we're buying a house?!

we are on our way to buying our first home. the next step now is finding the right one to buy. we went looking at houses today with our real estate agent. it was good, informative.... but now we're very confused about what we want! let me explain. we were able to check out 5 homes. three of them ended up being way too small for some reason or another, like an "eat-in kitchen" with absolutely NO space for a table, but yet no dining room either. or another one in which they've converted the living room into a dining room, but now the only "living" space is in the very dingy rec room in the basement... not so great for entertaining. etc.

another house we looked at today felt huge, with 4 bedrooms and a large basement... but it was nasty! the homeowners in no way were trying to sell us on it. all the walls, doors, door frames and counters would need work. the kitchen appliances were all old and rusty. i would be afraid to use the bathroom it was so gross. the carpets were stained. the windows needed replacing. etc. etc. etc. and that was the priciest one we saw today.

there was one more. this is the one that confuses us. it confuses us because we like it. a lot. but it's brand new. and in a suburb. and we don't like suburbs. we don't like that all the houses are the same, we don't like that there's no foliage, we don't like that there is absolutely no character in suburbs!! also, we want a minimum of 3 bedrooms - one master, one office, one art room/future baby room. this lovely little brand new house only has 2 bedrooms, but they are quite large. and it's a bi-level, so the basement, which will be unfinished, has fairly large windows, plenty of room to make a rec room of sorts, a bathroom, laundry room, and 2 smaller bedrooms. the house is pretty cheap considering that they'll be building us a new one (our choice of colours, appliances, carpet, etc.) so we could save money by not needing to do renos right away (unlike the nasty house!), and use it to landscape and finish the basement.

the location is not so good for the fact that we only have one car and i'm not willing to walk more than a 5-minute walk home from work after a 12-hour shift. and that it's in a SUBURB!! seriously, what are we thinking?? i've already decided that if we move into a new house, i'm planting a crazy wild flower & rock garden in the front yard. just to be a little different, to bring some life into it, to make it more organic - that is, if we're allowed.

we're still gonna keep looking. there were a few that we weren't able to look at for various reasons, including the one that we've had our eye on since before christmas (and it's still for sale.... but what does that mean?) this particular house has a whole lot more character and is in a great location.

this is our first house. WE'RE BUYING OUR FIRST HOME! crazy. obviously we've never done this before, so we are totally open to suggestions. if you own your home, please leave a comment with a tidbit of some good advice about house-hunting. what do we look for? what should we keep in mind? if you know us well then you'll understand our desire for a house with a bit o' character... any advice?

any at all?

self care or selfishness?

bear with me and my jumbled thoughts here for a moment.

in various nursing classes, we've been reminded about self-care - taking care of yourself - and how nurses and nursing students are especially bad at it. students, with balancing group projects, required readings, exams, clinicals, part time jobs. nurses with crazy hours on top of everything else. and as a general rule, we have personalities where we like to care for others - and not just in the hospital - which sometimes means putting our own needs on the back burner. and this only increases for those who have children.

self-care. this is something i am trying to work on. the other day R pointed out how many times i've been sick over the last year. we try to eat right, but it's doesn't always happen. when the 12-pack of KD goes on sale for $6 and a pack of yummy no name brand weiners is only $1.15, who can refuse it? i try to get enough exercise, i'm up to walking 25 minutes (in the snow) 6 times/week. but that's just because i walk to school three days a week. i need to take better care of myself. i'm trying.

selfishness. this morning our pastor talked about a number of things. he pointed out various passages in the Bible that describe the devil's selfish nature - how he fights for glory, for our worship. he wants to be greater than God and he wants to draw us to him. when we are selfish, we are not bringing glory to God. when we turn our focus onto ourselves, we're turning our focus away from God, which is what the devil wants. we're opening the back door and letting him in, so to speak.

this certainly does not mean that we should neglect ourselves and our own needs. absolutely not. i think that God wants us to take care of ourselves, since we are his creation and he loves us. i do believe that God wants what is best for us. and if it's in our power to care for ourselves better, then we should.

i am convinced that self-care and selfishness are not the same thing. but where's the line between them? when am i taking care of myself, having some "me time", giving myself a break? and when is it laziness, only thinking of me and my wants, putting myself ahead of everyone & everything else? perhaps when i let the dishes pile up while i sit at the computer wasting my life on facebook, 20 minutes at a time, while my hard-working, first-year-teacher husband plugs away at his desk, prepping for the next day... or perhaps when i'm heading out the door to Day 18 (no joke) of visiting with family within 3.5 weeks over christmas, perhaps i can put a smile on my face and remind myself how blessed i am to have family who likes to hang out. but where's the line? i like to scrapbook to relax, to let the creative juices flow a little bit. but it's not a right, it's a privilege. with our free cable, it's very easy to get lazy. homework gets neglected. but my GPA is still right up there, so does it matter? well, yeah, it does. i don't want to be lazy... that's selfishness. but relaxing every once in awhile IS allowed. for my palliative care clinical last october, on top on the usual personal and professional goals we had to make for ourselves, we had to make one self-care goal. mine was simple. i was only allowed to watch tv shows that i felt were worth watching (ie. R and i watch the amazing race together every sunday), and if i felt like i was wasting my time, i needed to turn the tv off. okay i don't watch as much tv as i'm making it sound, but that's just an example.

where is the balance? that's what i'm trying to figure out. i want to bring glory to God with my life. i'm just trying to figure out how to take care of myself without putting myself first.

west coast adventure

i can't believe that Christmas holidays are almost done. well, i guess i can believe it considering all the things that i did this holiday. but i'm still sad that it's almost time to go back to school (however, this is the LAST time i ever have to go "back to school"). i'll try to keep this short. after genifer's surprise visit, we flew back to victoria together where we hung out and she showed me the sights. we had great fun, hanging out as sisters. a few days later, we went down to seattle to see kerri and her clan. that sounds so simple... we just "went down...". In reality it took a ferry, a bus, a bus on a ferry, and a car ride. we left a 9:30 am, and arrived as the sun was setting.

the three of us hung out, went shopping, went out for supper at the icon grill. by "supper" I mean that we split a side dish of fantastic macaroni and cheese and then the gigantic hot fudge sundae, that was too big for the three of us to finish off.

after the bus driver almost left without a bunch of us (even though we were all waiting in line outside the bus....?), genifer and i took the bus up to vancouver. thankfully, the border crossing was rather uneventful, unless you count the fact that we had to get off the bus and show all our documents to the officers in the dark, since the power was out. the rest of the bus ride was uneventful too, except for as we approached vancouver, the driver asked if anyone wanted to get off in coquitlam, and as a few people raised their hands, he told the rest of us that it would now be an extra hour until vancouver. what?? this was the first time i've really travelled anywhere by a non-chartered bus... it is always this bizarre?

in vancouver, genifer ferried back to the island and i was reunited with R. we spend the next week hanging out with his family. it was great to see them all again. our nieces are so much bigger than they were last year and it was so much fun to play with them.


R and i returned to manitoba for some relaxing, hanging out with my family and a whole lot of sleeping in. i'm loving this holiday thing. no school, no work.... i think i would like to be on holidays for the rest of my life.

I Celebrate the Day

And with this Christmas wish is missed
The point I could convey
If only I could find the words to say to let You know how much You've touched my life
Because here is where You're finding me, in the exact same place as New Year's eve
And from a lack of my persistency
We're less than half as close as I want to be


And the first time
That You opened Your eyes did You realize that You would be my Savior
And the first breath that left Your lips
Did You know that it would change this world forever


And so this Christmas I'll compare the things I felt in prior years
To what this midnight made so clear
That You have come to meet me here


To look back and think that
This baby would one day save me
In the hope that what You did
That you were born so I might live
To look back and think that
This baby would one day save me


And I, I celebrate the day
That You were born to die
So I could one day pray for You to save my life

-relient k

surprise!

i like surprises. i like when people surprise me, because it means that they were thinking of me and wanting to make me happy. but more than how much i like surprises, i LOVE anticipating good things. i love getting excited about things that are coming up. i love the anticipatory feeling. R pointed this out in me recently. back in august, he wanted to surprise me by buying tickets to see the sound of music at rainbow stage because he knew i'd love it. he told me that he had a date planned on the last day of day camp but he didn't tell me what it was, because he knew i liked surprises. but then, he told me a few days before the show that we were going to the sound of music and i was PUMPED. he told me because he knew i would love the anticipation.

this weekend i pulled off a good surprise myself. see, i'm planning to fly out to victoria on tuesday to spend a few days with my sister, then head out to seattle and hang out with kerri for a few days, then go up to vancouver where R will join me and we'll spend some time with his family. that was the disclosed plan. but my sister and i schemed up a secret plan to surprise my family. and so on thursday, she flew out here! only a very few people knew. on friday, i had invited my family over for a little family christmas party at my place. when my parents arrived and my sister opened the door they were literally speechless. hahaha! great fun! and then on saturday we had 2 gatherings and surprised all our relatives. we had warned the grandparents that there would be a surprise visitor, because we were slightly afraid of the physical trauma we might inflict onto them (and i did not want to have to use my CPR skills).

oh it was great. genifer and i are going to be flying back to victoria together on tomorrow.

and now you must go to the sidebar and vote!

elfed.

this is what i did today, when i should have been studying. check it out here.



(thanks for the idea janelle)

job shadow

on tuesday i spent the day at my (hopefully) future place of employment, job-shadowing a nurse. it was a pretty good day, although unfortunately it was unusually slow and there were no women in labour. in fact, if this would have been a day at clinical, rather than a day of job-shadowing, it still would have felt like a slow day. i guess the disappointing thing was just that i wanted to see how a crazy day goes where the nurse has to balance obstetrical patients and surgical patients and how that works. but as it was, i could have easily just done everything my nurse did that day. i didn't do a thing, but watch. i couldn't do a thing - at least, i'm pretty sure that i couldn't, since i'm not licenced (obviously) and i didn't have an instructor there like in clinical... i'm not sure what the legalities are, so i just watched. i even watched her do vitals, which is something we've been doing since first year. so... it felt kind of dumb sometimes.

however.... it was a good day nonetheless, and i can totally see myself working there. good to know! anytime i was introduced to someone, whoever was introducing me would say, "...and she's going to do her senior practicum here" or "....and we're trying to convince her to work here when she graduates."

it's very different in a rural hospital, especially in your hometown. it felt like i grew up there, and have been gone for 7 years and now i've returned. ...oh wait, i guess that's exactly what happened. the hospital is small - which is nice - and even though i was only there for 8 hours, i recognized a lot of people - nurses, patients, doctors. i have a friend (who convinced me to go into nursing in the first place) on that ward right now, a friend who is an x-ray tech there, etc. i was chatting with some of the doctors there - i used to babysit 2 of the doctor's kids back when i was in junior high. crazy.

but yes, it was a very encouraging day.