going to be doing some temp work doing mecial transcription while the chiro stuff comes together starting next week.

We hope that all is good in your lives, and this caught you up to date on the last few months. I know I missed tons, and maybe got something wrong in all of that, but Jo will be sure to let me know. :)

You can expect more frequent updates, and we wish you all the best in 2009.

Belated Merry Christmas

Belated Merry Christmas Everyone!

We've been delinquent in keeping this up-to-date for all of our family and friends, but that was possibly because I forgot the password. :)

But a new year is approaching, and there will be more posts. This blog is a nice way to keep you all in the loop of what is happening in our lives, so for those of you we don't get to talk to on a regular basis, or for those fun little things that come up, we'll post about them on here.

price drop and subsequent offer

So we dropped the price of our house on Monday. We'd been on the market for 3 weeks with a decent amount of activity in terms of showings with 2 to 3 a week, but not a single offer. Now we understand the market in Calgary has slowed significantly, and this is just how things work. So we dropped it by 6 grand in hopes of enticing new buyers. Immediately after the drop we got 2 showings in 2 days, with an offer following the second showing.

The buyer's Realtor, Lynn, presented the offer around 9pm on Wednesday evening. The price they offered was acceptable, but they had a special clause saying that their house had to sell in order for this contract to go through. And that they had until July 15th to sell. They were also only offering a $2000 deposit, which is low compared to the usual $5000. So we counter-offered accepting the price and asking them to drop the clause that they needed to sell their house, and to raise the deposit to $5000. Then we sat around waiting for a reply. And waited. And waited. Eventually we find out that the other Realtor has just left. So our realtor calls her to see what's going on, and Lynn gets in a big huff about how they would never consent to that change in the contract, and was all insulted that we would even suggest such a thing. I'm not sure why she took the insult so personally, as it's just a business deal but... The fact that she just left without giving us a response to our counter-offer annoyed me, as that's really quite rude.

But such is the way of business, so we continue to wait.

House is Listed!

So our house listed on Monday and showed up on MLS earlier this week.
Here's a link.