Stressed out

Well, it's been a frustrating and stressful couple of weeks. I just need to vent a bit, so bear with me.

In the past couple of weeks, we've dealt the following:

- Chris and Alex were driving home from the grocery store and some lady "got distracted" and hit the side of their car. She was trying to turn left through the intersection and supposedly misjudged how close she was. Thankfully no one was hurt, but Chris' company car had about $4000 damage to it, plus we needed a rental while it was getting fixed. As it's the company car, the fleet company pays for the repairs and rentals, so we're not out of pocket, but it's been a major pain to deal with.
- After having to cancel two camping trips thus far this year, we finally had one that looked like it was going to happen. It was our big trip for the summer to our favourite provincial park and we were supposed to be away for five days. Last week we realized that we had nothing to tow our new trailer with as the vehicle getting repaired is what we tow with. Luckily the repair shop was able to complete the suspension work, so we picked it up yesterday and we'll bring it back after the camping trip so they can finish the body work.
- While doing some stuff to get the trailer ready this weekend for the trip this week, we decided to sanitize the water system as we hadn't done that earlier this year when we took it out of storage. Unfortunately, as soon as water went into the hot water heater, we realized there was a leak somewhere and the water went all over the place in the trailer. One bit of particle board was damaged by the water, but we got the rest mopped up really quickly.
- So now we had a trip planned, a car that was due to be ready on Monday and a leaky trailer and we had to wait till Monday to get in touch with dealer and find out if they could look at it.
- Chris dropped the trailer off in London on Monday afternoon while he was there visiting a client, and then we found out today that it will cost about $500 to fix as the hot water tank is cracked - and they say the only way that can happen is if water was in it and froze over the winter. We really worked hard to winterize the trailer before putting it into storage and we were sure we had it all figured out, but I guess we somehow missed a step - and it was an expensive mistake. We trust the dealership - so it's not as if they'd blame us if it was a defect with the tank. Hard lesson to learn.
- Then yesterday I went to print a photo for a new scrapbooking layout I did for a contest I'm participating in - only to find out my lovely, amazing, incredible printer wasn't working. I need to figure out what's going on with it, but again... it'll cost me money for new ink or maybe a new print head. (www.scrapping-fun.blogspot.com if you want to see the recent scrapbook layouts)
- Add to all of that that Chris' headaches are still bad, we have no idea if we can go camping again soon due to schedules and such, and we're just all a wee bit stressed out.

I'm still waiting for bad thing #3 to happen... I don't really count my printer as a bad thing (frustrating, but not huge like the trailer leak and car accident), so keep your fingers crossed that our roof doesn't blow off, or the furnace doesn't die on us.

Three-months to go!!!

Today marks the official three-month countdown to our cruise this October for our 10th Anniversary. It's hard to believe it's getting closer - time is just flying by it seems.

We'll be sailing on October 17 out of Fort Lauderdale on the Eurodam. We chose to go with Holland America for a few reasons, but key was that we could actually afford a decent cabin. We're in a Verandah cabin near the back of the ship on the starboard side (unless we decide to upgrade and move, which is unlikely).



Our itinerary is:

October 17 Fort Lauderdale, Florida (boarding at around 11:00 a.m. and departing at 05:00 p.m.)
October 18 At Sea
October 19 Grand Turk, Turks & Caicos
October 20 San Juan, Puerto Rico
October 21 St. Thomas, U.S.V.I.
October 22 At Sea
October 23 Half Moon Cay, Bahamas TR
October 24 Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Chris and I haven't really done a trip on our own since our honeymoon almost 10 years ago, so we decided to do something special for the 10th anniversary on October 23. Alex will be coming with us and he's very excited, even though I know he doesn't really have a clear idea as to what to expect with a cruise ship.

For the most part, we plan on taking it easy and enjoy the ship and the ports. No major shopping binges, and no huge excursions planned. We do hope to take Alex snorkeling in one of the ports, and do some sightseeing, but that's it. For our day at Half Moon Cay, we've reserved a private cabana for a little bit of luxury. Half Moon Cay is a beautiful small island owned by Holland America. From everything we've read, the beach is amazing and the sand is as fine as powdered sugar. The only downside is there isn't a ton of shade, and with my issues with the sun, the cabana was a good idea and lets us celebrate our anniversary that day with something extra special.

The cabanas offer a comfy place to sit, shade, fans, misters, some snacks and soft drinks and snorkle gear for the day, so we're very excited about it. Below are two pictures of some of the cabanas. We booked the Turquoise one as it's close to the kids area and bathroom and dining area, but it looks exactly like these pictures (other than the colour).




We have the flights booked (great deal out of Buffalo on Southwest) and are using our Airmiles for a hotel in Fort Lauderdale for two nights and for a car rental, so we're set for the basics of the trip. I still need to look into the excursions and ports to decide what we want to do each day.

It seems like it is still so far away, and yet it also seems like I'm running out of time to get things organized and planned! I'm sure it will be a great time for all three of us and hopefully I'll be able to update this blog somehow when we're on our trip.

New Blog

I'm in the process of moving the journal entries and photos from my old babysite over to this blog as it will be easier to update it with smaller updates and photos/slideshows.

Bear with me while I work out the kinks, please. Let me know if something on the blog doesn't show up for you or looks wonky at all.

I've been getting caught up with some posts and photos since I last updated my babysite (last Fall!!!!), so there's some new stuff, as well as entries and photos I brought over from the old babysite. If you find the photos are too small, you can click on them to enlarge them.

The last entry I did on the Babysite was in November 2008 (ACK!!!), so anything after December 2008 is new. If you look on the right side of this page, there's a list of the dates so you can easily jump to a specific month, or you can read backwards from this point until you're caught up to today. To 'expand' any of the months in the list on the right, simply click on the right-pointing arrow. That will expand that specific month and show you the posts for that month if you want to click on specific things.

I do apologize for taking so long to update the babysite but I've been working hard the past few weeks to get the content from that old site moved over here, plus I've been posting some updates from last December until now. My plan is to continue to move the older photos over to this site so everything is in one place, plus update this blog much more regularly, which is much easier here than it would have been on the babysite.

I've got a few slideshows added already for a some of the older posts, as well as on some of the more recent ones.

If you want to see any of the photos in a bigger format, simply click on it and it will open up a bigger version.

If you'd like to view any of the slideshows, here's a few tips:

- If you click on the little "play" button (a sideways triangle) in the middle of the slideshow graphic, that will start the slideshow.
- Depending on your computer monitor, the photos might be quite small. To make them bigger, you have two options. The first is to click the little 'expand/full screen' button that's on the bottom right corner of the slideshow. It looks like a little button with 4 arrows pointing to the 4 corners. Clicking on that will make the images fullscreen. The other way is to click on the photo itself and that will open it up in Flickr (the site I use to host the photos online). You will then see the "Set" the photo belongs to, along with a little icon that looks like a screen for a slideshow. Clicking that icon will start the slideshow for that set. It sounds more complicated than it is.

If you have any trouble viewing the pictures or anything on this blog, please let me know. Also, if you want help setting things up so you're notified when I update this blog, just let me know.

One last thing - you can comment on any posts, so feel free to do so as we always love to know that people are enjoying the photos and posts!

Thanks!

Picnic Fun!

Each year, a huge picnic is held in Stratford for families with kids adopted from Korea. The family that hosts the picnic has a gorgeous property south of Stratford, and they organize a picnic that is very popular each July.

We missed it last year (I think we were away camping), but we were happy to be able to attend this year. I think about 100 people were there and the kids had an amazing time. They have a pool, a playhouse, a trampoline and swings and they also also rented a jumpy castle for the kids to play in.

Alex had a great time seeing some of the friends he's made at other Korean events, and he just loved the playhouse/fort.

We are just so grateful for the connections we've made with other families who have also adopted from Korea. It's a pretty small community, but so many people are so supportive of everyone else, and it was also so much fun to see so many cute new babies and toddlers out at this event.

Alex in the fort:


Swinging on the tire swing:


A group shot with most of the kids:


The kids helping out during a cooking demonstration: