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2006
Olson Christmas Letter
New
province, new house, new baby, new (no) jobs. That’s how we
will be starting 2007! The only thing constant in our lives
is change, and that’s the way we love to live.
Let me
think back to January. After recently learning that Ana was
pregnant, we found ourselves on a plane headed to Jamaica for
a week holiday with our friends Darren and Deb. We had a
great time relaxing in a seaside beach house which included
two cooks who also cleaned and did laundry. I’m certain we
were the best fed and least exercised people in Jamaica that
week. In the spring we decided that leaving our newly bought
piece of land at Fishing Lake, Saskatchewan vacant was not
something we wanted so off we went for a weekend of house
hunting with the goal of finding a nice house to move onto our
lot. Moving an exisiting house is the most environmentally
friendly and economical way to get a cabin by a lake so after
a long weekend driving around small town Saskatchewan with an
entourage which included two sets of grandparents and a one
year old with perpetual motion sickness we found the perfect
one – a 1950’s two storey character home. Throughout the
spring and summer we made many trips to Fishing Lake to move
and renovate Vivenda Olson and now it sits awaiting the flurry
of Olsons and Gustafsons for many great events to come.
With a
hot and sweaty summer on our hands in Calgary and an equally
hot and sweaty real estate market, we decided that the time
was right to leave our home in Inglewood and set sights on new
adventures in Ontario. We’ve always found that decisions are
easy to make if you only look and listen for the signals. The
time for us to move was right; Calgary real estate was
soaring, the new baby was coming soon with Ana eligible for a
year long maternity leave, and Kris’ contract was coming to an
end (again) at Shell. The stars aligned, we sold our house,
packed our boxes and got on a plane headed east with the Rocky
mountains and what felt like a lifetime of wonderful friends
and memories in the rear view mirror of the Boeing 737.
In the
midst of all that activity we were blessed with a fast
delivery of our lovely and darling little girl Stella. She
has been a star baby in every way – great sleeper, great
eater, and a perpetual smile on her cute round face. Magnus
doesn’t pay too much attention to her, but gives her the
obligatory hug if asked to. He does like to wait until we
are distracted then pick her up off the couch and tour her
around the house and thanks to his upper body strength has so
far been able to keep a nice tight grip on her.
Since our
October arrival in Ontario we have nicely settled into Ana’s
parents (John and Maria’s) house, with our two kiddies and
9,850 pounds of possessions. As you can imagine, the house is
noisy, chaotic, messy and we have in fact lost children once
or twice in the sea of furniture, boxes and toys. This will
soon be coming to an end as the new house we purchased in
November is nearly finished and we have a final possession
date of January 10th, slightly delayed from the
original date of December 22nd. The house is in a
new subdivision of Paris, Ontario and is located on the edge
of town, backing onto a horse farm and a valley leading down
to the Nith River – quite a beautiful place. The entire
building process will have taken about 8 weeks from bare land
to completed house. It’s been fun watching the construction
and we will be overjoyed the day we move into this, our first
real family house.
We’ve
managed to do a bit of travelling as well since arriving. We
returned to Calgary to attend the wedding of Kris’ cousin Jen
to Chad (Chadifer to most), went on a weekend trip to New York
with friends Ian and Anne Marie to attend a real estate
conference and also spent a week in Florida in early December
with Ana’s folks. One of the best days in recent memory was
the first day in Florida. While I stayed home with the kids,
Ana and her folks went out grocery shopping and returned a
couple hours later with a crate of Kalik beer (from Bahamas)
and another crate of Presidente beer (from Dominican Republic)
– two of my favourites! I can’t remember what happened after
that.
We have
also started a new company called Grand Ventures (www.grandventures.ca).
The main goal of the company will be acquiring real estate
properties for resale or long term investments. I have been
very busy meeting people, checking out possible properties and
building up a workable business system through trial and
error. It’s a big change from my IT consultant days and I’m
loving every minute of it. I also plan on keeping up with at
least some part time IT consulting work as I still enjoy that,
but am just ready to pursue new ventures. Ana has been
helping me out a lot and we plan to work together to make a
success of this business.
Ana had a
good year with WestJet and is now on her year long maternity
leave. She is not sure what will happen when that year is
over, so until then she is going to have her hands full with
Magnus and Stella.
Magnus is
diving headfirst into his “little boy” years including, but
not limited to, learning swear words from grandpa when
grandpa’s wood working projects go awry, attempting to
bareback ride the Borges’ 12 year old cat Tico , carrying a
plastic sword at all times and attacking strangers at will
and, his favourite, load testing his mouth cavity (no pun
intended here…) with entire boxes of Smarties, leaving
colourful swirls of drool abandoned all over his grandparents
house. He keeps us well entertained.
The rest
of our extended family are all doing very well. My dad Peter
retired this year from SaskPower and started a new career as a
real estate developer, working with my uncle Ian and brother
Curtis. Loretta runs their care home full time. My mom has a
business cleaning houses and her and her husband Rick, who is
a realtor, still live in Saskatoon. Ana’s mom Maria retired
last year and her dad John will be retiring very soon. John
will be helping me out with some of the rehab projects on
houses as he is a very handy guy. My brother Marty and his
wife Jen live in Ottawa and are expecting their first baby in
February! My other brother Curtis and his wife Carrie, who is
a musician, are living in Saskatoon and just moved into a
super trendy new condo. Ana’s brother Mark is still living in
Toronto and has been doing a lot of traveling recently for his
job which he’s really been enjoying. My grandparents Edgar
and Elaine are as busy as ever and since we were in
Saskatchewan so much this year we got to spend a lot of time
with them.
At the
moment we don’t have much planned for 2007. Our long standing
policy of always having at least two vacations in the pipeline
seems to be straining under the pressure of everyday
child-rearing. But since we refuse to give in, our first task
for 2007 is to get some vacations lined up for the year!
With
that, we want to wish all of our friends and family the
greatest happiness for 2007. We hope that days of love and
laughter find their way to you.
Kris, Ana, Magnus & Stella
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