THE GOODS BLOG: Erika's Precious Little Life - August Edition
Updated: Jun 18, 2021
Whoa, this is late!!! Ten days late!! As you can imagine I have had NO time for anything and everything is upside down at the moment. Plus I’m a homeless gypsy. So I’m gonna do my best to finally bang this one out.
The events of July already feel like a lifetime ago in many ways. Life in Montreal already somehow feels like an old chapter. But in another way, it’s hard to grasp that I’m never going “home.”
We began July by going to Ottawa for the big Canada Day 150 shebang. I wrote about it in last month’s blog. We tried to soak in as much Montreal summer as possible before it was gone.
Then we were off to Vancouver to find a place to live!! Archie took his first flight (and has now flown 3 times already). He did great!
This trip was stressful for many reasons. First of all, rentals usually only become available one month in advance, so we just had to hope that decent places would exist for us. We lined up a bunch of viewings (14 in total) and hoped for the best. We also had a rental agent (a necessity/requirement in Vancouver) to help us out. We ended up with about 4-5 places that we liked, but only 2 that we really loved. The final (14th) place that we went to see was on the morning of the day that we were leaving, and we almost didn’t go to see it at all. It was an open house and we were feeling pretty burnt out at that point (and settled on a different place). Thank goodness that we did go, because it became our top pick!! Upon leaving the open house, there was a lineup down the block of other people waiting to go in to see it. We applied for the apartment immediately (this is where our agent was truly indispensable, as she acted as our negotiator and also made us appear more serious) and we found out that we were among the top two candidates being considered for the place. This resulted in a bit of a bidding war, and we ended up offering to pay $150 more per month. This wasn’t that bad, because it still ended up under our max monthly rental budget. But it was a stressful and scary few days. We had already returned home by this point, so if this didn’t work out I don’t know what we would have done. We wouldn’t have had anywhere to live and no ability to go and look at more places. I manifested abundance so hard on this one. Thankfully we got the place!! I have rented a lot in my day and I’ve never experienced anything like this. I’d heard that the rental market in Vancouver was terrifying and it was true!!
The place is super awesome. It’s a three bedroom apartment on the entire 3rd level of a 1910 heritage house. Very much our style! It’s over 1100 sqft, which is bigger than our Montreal place. The master bedroom is huge, there’s a lot of storage, there’s a dishwasher and a gas stove, and we have a balcony. Plus the whole backyard is available to everyone in the building. It has tons of unique character, which is what we love and look for the most in the places that we choose to live in. Best of all, it’s in my dream neighbourhood of Kitsilano and a five minute walk to the ocean. And a five minute walk to the yoga studio that I like. We’ll be so happy here!
Here’s our new address!! Record it wherever you keep your addresses!:
5 - 1922 Stephens Street
Vancouver, British Columbia
V6K 3V9
We also had a tiny bit of time to do Vancouver things while we were in town. Like the beach, obvs.
Plus we visited Tim’s new office building to get an idea of it’s location in relation to where we were going to be living. It’s about a half hour drive away, which is about the same distance as he was in Montreal.
We’re very excited to begin our new life in our new (dream) city and to raise our family there. Everyone come to visit!!! We will have a guest room ready and waiting for you, as per usual!!!
At long last, I finished up Archie’s room... Just in time for us to move away. I definitely wanted to photograph it while I still had the gorgeous wallpaper. It was the most beautiful room in our house. I’m so happy with how it turned out and will do my best to recreate it in the new place!
Then we started getting ready to leave Montreal forever. You probably saw the final tour that we did of all of our favourite restaurants. And Archie attended his last baby yoga class at Naada.
The movers came and packed up our place on one day and then loaded the truck and took everything away on the second day. During this, we moved into an Airbnb just around the corner. That was pretty fun!
I attended my last yoga class at Naada Yoga. :’( This was the hardest thing for me to leave in Montreal. The studio had become such a mainstay in my life and a home away from home. I may not have made a ton of new friends in Montreal (by choice), but I did cultivate something special at Naada. It was my community. They made me a yogi. I will miss it dearly.
Then our place was empty and we left it forever! Mixed emotions for sure. I’m excited to move on to our new life. But we also made a lot of special memories here. This is where we brought Archie home to. Out of the 22 of you, 11 of you (half!) came to visit us here in our 3.5 years! I’m so happy that you were a part of these memories. ♥ It’s Hawksley Workman’s place now, ha ha.
We got in the car and drove away from Montreal for the last time. I had never expected to live there forever, but I did love living there more than I had expected to.
We then drove off to Muskoka for our family cottage weekend there. This will be our last one for a while. As always, we had nice lake times! Just slightly more chaotic with four little people!! AND we were given the exciting news that my Sister-in-Law Emily is pregnant!!! There are going to be FIVE of them!!! It’s still super new and she’s due in March! :D
The best part about the cottage is just chilling on the dock (I highly recommend Palm Bay Frozen!!) and jumping into the lake and swimming. So we did that a lot!
We also did fun water activities like canoeing and stand-up paddle boarding (my favourite!). Now that I’ll be living near water, I totally want to get my own stand-up paddle board!
We did a little photo shoot of Archie in the woods...
And we also did a Mom+Baby Yoga photo shoot... Because I wanted to have photos of us doing that!
It was great to see all of the Golems before heading west. After that, we drove down to Toronto and I got on a flight with Archie to Regina. From there, Tim drove back to Montreal to put our cat on a plane and to pick up the last of our things. Then he began to drive to Regina, which took him three days to do.
For the first few days in Regina I was just spending quality time with my family. My brother hadn’t met Archie yet, so it was nice that he finally got to!
Once Tim arrived we also celebrated Christmas in July with my family!! Since we totally missed real Christmas due to me being super pregnant, we decided to celebrate it together in July. We went out for Christmas Eve dinner like how we do (Red Lobster), wrapped gifts, and had a Christmas morning. It was pretty awesome. Archie loved fake Christmas!
Sarah’s wedding week kicked off! I was so happy to see her and to jump into the wedding madness!!! We built a wedding! (I’ll blog about the wedding deets in the next blog!)
I was also so happy that more friends got to meet Archie for the first time too! ♥
Life with Archie:
Archie turned SIX MONTHS old!
His interests include: Sitting on his own, grabbing things, and telling loud stories.
He weighs about 16lbs.
We started to give him solids to eat! ...But haven’t gotten very far with it yet. We just don’t have the time to be consistent with it right now! Plus we need to buy a highchair, and figured that we’d get one after moving. We’re going to do a combo of BLW (baby led weaning) and also purées (which we want to make ourselves). We’ve tried giving him chunks of avocado and sweet potato but he mostly just mashes them and doesn’t actually put anything into his mouth. We tried giving him baby food (which he didn’t like) and rice cereal (which he did like). He really likes baby rice crackers and loves drinking water out of his sippy cup and also regular cups. We’ll get way more into it once we’re settled!
He also got his six month immunizations just before we left Montreal, so at least he’s all set now until he’s one year old. By then he’ll surely have a new pediatrician and everything.
Then it was August (ten days ago).
The first week was spent completely focused on Sarah and Shane’s wedding. Their wedding was on the 5th. I couldn’t have been happier for Sarah and loved seeing her as a stunning bride so much. I was so honoured to be her Matron of Honour! (Again, will post more about this with photos in the next blog!)
Tim left the day after the wedding and drove two more days to Vancouver. (Thanks for having him for the night Lacey!!) He had his first day at his new job on Tuesday and is really enjoying it so far. I’m still in Regina for the rest of this week and am using this time to unwind and relax after all of the wedding mayhem! Then I fly to Vancouver with Archie (and Ramona!) on Saturday. And then that’s it! We’re there permanently! I believe that we’re getting our apartment on the 17th now. I assume that we’ll be spending the rest of the month settling in and setting up and organizing our new place!!
I’m very curious to see how our new life will unfold!
THIS MONTH’S SHOUT-OUTS!:
August 5th was Krystie Coutu’s 5th wedding anniversary!
It looked like you and Trevor had a nice celebration in Vancouver! Your wedding in Abbotsford was probably the funnest wedding that I’ve ever been to! ♥
August 8th was Lacey Suttie’s 8th wedding anniversary!
Your wedding in Calgary was so beautiful and I was so happy to be there on that day. I hope that you and Dallas got to do something special! ♥
August 11th is Crystal Maffenbeier’s 10th wedding anniversary!
TEN YEARS!!? I feel like we can’t possibly be old enough for any of us to be married for a decade already! It was such a fun day in Kenosee. I hope that you and Jared get to celebrate! ♥
August 15th is Enobong Anstey’s 2nd wedding anniversary!
This picture is so great. Wishing you and Ian a wonderfully special time! Your wedding in Regina was the greatest and I loved standing by your side! ♥
Comments