THE GOODS BLOG: Erika's Precious Little Life - August Edition

Jul 31, 2020
7 min read

Updated: Jun 18, 2021

First of all: How the actual f*ck is it August already? And second of all: I am moving in ONE WEEK which is complete nonsense to me at this moment. Stuff feels pretty surreal right now.

Back to pandemic chat for a sec, I have been feeling sooo much better about the situation in Toronto lately. We currently only have 321 active Covid-19 cases in the whole city which is less than half of what we had at this time last month. With a population of over 2,956,024 people, that’s a very small percentage who have the virus. I am by no means suggesting that “we can relax about it,” if anything I’m just very proud that the measures that we have taken have made such a big difference and I hope that we all continue to do these things (social distancing, masks, hand washing). I’m very interested to get to Edmonton and to see how the situation is different there! (And no, it is not required to quarantine if you travel within Canada.)

July was nice and we tried to fill it with summer fun. It has also been extremely hot. It has been over 30 degrees pretty much every day of July and very humid. Near the beginning of the month the restaurants in Toronto were allowed to open for patio dining again and I was very excited to get to eat at a restaurant again (as opposed to getting take-out). It’s kinda my thing. ;)

We had a mini Canada Day celebration by eating in said restaurant and doing sparklers in our backyard. That counts as fireworks, right?

My latest (7th) tattoo got done and I am so happy with it!! It took about three hours and it didn’t hurt too much. I consider this my “big girl” tattoo because it’s my largest and most involved one. I am so pleased to have all of the different phases of my life represented in this way, and in a sense, the flowers represent all of you as well. I met all of you while living in each of these provinces and that really means something to me. ♥

White Trillium ~ Ontario ~ 16 years + 1.5 years

Prairie Lily ~ Saskatchewan ~ 6.5 years

Wild Rose ~ Alberta ~ 9.5 years

Blue Flag Iris ~ Quebec ~ 3.5 years

Pacific Dogwood ~ British Columbia ~ 1.5 years

It was getting down to crunch time of my moving away so my Toronto ladies and I started to make sure that we were hanging out a lot more. Which I have been so grateful for! I have loved spending quality time with them and I am going to miss them SO MUCH. It’s absolutely the worst part about moving and I could cry just thinking about it.

Sarah, Colen and Melanie; you are the oldest and most enduring friendships in my life and we share something that truly transcends distance. When I moved back to Toronto it was like I had never left. We are the true definition of best friends forever and you are more like sisters to me. ♥

We had a beach day, a “farewell” BBQ in our backyard, a nature walk, a birthday party...

Our kids were born within 5.5 months of each other.

We had A LOT of family drama with Tim’s side of the family this past month. It was ridiculous and I am so relieved that we are past it all. As you know, every summer we all go to our family cottage in Muskoka together. We assumed that this would be the case this year as well. Even with the pandemic, things were opened up enough for us to go. But all the trouble started when some of the family members started complaining that they didn’t feel safe going there. Fine. So we “cancelled” the Muskoka plan and decided that we would all get together for a few days in London instead. Until that plan “wasn’t safe” either. This went on and on with various people having different opinions, people changing their minds repeatedly, people “storming out” of chat groups, and all sorts of general drama. Even Tim was like “I can’t wait to move away from all of this!” I’ve mentioned in the past that Tim and I feel somewhat “different” from the rest of his siblings (and their families) and this whole situation was a pretty good example of that. We FULLY respect the fact that the pandemic is a tricky thing to navigate and that everyone has varying levels of comfort with it... But it all got pretty ridiculous.

In the end we made a day trip to London without spending the night. It all turned out lovely and fine. We were just glad that we got to see them all before we moved away.

And yes. This is our socially distanced pandemic family photo. Ha ha!

Tim and I decided that we were going to go to the cottage in Muskoka anyway! The place was just going to sit empty and we personally did not feel unsafe about going there. Plus we wanted to get to go before moving. So we went!! We stayed for three nights and I am so glad that we did.

We had an amazing, quiet, relaxing time of swimming in the lake, stand-up paddleboarding (my favourite), canoeing, campfires, and nature walks.

I need to report that I am on day 139 (and counting!) of practicing yoga every single day consecutively. I still haven’t missed a day. At this point I’m not sure if I can stop. Even on days when I haven’t wanted to practice... I still practice. I’m going to get to have my own little yoga shala in our new house and I’m very excited about it!

And then there were even more friend hangouts! We had our last girls night (just the four of us, without our kids), and Sarah and I even went out for a nice patio dinner together! ♥

Life with Archie:

Archie is now three and a half years old!

He has had a pretty exciting month of summertime fun!

Archie seems to be completely toilet trained at this point and diapers are becoming a distant memory. I think in the entire past month he had only one accident. We are very pleased!

He does really well at wearing a mask when we’re in situations that require one. He doesn’t pull it off at all and is very easy-going about wearing it when we tell him that he has to.

Archie and I tossed back oysters on a patio together... And that’s when I knew that I had succeeded at parenting.

He got to see ALL of his cousins (by sheer miracle) and this is the first time that all seven of them were photographed together. ♥

Archie, Amelia, Penny, Evelyn, Laura, Madison, Mackenzie.

And of course, Archie absolutely loved going to the cottage. I mean, there were s’mores involved so... Plus he stood up on the paddleboard for the first time which was awesome! I’m so proud of the interesting, adventurous little person that he keeps becoming.

Another development that happened at the cottage is the bed situation. At our home he still currently sleeps in a crib. We want to switch him into a bed but with all of the moving stuff going on we haven’t been able to deal with that right now. Plus we thought that maybe we should wait and not throw too many changes at Archie at the moment. But at the cottage his room had a bed in it and he asked to sleep in it. So we just let him. And it was totally fine. He didn’t get out of bed or anything. So now we definitely want to get him into an actual bed, but again, it’s kinda gotta wait until we’re settled into the new house.

And lastly, Archie said goodbye to his little neighbourhood friend Caleb the other day. We likely won’t see him again before moving and chances are actually pretty good that he may never see him again. So that’s pretty sad!!!

And now it’s August and it’s time to move to Edmonton!!! I almost can’t believe it! For something that was originally supposed to happen in June, it almost started to feel like it would never actually happen. But here we are. I feel very “seasoned” at the whole “moving program” at this point that I barely need to put much thought into it. How is this my life? Here’s the run-down of the coming week:

Wednesday: Movers come to pack up the house, we go and start living in a hotel.

Thursday: Movers come back to load up the truck with all of the boxes.

Friday: Cleaners come to clean the empty house.

Saturday: We fly to Edmonton! Start living in our temporary corporate apartment.

Monday: Get the keys to our new house! (However, our stuff won’t arrive for like two weeks.)

Also, as always, we will be doing a farewell tour of our favourite Toronto restaurants every night of the week. It’s a tradition now!

We also put a lot of careful thought into our first dinner in our new city.

Stay tuned for our picks!

And then... We’ll be Edmontonians again!

I’m sure that the rest of the month will mainly consist of settling in and unpacking/setting up our house once our stuff arrives. Except that we have one fun thing! We are going camping (in a tent) for two nights in Jasper at our favourite campground (Wabasso) on our favourite campsite (A74). OF COURSE one of our first stops upon returning to Edmonton is going to be Jasper!!

You ALL need to come to visit and we will take you on mountain adventures. ♥

THIS MONTH’S SHOUT-OUTS!:

August 3rd is Zena Domanski’s 69th birthday!

I can’t believe that this is your last year in your 60s. I think that I still generally picture you as someone in their 40s forever. Which is great news because I intend to do the same! I’m very sad that I haven’t seen you since Christmas but also super excited to be living closer to you in the west again!!! I have the best mom and I love you soooo much!! ♥

PS - Please come and babysit my child.

August 5th is Sarah Turnbull’s 3rd wedding anniversary!