5 years and no cats.

I've been totally negligent in keeping y'all updated on our mundane day-to-day! For those of you who were anxiously awaiting my next post... I'm sorry! But I'm posting now - better late than never, right?

First, we celebrated our 5year anniversary in true Paul & Julie style. I told Paul what I wanted and he snuck out and bought it for me :) I love my man :D I was really wanting the board game "Blokus" - one of my visiting teaching girls got it for Christmas, oh... 2 years ago? 3 years ago? Anyway, she was totally addicted and wanted to play it with us, which in turn... got me totally addicted. And I've been asking for it ever since. So after 2 (3?) years of begging (ahem, I mean "asking") for this game, Paul's finally gotten it, and we've even played it together a few times :) Paul doesn't like playing games if it's just the 2 of us, because he's too nice and lets me win, and then gets sad when HE doesn't win... so if anybody else is a Blokus addict and would like to play in 4s instead of our 2, let me know :) (other games available :D)

For Paul's gift, I made him a book :) Just a simple book full of pictures of us over the last 5 years, and listing my top reasons of why I love him, but it's his book and so if you want to see it, you'll have to ask him :)

Our wedding anniversary was on the 9th, but Paul had his BIG, HUGE-DEAL, EXPENSIVE exam on the 14th, so we celebrated after. It was his entrance exam to get into the CMA program, and he feels good about it, but we won't know for 5-6 weeks when he's supposed to get his results back. And I suck at waiting! Argh!

Anyway, so we celebrated on Friday the 16th instead (also kind of celebrating our 4year temple sealing date on the 15th!) (another aside: Paul's Grandpa Fred was the one to conduct our temple ceremony, which was hugely special. He died on Oct 15th of last year, so 3 years to the date after our sealing. Very memorable for us. And right before Gabby was born. So we think they were catching up.) I digress! Anyway! Paul's mom, aka "GWAMMA" came and babysat for us while Paul took me dancing :) There's this place by the UofC where they have $7/person dance lessons and dance party, so potentially 4-5 hours of dancing in a booze-free environment for cheap without feeling guilty about crashing the YSA :) We also stopped at DQ and grabbed blizzards on the way home, and found our babygirl fast asleep, thanks gwamma! First time we've had somebody come over to babysit at night, and it was a success! Wahoo!

More updates: It's snowed. Which means hot-water issues in our building that I get to deal with. Along with the noisy kids across the street (at 4am. SERIOUSLY??) and vandalism in the laundry rooms, and the fire alarm going off for no reason, and the senile old lady on the 2nd floor who truly belongs in a care facility... *sigh*

And our most recent news: the cats are gone. I know, I know... some of you are thinking "that's terrible! Just because they're not kittens anymore, you're just getting rid of them??" (yup. that's a response I actually got...) but it's not true. Ever since Gabby came along, our cat situation has steadily gotten worse and worse. We've put up with a lot from our cats. We've gone through 4 couches for our cats (behavioural peeing issues...) and trained him out of it, and taken care of them, loved them, spoiled them... and then one of them peed in Gabby's carseat. Too much! Last Straw!

Rather than taking them to the humane society (where, let's face it, they'd be euthanized. With the overabundance of cats in Calgary, nobody wants a full-grown pair of cats when they can have adorable new kittens!) we called the lady who helped us find them in the first place, and she took them back rather than see them go to the humane society. So that's where they went today. To be quite honest, I'm more sad because Paul is sad than because I'm actually missing the cats. Once Gabby came along, my focus completely changed. But Paul was still the one feeding them, changing their litter, cleaning up their messes, cuddling them, etc... huh. Service really does help you love people (cats) :) So yeah. In return, Loki & Leila love Paul, and actually sit and wait for him at the door when he's not home. See picture below :) But we've been fortunate to find a new home for them, and truthfully, I'm seriously re-thinking whether or not I consider myself a "Pet Person" for the future. Lots of work. Lots of mess. Lots of commitment.

Upcoming news: Gabby's birthday is on Wednesday - we have an almost-1year old! Stay tuned!