Mommy and Daddy signed me up for Art Class after school on Tuesdays and I am very excited about it! I can’t wait for it to start.

He said

This week saw the end to a marathon nine-day stretch at work that finished on Wednesday after a trip down to Toronto on Tuesday. The trip Tuesday was for work and was a very exciting development that came about last week. I was invited along with a somewhat small group of people hailing from other stores in the Southwestern Ontario area to spend the day talking about our own personal growth and development within Apple. It was very exciting and humbling to say the least to be included with a group of inspiring people. It never ceases to amaze me the effort and investment Apple puts into their talent internally and the opportunity I am given to develop myself. I am truly fortunate to have had the opportunity and a day doesn’t go by where I count the blessings and opportunities that have happened since drinking the Kool-Aid almost two years ago.

With the past nine days being mostly focused on work, Wolfie talk was at a minimum over the last week as a result. The awning and patio lanterns we had ordered are already completed and have arrived at the postal outlet waiting for our camping trip in May to retrieve them. The only other discussions we’ve had about Wolfie this week is ‘when do we go and retrieve her from her winter hibernation spot?‘ The consensus right now is May 1st (or close thereto). That should give us two or three weeks to clear the cobwebs before we embark on the first weekend trip away in her!

The cabin fever that we have gotten a heavy dose of thanks to this winter that will just not stop, has turned conversations ’round here to finishing up the one million nagging jobs that have been in an incomplete state for more years than we care to admit. The last 5% of our basement and kitchen renovations, the walls that we’d promised ourselves we’d paint when we moved in here fourteen years ago, and all the patch work to the plaster that needs to be done.

With Danielle being trapped in the house more than able to escape it, and with me in the same state vicariously, we’ve started mapping out the jobs so that we can navigate through completing them over the next six to nine months so we can stroke them collectively off the list of things weighing down our subconsious. First up likely will be painting… But, before that can happen we need to find a person who is really good with patching plaster holes and cracks. Once we get that taken care of we can dive into four or five gallons of the Benjamin Moore Grey Owl paint we’ve settled on for: the upstairs and front hallway; the living, dining room and kitchen; and, the upstairs bathroom…

After that we’ll probably move on to the basement and finishing off the stuff that just never quite got finished when we prepped it for Little Bugs Daycare. The good news is, it’s mostly just painting. And a little bit of finish trim. Add in that we need to re-sand and varnish the front porch as well as fix or replace the front steps, and it’s starting to seem like we’ve got a very busy summer already. And that doesn’t even include Wolfie time, yet!

And while it feels like we have already have our days up to September spoken for and our summer already over, as I type this today and the odd snow flake has passed by the window, summer can’t come soon enough! We had the first official day of Spring this week and after that promptly followed up with minus double digit temperatures and snow in some parts. I don’t know of anyone who’s looking for another minute of the cold, and we’re clinging to the notion that it will soon be warm enough to sit out on the porch and enjoy not having to bundle up to be there!

Danielle found out about and got Emelia enrolled in an Art program through Spectrum at her school, after school on Tuesdays. She is chomping at the bit to get this program started but will have to wait another week or so for it to begin. When Danielle told me about it looking for my opinion on it, my response was an immediate, ‘it’s a no-brainer, sign her up!‘ She had me at Art Class…

Tonight we have our big quarterly meeting at the store, so I have to go in to work for 4:00pm and it will be till 9:00pm which is a little odd for a Sunday. But, these meetings are a lot of fun, we get fed, and it’s a chance to be together as a store team and connect outside of the usual hubbub of a business day at an Apple Store. I was lucky at my old job if we got these once a year, so I am blessed that we get these multiple times a year.

So, my part this week started and ended much earlier than it normally does. But, I suspect by the time Danielle hits the post button I will be back from the meeting and we will be in our usual spot surfing on the couch planing out more renovations…

She said

John is right the cabin fever has hit BIG TIME this year. I find annually that by February I am more than ready for some big changes around the house. The same 4 walls with 6 children can be, well a bit much. This year it has been worse than most other years and the nagging projects that we have been putting off for more years than I care to admit have really nagged at me. The front hall being one, when we moved in it was obvious that it has been a few years since it had been painted, it was a cheap off white flat paint and we realized quickly that it picked up every speck of dirt that touched it. So for 14 years I have annoyingly attempted to keep it clean. And I have failed. It is so bad that it is embarrassing to me at least. I hate it and have for as long as we have lived here.

So 14 years later we are FINALLY getting it take care of. Well soon we will… As John mentioned we have a ton of 90% done projects around here, one of the bigger ones that we need a professional for is some repairs in John’s office that were a result of the bathroom renovation, yes the same renovations that took place when I was pregnant with Emelia. There is a sizeable section of the wall between the office and the bathroom that lost its plaster when we took out the bathroom to the bare walls. That we need help with.

So that being said we need to find someone who can do some paster repair, and hopefully it won’t be an arm and a leg, when we have the person in we have some other areas we need patching, including a section of the living room behind the TV, some minor cracks that happened when they were doing the big constriction last summer that cracked some of the plaster. But hopefully we can find someone affordable soon. Once that is done well anyone who knows me knows the painting will be done as soon as the person is out the door and we can put paint on the walls.

The next debate, because god forbid I do not overthink things to death, is whether or not we are going to paint out the trim on the main floor. I know gasp! Painting original wood trim! The problem is, the trim is not in the best of conditions and our house does not get a lot of great natural light. This is the reason we are changing all the paint colours in the house to a lighter brighter neutral tone. For years we have had dark and warm colours but they were doing nothing to brighten this house. And take in account the length of the winters in this country and how dark it is during those winters we need to bring some light and bright to this home.

So the putting paint to wood trim will be a debate that we will have for the next little bit before we paint the living room and dining room. The upper floors all have crisp white trim and we love it but they were painted when we moved in, just to make that leap on the main floor.

Yes the honey do list we have built is long but I think once the plaster repairs are done we can blow through them in a matter of a couple weekends. Painting is something I can certainly handle on my own if John is working on the weekend or we can do at night after the daycare closes. Just a matter of taking on a bit at a time and finishing it once and for all.

After all the painting is done the next thing is a big spring cleaning, I am feeling the need to dump loads of things in this house that are just taking up space. Can you tell it has been a LONG winter?

There was however another good break in the cabin fever. A friend of mine, Karen goes on a vacation south each March/April and we have taken care of her cat for the last 4 trips to save them moving the cats to a boarder, not only to lesson the trama on the cats but also to save a ton of money. Emelia is more than thrilled to watch Lucy and Boris as they are the opposite of our cat, they are affectionate and loving. Emelia loves playing with them and the added bonus for us this year was the addition of their hot tub. So it might be in London but each visit we get a little ‘swim’ in the hot tub after we have some snuggle time with the cute cats. Emelia just loves it.

That is it for me this week, I am finishing this much earlier than we usually do, so I am going to finish my weekend with Emelia and get some supper on the go.