A Closed Chapter

The Cochrane chapter of our journey is now officially closed.  We finished cleaning this morning, had our walk through and handed in our keys.  It was kind of bittersweet to walk through our completely empty house and realize that we would not be coming back, however, it felt right to be ending that part of our life.  It has been a great time out in Cochrane, especially having the opportunity to meet some wonderful people, but at the same time it was some of the hardest times for us as well. 

When we moved into the student housing two and half years ago, we had no idea that God would lead us to move to the Philippines at the end of it all.  We had planned out where we thought we would be going after Steve graduated and what we would be doing, however God had other plans for us and has led us on much different journey than we ever thought possible.

While we are sad to end this part of our journey, we are excited to begin our new life in just over a week in the Philippines.

Kerri

Moving Along!

We are now down to the wire for our upcoming move and things are coming fast.  We are moving out of our house in Cochrane this coming Tuesday, the 28th and then will be staying with my parents for a week in Calgary before we fly out on July 7th.  This has been a crazy week of packing, giving things away, storing things and dealing once again with our wild emotions.  We go between being really excited to start our new adventure, sad to leave our friends and family, scared of not really knowing what's ahead, completely freaked out of the idea of going back to school, and just wanting to get on with it so that we can feel settled once again instead of living in limbo.  Right now our house looks like a tornado hit it, but we are making progress.  I have to say I will be very glad to have Tuesday come and be at Mom and Dad's so that we can relax somewhat before we go.

We were able to go to our church Family Camp last weekend and had a fantastic time despite the wet weather, and the best thing was being surprised by our wonderful Stephanie who got special permission to leave her job just to come out and spend one more family camp with us; we love you so much Stephanie.

The goodbyes have started and I've decided that I'm not really a fan of them, however they're going to continue, so I guess I have to get used to them.  It's beginning to really hit Julia and Daniel that they have to leave their friends soon and they are having a hard time dealing with that.  The tears now flow more regularly, and the emotions are more extreme.

Please pray for us as we tie up loose ends here, say our goodbyes and prepare for our move.

Kerri

Our boxes have arrived!

We received an email from the maternity center this morning saying that our first two boxes have arrived safe and sound in Davao City.  The next two boxes should be arriving there next week and then the fifth box will most likely get there after we arrive.  Besides the kids toys and some of my books, I don't actually remember what we packed, so it will be like Christmas in July for us once we get there and start unpacking them.  Julia and Daniel were so excited to hear that their toys are now waiting for them there; I think it makes the move a little more bearable, knowing that there will be familiar things there waiting for us.

We went to the travel clinic this afternoon and got our vaccinations.  We all had to get Typhoid vaccinations and I also had to get an MMR booster shot because apparently I only got one as a child instead of two, and measles is very prevalent in the Philippines and is quite dangerous, especially for kids.  Julia and Daniel were so brave but once we got home, their arms were beginning to stiffen up and hurt.  Hopefully they'll feel better in the morning.

Three weeks and two days left before we leave.  Yikes!

Kerri

Back to Reality

At the Palliser Lodge in Kicking Horse

After spending four wonderful, relaxing days as a family at a gorgeous mountain resort, I feel as though reality has hit me hard in the face.  We are back to our disorganized, half packed house, packing up our very last box that will be shipped tomorrow, and once again making decisions about what to take and what to leave behind.

While we were gone, it was easy to forget that in a few short weeks our lives are going to change in a huge way.  We relaxed, read books, played games, went for a walk in town, drank slurpees and ate ice cream, all the while not wanting to face the fact that this was our last Canadian family holiday.  For those of you who don't know us very well, our family holidays are a huge highlight of our year and for the last few years, we have taken road trips to various places - BC, Washington, Oregon, Utah and there are still a few left on our list to one day visit.  We absolutely love getting in the car with the kids, and heading out not really having many plans, except for where we are going.  We usually don't plan how long we'll be gone, where we'll stay (what's the fun in booking something in advance?), or what we will do when we get there.  We stop whenever the kids (or I) need a break or there happens to be something cool to look at and we arrive at our destination whenever we happen to get there. 

I keep having to remind myself that we are going to Davao as a family and we get to make new memories there, but sometimes it's really hard to leave the things you know and love behind.

Kerri

One of 9 bears that we saw on our trip - this one and her two cubs were about 100 yards from our lodge

We ended our trip by getting out to do some rock climbing in Kananaskis

Julia getting ready to start climbing

She did such a great job

Daniel enjoyed bouldering and playing on the rocks

Photo Album Dilemma

After much debate with myself, I decided that I really did want to take all of our photo albums with us to the Philippines.  We are going to be there for a significant amount of time, and photo albums are important to me, so they need to come.  After looking through them one last time, Steve packed them all up last night, taped the box and tried to move it - that's when we realized we had a problem.  There was no way he could carry the box by himself, it was simply too heavy, too many photo albums.  So now our box sits very nicely in the middle of our porch, and tonight we have to unpack it and decide which photo albums to take and which to leave behind in storage.  I knew we had a lot of photo albums, but I didn't realize it was enough to completely fill a shipping box.
Now before any of you digital loving, techy people laugh at me for having photo albums, yes I do have a digital camera, and I am well aware of the fact that I can simply have my pictures on the computer or a digital picture frame for that matter, and look at them that way.  However, I DESPISE looking at pictures on the computer, it's frustrating and not at all as satisfying as sitting down with a cup of tea, and a photo album on my lap, remembering and reminiscing.

Ahh, the joys of moving!

Kerri

The countdown is on...

6 weeks, and three days from now we will be on our way to our new home in Davao City!  It's kind of crazy to think that after 16 months of praying and talking this through, we are now down to weeks.

Our house is getting emptier by the day; our piano has been sold along with Daniel's bed (he now sleeps on a mattress on the floor) and Julia's bookshelf.  We are also now taking pictures off the walls and packing things up to take to my parents' house for a garage sale that we are hoping to have this coming Saturday as long as the weather holds up.  We still have some things to do, but it's nice to be able to cross things off our "to do" list and have it get smaller.  I think we may end up shipping one more box as we have found some more things that we would like to take with us that we forgot to put in the other boxes.  When Steve dropped off the last box, they gave us another one at no cost just in case we decided to ship another one and it will cost us very little to ship this next one because there was a special of 'ship four boxes, ship your fifth one for free' (or almost free). We could have fit the rest of the things into our last box, but we forgot to check our office, and our outside storage room when we packed up, and ended up filling the box with things like pillows and sheets, just to fill it up.  Oh, the joys of packing early and shipping things! I'm really hoping it all makes it there safe and sound.

We still don't have a house as of yet, but there's a townhouse for rent in a neighborhood about 5 minutes from the birth center that we may be able to get.  We are hoping to be able to see some pictures of it, but the lady who owns it has gone to the States for a holiday and didn't leave a key with anyone, so we have to wait until she's back. There was an option of renting a furnished townhouse, but we decided against that as the rent was quite a bit more than it would be for an unfurnished place and we are hoping to get a kitten for the kids when we get there, and we wouldn't be able to have pets in a furnished place.  If we aren't able to find a place before we arrive, we will still have a full month before my classes start, so hopefully that will give us plenty of time to find something.

Kerri

Things we will miss about Calgary - Part 1

Peter's Drive In.

We spent the day together as a family yesterday, playing and walking around at Prince's Island Park, then took the kids to Peter's for burgers and picked up Slurpees.

If you've never been to Peter's, you need to go.  It would be worth a vacation to Calgary just to get a burger there.  I would highly recommend it!  They have the best burger in the city.  In fact, they are the best in the entire universe.

We will miss Peter's burgers, as I don't imagine they will have those in Davao!