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

Sorry that this is late! I have been busy family-ing and haven’t had a few hours to myself to sit down and write this! At this point we have been away from home for 17 days and don’t go home until Thursday. It has been great spending a bunch of time with our families! It’ll be nice to get back to our own home and routine as well. December was full of festive stuff, obviously. We had a little “Montreal family” night where we ate donuts and did an escape room and ate Singaporean food and the boys played video games. It was fun!! Tim loves having best friends nearby.

We saw our favourite hipster Santa...

And Tim and I had our own Christmas night at home in Montreal to exchange gifts with each other.

I got a dramatic haircut!!! I hadn’t been to a salon or cut my hair since living in Edmonton, so it had been over two years at this point. I love having super long hair, but I felt ready to switch it up! I’ll probably grow it out again for another two years now. Ha ha!

Then it was BioWare’s Christmas party, which is our super glam night of the year. This year it was Back to the Future themed. The party started off in 1985 for cocktail hour, and then we went back in time to 1955 for the dinner and dance portion. It was pretty awesome, and as usual, the party did not disappoint.

Mr. & Mrs. Golem

They had live actors playing Marty McFly and Doc Brown. And of course a Delorean.

Tim with his Cinematic Animation team. It's funny to me that he gets to be the boss of all of these people. (Plus two more in Edmonton.)

When at parties...

Then we took the VIA train over to London, Ontario! It was about an 8 hour train ride, but fun to be on a train.

London was great. While Tim’s parents are a little old fashioned and conservative, my brothers and sisters-in laws are SO MUCH FUN! I miss them already. Plus our 9 month old niece is super cute and impossible not to love. We had a really great Christmas with them all.

*Mya is still not pregnant, so I am officially wrong in predicting that she would be expecting by Christmas. However, Tim and Jeff did get into a ridiculous drunken argument over which of them would have the tallest children. They bet $500 on it. To be settled in 2034.

We're trying to show all of the things that happened to everyone in 2015.

And I got to have a bonus visit with Melanie, because she decided to visit her cousin who lives in London while I was there!

Then we had our travel fiasco. We were supposed to fly from London to Regina, with a connection in Toronto. But because of freezing rain, our flight to Toronto got cancelled. Twice. So then we left the next day instead and finally made it to Toronto. But THEN our plane to Regina was broken. Seriously. And that flight got cancelled too. We had to stay the night in Toronto and fly out the next day. It was crazy!!

This is how I stay cool in situations like this.

We FINALLY made it to Regina two days late. Thankfully we were able to extend our stay for an additional two days, so that we wouldn’t lose any Regina time. It was an adventure!

Once in Regina, our first order of business was mother/daughter tattoos! My Mom decided that she wanted one (at 64 years old) and so we got matching ones to remind us of each other! My Mom picked the design, size, colour and placement. I just got the same as her. I also bought the tattoos as one of my Mom’s Christmas presents. So I have three tattoos now, all tiny. :P

We spent New Years Eve with Sarah and Shane. We did an escape room, ate sushi for dinner, and went to a house party. Let’s DO THIS 2016!!!

We had a whole entire second Christmas with my family, which was amazing as always. Onesies were involved this year, probably our best idea ever.

The holidays have been wonderful! Tonight I’ll finally be going out to see the rest of the Regina peeps as well, which will be great as always! Then back home on Thursday.

I did a thing in 2015 that I don’t think I have ever been able to do before. I think that this is a record! I SAW ALL OF YOU GUYS IN 2015!!! This is usually impossible, because you all live all over the country (and in another country, in Carrie’s case). BUT IT HAPPENED! This is all thanks to being unemployed and being able to go all over the place for extended amounts of time. Thanks unemployment! You make me a better friend! :P I would LOVE for this to be the case EVERY year!!! A year full of my favourites has been the very best. ♥

Guess what this coming weekend is? It’s my birthday! I’m going to be 34 years old. And that sounds crazy. But also, life is way too exciting to care! I’ve had the MOST FUN in my 30s so far and would go as far as to say that they have been my favourite decade yet. I tell everyone that the 30s are the best because you’re still young and hot and fun... Yet now you actually have the means to do awesome stuff. Or at least that has been my experience. Best combo as far as I’m concerned! I know that Tim has birthday plans for me, but I don’t know what they are. I think that we’re celebrating on Saturday.

We are also going to see Vance Joy play at the end of the month.

BABY WATCH 2016:

Yep. We have now reached the year in which this whole thing is supposed to go down. We’re going to start “trying” in March. And by “trying,” I mean that we’ll stop stopping it from happening and see what happens. I am not desperate for a baby by any means. We’ll let the universe decide if this is going to be our path in life or not!

I should also probably mention a thing that happened. Back in October, Tim was contacted out of the blue by a video game company in Vancouver called Capcom. They were interested in hiring him for the position of Lead Cinematic Animator (same as what he does now), which would later become a Cinematic Director position. He did several phone interviews with them and one in-person interview at their studio. They made him an offer, including a salary increase of about 20K more than what he is currently making. They would have wanted us to move in January (now). We discussed this at great length. Believe me when I say that about half of our conversations were just us saying “fuck it all, let’s GO!!!”

REASONS TO MOVE TO VANCOUVER:

~ IT’S VANCOUVER. ‘Nuf said.

~ Ideal utopia of dreams.

~ Best city in Canada.

~ The west coast is the best coast. We 100% DO intend to live there in the near future.

~ Everything that we love. Mountains, ocean, big urban city, Vancouver Island, Whistler, snowboarding, surfing, beaches, camping, glorious nature, major yoga culture.

~ We could live in Kitsilano!

~ No more sometimes-challenging French situations.

~ Closer to my family.

~ Amazing friends in Vancouver, and closer to friends in Edmonton.

~ Tim gets paid more money.

REASONS TO STAY IN MONTREAL:

~ Montreal is pretty amazing and we actually really love our life there.

~ Mile End, the greatest neighbourhood to live in ever!

~ It still feels like we JUST got there.

~ THE FOOD!!!! I am not done eating yet. Not even close.

~ We have only owned our home for two years and we were hoping to complete some renovations on it before having to sell.

~ We would have to go back to renting in Vancouver because NO ONE CAN BUY ANYTHING THERE UNLESS YOU’RE A MILLIONAIRE. Or unless you buy outside of Vancouver.

~ We considered the idea of keeping our property as an investment and renting it, but do not have the desire to try and manage it from such a distance or having to pay someone else to do so. We probably wouldn’t even break even. There’s also the idea to Airbnb it, but then we would have to totally refurnish the place, since we’d be taking all of our stuff with us. Plus still the management. So no.

~ Tim is currently at the tail end of game production with BioWare and wants to see the project through and also not screw them over.

~ We would lose Tim’s 7 week paid sabbatical which we intend to use in March/April.

~ Closer to Tim’s family.

~ Closer to friends in Ottawa and Toronto.

In the end, we decided to turn the offer down. Our reasons to go were created with our hearts (and that can be a completely valid reason to do things!) but our reasons to stay were created with our heads. While we fully intend to live on the west coast soon, this is not the right time for us. We need about two more years to finish what we started in Montreal. Tim is confident that he will be able to find similar opportunities in the future. He’s also pretty interested in Seattle as an option, however I don’t love the idea of living in the States at all.

So that’s a thing that happened... Or almost happened... And now you know!

THIS MONTH’S SHOUT-OUTS!:

January 30th is Enobong Anstey’s 34th birthday!

I had such an amazing past year with you making your wedding dreams come true! I love that we live close enough to each other that we get to see each other pretty regularly, and I look forward to a lot more fun in the near future! I know that Ian is going to spoil you on your special day!! LOVE YOU!!!! ♥