depressing market

i have an obsession...i like to look at new condo developments. not only that, but i have to get a jump on the pre-sales...as in i need to be first! it's a really bad habit because i don't really focus on a specific neighbourhood...on a sunday afternoon while gabe naps, i'll randomly run all around burnaby just to see a display suite. then i fall in love. it happens EVERY time. "oh, i LOVE the layout", "oh, i LOVE the colour scheme", "oh, wouldn't this be a great play area for gabe".


then comes the depressing part...the price. it happened this past weekend. my parents and i went to see a new development...seriously, this was a VIP preview opportunity. BEFORE a pre-sale opportunity. seriously, i was like #3...i could get THE place i want. i saw the floor plans, i saw the feature sheet, i pass the construction site daily. i knew i would love it before we saw the display suite. but with a 3 bedroom townhouse comes with a hefty pricetag and strata fee. even with a 2% cashback incentive, we just can't justify the purchase. we could get a house for the same price...perhaps not a great house, but a house none-the-less.


so now i'm depressed. because if we want to stay in our neighbourhood, which we both agree we do, then we somehow need to come up with a LOT more money (perhaps Lotto Max will be my friend tonight?). otherwise, we could be condo-dwellers for the rest of our lives. fortunately the brentwood area has a lot of options...i just might have to lower my standards a bit (i.e., perhaps we won't have 2,000 sq ft, we might have to settle for 1,500; perhaps we can find a 2+ (large) den rather than a 3+).

anyhoo, we're not going anywhere anytime soon. pipe dreams. instead, with assistance from my mom, i'm gonna re-organize our home and somehow "make space".

and now that the housing market has depressed me, in an effort to save just a "little" bit more money, i've cancelled our regular cleaning service and bought myself a vacuum cleaner. gawd, i need something exciting in my life.

happy week!

what a rollercoaster week at work!

tuesday - i'm happy to hear that stefan (my colleague's hubby) had surgery #2 to remove (more of) his brain tumour and that he came out of recovery with flying colours. taleen: i wish you guys lots of love and i hope stefan comes home soon to you & charlotte!

wednesday - after 10 years, rmm is leaving hewitt. i was sad to hear the news in person, but to see it in an email brought a tear to my eyes. our pod just won't be the same without you around. i think i'll self-promote and move into your window cube... :-)

thursday - congrats to laura & kelly on baby #2! at 4 lbs, 14 oz i think she's the smallest full-term baby i've ever known! can't wait to meet her :-)

friday - i`m almost scared to go to work tomorrow...let`s hope for a quite and uneventful day!

preschool daze

i still can't believe that gabe will be going to preschool in the fall! after a VERY early saturday alarm, i was pleased to get a priority number for our 1st choice preschool. i was even more surprised to discover that at 5:30 a.m., i was already #11 (out of 16 morning class spots)!


so, come september gabe will be attending brentwood nursery school twice a week. i was referred there by my cousin after her 2 children attended, and also my colleague's daughter went there. because brentwood is a play-based preschool, i'm sure that gabe will adapt well to it. they do have some stuctured activity time, but the curriculum is driven by what the kids want to learn about, and are given the time and space to follow their own interests. when we went to the open house in january, the topic was giraffes - since the kids were interested in height.


what is parent participation? as part of our enrollment at brentwood, we are assigned a "volunteer" job for the year (i.e., registrar, class rep, supply buyer, etc.); some of the positions form the executive committee who oversee the preschool and meet once a month. the preschool also has mandatory parent meetings once a month which chris or i will have to attend. we will also have classroom days where one of us (or anyone in gabe's immediate family) will be the classroom helper and provide snacks for that day. lastly, there is mandatory fundraising for the school.

i'm looking forward to being the classroom helper (it'll happen every couple months) and see who gabe is friends with, how he interacts with his friends, and what they're all learning about. i'm also comforted by this because it'll help me adjust to gabe being in someone else's care (even though it's only for 2 hours). he's never been left with anyone asides from my parents!

but before he can even attend preschool in september, he needs to be potty-trained! so, our new challenge is to get gabe on the toilet and learn how to do his business all on his own!