High school girlfriends

I can't even begin to explain how lucky I feel that I am still hanging out with the exact same girls I hung out with in high school. As someone who has moved every 2-3 years for my whole entire life, it feels special to have people who knew me when I was younger. 

The other night we had our biannual gathering. One of these girls has actually been my best friend since we were in grade 5. We were in the quilting club together, and generally just huge nerds together. This is the kind of friend she is: When I was in grade 5, my snow pants were bright blue with huge black polka dots. They came from k-mart, and I was embarrassed. They did not even match my jacket. Other kids had plain black or navy ones ones. Well, Jess, traded me every day at lunch so I could wear her nondescript ones and not feel embarrassed. She proudly wore my bright polka dot ones. For me, that is a kind of generosity that is rare. Through all the years of school when I just wanted to be cool, she never ever cared about that for a second. What a total gift to have her in my life all those years. Anyway, years later, she introduced me to the other ladies when I moved back here in grade ten to finish high school. 

We went for supper and talked about all the current events in our lives. We are all actually going through A LOT right now. One of us is very pregnant, another just had twins, another is going through a divorce, and another is about to open a big business. When we took these polaroids, we couldn't believe how much they looked exactly like pictures we would have taken in high school. So basically, girlfriends are the best, especially the kind that stick around for a long time.

A few more kinda recent pics...

I feel like everyone I know has been sick in the last few weeks. We are just trucking on, trying to get a little extra sleep, trying to eat a little healthy, trying to enjoy these cold days. These are a few pics from my phone from the first half of January. I can't believe we are already nearing the end of January. I am looking forward to more sunlight and more snow for sledding and snowshoeing. 

(Sweet little guy in a Benadryl-induced nap. He still sucks his thumb sometimes)

(A few peeps at our house on New Year's Day)

(New Year's Day)

(Picking colours for our powder room)

(Testing out some new ice skates)

(Our three year old loves climbing snow mountains)

(Looking a bit cute in new clothes)

(Cousins playing chess and matching, of course)

I am not into resolutions so much, but 2017 is going to be a big year for us. This is going to be our first full year in the town that is OUR town. We are not leaving here for a long long time, and that feels really good. Knowing we are staying here makes me want to decorate our house and also focus on local friendships. We are going to try to travel mostly around the province, and enjoy being close to our family. We are going to try to take advantage of the community events that happen around here. I am really excited about this year. More details to come.

A few holiday pics

(We love sliding with Cohen and our niece) 

(So fun, and seriously tiring because she makes me pull her up the hill.) 

(We made a lot of gluten free dairy free nut free egg free gingerbread men. So hard to find a recipe that fits our crazy restrictions, but this one worked great. We subbed wow butter instead of nut butter) 

(we went to Cohen's first ever Christmas concert. He was santa claus. We were so impressed he remembered his lines. Each three-year-old had to memorize 8 lines. Crazy) 

(We got Cohen snowshoes. He loves them for about 15 minutes at a time. Not bad.)

(More sliding behind our house) 

(These two loved Christmas at Nan and Gramps. Loved kinder eggs from Nan) 

(Heading to PEI after Christmas. We still love a good road trip once in a while to listen to podcasts, drink coffee, and let Cohen watch shows on the iPad.)

2016 was crazy

I remember being home a year ago for Christmas and visiting with my high school friends. I was talking about how I am not really loving being in NL anymore due to being so far from family, etc. One friend was like, move home to our tiny town!! And I was like, never!!! At that time I was sure I never ever wanted to live in this tiny military town where I did high school. And now, a year later, we are here, and more settled than ever. 

Right after we got home from our Christmas trip last year, Jon and I started seriously thinking about moving. By May, we were sure. We both locked down jobs here and we started searching for a house.   A handful of flights and lots of stress later, we sold our second car, took a boat, and moved into our house.

We are SO HAPPY here in Oromocto. I am actually kinda surprised how much we like it here. We have been able to see my high school and university friends on the regular, and Jon's mom, dad and brother have all visited. Life is so much easier here. My parents are a huge part of our lives now. We definitely don't see them every day, but they are Cohen's childcare 2.5 days a week, which is the greatest thing in the world. Mom works at the grocery store (the same one I worked at when I was in high school), so we see her when we get groceries. So cool.

2016 by the numbers:

1 house sold (at a huge loss, but whatevs)
1 house bought
1500 km moved
1 kitchen renovated in 1 week
2 new jobs started (one for each of us)
1 3-year-old started preschool
47th flight for Cohen. He has not been on an airplane since we moved back in July, and we opted to boat home instead of fly. Although we have another 2 flights booked for the end of this month, we are planning to keep the flight count as low as possible. We are so over multiple flights unless we get to visit someplace international
50 times (or so) that Cohen told us he didn't like our new house and just wanted to go back to Clarenville (he now loves it here, and tells us all the time that he loves our new house)
1 big kid bed bought for Cohen. We ditched the crib in October and it feels so good.
0 doctors that we have. So hard to get a doctor around here! I am finding it tough with all the allergies, but hopefully soon.

I am so excited about 2017. We are visiting my grandmother in a few weeks, and I have a couple girls nights planned with old friends (so wouldn't have happened while living on the rock) in the next couple months. Jon and I will probably do a few courses, and we have a lot going on professionally. We are hoping to do a lot of road trips around the province instead of taking flights this year. We want to do some hiking and a little snowboarding. We are also kinda dying to renovate our master bathroom, which sounds so lame, but there it is.