Good News Friday

Not a scare crow but a scare-sea lion so they don't come on the dock, Ucluelet, BC

Sharing a few more pictures of our trip to Ucluelet and Tofino and some great news this week:

1.  Mom's CT scan came back negative - no issues there so we are not quite sure why she had vertigo but with the help of some medication it appears to have passed after a few days.  The Dr is hopeful it will be 100% a non-issue within the month.  In the mean time she has started driving again but has no long trips planned.


2.  Flooring news.  The manufacturer of our laminate flooring agreed to a 100% replacement due to the flooring we installed last year being faulty (cracking way more than it should).  The install is scheduled for the end of July.  Originally they wanted to do it next week but hubby is away and there is zero chance I am doing this again by myself.  It is really good news - and yet I find myself completely depressed about it.  I hate renos and the first time was hard enough.  Total chaos again for a couple of weeks as everything is moved/fixed/glued/painted.  We are lucky we dealt with a reputable flooring installation company, but yet it makes me wonder if there are other people out there that have this same problem!?!  We upgraded and paid for nearly a commercial grade of flooring.   Lots of money spent to have to have it done twice but in the end I have to write this one off and accept the new floor as good news.

3.  Tomato news - I have small tomato hatchlings on two plants and foresee eating homegrown tomatoes by the first week of July.  We had hot weather in April and May but June has been colder and rainier. That is good news as last summer we had nearly no rain from mid May to October and had extreme water restrictions imposed with zero sprinkling, hand watering only.  That is unlikely this year.  Some baby spinach leaves are ready to harvest.  Does anyone who grows spinach know if it regrows once cut?  My first year at this and I am only using it for salads as do not eat most of my veggies cooked (hated it since I was a kid)

4.  This week is the final week of highschool for kid #4, my challenging stepdaughter.  Marks are not in yet but we are confident she passed all her courses and actually graduated from highschool which is a complete miracle based on the last 2 years of her life (if you are a new reader many a blog post has been spent discussing this).  Now she needs to get a better job and find a better place to live, although she has been actively trying to do both the last few weeks.  We are paying room and board for 2 more months to help her get on her adult feet and then it's showtime, she will be 100% responsible for paying for her own life.  We get a bit more financial freedom and she answers to no one but herself.  A win-win for all of us.  If she chooses to go to college all the better as the funds are waiting for her to do that.  Likely that is at least a year away at this point.

Lady kayaking the waves at Chesterman Beach, Tofino (I am a calm water kayaker, she was crazy!)

5.  We had a great visit with our friends this past weekend.  They came for an overnight on the way to visit relatives and we BBQed up ribs.  We cooked far too many and had to eat them all weekend plus I gave some to Mom.  It was nice to see them and due to their visit the house was cleaned top to bottom.  That is not going to happen again now until after our floors are redone, no point in scrubbing anything except the bathrooms and kitchen.  Let the dust bunnies run rampant as when you get new floors your house becomes a dust-bowl anyway.

6.  We managed to lower the taxes on the condo we own and that my Mom lives in.  By adding her to title with right to occupy rights (living estate) only we can allow the kids to inherit the property should we pass but she can live there as long as she wishes.  They can only sell it once she is done living there (she can remove herself or we can remove her if she enters a senior facility/passes away). We did this for estate planning protection as with 4 kids if we passed away sometimes spouses can put pressure on them to sell (none have spouses currently) and by doing this there is no question as to her right to live there.  She pays us a nominal rent and now the lower taxes mean we get both homeowner rates versus secondary property rates and a senior discount shaving $1050 off the taxes per year - woohoo!  The cost to have the title changed was $250 but may be different in your area.  It will continue to save us money as long as she lives there.  It cannot be rented to non-family so will have to be sold whenever she decides to move out but it is already valued at at least $15,000 over what we bought it for 2 and a half years ago.

7.  BC Cherries went on sale for $2.69 a pound this week and so I ran out and bought some - they are amazingly delicious and are being enjoyed daily.  Less than $2.99 a pound is the magic number where I pull the trigger to stay on our monthly grocery budget.

Ucluelet coastline

8.  I won a prize - details to be given at a later date but it involves an adventure on an upcoming weekend.  That is all I will say for now but the release forms have been sent in and the prize is amazing!  Yes, I still enter contests, only spend about 5 minutes a day on it a few days a week, a hobby of mine.  No large prizes since our last 4 day weekend in Whistler which we went on 4 years ago (amazing by the way, see August of 2012 Part 1 and Part 2).  I only enter contests for companies that I know and like and only for prizes I would actually like to win.  I use the site contestgirl.ca to find out about them.  Most of them you have to sign up to receive their newsletters without unsubscribing so I have a lot of spam email but it doesn't take long to sort through.  I also only generally enter contests that you can enter once so that I am not competing with contesters that enter hundreds of times (a gigantic waste of your time by the way).  I manually enter and use no programs to assist in speeding up the process.  I have also won $4000 worth of furniture in 2010 (see this post).  I actually told hubby on Sunday that I thought I was going to win this prize and to accept a phone call if we saw the company calling as the draw was on Monday.  I heard nothing until Thursday.  I have never quite felt that I was going to win something like that before....premonition maybe?

We are madly trying to finish projects for hubby to fly out on Sunday to deliver a week of training in Toronto.  I hate to say this but I love it when he travels on business as I get so much accomplished at home, both business-wise and personal.  I also get to eat 35 second meals and eat things he doesn't enjoy like quiche.  I plan to clean out the fridge and take stock of what is in the freezer - hopefully a zero spend grocery week unless great deals come up.

I realize I said amazing quite a few times in this post but life is good here and I hope the same for each and every one of you!