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

This is super late because I wasn't at home for the entire beginning of this month. But I'm here now! And this entry has a lot (too much!) ground to cover. Tons of stuff has been going down! We're gonna talk houses, we're gonna talk my uterus, and we're gonna talk summertime funtime. Let's go! I wasn't even going to bother with "pandemic chat" this time around, but as it turns out Alberta has made some controversial decisions that merit some conversation. First of all, we moved to Stage 3 (the final stage) of the "Open for Summer" plan on July 1st which meant that all restrictions were lifted. At first it was really surreal to see this in action. It felt like I was waking up from some bizarre dream. But it also felt really amazing to remember what "real life" is like again. Since then, the Covid cases have gone up in Alberta (which I think was expected). As things currently stand, in Edmonton there is 0.05% of the population with known active cases. It's still pretty low, but not as low as it was. On the other hand, the hospitalizations have continued to remain very low. This is clearly because of the vaccine. Then Alberta announced some pretty surprising changes, such as; isolation following a positive Covid test will no longer be mandatory, Covid testing will only be available to patients in the hospital with severe cases, and there won't be any more contact tracing. Basically, the idea is to bring Covid measures in line with those used for other respiratory viruses. I (clearly) have mixed emotions about this. Part of me is optimistic and wants to believe that we can let go of all of the "safety blankets" that we have come to believe are necessary. I want to believe that the vaccines are working and that the province knows what they're doing. On the other hand, I'm still traumatized (as I'm sure everyone is) from this whole thing that we went through and it's hard to accept feeling safe again. I'm not entirely sure how to feel but I do want to continue to trust. I remain positive, optimistic, and choose to hope for the best. July felt normal. I still choose to wear a mask in indoor public places. But other than that, our lives have felt entirely back on track. It's wild to have an entire social life again. At the beginning of the month we were still in Jasper with my parents and we celebrated Canada Day by wearing orange. Mountain time is always the best time.

After that, my parents came back to Edmonton with us and stayed at our house for over a week. We had a great visit and it was their first time coming to our house in Edmonton.

Because of the free childcare Tim and I were finally able to properly celebrate my 39th birthday! (We literally celebrated on my half birthday.) It was THE MOST FUN. Tim rented us a Vespa (little known fact: I have always wanted a Vespa), we got all dressed up, we cruised around town on the Vespa and felt very European, ate dinner at one of the best places in the city called Bündok, and then checked in for the night at Fairmont Hotel Macdonald (probably the fanciest hotel in the city). I LOVED ALL OF IT! It was a PERFECT birthday. <3

DRAMA #1: My Uterus. As you know, my period had been completely MIA. This was really beginning to stress me out. I ended up going back to the doctor and mentioning it again, at which point he had me do a pregnancy test in the clinic (negative) and sent me for bloodwork to test my hormone levels. I was able to see the bloodwork results on my health app, but since I didn't understand the numbers I sent the results to my personal Gyno, Dr. Enobong. She told me that everything looked great and normal, and that if anything, it appeared that I had recently ovulated. This sent off alarm bells because *plot twist* two days prior Tim and I had sex in our fancy hotel room and the condom broke. And I am no longer on any form of birth control. And Enobong just told me that I likely ovulated. (We didn't think much of the condom breaking in the moment because we just assumed that my body was "broken.") Panic ensued and I went to the drug store and got the Plan B pill. That was the first and only time that I've ever had to take it. I went back to my doctor and he recommended that I do a bloodwork pregnancy test in two weeks to confirm that there was no pregnancy. But THANK FREAKIN' GOODNESS after day 82 of my cycle, my period returned. And it was an angry rager. I still went and had the bloodwork pregnancy test done just to be extra sure and it was negative. This whole entire thing has stressed me out WAY TOO MUCH. I am 100% certain that I do not want another baby and this whole episode has made that extra clear to me. I swear that I am OFF sex until Tim has his vasectomy done (which is now booked for October). I'm very curious to see if my period will become regular again or if it will continue to be a mess. Another birthday party that we were finally able to throw was Archie's! He finally got to have a 4th birthday party with his friends and we took full advantage of it being a summer party. The party had a tie-dye theme (the pandemic's hottest fashion trend) and we had all of the kids tie-dye their own shirts. Plus there was a campfire with a s'mores bar, trampoline filled with balloons, BBQ lunch, and cake & presents. Archie loved it and it was so nice to invite people over to our house again.

The rest of the month involved us trying to make the most of the summer. We had a date night where we hired a babysitter for the first time since the pandemic started AND went to see a movie in a theatre, also for the first time since the pandemic started. We took Archie to the Edmonton Valley Zoo. We bought a trampoline for our front yard that has provided a lot of fun. I visited Rachelle's new house that she bought in Lacombe. And we attended my 2nd favourite festival, Taste of Edmonton. (I wrote a whole blog about what I ate.) It was a great month full of totally normal activities!

Me on date night.

Mama has still got it.

Taste of Edmonton!

DRAMA #2: Our House. We are now in a position where we want to own a home again and we have been pre-approved for a mortgage. We love the house that we are currently renting, and so we approached our landlord and asked him if he would be willing to sell. We also started looking at other houses with a real estate agent. We saw about 6-8 other houses and none of them excited me. If anything, they just made me realize how much I love the house that we are already in. Thankfully, the landlord replied that he WOULD be interested in selling! This was amazing news until we heard his insane asking price (479K). From doing our own research, he was asking about 82K MORE than what we thought was fair for us to pay (397K). We all agreed to have the house professionally appraised because either the landlord was crazy or we were crazy, ha ha. We were on the edge of our seat waiting for all of this to happen. The appraisal came back and the house was valued at 400K!!! So we weren't the crazy ones! However, we were worried that the landlord wouldn't want to sell it anymore if it was so much less than what he wanted for it. He originally bought the house for 419K and did not seem like he wanted to take a loss. In the end we all agreed on 415K as a selling price and everyone seems happy! We currently have a hand-shake agreement that we are buying the house and are aiming for a September 1st possession date (pending all of the paperwork, money stuff, and house inspection gets done)! I am SO HAPPY about this! All of the back and forth was pretty stressful with this whole thing (and it's not entirely finished) but we're all saving money by doing a private sale and I am so thrilled to not have to move again. We love the house, the large property, and the neighbourhood. Plus if we do the updates on it that we want to (over time), it'll be REALLY nice. It'll be so awesome to be homeowners once again! (PS - To my Toronto and Vancouver friends: The numbers that I'm talking about here must sound ridiculous to you. It's a four bedroom detached house on a huge lot and it's centrally located (10 minutes from downtown). This is why we couldn't stay in Toronto or Vancouver. We wanted to pay a sane price for a house.) And then we left on our second summer vacation!! This time we headed east and stopped in a tiny Saskatchewan town called Richard. It was fun to make more of an adventure out of it and to have a full-on prairie experience. We stayed in a super cute cabin on an organic farm and also took Archie to the Western Development Museum in North Battleford (which is full of old-timey cars and trains).

Then we continued on to Regina and stayed there for a week. It was wonderful to spend a ton of time with my family (I hadn't seen my brother since Christmas) and of course I also saw as many of YOU as possible as well! Laura was even in town from Ottawa!

It was a busy month in an amazing way that felt like the real world again. I loved it all very much! (Except for all of our simultaneous high-stress situations!!) Life with Archie: The summer seems to be flying by and I can't believe that he'll be heading back to preschool again soon! Archie turned four and a half. He loved being in the mountains and also on the prairies. He LOVES our trampoline. And he has recently gotten into actual LEGO and is constantly building things. (CONSTANTLY.)

Four and a half!

I BARELY helped him make this.

We spent the start of August (and Heritage Day) in Regina. We did many fun things, saw a lot of people, and ate way too much. It was great. (There will be more about it in next month's blog.) We FINALLY celebrated Christmas Girls Night, since we haven't been able to eat at a restaurant indoors with people from outside of our households until recently. Our tradition is to always go for fondue and exchange gifts (which I have had since December). Very exciting! Christmas in August! Archie is attending a KinderGym Summer Camp for a week, so it will be nice to have him out of the house and occupied. Lots of nice quiet time for me!! Plus he's doing gymnastics, which is awesome. And then my #1 most favourite Edmonton festival is happening! FRINGE!!! It didn't happen last year and I am so excited that it's back this year. I have tickets to six different shows and I cannot wait to be back to doing something that I love. It's the best Fringe Festival in Canada (trust me, I've been to a lot of them)! Otherwise, August is fairly quiet. We don't have any major plans to go anywhere and will probably take advantage of the fun things happening in our own city. As always, I love you all and appreciate you being by my side. It has been absolutely wonderful getting to hug you all once again. <3

THIS MONTH’S SHOUT-OUTS!:

August 3rd was Zena Domanski’s 70th birthday!

I love that we've been together so much recently and that we got to celebrate this big milestone birthday together in style! I love you very much and can't wait to make up for all of the lost pandemic time (although we probably already have at this point). Thanks for being the best mom and grandma! <3 August 8th is Lacey Suttie's 12th wedding anniversary!

I hope that you and Dallas were able to ditch the kids and do something special! August 15th is Enobong Anstey's 6th wedding anniversary!

I hope that you and Ian can ditch the kids and do something special!