Happy Anniversary.

Can you believe it. My blogversary was on Thursday. The burger meal evening. It has now been two years of blogging. I wish I had something more monumental to say. I have really taken a hit recently on the blogging. Lets hope it picks up after the big move (not the one across town, the one to Japan).

T- Minus 5 Days.

Well faithful reader, the landslide of detritus continues from our house. The thrift store, library and dump were the lucky recipients today. Most of the dump stuff actually ended up in the reuse center and was being put into other peoples vehicles as fast as I could put it down. It was pretty heart warming to arrive at the dump thinking I was going to make a serious deposit and then to only have a few fatally broken things end up actually ending up there. Gotta love giving stuff you don't want a second life. In our case it was a third or fourth life for a lot of it. Tomorrow is the couch and the second dining room table we have.

On the storage front we have probably filled about 500 of the 800 cubic feet of space we have been allotted. With three beds, four bikes, two desks (legs removed) a bar fridge and a barbecue left to store it is going to be close. Lets put it this way, if there is an earthquake I am not worried about anything falling over.

Now to get down to business. Though we have eaten a meal every night this week, this evening was a nice chili burrito affair, we have but one picture. It is the Thursday evening meal. I came home from work earlyish and the Mrs. took her break and went shopping. She arrived back with fixins for burgers and fries. I did the honours and I was truly honoured by how well those patty's cooked up. Once again we have to say that you can't beat the quality of meat at the Overwaitea up here. For those of you playing along at home, yes those are yam fries. Very yammy.
After dinner we all sat down to watch a movie in the rearranged house, computer is now by the kitchen, living room is pretty much empty. The kids settled in to the big chair together and ate their ice cream bathed in the blue electric glory of dessert and a movie. Good times.

Dinner and a Tissue

Sick boy # 1.

Sick Boy # 2.

Pizza # 1.

Pizza # 2.

Well we are wrapping up our extended spring break here much the same way we started it. Two boys down for the count and the house in a state of confusion. Only now we have sold our house and are packing for the move. The older boy has had this brutal cough but doesn't cough much when he is sleeping. Which he thankfully is doing now. The youngest sprang into action with a nice fever today but he has been out of sorts for a day or two so we saw it coming.

As for dinner on this last night of freedom I went for pizza again. We used some home made (not by us) maple flavoured elk sausage and though the sausage was great its sweetness didn't really accent the pizza in the way I was hoping for. Then for dough this evening I went with 100% white flour. The Mrs. used up the last of the whole wheat flour making bread a few days ago so we are down to white and seeing as we have a sack and a half left we really should use it up. I mean it still has nutritional value. Just not as much. It also lacks a little in the flavour department but hey.

And finally we have the one picture that was taken from our most recent trip to the coast. Our free fun day which went into the crapper as the boys started to get sick. Funny story but we are standing in line at American Customs waiting to get the wife's visa, we were going to visit my mom and her hubby at their vacation place, and the middle son pukes all over me while I hold him. I catch most of it in a free hand. One of the customs guys let us use the washroom that is not for public use and we ended up just heading back home. You gotta love kids.
This picture was taken in John Lawson Park. Anyone remember that dolphin.

Now here is a coincidence, we just finished watching The Cove. Wow.

Almost

Well the youngest showed his first real interest in walking today. Amazing. He is almost 13 months old and up to now has not had the least inclination to give it a whirl. Sure he likes standing up while holding on to stuff but the letting go and flying off into the stratosphere, nope not his gig. I think he prefers to be carried around so I have taken to calling him little prince, a fairly rough translation of this into Japanese would be, Koji. With the "o" sound held a little bit longer. No we are not going for a late name change.

Mokatte iru.

Which basically means I'm making money. This is what we were doing today. We managed to sell almost everything that was meant to be sold. Okay, okay we gave a lot of stuff away and there were a couple of people who filled up a box for two dollars but overall people ponied up for the stuff we no longer have a need for. Case in point. We sold 7 chests of drawer/dressers today. We only bought one of them and that was at a garage sale so we are definitely up in that department. We sold a lot of stuff that had been handed down to us. We also got rid of a lot of stuff that we had garage saled to begin with. Toys were pretty popular today. Considering the bags of toys that we have received over the years from various folks it only felt right to give most of them away for a song. The madness definitely started early, 7:40 to be exact. The wave crested at 8:00 and I struggled in the rip tide for a while as various groups made their various piles of loot. By 9:00 the sea had calmed and we were left with about half of what we started with. I thought it was over but by 1:30 the scavengers had picked the remains pretty much clean. Just to refresh your memory we have the before picture from two nights ago. Then today.What was the wife doing in the mean time. She was selling the big stuff inside and baking cookies. We have to use up the sugar and white flour so she made a plan and stuck to it.
It looks like we will not have the trampoline much longer so the kids got in some quality playtime today. I put together a little bit of video. So here it is.

Early Start

Well lets start with dinner. After a busy day with early birds arriving to check out garage sale items (two day early, can you believe it -- more on this later), the pizza ended up coming out a little late so the Mrs. made veggies and dip to tide the crowd over. The crowd was pleased as you can see above they were vieing for optimal position in the bowl. Below our youngest diner is enjoying some of natures harvest.
The regular was up for pizza tonight although the Mrs. threw in a nice twist. She got the big green olives from extra foods. The kind you choose yourself and then put in a little plastic container. So salty and meaty. So good.
The kids had the usual ham and pineapple goodness.
This evenings dough is worth mentioning. I used one cup of whole wheat with two cups of white. Then prepared the dough two different ways. Two of the crusts were hand spread using the technique that sister R brought back from Italy with her. The other two were dusted then rolled with rolling pin. The rolled crusts were nice and uniform however the pulled crusts were fluffier and fuller. The rolling pin crusts made larger area pizzas but the thrown ones weren't that much smaller. I think the one whole to two white is the highest whole to white ratio I can do and still manage to throw it. Anything higher and if I throw the dough it ends up with rips. So we are still learning lots. I do need to add a third flavoured pizza to my rotation. I don't really want to cook a meat for it but I am also not a big lover of vegetarian pizza. I think the bacon cheeseburger pizza with ground beef, onions, cheddar and maybe some bacon might be the answer. Or we used to make a bbq chicken pizza which was pretty nice. Then again there is the feta, spinach and tomato pizza which we have done on occasion. I just need to work on one of these so when we have guests and have to make more than four pizzas I can add another flavour into the rotation.

Now we still have the garage sale update. As of close of business today we have sold the trampoline, ping pong table, rototiller, guitar case, tree sprayer, kids john deere tractor, wheel barrow, black couch, one dresser, various kitchen implements, five movies and possibly my golf clubs. Almost managed to sell the bedroom set but the guy backed out at the last minute. Apparently his wife didn't think they were dark enough to match the bed frame. Picky picky.

Did I mention the garage sale doesn't start until Saturday. Early birds have taken a lot of the good stuff but there is still lots to go. If you look at yesterdays blog you can see the difference a day makes. Things are starting to come together in the old garage.

There is still lots of organizing to do tomorrow but at least stuff is mostly in the right spot now and everything is accessible. I sure hope we get enough young families through here as the toys we are getting rid of are pretty awesome. I am definitely going to have my salesmans cap on come Saturday.

What I will not have to sell is our video collection.
Yes they are cassettes but if you double click the image and take a closer look you will see how many true gems there are in the collection. The guy who picked up the ping pong table today actually said, "you wouldn't happen to have adventures in babysitting would you?" and I said no because I recommended it to the people who bought the tiller and tractor this morning. However, as the daughter pointed out they took stuart little 2. So there it was and now it has found a new home. Videos are 2 for a dollar or 5 for two dollars. Can't go wrong at that price and I hope everyon takes home five. I will miss having them but I have to say there is something very cathartic about getting all your worldly belongings down to a 10 x 10 storage area.

Wish us luck for tomorrow.

ps. Does anyone want a set of Encyclopedia Brittanica circa 1980. Beautiful books, almost totally useless today. I wonder if they can be recycled.

Gearing Up.

So this is what one would classify as the current state of the carport (here after called the garage, no one has a carport sale)We have yet to move out the kitchen items that will be up for grabs but the rest of the non furniture items are outside. The couches, dressers and chairs will all be shown in the living/dining area. I just don't have the room to store them outside and the day will be busy enough without having to move dressers and such.

Our stack of, to put in storage stuff, in the living room has begun to grow. I measured out the 10x10 spacing on the floor and put down some tape markers. Currently it looks pretty good but with all the odds and ends and what not I am sure the space will quickly disappear.

With the desk and the TV table as part of the storage I am pretty sure we will be able to pack it to the rafters. Then the bikes and ugly non stacking stuff can be put underneath. The real dream would be to get it all into a five by ten but that is probably a bridge to far.

Here is the youngest, we were startled by his initial call only to look behind the chair and see him sitting in the pasta pot. We all had a good chuckle.
As for dinner we went out. I know, stop the presses. But it was Wing Wednesday and some plans to go for dinner at a friends place fell through (young kid wouldn't mix well with our sort of sickies). So we ponied up the cash and enjoyed a frustrating 40 minutes of trying to eat around a baby squirming.

Beauty and the Beast.

So the beautiful home lasted for three days. Then today we started getting ready for next weekends garage sale. Today was toy day and we basically took all the toys out of the basement. The keep pile would easily fit in one largish box. The garage sale/give away pile was enormous and took about ten trips up and down the stairs to move into the garage. So yes we have no bananas but toys for those aged 1-5 we are overflowing with. We even went so far as to pack all the farm animals into a bag that is attached to the farm house. I am telling you there is some amazing garage sale goodness coming someones way this Saturday, 8-2. Of course after the organizing and before the up and down stairing I had to get the carport into ship shape. Things are definitely looking like they will come together for Saturday. Everything that isn't sold or given away will be taken to the dump. I am really hoping one of those scavenger types arrives at 2 and offers to take the rest of it away for nothing. The answer will be yes.

So to recap, by Sunday morning I am hoping we have boxes of clothes and beds in our bedrooms. Nothing else.

Tomorrow is tools and clothes day. With the tools organized then the rest of the garage will be fillable and with the clothes done we will be able to start moving dressers out. I worry that no one will want any of our crap and I will end up carting the lot of it to the dump. However, a friend offered up his utility trailer so I will not have to make quite so many trips. Now that is a big yeah. The Mrs. has decided the official price for anything without a tag on it shall be described in two parts, 1) make us an offer, 2) no offers will be refused. She basically wants to give everything away by donation and I am holding out for enough money to pay for the classified ad that will run Wednesday and Friday.

The awesomeness that was our living dining kitchen is now filled with boxes again, some empty, some full. I also priced out storage today. They aren't giving away space but it won't break the bank.

Well I hope you and yours had a great day.

Night.

Are we Moving?

House is gonna be great. Here are some pictures of how our house looked today. It looks so nice we really want to live here.The white surfaces are known as counters. Apparently we have lots of them. I hadn't realised until today.
We have a very open living/dining/kitchen plan. There is lots of space.
Here you can see a home office and a tv area fit easily into our living room.

Well after a marathon attempt to get our house up to sales shape we finally finished today about 10 minutes before the first prospective buyers walked through. It was tough what with all the painting, rearranging, decluttering, taking apart of furniture and what not. However, with the final touches done and the carport looking seriously packed we left our home so someone else could come and see if they wanted to buy it. And they did. They lowballed us before lunch and then came back with the real deal in the afternoon. We hemmed and hawed for a few seconds and then gave our heads a shake. After a call to the bank and a little discussion with the realtor we got the take hold date moved back to April 1st and now we are starting to think about packing up. So if the house passes inspection next week the deed is done.

Now we are starting to talk about options from here on out. The plan that is getting the most play right now has the rest of the family flying off to Kagoshima on April 3rd with me following at the beginning of the summer. I will try and couch surf with some colleagues for the remaining months and the kids will get to start the school year with their Japanese peers. Still have to wait on the house inspection but the buyers seemed pretty motivated and I don't think there is anything glaring enough to sour the deal. Its an old house but for the most part it gets the job done.

Best case scenario has us down in Van next tuesday to thursday to pick up passports so we can book the flights. So you never know, dinner may be on at mom's after all.

Crazy crazy day but it is probably now time for bed. Later