New Beginnings

Hello folks,

Yes it's been awhile...but I have been pretty busy!! Okay maybe not that busy, but pretty lazy :) It's been a good month though, lots of exciting things happening including the purchase of a brand new house! As most of you know, my boyfriend Eric and I had been looking to move this summer and had been looking at houses for a few months in the north end (Barrie area). However, after doing the commute to work, I realized a 2 hour commute to work would not be ideal for me. Feeling a little hopeless and defeated, we assumed we would have to lower our expectations in terms of price and size. We were keen on getting a detached home, but the prices in the GTA for anything detached is way too high for our budget. Even condos and townhomes in some of the areas we liked were above our budget. I was about to give up hope, assuming we were never going to find anything until we found out about a new subdivision being built in Bradford (just north of Newmarket). After looking around the model homes and taking a drive around the community, we knew we had found our new home! Thankfully we found something in our price range and thankfully there is a GO train right nearby! It just seemed so right! We signed our papers a few weeks ago and are now official homeowners :) The home won't be ready until earliest January 2012!! It's quite a ways away, but this gives us some time to save money for upgrades,furniture and closing costs. I am really excited to have a brand new house!! We get to pick all our colours, designs and finishings!! We are going this weekend to pick the colour of our brick and garage. This is what our house will look like (not exact colours). Ours will be brick:

With this house will come a lot of sacrifice in regards to spending money. Buying a house is obviously not cheap, so I will have to use the next 9 months to save like crazy!! This means I will be moving out of the condo come July 9th. *Sad face!

While this upsets me greatly, it is one of the biggest sacrifices I am making. I will either be living back home with my folks or at my grandmother's again. It's going to be tough, but worth it in the end! Living back at home with Mom, Dad, Katrina and Beau would be ideal. I haven't lived at home full time since before university!! That is a long time!!

The house purchase is probably the most exciting thing that has happened this month, but another exciting event also occurred this past weekend....The Sporting Life 10km Run!! This was my first ever race that I have been training for since early January. It was probably one of my proudest accomplishments. You see, I have never been a great runner. Dance? Of course! Soccer? Okay! Skiing? Sure, why not? But running?? No! I always had terrible endurance and would get bored very easily. But thanks to my good friend and avid runner Sio, me and five of my other closest friends were able to finish the 10km race together!!

My time wasn't the greatest...1 hour and 4 minutes! I was really hoping I would be under an hour, but I feel like I was poorly trained with my Nike Plus Trainer!! As I was running on Sunday, I wasn't feeling too well, I had some cramps which caused me to walk a lot more than I had planned. Once I started feeling better, I felt my pace was picking up. When I looked down at my Nike Plus, it said I was halfway done the race (5km), so you can imagine my surprise when I saw the 3km sign at the same time. My Nike Plus Trainer was way off! By the time I had completed the race, the Nike Plus had clocked me in at 12.77km!! That is almost 3 more km than I had trained for. It was a little discouraging and I felt lied to almost! How could that little gadget mislead me in such a way? The same thing happened to my roomate Shannon. We were quite upset at the time, but we realize that it was only our first run and we should be proud at how far we have come in regards to our training. This run has now got me hooked and determined to beat my time...I instantly signed up for the Toronto Zoo 10km which happens in September! Exciting!!

Below is a pic of my girls and I with our medals. I am so proud of us!!!