One year ago today...

One year ago today, Brian gave me the greatest Valentine's day present ever. One year ago today, our offer got accepted on our new house! We moved into the house in April, while I was 6+ months pregnant. You might think it's a bad idea to move houses in the middle of pregnancy, but it actually makes perfect sense if you are planning to move in the near future anyway. I mean, why wait until the kid is here? you wouldn't be able to set up a cute nursery in the current house because you're gonna move anyway, so what's the point? plus, you'd have to not only pack your own stuff, but all the stuff your kid now needs. That's a lot of stuff. And looking back on the first few months with Trent, if we'd had to do that, it would have been damn near impossible to do it without someone taking Trent off our hands while we packed. Having a new house before the baby arrived enabled us to set up his room, decorate it, and settle into our house so that when he arrived it wouldn't be such a big upheaval. We were able to tweak and organize things to make our lives easier when the baby arrived. So there is some logic behind doing that. Brian was talking to a co-worker the other day who is in a similar situation. I'm glad he got to pass on the things we learned. And I really hope that their move goes as smoothly as ours did.

So we haven't quite been in the house for a year yet, and we've done a few minor modifications so far. One was the dining room floor, mostly out of necessity because we had a cat accident in there. Well, not so much of an accident as a miscommunication ;-) Anyway, the carpet is gone and a gorgeous wood floor lies in its place. The next big thing we tackled (and by "we" I really mean me, with a little help from Tiff) was removing the ugly green wallpaper from the bathroom, texturizing the walls and painting them a nice calming blue. I also made an enhancement to Trent's room which includes a roundabout and three roads converging, painted on his ceiling, and adorned with hot wheels stuck to the ceiling. Trent laughs every time he sees it. That makes it worth all the neck pain from painting it. I can't imagine how Michael Angelo felt... I wonder if he had a good masseuse. In addition to some aesthetic changes, we had some minor repairs to make. The biggest one being the ceiling in the game room from when the air conditioner leaked. The patch job looks like crap and needs to be redone, but we've been procrastinating on that and will probably continue to do so until we move out!
This year we have one major renovation planned. The back of the house needs a covered porch. I think it will make the back of the house look less "boxy". And it will also be nice to sit out there on some comfy wicker furniture and sip my wine while I supervise Trent playing on the trampoline ;-)
I also plan to plant a tree in the back yard to scatter my Ember's ashes under. I can't bear the thought of parting with his ashes yet, but I know that it's part of the healing process, and this will help me let go.

So here's to another happy Valentine's Day! We're celebrating with a family dinner at my favourite steak house this evening. And I might make Brian his favourite cake for dessert.