and now more!

OK, So I have the blog up and running. Will you be checking in?

As of today, I believe that we (the four of us Lukies) have made a decision. We are going to put the house up in the next month, and sell sell sell the crap outta our stuff. Get all the shots we need, and put a limited amount of 'special memories' in storage. I have a huge list of things to do from today until then, but everything always works out for us, and I know that it will continue to do so.
So, as of right now, our DVD's, and CD's are on used edmonton. I will be putting up most of our furniture up tomorrow, as well as anything else we can find. I also need to take the boys for physicals tomorrow, call our travel agent, and get Oscars passport photo taken, and send it in! Ahh. Anyways, this is good. I will be buying the last (I hope) of the paint for the bedrooms, and the laundry room.
And then, hopefully it's only Friday. Wish me luck!

and on we go some more....

O.K. so the counter-tops needed a 3rd coat. I ended up doing it, and although it is not perfect, it looks great, and it's finally done. Chris also put my sink back in, this took him 2 days, and frustrated him to no end. Well, it looks great, and I'm so happy. Our kitchen is now back together, and I plan to start painting the Kitchen walls, both bedrooms and the laundry room this week. Then, it should be done.
This is all good news following the report from our realtor. Jason came by a few days ago and let us know that the market here has slowed almost to a halt. Well, not really slowed, but instead of 1800 homes on the market, there are now 8000. Well, this will not help us in getting the price we want. Our house is surely worth more, but is anyone going to pay us that? For us to go on this trip, and change our life, we need to have as close to 200000 in our pocket. We don't want to have anything to do with loans, etc. But it looks like we may only walk away with 100000. A very significant drop.

What are our options... Here we go. First off we could wait until the spring, this is the time when the markets should pick up. But that will only help if the interest rates don't jump. A risk. Our other option is to sell now, and take the hit, we would then go on an 18 month 'holiday' and be able to purchase one property. I hate this. I really think that having 2 properties would be better. One to live in and one to rent out. This will help us to not feel the need to work work work for a living. That is not the living I want us to have!
So, what does that leave us with.... One thing that came to mind was our buddy Matt. He let us know on our last trip to Winnipeg that he would be very serious in building a home on our plot of land and sharing in the income. I didn't really like the idea at first, but considering our situation, it may be a very fantastic oportunity.
Chris also recieved his writting package in the mail and I think this may be a great thing as well. Who knows, the restaurant, or import/export thing may take off as well.

At any rate, Callym and Oscar have made it perfectly clear that they don't want to spend another winter here, so it looks like we would be leaving on this adventure sooner than later. Seeing as it's mid August, and it has snowed here early September, we should start packing soon, and putting the 'for sale' sign up in the next month (at the latest.)

Ah, the headaches of a dream. . . . . . . . What a horrible thing to write!!!

on we go.......

OK, August 6th and WOW has a lot happened! At this very moment I am drinking some tea and watching Chris do a beautiful job on the 2nd coat for our countertop. Yes, you heard me correctly, a 2nd coat.
Strange, there were 4 steps for this countertop process. The first can had half a can too much, in the 2nd can we needed another half a can, the 3rd can had 3 quarters too much, and now with this fourth step we needed to go out and get an entire full can. Oh well. Chris looks great doing the brushing, and the counter's look fantastic. As for my work, well it's done for a few days. I have gotten both the bathrooms painted, the kitchen done (save for the actual walls) the up and downstairs living rooms painted and the up stairs hall. I am ahead of schedule and enjoying my break!!!

this just in. The top coat on the countertop hardens in 30 minutes. Chris has been working now for 40 minutes and counting.... will they turn out, or will we have to go out a 3rd time and do this again??? More to come..... Ahhh!

Anyways, Callym had a great time at his party today. Family and all came to hang out and have some snacks, hotdogs and drinks. Picking up the cake was a suprise, some how I ordered the full slab, this feeds about 80, well we had about 15 people. You do the math.... Anyways, good friends and family, Callym had fun. He has also collected almost 300$ to help him donate to the animals at the zoo and the world wildlife fund. He has chosen to help 5 turtles go to rehab, buy a goat to save a leopard, give a panda some room to grow in the wild, and he is donating the rest to the Edmonton Valley Zoo in the name of the Sea Lions. He is so excited to be doing something good for the animals. And actually mentioned that he wished he could help the gorillas, because he didn't want them to die. I am so impressed with how big his heart is. He is the greatest four year old I have ever raised.

and the rush is ON!

August 1st, today has been another day of painting and sanding and we're still only on the kitchen. But I have made some progress. All the cupboards are now painted and put back into place (save for 2 doors near the stove) All I need now is to do all of the pull out shelves, and have Chris cut a few pieces of wood to close off some open area's and I can get on with the counter-top and bathrooms.
It looks like we will have this done for the party! Chris has also found another development property in Honduras, the company is not only Canadian, but right down the street. We must look into this now.
You never know... actually, we don't know. What do we know.... well, we know that we are moving. We know that we want sun, sand and sea. We know that we want a much simpler life style, one that our boys will be happy, and know the meaning of life. Not the rush rush of money making and keeping up with the Jones'. We know that there are 5 or 6 countries that fit our profile, and we intend to cruise around for a few months, a sort of vacation, to find our paradise of sorts. We are actually very willing to do a number of different things. It started out that we were going to start a restaurant. Chris would do Cinnamon buns and coffee in the morning, and I would do Sushi in the evening. (The most important thing here is that we are together as much as possible. That we are smiling and together. Oh ya, and NO SNOW!) Anyways, we would still love to do that, but we have also been throwing around the idea of an import/export business, and building a school, starting our own resort, or buying a bunch of land and selling it. Just yestaurday Chris bought an online school course about copy-writting. That could turn out to be a great thing. He really feels that this is something good, and I fully 100% support him. Anything to get him away from this shitty night shift...... Hey, and who knows, maybe, just maybe I'll sell this story.....

August 2nd. I've gotten all of the shelves, cupboards, chairs, and the first coat of the upstairs washroom done! I feel as though things are coming along nicely. Now I just need to remember to get to the dentist tomorrow.

July 30th

July 30th, 2007.
I've gone out and bought the first batch of paint, gone to mom's to pick up the sander, ended up picking raspberries and forgetting the sander, so out again for that. Also went to Ikea, twice, in the same day. This should be fun...
Chris has taken all of the kitchen cupboard doors off and is now sanding them, my job is scraping off all the crap inside and painting them all cane sugar white. I still think that new cupboards would be better, but with our time-line and money, this will have to do. I have found a cheaper way to update our counter-top, hope this does the trick. I need to get the kitchen done, as well as the bathrooms before Callym's birthday party on the 6th.