Goldstream Park

Alina, Jordan and I took Oreo and went for a nice little hike through Goldstream Park the other day.  Jordan and I went with all of our camera gear...we were ready to shoot away!  We got some great shots too :)  If you're on my facebook, I uploaded all of them on there.  I'm thinking I will need to upload fewer onto here, but I will get as many on here as possible.  It's great to be back amoungst all the moss and greenery of Vancouver Island!

The beautiful forest...I sometimes forget how green and lush it is around here!

This is the moss hanging on most of trees in the area.

A close up of the moss...

Jordan getting a shot!

Oreo!

Oreo giving Alina "5" - he's so talented :)

He however did NOT want his picture taken!  He would do this and look away almost every time I pointed the camera at him! :)  

This is the view from the trail on the way to the waterfall - we went through that tunnel later!

The little leash part around his nose isn't a muzzle - it just helps him not to pull on the leash :)  He's a sweetie!

Alina, Me, Jordan, and Oreo!  Oreo was having none of these picture taking shenanigans! haha!

Heading out towards the tunnel

An Inukshuk!  It's the native symbol that's the symbol of the 2010 olympics this year in Vancouver...we jsut found him hanging out by the stream :)

Some neat little plants growing through the moss...I love the colours happening in the background!

Sweet Oreo :)

Jordan looks great....Ali, on the other hand, is terrifying :)

Moss hanging from a tree....gorgeous :)

Jordan being the Pro Photog that he is! :)

 

 

Goldstream Park

Ferns growing out of the tree :)

She is a nut bar! ;)

300 days of Paper Chainey Goodness

10 months....30ish days a month....give or take.....equals about 300 days until the possible end of our paperwork!  It seems as if that's the average time frame...some people are seeing shorter times, but I thought for a project like this it would be best to go with an over estimate rather than having to add more pieces later on :)  That would be uber horrible!  

Check it out!  Jordan and Alina helped me hang it - we had a good time ;)

Gotta love a paper chain!  The countdown continues!

how do you say goodbye?

I don't have an answer to that.... I'm at a loss for words when I look at these pictures, because it was the saddest day that I've had so far in this lifetime. Our eyes are so puffy because we cried so much that day and the day before...I couldn't go a minute without breaking down. I had a panic attack when we got close to security and he had to leave me. My throat literally felt like it was closing - I didn't know how I could possibly look at him for the last time and say goodbye. How was I supposed to kiss him for the last time...how was I supposed to do that? It was utterly horrible. I couldn't touch him enough. But I also couldn't be late for my flight....so at some point he had to go. It was probably the longest day ever....i still have a headache thinking about it. 

  

I got into Seattle earlier than expected, so I killed time with the free wifi and talking to Luke on the phone and on the computer....that's something we have to get used to again! And then of course, to extend the already longest day ever, my flight to Victoria was delayed. I eventually got in safe and sound, but then we ran into further delays on the highway due to an accident. By the time I got to my family's house, I was so done. I was so exhausted and drained and just done done done. I was so excited to see them and be surrounded by people I love, but I was mentally and physically drained. And I know I might sound a little overboard...I know there are people that go through much much worse. People who have their husbands and wives and children off at war...people who lose their family to sickness....but this is the worse *I've* been through with Luke. We've had some health scares and issues, but I've always been there by his side. To not have him beside me just kills me. My heart is so empty without him here. I miss him so much already.

All wrapped up in you...

I had been knitting a blanket for Luke for months now, and I finally finished it just before I left :)  I was very happy - I really wanted him to have it while I was away.  It meant a lot for me to have him be able to wrap himself up in something I made especially for him, so he can feel like it's me hugging him too :)

Package #1

I took a photo of our I-130 package...it's pretty thick :)  Once we got it all organized in order to send it, it was even thicker...once we added all of our cover letters and things like that....

So here it is:

A beautiful January afternoon....

Luke and I went to visit with Larz, Wendy,  Roman and Gianna last week, to say goodbye before I leave.  I've been babysitting for Roman and Gianna, on and off, for the past year and a half or so.  They're family by marriage (Luke is their cousin), but they are most definitely my family!  I love them :)  I'm sure going to be sad not to see them for 8-10 months - kids grow a lot in that period of time!  But I'm going to try and stay in touch as best as I can.

 

After our visit with the kids, we stopped in at Kendrick Lake Park, out near Jewell Ave & Kipling in Lakewood.  It's a great park!  There's a 1 mile paved loop around the lake, which is great in the summer...but we just walked a little ways to a small bridge overlooking the lake.  I had been wanting to get some nice shots of Luke and I before I go.  I'm talking planned shots, not arms length shots...drag out the tripod and be creative in some way! :)  Here's some of my favourites:  

 

And a shot of the lake:  

All in all, it was a wonderful day!

Adventures on Loveland Pass

Luke had an overnight field trip up to Arapahoe Basin to take a group skiing - they were providing a hotel room for him and everything!  So I decided to drive up later in the day and meet him!  It's almost like a paid vacation ;)  He only had to drive the kids a little bit, so we had most of the day together, which was great.  Arapahoe Basin is along Loveland Pass, Hwy 6, near Frisco, Colorado.

Luke's computer was being delivered on Thursday, so I arranged with our neighbour to pick up our packages.  But according to UPS and Fedex, they left them on the porch!  So I had to deal with the packages before I left,  which meant I got up to Frisco kind of late....which meant I had to drive over the mountains in the dark, which I was not too excited about!  But I made it just fine...and the car did great, I was impressed :)

We stayed at the Holiday Inn in Frisco, CO, which was a fairly short drive from where the kids were skiing.  We headed out in the morning on Friday and took a drive up Loveland Pass, stopping everywhere we could to take photos (Luke is so patient with me and my need to stop all the time!) .  We stopped at Arapahoe Basin and took some shots of the people skiing, and then once we got to the summit, we took  photos of each other at the Continental Divide sign.  It started snowing shortly after we got through the pass, so I decided to head home a little earlier than planned.  But it was a wonderful time!  It was great to be with Luke - I didn't want to spend the night away from him when I'm going to be away for so long already.  

This was the view outside our hotel room - it was gorgeous!

Luke needed to put chains on his bus for the drive back up the mountain later that day, so I took advantage of the opportunity to take his picture doing it :) 

Changes

We're going to be seeing some changes in our lives in the next few weeks. We've been trying to figure out all the logistics of it for a month or so now, and we finally have a solid plan.

As some of you know, Luke is American (born and raised in Colorado) and I am Canadian (Victoria-born, Sooke-raised). The original plan when we got married was for Luke to immigrate to Canada with me, since we both loved it up there. God obviously had different plans for us, as everytime we got close to being able to send the paperwork, or complete the paperwork, there was a barrier standing in our way. We delt with major health issues, major financial issues...you name it, we faced it. It's an expensive proposition, and it seemed like everytime we came up with the money to do it, something majorly pressing took it all away. Anyway, long story short, we have come to love our lives here in Colorado, and want to stay in the US. The plan is now to have me immigrate to the US and live here permanently. We love the house that Luke bought, and we want to stay there a long time. And plus, Luke is starting school to get his Bachelors and Masters in Accounting...so we have a lot to stay here for. We've talked about moving to the west coast someday - possibly Washington State or Oregon, so we can be much closer to my family. This is especially important if/when we have children someday.

Anyway, so with me immigrating to the states, I have to go back to Canada while my paperwork is being filed. I could come and visit if we choose, like always, but when Luke files the paperwork to begin with, I have to be out of the country. So I have a plane ticket back home to Victoria on Feb. 1st. Sadly, that's only a couple of weeks away. The whole process could take 8-10 months it's looking like, so I will likely not be able to move to the US until maybe Sept/Oct...possibly later. So we're looking at a long time being apart, which really stinks.

We're really hoping that we can arrange it so that we don't go more than a couple months between visits. At the moment it's looking like Luke will hopefully be able to come up to Victoria during his Spring Break from school. So that would be wonderful! And then he has the summer off for the most part, so we're hoping that he can spend a great deal of it in Canada with me! And then who knows what stage we'll be in the paperwork at that point in time...we'll have to go with the flow until then.

It's going to be extremely difficult, and very lonely, especially for Luke. Thankfully I will have my family, as always, so that will be really nice. Sadly, he will only have the cats to keep him company...but I'm hoping that with the constant phone calls and IM's we'll do okay. So I would love it if you all could keep us in your thoughts and prayers....pray that our case gets complete and we get an interview ASAP!! Apparently Montreal is a very very slow consulate, so we're hoping and praying that they find a way to change that this year and get rid of the backlog! ASAP!!! :)

So, that's just an update on what's happening with us....I'm planning on keeping this blog very updated so that everyone can see our progress, and Luke can keep up on my day to day life in Victoria :)

...lucky I'm in love with my best friend....

I'm lucky we're in love in every way....

Thanksgiving 2009

We had a beautiful Thanksgiving dinner at our house this year. We had Luke's mom and dad and brother Christopher over. As well as his Grandma and Grandpa, and our friend Suzanne. It was the perfect amount of people, and oh did we ever have FOOD! :) We could have served an army and then some! It was our first time hosting a big dinner party like that, especially something like Thanksgiving, but I think pretty much everything went off without a hitch! Oh, there was one thing....I had completely forgotten to make the stuffing/dressing and didn't even realize it until we sat down to eat and someone asked to pass it....and I realized I had none made!! But it was all fixed very easily...I had the quick stuff....it only took a few minutes! Crisis averted :)

Some of our family mingling in the living room, eating some snacks before dinner was served!

Luke was the master Turkey Chef - he did a great job! It was super moist and tender! It was our first time doing a big turkey like that, but I think it all turned out really well...I was proud of his skills! :)

This is everyone! We were so blessed to be surrounded by family that day - it was a real treat!

New Beginnings...

Hey Y'all....it's been awhile!

There's been a ton going on with Luke and I in the past year and a half since I last updated this blog! The biggest one is, we bought a house!!! It's out in Keenesburg, CO and we absolutely adore it! It's big, about 1,900 sq. ft with an attached garage and a really big 'man shed' outside for Luke's enjoyment! :) It has 3 bedrooms, which we are using as our master bedroom, a guest room and a large study/computer room/guest room with a hide-a-bed. It's great - we absolutely love it! We closed on it in May and have been enjoying it ever since :)



This is the view from the kitchen, looking into the dining/living room....the entry hall is seen past that.

This is the living room area of the house - Mom found these couches at the flea market! And they are in such excellent condition! You can see the purple study/office room just past the TV....that paint colour will be changed asap! :) The bedrooms are just through the arched doorway....

This is the dining room area with our awesome old dining table and mismatched chairs...love it! We got a lot of our furniture from our friend Suzanne, who used to buy and sell antiques with her husband. The table, chairs and old radio in the corner all came from her.

A good look at our beautiful floating shelves from Ikea, and the great corner window! I got that recliner off Craigslist for only $20!

This is our master bedroom. There used to be carpet in this room, the guest room, and the study, but the lead based paint removal people had to take it out. We were vvery appreciative of that since it's one less job we had to do! We chose a beautiful gray/blue for the walls and accented it with chocolate brown....we love it!

This is the guest room - a work in progress. Since taking this photo, I've gotten window treatments for all 3 windows and put up a few mirrors and photos and added a beautiful milk glass lamp in the corner, as well as some accent pillows for the bed. It looks very homey now! :)

That's about all I've got for now - more updates soon!

mid-week already!......almost ;)

Happy Tuesday all! :)

Nothing too exciting going on today really - all that matters is that tomorrow the week will be half over - yay!! Nah, it hasn't been a bad week so far.....Luke has to drive 2 weeks of summer school and then school pretty much starts full-time for him after that. So he's really busy...he's having a hard time getting back into the work groove though :) We need to wean him off of staying up too late and sleeping in! I hope he had a good break though - it sure is lovely having him at home with me. We get to spend tons of time together and reconnect. I really miss him when he's working all day. I didn't babysit on Monday like I usually do, but instead I have to do it on Thursday, plus I'm working with Suzanne on Wednesday this week....so my busy week will start tomorrow.

I'm planning on trying to get some housecleaning jobs in the very near future as well. I need to try and bring more money in....as much as I love not working ;) but I do feel bad when I'm not contributing to the family and the money, etc. We need to keep up on bills, both here and in Canada, plus have some sort of a savings if at all possible, plus we really need to try and move out of Luke's parents house as soon as we can. Not that it's horribly bad - it's just getting to be a bit crowded and small and crazy....I think we would both benefit from living on our own again....like HUGELY! :) But anyway, I've been housecleaning with my mom ever since I was 10 or so, so I have tons of experience in the proper way to clean, being thorough, etc. So I'm hoping I can put up some flyers and hit up some people for ideas, see if anyone knows anyone looking for a cleaner....hopefully I can get half a dozen jobs. I think that would help out immensely! So wish me luck!

I got my hair cut last week and I absolutely love it! It was getting too long for me and I was really looking for a bit of a change. I had been to a salon out in Lakewood the past few times, and the guy who did it was good and everything, but it was a bit of a drive out there (about 30+ mins) and it was just a little more expensive than I was wanting to spend. So I looked around online and found a salon much closer that had unbelievably good reviews. So I gave it a try and met with a stylist named Deanna who is awesome! She gave me a great cut, which I love. The only problem is, which I didn't realize until a couple days later, the back was really pretty blunt looking and choppy. It kind of looked like I tried to do it myself.....with dull scissors! ;) So anyway, I made an appt to go back and have her fix it for me. I was really interested in seeing her reaction to me going back in - some stylists could have gotten really bent out of shape, but she was really great about it, and apologetic that I had to come back in, etc. So anyway, she seemed to do a good job fixing it for me. It's still a little more piecey than I'm used to, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. Next time I'll be sure to tell her that I'm looking for more of a smooth stacking on the back. Anyway....enough on that. I'm still happy with it ;)



I guess I should get going here and get something done. I really need to work on my friend Sacha's wedding photos. I've been so busy for the last couple weeks, and I've been trying to get my sister's photos edited as well....but I need to get on Sacha's asap! So I'm planning on editing for the rest of the afternoon and evening and hopefully get them off to her by the end of the week....maybe! :) I'll have to ask her if she wants me to get prints made and send those to her, or if she wants just the CD and can print off whatever she wants. I also got this really great photo album for my sister's grad photos. It's a black photo album with '08 printed on it - it's super cute! I got it for 75% off at Hallmark - best $2.99 ever! :) So I want to print off some of her grad photos and prom photos and send that off to her as well. So I have a few things to do....I better get on it!

Bye!!

S.W.E.E.T R.E.L.I.E.F

AhhhHHhh! I am currently laying on my bed being blown away by the wonderful icy air coming from our new (new to us) air conditioner!!!! Woooohooo!! It's just been so hot around here lately, and it finally got to be too much for us. New AC's were around $99 + tax....so we checked out craigslist and found a pretty new one being sold for $65! So Luke went and checked it out this morning and brought it home for us. He and his Dad spent a fairly long time making a bracket for it and setting it up properly. But now it's in and working beautifully! And it's so cool in here now....I actually got cold and had to turn it a little warmer ;) haha! Anyway, I'm thrilled! No more waking up boiling hot and choking on hot ass air in the mornings! That just makes me happy :)

The tale of the missing "R"....

So, about a year and a half ago, I stupidly had laid a book on top of my laptop keyboard and somehow managed to pop off my "R" key....very frustrating! I tried and tried to get it back on, but Luke eventually figured out that I had snapped off a teeny tiny little piece of the harness that holds the key in place. So we ordered a replacement key off of Ebay - once it got here we tried and tried to get THAT key on.....with no luck whatsoever! So for the past 18 months or so....possibly longer....I've been typing my R's by tapping my finger on the missing spot and sometimes getting no r's and sometimes getting multiple rrrrrr's! So ghetto and so frustrating!

Well, I get home yesterday and Luke asked me to get on my computer and look something up for him. The weird part is, he asked me to go to Flickr, which he never really asks me to go to....so I hit the tab on my browser that has my most used links and I go to Flickr. I'm waiting for it to load and I glance down at my keyboard, and I see my missing R key!!!! The sweetness had bought me a replacement keyboard off of Ebay and had it shipped here and installed it without me knowing :) What a guy! He had wanted me to go to Flickr because obviously it has the R in the title....but I foiled his plans by just clicking on my tab! LOL!

Anyway, now I am the proud owner of my very own "R" key, and a whole new set of other new keys....it's like typing on air! haha! I've come to realize that it really is the little things that matter in life....it made my whole day to realize Luke had bought me an R key :) He really is the sweetest guy ever. He would give me the world if he could, but little does he know that it makes me smile so huge when he does something little like buy me a new keyboard. He knows it's been driving me crazy and it was just so sad looking!
It really is the thought that counts :)

I love him!

*sigh of relief*

We had a bit of a scare today....the big "are we pregnant??!!?!" scare :)

And Mom, if you're reading this...the answer is NO! But we were unsure enough to go buy a test and make sure.....whew....I'm still sighing with relief!!

It's not that we don't want kids....that's not it at all...we would LOVE to be parents....just not at this present moment!  We're relieved to not have to plan for baby at the moment. With the immigration stuff still looming and the fact that we don't even have our own place at the moment....plus, I really want to be back in Canada before we have to deal with parenthood! But alas, we don't have to deal with all this at the moment....

*double whew*! :)

Wow, it's been awhile....

Wow, has life ever gotten away from me or what! It's been so long since I've written anything on here - I almost forgot that I had it! :) So many things have happened since I last posted....

• We've been in CO for a year now...whew...
• I became majorly interested in photography and have taken it up in a big way...
• We've distanced ourselves from the church we've been going to for the past 10+ years and are now fellowshipping with another group.... It's scary and new, but exciting at the same time...
• My best friend in the world met a wonderful man and recently got married...they are the sweetest couple EVER...
• Luke found and kept a wonderful job for the past year...
• It's kind of up in the air a bit right now, but there's a good chance that Luke's employer will be paying (at least a portion, if not all) for him to go to school to become a Diesel Mechanic! That's so exciting! We're not totally holding our breath yet, but the possibility is pretty good!
• My sister graduated High School! Woohoo Ali!

Whew....talk about a year in review! I would go into greater detail, but it would just be a mammoth task and would take FORever! So that's my wind-up of the year....I think this year has the possibility to be really good - I'll just have to do a much better job of keeping this updated, that's all!

And now for your viewing pleasure, some family photos we took while we were in Victoria in June...


My whole family L-R: Alina, Jordan, David, Dad, Mom, Me


Siblings...


Luke and I....