It has begun.

Well, we had the Realtor over the other night and it went well - he's such a good guy! Anyone looking to buy or sell in Calgary should call Keith Braun & Associates. Okay, the plug is over.

Keith helped "stage" our house and when he was done with our living room we loved it so much we joked and told him that we were not going to sell anymore but stay here. It's amazing what de-cluttering and rearranging will do to a room. He took a lot of pictures and we had to answer some questions about our place and he ran us through how the process was going to work - pretty cool. So, the place is now up for sale. There was a place in our neighborhood that is now "pending" so the girls and I walked over there today to have a look. Overgrown with dandelions and in kinda poor shape. I was thinking, "If this place can get an offer to sell on what they had it listed for then ours should be a shoo-in." Not nice thoughts. I REALLY hope we get what we're asking for.

So, without further ado. Here's some pics I took of the outside of our place. By the way: Anyone wanna buy a house?

What a week!

It's been a pretty crazy two weeks here in Curtville. Last Thursday I quit my job for reasons that I will not go into here. Suffice it to say the last two weeks I have been walking closer to Christ than I have been for a long time and the book of 1 Peter has been like having Him sitting across from me encouraging and strengthening me. It is amazing how struggle and hardship drive one to Christ where there is a continual sense of His presence and strengthening. Contrast that with how I so often move away from Him when things are going good with no hardships to speak of. The Apostle Peter was so right when he talked about suffering bringing the blessing of Christ.

Stacey and I have been wanting to move back to Sask. for a few years now but the timing just never seemed right. However, what has just recently happened to me coupled with the girls homeschool year ending and Stacey's involvement in the Sunday school program at our Church has lead us to believe that maybe this is God's timing for us to move. We all WANT to move back and have for some time now.

Our rough plan is to sell our place here, move back to Swift Current area and rent a place for a few months. I will be sitting on my butt for a month or two (I may not be able to last that long though) just to recharge from the last 5 years of life here in Calgary working 3 jobs that went in the toilet due to......"employer issues". Then after a month or two I will try to land a job, maybe in the oil industry, and then we'll buy a place of our own - preferably a place out in the country with a few acres to play with. Like I said, that's the rough plan. We are remaining open to what Jesus Christ has for us and we are praying that He will strengthen us to remain open to Him. We really want to move back, and we're pretty certain we will, but...ya never know what may happen.

If we do move back I may bear a similar resemblance to this yahoo.

It's over! It's finally over.

I just completed working for 21 straight hours. The place where I work had to move out TONS of computers, monitors, IP phones, mice, and keyboards along with all the cord and cables associated with the lot. Due to the large volume of stuff my company hired a bunch of extra guys. We broke into teams and then went at it. Myself and another guy removed monitors for the ENTIRE time we were there. I have to say that I have never worked so hard in my entire life! Thankfully the monitors were only 17 inch and not the 19 or 21 inch mutants I'm used to hauling.

We had a great crew and there was lots of laughs, even in the intoxicating stupidity that comes after 15 hours of constant movement. One of the guys that came was Ben, a 2nd degree BB from my Hapkido class. This guy was moving, moving, moving all night long. No complaining just go go go. It was awesome to watch. My teacher/boss' dad was also there helping along with another guy from Regina. The dad, Bill, and the other guy, John, had left Riverhurst, SK at 6:00am the morning we were to start working. They got here after 6 hours on the road, chilled for a short while and then we worked. These guys kept going the whole time - amazing!

The place we were moving all this stuff had crews of their own moving in new equipment as we took the old stuff out. The head people from this company we were in contact with were awesome and they took care of all the workers there. I have never seen so much good food at so many times per night for everyone. No set break times just help yourself whenever. Our crew would go hard for a long time and then someone would do something that made us all realize that we should have a break and then we would all descend on the food room. Man, coffee at 3:00am never tasted to so good.

I finally got home and slept for probably the longest I ever have. It was beautiful. I hope this doesn't happen again for a long time :)