Happy Third Birthday Cam!

Here's just a few photos we snapped while celebrating Cam's big birthday party in the park! He turned 3 on July 15th (Meg might argued he turned 3 many weeks earlier!!!!!) and is currently obsessed with all large construction vehicles - which is very appropriate given that he and Ryland spend so much free time out at the property watching dump trucks, excavators, bulldozers and the occasional boom truck! Sometimes they even get to climb and play on the machinery, and other times they're just as happy to play with mini-versions in the sandbox. Life is good when you're three and your parents are building a house!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY sweet Cam, may this be a fantastic year for you, full of bikes and trucks, trains and skates, copious bubbles to eat and very few bruises on your knees! We love you xo

Building onto our foundations.....

So, we FINALLY got our building permit - seemed like a lot of work to get to this stage, and boy are we ever happy to get here. Proudly displaying it in the window of our canvas storage tent! Now to get busy building.....









We bought a bunch of second hand rigid insulation from a roofing company - I guess it was used under steel roofing, so is in great condition, and we needed it to place underneath our foundations so were happy to pick this up for a tenth of the price of new stuff. The only issue with collecting so much used stuff is we ended up storing it all in various piles all around the property underneath tarps, and we found we were moving it over and over again which was a bit of a hassle. BUT, I was also able to practice and show off my new skills so it wasn't all a loss:-)

The second picture is of Jamie installing more rigid insulation on the interior of our external foundation walls - there`s a layer of rigid underneath the concrete foundation walls, then a layer up the side on the inside and we had a bunch of rock poured in to hold it in place and bring the floor level up. Next step is to get the plumber in to lay out drains and piping, then we will insulate the floor plan before laying out the tubes for in-floor heating and then pour the floor.

Then Lucas, a guy down the road from us who has his own mill, dropped off a bunch of the wood for framing. We've decided to use primarily pine for the outside frame, which will be hidden inside the walls and using metal brackets. Then we bought a lot of reclaimed barn wood for the interior middle corridor, which will be exposed and traditional timber framing. As he was dropping off loads of wood, he also used his truck to pick up a few huge pines that had been knocked down while we were clearing our building sites, and he`ll mill up those trees for us to use in our houses.

So, progress is progressing - just not FAST ENOUGH. As I`m sure always happens with housebuilding! These piles of wood sat on our site for a good week just waiting, and this week the builders are FINALLY starting to work on the house so I`m hoping to being able to take photos of actual walls soon and sharing them with you! And, of course, this is how Ryland spends all of his days while we`re working on the site!!!....

Fixing up Bartha....

While Jamie was buys snapping shots out at the property, the kids and I were busy working away in Bartha - here's us putting a coat of primer and as you can see I got a wee bit in my hair - which lasted for a good week or two!!!!! After the primer we added some fun colours and I sewed up some curtains, but I haven't taken photos of the end result yet - those will come soon!

Making a foundation....

So here's a few photos that Jamie took of the guys pouring our concrete for the foundations. It's been really neat to watch each step of the process......watching the trees being cleared away and a bit of the lot cleared out. Then rock brought in, followed by sand and rock, which was compressed and leveled. Then we brought a bunch of rigid insulation up, and laid it out underneath the forms, and placed the forms for the outer rim of the house and for the posts inside. Concrete was poured, and then the forms were packaged up again to be taken away. The concrete settled for a week, and in the meantime we've had rock brought in the fill most of the interior, which will be where the plumber starts laying out all the piping. It's starting to look more and more like a house these days, or at the very least I can more easily picture where all the rooms are going to be!!!!

Family Photo for June

Okay, so the plan is to combine these two photos. I've never done that sort of thing before, and imagine it's probably MUCH more complicated than I'm anticipating, but it's a skill I'm curious about - and life was SOOOOOO busy in June that it seemed impossible to gather us all together for the photo we wanted to create. So in the end, we were packing up our lives in Caroline's house, Kea was heading out to camp in Deep River later in the afternoon, Jamie had left bright and early before everyone was up to pick up wood for the house we're building and I decided to just take the photo of Kea before she left. Then, when Jamie got home completely exhausted from a full day of trying to move 300 pound pieces of old barn wood, driving hours and hours and unloading it at the other end, he took me a moment to help set up this photo and obligingly posed for a few different shots before snagging a shower and beer. Because that's the kind of guy he is:-) So anyways, here's a shot of us in the kitchen that we used a lot for the past 10 months, cooling down during an insane heat wave:-)

For the first half of June we were still in Vancouver, and I wish I could say that we came home from our whirlwind trip in order to relax and recover! But instead, Jamie travelled for work, then returned the night that Kea and I needed to pack up for our flight to NYC the next morning! LUCKILY Jamie had arranged a two week extension with our landlady so we didn't need to stress a lot about packing all of our stuff up right away and moving by the end of June, I think that might have just killed us!!!! As it was, June seemed to pass by in a blur of busy-ness, and now that I look back at it, I'm not even sure what happened!!!!! So I'll focus on a few of the highlights that are sticking out in my mind......

Kea and I had an absolute blast in New York. What a great new stage, to be able to travel alone with just one of the kids and really spend some quality time together. Life seems so very easy with just one 9 year old along:-) We packed in a lot of activity during our long weekend - mermaid parade and coney island, walking along the highline, walking in Central Park, cake baking, cake decorating, civil ceremony at City Hall, Ghana soccer match over brunch, and a fabulous meal celebrating Anja and Vernon's wedding at their favourite restaurant. Kea was absolutely spoiled with attention, it is so rare for her to be the only child and I think she really enjoyed it!!!

As you can see from the photos, we also all got drastically short haircuts for the summer. We have no air conditioning at all, so it was a matter of comfort and survival, and we all felt immediately lighter once we got all of our hair lopped off. The next step for us is to find a hairdresser that we actually like, but I have to say even though we were all unimpressed with our haircuts as we left the hairdressers, they've been growing out and everyone looks adorable!

I finally got my varicose vein taken care of. I've always had issues with my right knee, as a child I would always twist my kneecap out of position and strain my knee. So it didn't really surprise me when I got a varicose vein in that exact location during my pregnancy with Kea. But this vein just got worse and worse with each pregnancy, to the point that it ached in hot weather and was so stretched out there was nothing I could do to make it better. I kept meaning to get it looked at, so when we found a doctor here in Ont. I finally decided to do something about it. He sent me to a specialist, who had time for me 6 months later, and finally at the end of this month I had it stripped. Which is awesome as it no longer aches at all - but I can't say it looks much better! It's bruised like crazy, there's two lumps that I'm told will eventually go away but for now really stick out, and I have quite a scar where he cut in! But I'll give it a few months to recover!!!!! I also happened to choose the week of the INSANE heat wave here in which to get it done, meaning I had to wear support stockings during the whole time, which was absolute torture! Did I mention that we don't have air conditioning?!!!

Otherwise, our time was filled with painting the Barth, fixing up the flooring and cleaning out all the cupboards, starting to pack and sort our stuff in the house, running out to the property to oversee the pouring of concrete on the foundation (yeah!!!!) and of course trying to fit in a few last minute sewing and knitting projects in between all necessary tasks!!!!!

Heat wave

So, it's been a wee bit hot here in Ottawa. And our little cottage limps along with a few lame ceiling fans, and we all feel like we're suffocating in pools of our own sweat. I had a little surgery just over a week ago on my varicose vein that has been getting worse with each pregnancy and really aches in the heat - so glad to have gotten it taken care of, but the timing of having to wear these support stockings could not be a lot worse. I'm soooooooooooooo overheating. And can't take the kids swimming. Not to mention that we're trying to pack up the house and get ready to move out in mid-July, so are feeling BUSY!!!! So, the kids have been left to their own devices to entertain themselves for the most part, and it cracked me up when I checked on them in the backyard to discover they'd snagged a few empty rubbermaids and filled them with cool water!!!!! Entertained them for hours, and gave us a few chuckles as well, what a bunch of nuts!






It just blows my mind that around this time last year, Tiegan and Ryland could BOTH fit into a rubbermaid together! Look at how much younger they both look here......



Now I'm just hoping that we get a break from this heat soon, and that the never-ending packing wraps up sooner than later!!! We're painting up the Barth too, and are really stoked to be moving back in there for the summer - Tiegan thinks you should all spend some time staying in the RV so you too can see just how awesome it is to live in a Barth. I'm thrilled that she has such happy memories from it.....but would request you move in AFTER this summer because it's definitely starting to feel more cramped the bigger these kids get!!!!!!!

House Update, part one....

So, we're starting to really move along with the property, which is so very exciting for us all. The severance is STILL not through, but it is oh so much closer (I've had a couple of questions about this - we need to legally sever the land into two parcels and sell one parcel to Meg and Ian in order for us to both live on the property. This is probably a smart move overall anyways, but it is such a pain in the buttocks to accomplish. However, we've passed through all of the council meetings, jumped through all of the hoops, paid all of our numerous taxes and playground fees and money in lieu of parklands and whatever else they could think up, and now it's all in the hands of the lawyers to HOPEFULLY wrap up in the next couple of weeks!!!!!! In the meantime, though, we've created a driveway, we've cleared out the lots where our houses will be built, we've created septic fields and even dug FOUR HUNDRED FEET down to create our wells (better be darned fresh water!!!!!!!!) Now Jamie and I have our building permits in, and are lining up our foundation form workers to get out, and then we start really moving forward - yeah!!! More photos soon, I promise!