Well, in the past 6 weeks or so not too much has happened in the Rennick House. The school year started which means I'm busy at work, and J's busy with Vnet -- building, building, growing, growing...we had to miss a couple of weddings this Fall because he's been just completely boggled between work and school, so life is very full for us. I do what I can by coming home and doing a lot of copywriting for him, but he's still just so busy. Can't wait until this MBA is done...only 2 years to go! Sigh...

One new thing is that I have a personal trainer now! And even more shocking: I like it! I do that 3 x week, and started a yoga class (I'm pissed. I wanted to take bikram but can't because I haven't completed the "intro class", which is dumb b/c I did a lot of yoga in Uni...whatever).

We have met a new couple who we LOVE. They're just like us and totally awesome. I look back at when we first moved here 3 years ago and didn't know anyone yet, and I wonder what the hell we did every weekend???

J's parents were just here for Thanksgiving, and we had them and my aunt & uncle over for dinner: and I didn't break anything, burn anything, set fire to anything, or crash anything. Success!

Sister is coming this weekend --- yay!!! -- and then we'll be in Edmonton the weekend of the 23rd. V. excited about that!

Wow! Well it's been quite a while since the last time I posted anything! The summer's are just so busy, especially in the Okanagan! I think we actually had less company this summer than last summer though...

So! What's new? We've had a lot of excitement! This summer has been great for company. We've had a couple my Aunt's & Uncle's visit us in our new house. Rita and Russ (they live in Kelowna) brought my Auntie Marylou over. Bernie and Dale have been through a couple of times. My cousin Lee, his wife Dawn and their GENIUS child came for a visit. No friends this summer though! Last summer we had lots of friends visits, but this year they've all been too busy having babies and breaking legs!

I went to my cousin Tric's beautiful wedding in Victoria in July, and now I want to go back to Victoria again for a weekend or week's mini-break. I forgot how amazing it is there -- I hadn't been here since I was a tween. Victoria is the kind of place that makes me realize we get so caught up wanting to do all kinds of posh, international travel, and we totally forget what there is to see in our own backyard!

And then of course....the camping disaster! You've all heard of it. Here are some pics. That was honestly the most horrible and traumatic experience of my life, and imagine how Meghan feels! Lucky for her she was semi-conscious and had amnesia for the worst of it, but let me tell you: traumatic.

So that's a basic recap of our summer. We haven't done anything new to the house this summer, which I feel guilty about. We need to do so much! Summers are a write-off for me because it's my busy time at work. Other than spending a week in Edmonton we've just been doing the usual thing around here. In Edmonton, the obsession game of we four was Risk. We played about 60 games of Risk....well what else were we going to do do with Gimpy Meg? I also had a great chance to spend time with the girls! Saw Estere right before baby Maarten was born, and saw Jen, Char, Jake, Krista & new baby Sawyer too! Miss my friends, want to move home....well, I want to move home when I'm home, and I want to stay here when I'm here. Jamie is the same; this is our constant dilemma! What I really want is to have a house here WITH a pool, and also have a house in Edmonton, and just split my life between the two! Best of both worlds!



Hope everyone else's summer has been fun and relaxing!

Two posts in almost as many days! M&M are coming tonight so I should be frantically cleaning the house, but true to form, am finding any reason to procrastinate! Today's distraction is taking pics of our backyard cherry tree! I have to put some on here for Mom, who can't believe "that piddly thing" can be so fruit-bearing as it is! Mmmmmmmmmmmm -- looove living in the Okanagan!





I thought I'd stick in a pic of what Fonzi gets up to when we turn our back these days. Is he mad at me, People magazine, or does he just not like Jon & Kate?

I see I haven't posted in almost two months, but really, there hasn't been too much to say! Things are plodding along nicely for us. Same old, same old. We have been working like crazy on our backyard; planting flowers, trying to grow vines, admiring our cherry tree (which has marble-sized cherries on it!), and planting grass seed. Ohhh grass seed...we're at the very patchy stage right now, but it's coming! The dogs love digging in the top soil and foiling our progress! It's exciting every time we see a new patch coming through though!

The weather here has been great. It's been around 27-30 degrees most days for nearly a month now. Love it! This weekend we spent time with J's Rennick side of the family, so that was nice. Mid week Mike and Meg are coming, which will be great! I love it when they're here for the weekend. In July my cousin is getting married in Victoria so Mom, Dad, Matt, Nik, Meg and I will go to that (unfortunatly I have very little vacation time and can only do a quick turn-around trip), but it will be nice to see Victoria b/c to be honest, it's been so long since I've been there that I dont' even remember it. The best news lately is that Meg, Mike, J and I are going to Maui in January! Whoo hoo! I thought for sure that we wouldnt' be going anywhere at all for a looooong time, what with all the work that we need to do on our money pit of a house, but happy days, I was wrong! Mike and J went to Hawaii many times growing up, and we went on a family vacation to Hawaii back in '99, but none of us have been to Maui, so it will be something new for all of us! I so need a break from work --- and the busy time at work is just starting this week! Eeek, the summer.....oh God. Maybe I should have been a normal teacher after all! Summer's off must be nice -- I've never had one.

We are coming home for a week in August for Folk Fest. I wanted to come home for the Fringe, but Folk Fest is good too. Really, my objective is beer, bean burritos and tom thumb donuts, so as long as I can get them in my belly, the festival is secondary to me! We have tix to see Tracy Chapman/Sarah McLaughlin. Excited. I'm not much of a concert goer, and haven't been to one in a really long time. I actually don't even remember the last concert I went to....perhaps Chantal Kreviazuk when I saw Prince Edward? Wow, I'm a loser; that was years and years ago. I just don't like to spend the $ on watching people lip synch when I can listen to the cd or whatever for free, and better quality music. J and I had Neil Young tix last year in Vancouver but couldn't go b/c of work -- that was disappointing b/c you know I love Neil. Anyway, we're excited to go home b/c our friends are having a baby boom on both sides -- his are having them at the same rate mine are -- so we will have mucho baby holding to look forward to!

Ahhhh, 10:16 Saturday morning -- the whole weekend stretches out ahead of me! Best time of the week! Jamie left last night to go camping with his hockey team to Echo Lake (wherever that is), so I'm all alone this weekend. I don't know when the last time I spent a bit of time without him was...of course when Mom, Meg and I went to France, but that doesn't count, I mean time when I was just alone. Must have been about a year ago when he went to Europe? Not that I don't miss him, but I have to admit it's ok to have some alone time too. I'm like that, I'm a lone wolf by nature, I need privacy sometimes. Being from Alberta I'd say half of the girls I grew up with now have husbands who "work away". Being that my dad's a teacher, I have never experienced that. On one hand I think it would really suck, especially if you were trying to raise kids by yourself 50% of the time, but on the other hand sometimes I think it would be exciting in a way to have him gone and then have him home again; the home time would be so much anticipated. But overall, I'm obviously extremely glad I've got a white-collar guy who I see every morning and night and don't' have to worry about incurring any injury greater than a paper cut!

So this morning I'm sitting here, and I should be doing the following (they all need doing, in no particular order):

• gardening: need to rip out much dead foliage, weed the already weedy front tiers of the yard, plant new seeds and my roll'n'grow (sluttish house-wivery, I know!). Also need to PICK ROCKS (shudder....) and cultivate my organic garden patch spot.


• re-grouting: some spots in the kitchen need to be touched up. It's an easy job, but at the same time it's messy and is hard to do with the dogs underfoot.
  
• paint touch ups: I'm so unbelievably sick of painting, but we still have spots that need touching up! It never ends. It's my albatross.


• the laundry! When Auntie Bernie was here, she did all our laundry. It was heaven! I saw the bottom of the laundry room floor for the first time in about 6 months. She left, and one week later, the mountain had returned. :-( Come back anytime Auntie B!
  
• washing the damn dishes: because of course, immediately after spending a fortune on house reno's in April, our dishwasher kicked the bucket. The new one's on order (please get here, please get here, please get here soon!), but the silver lining is that at least I ordered a white one so that will mean all my appliances will finally match.
  
• updating our May budget - I'm behind and again, it's not a hard job but it is time consuming and depressing!
  
• doing some work for Jamie -- I promised I'd help him because his MBA program starts on Monday and he's so busy with work on top of it. ** Yes, that's right, he got accepted to do his MBA. I'm obviously extremely proud of him! He was accepted ages ago but is very private so I didn't' say earlier. My husband is brilliant! Me, personally, I'm waaay too dumb in math and such things to ever get into an MBA (nor does it interest me much, but that's beside the point...)
  
  Instead, what I am doing is:

• drinking coffee, blogging and trolling the tv for movie channel movies to watch.
  

Now, the most exciting thing that happened this week in the Rennick house is that we got a new member of the family! I know, I know you are all wondering why one dog isn't' enough. The thing is that we leave poor Kaiser alone 40 hours a week while we're at work, and even though we walk him diligently and take him to the dog park min. 4 or 5 times a week for socialization, he's seemingly depressed. My dad is shaking his head right now because I just declared my dog to be depressed, but I really think he was. He was lonely. He was constantly trying to escape into the neighbor's yard to play with their dog, and then when we'd go to retrieve him, he's cry. So we bought him a little playmate! And really, in for a penny, in for a pound -- we're walking one dog and picking up one dog's mess anyway! And now it's twice the love. Awwww.

He's another pure bred schnauzer. He's nine weeks old, whereas Kaiser was already 16 weeks when we got him, so having such a tiny puppy is new to us; he only weighs 2.6lbs! On our way to the breeders to get him we were tossing around all the cool German names we could give him: Otto, Strausse, Zeppelin, Blitz, but we did not anticipate how CHILL he would be. He's so unbelievably laid back it's like he's been tranqued! So after about an hour of having no idea what to name him, we settled on Fonzarelli, because he's like, ice-cold cool. It works.

Introducing: Fonzarelli Rennick

<----- At first, with Kaiser, it was "look at my new brother!!!". So happy. By day two, it was "hmmmmm, so it should be about time for him to be going back to his house, right?". By day three it was head-bunting, ear-biting, full throttle screaming whenever Jamie or I even looked at poor Fonzi! Now I'm starting to see a slight resignation in him that Fonzi may in fact be here to stay! However, though I'm seeing an improvement in K's attitude toward poor little Fonzi (who doesn't seem to care at all that a homicidal schnauzer is plotting to murder him in his sleep), next weekend Auntie Meggie is coming and having to share her with Fonzi will probably put Kaiser back about a month! I hope Meggie is willing to help her big sis out with some weeding.....

The bane of my existance, from August 2008 to April 2009! Our terrible, horrible backyard workshop!



Bye-bye ugly workshop! It got the ol' heave-ho (!!! tee hee, I refer to the above sequence!)

Brother is seriously a rock star! (xoxoxo)

As you can see above, every work site has it's supervisors.....sometimes they have to be tied up. Sometimes they have to have mid-day naps.


And here are some shots of the final product...

Hooray! The Rennick-Hilker (x3)-Chatel-Warrik Work Bee 2009 was a success!

My long awaited triumph! A triumph of the wills, really, because no one thought we could get everything on my list done. And what do we learn? That's right, Erin can get everything done AND some turkey dinner!

Over Easter weekend, we literally ripped our house apart. On Thursday, Mom, Dad, Nik, Meg & Freddy drove from Edmonton to Vernon with a u-haul behind Nik's truck. In it contained my old/new AWESOME dining room suite (that Opa did not make afterall, which is disappointing, but we all know how my imagination can carry on). Friday, Bernie, Dale, Matt & Marc joined us. We had a VERY busy weekend! In 4 days we destroyed the backyard workshop, hauled it all away, put up a fence, base-boarded the entire house, and tiled the kitchen, two bathrooms and foyer! Mom and Auntie B also made us a full-on Easter dinner! Other than Sister stepping on a nail at the dump and having her foot swell up (to an even larger size, can you imagine!?!?) it was a big success! We worked like demons. Everyone is amazing. I love you all, thank you SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much!

For a funny story, guess which 25 year old thought it so plausible that a treasure map could have been dug up from our backyard that she actually went on a search for loot all the way to Coldstream? She did find buried gold there and now is extremely rich.....

in ridicule.

Happiness! Spring has sprung! We have tulips and green grass and 21 degree weather! Jamie and I are taking this week off in preparation for our "work bee" this weekend. We have officially FINISHED painting! I can not express how much work it's been! We have painted our bathroom, en suite, master bedroom, foyer, dining/living room and kitchen. The biggest part really was the damn trim. There is so much of it. Door frames, doors, window frames, etc. They were all taupe-brown, which I just totally abhor as I firmly believe that all trim must be crisp white, so that was a loooong process. It feels so good to finally have it done. I also refinished our horrible kitchen cupboards -- had a quote done to have them redone but probably won't do it until December so for now had to sand and paint them because in the meantime it's certainly better than peach with oak trim! It's amazing how much better just doing cosmetic stuff makes me feel. Yesterday we went to Rona and bought tiles, fencing material and new baseboards so this weekend we'll be hard at work! But excited for BBQs and board games with the fam more than any of the home improvements, of course! V. excited to see everyone! My cousin Marc is coming too, which is great!

I'm finding it feels weird to take "vacation" but not leave town. As I drive around town doing errands it is VERY hard to not pop into the office to make sure everything is ok. Hard to not worry about the little things that could go wrong, but it's always about this time of year that I get spring fever and just get SO SO burnt out. Last year at this time we went to Nuevo Vallarta b/c I just was so exhausted and sick of work. I feel the same this year; the last bit of the school year gets busy and I just get so bone weary and fed up with work that my whole body needs a break. So clever to take a week's holidays in combo with a long weekend! Also v. excited that Auntie Bernie is very generously handing down her dining room set to us. It was made by my Opa (I'm pretty sure, anyway) and if that's so he died in like 1952 or something so it's v. old and funky! Love it! We'll only just have enough room for all three pieces of furniture in our tiny house but I will make it work come hell or high water!!

Must go. I"m fixing poor Jamie the first proper, non-take-away, non-pre-packaged meal in seriously longer than I can remember and am determined not to fuck it up. I honestly don't' remember the last time I cooked more than tacos for dinner; I'm just not a mindful wife! Laundry though......he's not that lucky!