Life Update: Feb - May

I'm back! Where has the time gone? I can't believe it has been 3 whole months since my last post. Life has been extremely hectic these past few months and have brought a whole lot of change into our lives. I'll have to make numerous posts about everything that has happened recently, but, for now, I will give you an overview of what has been happening.

February: I was feeling awesome in February. We were newly engaged and I was ready to power through securing a venue for our special day. We decided to have a November wedding. It's a little bit of an unconventional time of year to get married, but the date was thoroughly thought out and, of course, we had our honeymoon in mind. Our plan is to go somewhere all-inclusive and relaxing; and November is a great time of year for that. However, we didn't want our wedding to be too close to either of our birthdays. My birthday is October 9, which usually falls right around the time of Thanksgiving. I'm a strong believer that holidays and long weekends are times meant to be spent with family, so I knew that a Thanksgiving wedding was out of the question. Also, the later you get into October, you start nearing Halloween and a Halloween wedding doesn't scream "Blake and Kaylin". Finally, Blake said that he didn't want to be on our honeymoon during his birthday (which he has since redacted) and I didn't want to get too far into November and enter the Christmas season .... so we settled on November 7 2020. However, we haven't secured our venue yet so that date is tentative, but I'm pretty set on it.

I thought finding the perfect venue would be easy. We had planned on making our final decisions for the venue by the end of February, but that didn't happen. We had a couple of places that really impressed us and we almost went all in on a few. Fortunately, our families were able to convince us to come down from cloud nine and look at the places in a more realistic perspective. We ultimately decided that they weren't the best fit for us. We have since visited numerous venues and I think we have settled on a location that best fits our needs, but I'm still not 100% satisfied with our decision. When we finalize the venue I will make that announcement in a future blog post.

March: In March, we decided that, since it seemed we weren't getting anywhere with the venue search, we would put that on the back burner and focus our attention on house hunting. Blake and I have been in our rental for 3 years now and the desire to move has been on our radar for quite some time now. It wasn't until this winter that the desire became a need.

This winter was a wet, cold, miserable season. One day this winter, after an especially cold day, I came home to a particularly unpleasant smell. We initially blamed Lily's litter box (sorry baby cat) until we discovered that it was our sewer backing up. Needless to say, it was a mess. Blake, the amazing fiance that he is, completely stepped up and handled it. He wouldn't even let me see the mess. All I know is that it was a disaster and he used cat litter to try to contain the flow. Smart thinking!

Shortly after that initial disaster was handled ... our lights shut off. We didn't have overhead lights for approximately 2 months while our landlords tried to figure out the problem. It is hard to motivate yourself to cook good/healthy dinners using only the stove light and the bathroom light ... which was the only overhead light that stayed on. Luckily, all of our outlets works, so we were able to use lamps. Those lamps were the only thing that kept us going this winter, especially when Blake was on the night shifts. The landlords still haven't fixed the problem, which we have discovered is water getting into a specific light, but we have discovered the problematic light, so we just haven't used that light since.

Anyways, we were just tired of the problems that come with our apartment, so we wanted to move ASAP. Again, we fell in love with a house, but my parents urged us to take a step back and look at the big picture ... they were right. We didn't go with that house and decided to wait for something better.

I'm so happy that we waited because, after a few weeks of searching, we have bought our first house. It's a small 3 bedroom bungalow located within walking distance to the hospital, so you can't beat the commute! We just had to go for it. This time, Blake and both of our mothers really liked the house, but I wasn't sold. It took a couple of days for me to come around to the idea, but I have and I'm so happy that I did.

We have chosen to slowly move in throughout the month of May because we want to do some renovations, but once we are more settled, we will definitely do a house tour post! Very exciting!

Another thing that happened in March, was that I took two of my best girlfriends, Kristen and Paula, to Laduree at the Yorkdale mall to ask them to be in my bridal party. I'll do a separate blog post about that experience too. It was a very stressful, yet exciting day for us all!

April: This month hasn't slowed down for us at all, while we finalize some of the biggest decisions of our young lives. Blake and I were happy to take a pause in our busy lives to celebrate the Easter long weekend with our families. Mady had just recently gotten back from her 6 month adventure around the world, so it was great to get to spend more time with her. Unfortunately, Kyle had to go back to work up in Nunavut, so he couldn't come to Easter, but it was still a nice time spent with Blake's family. I took the opportunity to ask Mady to be one of my bridesmaids that weekend. She accepted the role and I'll put that funny experience in the blog post I'm making about asking all of my girls.

On the more stressful side of things, this month has brought a lot of stress for me. Not only have a been handling a lot of the planning for our futures, as well as packing, but I was summoned to attend an arbitration between a previous coworker and my employer. This coworker has chosen to sue the hospital for wrongful termination and I was called to testify on the hospital's behalf. I obviously can't go into details about it because the case is still open, but I was on the stand for 9 hours over the course of 2 days -- I took the longest out of the 3 coworkers summoned. It was tedious, but it is finally over for me and I am beyond relieved.

Anyways, this post ended up being longer than expected, but it's been a crazy time in my life and I wanted to update everyone on what's been happening. I'm hoping to schedule time during our renovations to write more.

I look forward to sharing this time in our lives with those reading. It's all very exciting!