One journey ends, another begins.

We bought a house.

This week all of the legal stuff has to fall into place, but if all goes according to plan, we should be in there by this Friday, or next week Monday.

This is all crazy town.

It's a very hard concept for me to get my head around, that I finally have my house. The house I've been dreaming about since I was a kid. Since I moved out of my parents' house when I was 19, for the entirety of my marriage. The holy grail, the prize at the end of the finish line, the driving force behind every decision. And it's here. And it's mine. Or going to be.

And it's been a long. Freaking. Road. Let me tell ya. (Warning: It's a long post, too!)

I shouldn't complain. There are many my age who are lightyears away from having a house of their own. There are some in the world who will never have one, or have never had one. As far as the grand scheme of things is concerned, we are abundantly blessed, and I should start by saying that I know that. And am grateful every second of every day.

I moved out when I was barely 19 years old, out of my safe and everything-I'd-ever-known home town into the big scary never-even-driven-there city. Just like that. On a whim, with a friend, because we both wanted to live in the city to be near the boys we were in lerrrrve with. We both just up and quit our jobs, just like that, and took every penny we had and got an apartment in Winnipeg. It was amazing, being on our own for the first time. I look back now and think just how brave that decision was, because at the time we had no idea. We didn't even have an inkling that everything could crash down around us. Sure, we had no vehicles and no way of getting around the city (bus virgins!) and sure we didn't have jobs lined up and just signed up for an over $700 rent payment every month. But in our minds, the world was our oyster, full of endless possibilities, and nothing was going to break our stride.

We didn't even get jobs for like two months after we moved in, either. Just spent our days dancing around to the Hairspray soundtrack and eating Toaster Strudels and ramen noodles for every meal. 

Just little babies we were. We did eventually land jobs, and begin to learn the meaning of responsibility (we even shared a cat for a while!) But we still didn't really understand.Then my boyfriend (at the time) moved in with us (sort of) and started helping out with rent. I had a very difficult time being so far from Altona, though. I had never lived anywhere but there, and had never gone such long stretches without seeing my family. It was like ripping off a band-aid, and it stung. A lot.

I actually spent nights just crying myself to sleep in my loneliness. I wanted my mom. I wanted my dad. I wanted my brothers. I wanted streets I recognized and faces I'd known all my life, and suddenly I was going a month at a time without seeing them. I tried to go out every other weekend, and when I did I of course brought bags of laundry along because I was terrified of the building laundry room. It was during this time that I realized I needed to be a bit closer to home. We're a close-knit family, and I so badly wanted to still be a part of it. 

Matt and I started making plans, and trying to figure out a way to move back. We even looked at houses at one point with the naive belief that buying a house was easy. Who needs a downpayment? Closing costs? What closing costs? Matt was still going to the University of Manitoba at the time, and unemployed, and I wasn't even working full time hours, and we were so crazy in those moments. But we were desperate. I was so desperately sad and lonely.

Once we realized how out-of-grasp a house really was (and thinking back I'm glad it was!) we explored other temporary options, just until Matt was finished school. So in an effort to get some more space, and get a bit closer to the University, we embarked on a new adventure in a new apartment, and I bid my sweet roommate adieu.

We slept in separate bedrooms in the new apartment, since we wanted to maintain a bit of mystery for marriage, and have strong spiritual beliefs tied to "waiting until you're married" as we're all taught when we're younger. We wanted to stick to it, so we dished out the extra dough for a two-bedroom apartment. We just didn't think we could find roommates that we could get along with as well as we got along with each other. We were best friends before we were together, and best friends still, so it just made sense to us. A little unorthodox, but you do what you gotta do.

Matt worked at the Robin's Donuts Deli down the road for a summer while we lived there, but otherwise just went to school to become a math teacher, and was unemployed. I continued to make all the big dough while we invested in our future through Matt's schooling. Due to the unfortunate passing of his United States Military employed step-dad years prior, Matt's schooling was supposed to be paid for by the United States government. However, due to complications with international paperwork and phone calls, and school confusion, it sometimes took months, even a year, for us to get any funding for it, so the tuition bills and text books had to come out of our own wallets until then. And the University of Manitoba is not cheap.

We were extremely blessed at this time by Matt's mom who helped us pay Matt's tuitions until we finally received the funding we needed. We couldn't have made it through that time without her generosity. Although we did manage to furnish our entire apartment on my income alone, and we're very proud of that.

It was while we lived there that Matt proposed to me, and we got married. It was the first home we shared as a married couple, and will always hold a special place in our hearts. I'll never forget sipping coffee on the deck, making dinners in that kitchen, and having pillow fights all over the apartment. It will always be the place we came home to after our honeymoon, and I still miss it a little.

There are Christmas lights strung around because the Maid-of-Honour and one of the groomsmen "decorated our apartment" while we were away at a hotel after our wedding. Fun discovery.

But all the while we lived there, I still dealt with daily pangs of sadness, and weekly bouts of severe depressive episodes. I don't have diagnosed depression, but at that time it would have been difficult to tell the difference between me and someone who does, not that I presume to know what diagnosed depression feels like. But I imagine that's as close as I'll come to it.

It was getting increasingly difficult for me not to resent Matt for being the reason I was still so far from home, and alone. It felt like I was on a desert island, by myself, all the time. No friends, no family, no interests. Working at a job I didn't really choose for myself but I stumbled into. I wasn't working toward my dreams and my goals but just watching as Matt worked toward his and it was enough to crumble me on a daily basis.

All I ever wanted was a house of my own, near to my family, a husband, and babies to raise. I wanted to bake, and clean, and do laundry, and have my mom over for casual coffee. I wanted that life so badly, and couldn't have been farther from it.

As I stated earlier, Matt was going to school to become a math teacher. But day in and day out he was also struggling with sadness and longing, because he wasn't truly passionate about what he was going to school for. He felt a responsibility to his family, and to those who knew him, to become who they all wanted him to be, so he struggled every day in class to become it. But he had an extremely hard time finding the motivation to attend classes, to put in a real trying effort, and when grades time came around it was always discouraging and very uncharacteristic of my honour student husband. It just wasn't who he was, but he stuck to it because he figured that since this school was the reason I'd been so sad for so long, he had to stick it out and finish it.

My sadness was very difficult for Matt to watch, so we decided that we would begin to work toward some of my goals so I could feel like I had some purpose in my life. And my biggest most important goal was to have a child. So we evaluated our situation, our life, our circumstances, and concluded that we could in fact finally fit another human into this picture. And after only one month of trying we found out we were expecting our first child. It was an incredible whirlwind of a time.

The only reason we were able to do this, however, was by deciding we would find a more affordable living solution. It happened very suddenly, but we came up with the idea one day, with the help of my mother-in-law, that we could finish her unfinished basement in Rockwood (north of Winnipeg) and use it as an apartment to live in while we saved up some money for a down payment for a house, and while Matt finished school.

This was an incredibly difficult and heart-breaking decision. We had to factor in a lot of different aspects. For instance, our rent was about to go up to over $1000 a month in Fort Richmond, and at that rate we wouldn't be able to save a single dollar for a down payment for a house. We also definitely could not afford to add a new addition to our family if we stayed there. And since Matt couldn't really work while going to school, we had to find a solution somehow. So with heavy hearts we all agreed it was the best decision for our family.

But it was definitely heartbreaking. Nobody wants to feel as though they're going backwards, and even though the apartment we would build would be private, with its own kitchen, bathroom, and living room area, it still felt like "moving back in with mom" which is the exact opposite of what you want to do once you've finally "escaped" and lived on your own for a while. Matt's mom also lived even further from home for me, an extra 45 minutes to be exact, and that was probably the worst part. But since our baby was important to us, along with Matt's schooling, we did what we needed to do, gritted our teeth, and made the best of it. And it was extremely generous of Matt's mom to offer.

Over the next few months we worked tirelessly on the apartment. I helped as much as I could despite my pregnancy symptoms, and we put in many long hours trying to complete it. My dad helped out a lot, too, since Matt and I really didn't know anything about home renovations. My dad put in hours upon hours of unpaid electrical and plumbing services, as well as drywalling and many other jobs that needed to get done. Again, Matt couldn't take on a job since he had to spend the majority of his time at the apartment getting it ready for me and my growing roundness. We had to consider the renovations to be like his job at the time, despite the fact that he wasn't getting paid for his endless hours of work.

Matt's mom funded the project, and actually ended up saving tens of thousands of dollars by not having to pay an electrician, or plumber, or contractors to finish her basement. All she had to pay for were the initial supply costs. So the situation was actually great for everyone involved, since she will actually end up making back close to twice what she put into the renovation when she sells her house, without having to pay for the labour. In a way Matt and I considered this to be like the rent we were paying, in our sweat and our sore muscles and tired bodies. Our way of giving back in the situation. So we still felt like we earned our keep, or at least we definitely tried our best to.

The bedroom of the apartment was priority one, and we got it finished right away. Then for the next couple of months we lived in there while we worked on the rest of the apartment. We had a toaster, on top of a microwave, on top of a mini-fridge in the bedroom that served as our temporary kitchen where we ate the majority of our meals, but I still had to trek all the way out of the apartment, up the stairs, and across the house to get to the bathroom at night in all of my pregnant urgency. It was definitely straining on our marriage, too, being newlyweds and completely unable to really behave together the way we would have liked. Our master bedroom was directly below my mother-in-law's kitchen, and we figured since we could hear absolutely every word of her phone conversations from in there, she surely could hear everything we did, too. Ahem.

The intimacy in our relationship definitely began to struggle, and that's the point at which we started to fight a lot more often, and feel distant from each other in a very new and hard way.

Then we finally got the apartment finished (everything but the ceiling) and began working on the nursery. We paid for the bead-board around the room ourselves, and every single piece of furniture in it. Even the paint. The entire nursery suite, the diaper pail, dresser, changing table, linens and layette for the crib. I created the art pieces and lamp myself. We bought all of the clothes ourselves, and most of the other little things. It was important to me that my sweet baby wouldn't have to suffer, that these experiences in my life wouldn't have to be tainted by our circumstance. I wanted to remember everything having to do with my sweet baby as perfectly as possible.

We received some small but very thoughtful presents from friends and family, the largest of which was the stroller and car seat my mom and her boyfriend Richie purchased for us. It was at a time when we barely had enough money for groceries so desperately scraping up the funds for the nursery furniture was hard enough, and we definitely appreciated their generosity.

Thinking back now, we were crazy to start a family with so many things uncertain. So many things up in the air, and almost no money coming in to our family. But I'm not sure it's ever the perfect time to have a baby, and I have never regretted it for a second.

Only a month after the nursery was finished Oliver was born, and we were head-over-heels in love. It was a difficult experience, however, since the labour was sort of a nightmare, and bringing him home was nothing like I'd always imagined it would be. I never thought we'd be sitting in the back seat of my mother-in-law's vehicle on the way home from the hospital, or heading down into a dark basement with our new beautiful baby. It wrenched at my heart, but the beauty in that little boy's face was enough to carry me through.

At this point Matt had lost so much interest in his schooling that he essentially didn't attend anymore so he could spend time at home helping me care for a very difficult little baby. It was an extremely hard transition for me, because not only was it a very cold winter, but since we lived in a basement apartment with only two moderate sized shaded windows, we had to have the fluorescent lights on all the time. Hardly any natural light, and since the ceilings were unfinished, and were just bare wooden beams, electrical cords, pips and duct work, the light that we did get didn't really reflect at all. It was emotionally draining to feel like a flower that wasn't getting any sunlight. There were definitely days that I couldn't stop crying, couldn't hide the sadness. 

It definitely wasn't an ideal situation for a new mom, that goes without saying. There were times when Oliver was crying and we just couldn't settle him since he was colicky, and Matt's mom would be banging on our apartment door, asking us why on earth we weren't caring for our baby. I know it was out of love and concern, and I've long since forgiven her since I know it came from a place of kindness, but at the time it was more than I could bear. I was doing my best, and unintentionally being made to feel inadequate, all the while feeling pressured to keep my baby as quiet as possible for fear of disturbing the residents upstairs.

For a very long time living in this apartment, I felt as though I just couldn't go on. It felt like I lived in a land of perpetual darkness, like the morning after the night never came. I was so far from anyone I knew, in the middle of nowhere, stranded and alone. And since it was a basement, we had to wear sweaters, socks, and toques indoors in the summer time since it just got so cold, and have the electric fireplace blasting all winter in order to ever be comfortable temperature-wise.

It was a very long, sad, and lonely time in my life. Since I was so far away, my family and friends didn't visit very often. This part was particularly hard because I am a perpetual hostess. There is nothing I love more than having company over, and feeding them, and entertaining them. I decorate my home for others who visit to enjoy and relax in. I buy extra plates, extra flavours of tea that I don't even like, just so I may serve others. We even ended up getting a day-bed that pulls out into a king-sized bed for company. And every day that I looked at these things sitting on the shelves, surrounding me in my home, it filled me with immense and overwhelming sorrow.

I was alone all the time. Just me and my baby. Matt would go to school and it was just me, alone, in the dark cold apartment. Beautiful walls, beautiful decor, well built and new, and it just felt like a dungeon to me. It was very difficult to overcome. But a lot of the time I could suppress it, hide it. I just didn't allow myself to feel that sadness. I reminded myself of the generosity that was shown to me, reminded myself that this was far from the worst situation in the world. That I was lucky to have a home, and a family, and food in my belly. But it was definitely hard. Every time I broke down it hurt Matt in the worst possible way. He felt personally responsible for my sadness, like if only he could get it together we'd already be in the place of our dreams. It was hard on our marriage, on our family, on everyone.

I wrote a poem at the time, describing the way I was feeling. (Warning: It's a huge bummer!)

These words from inside
Describe that which dooms me,
The monster I’ll hide
Until one day consumes me.

It’s struggle and hardship,
Labour without rest.
What crime commits me
To endure such a test?

My friends and my family
Won’t come to call.
I guess that my world
Is too dark for them all.

My treasures once kept
Are now beat up, and busted.
Tainted by sorrow,
Tarnished and rusted.

Warmth a veiled memory,
Distant and thin.
The walls built around me,
Keep only cold in.

My life a dark prison,
I toil to survive,
In which not even sunlight
Can pass through alive.

The calendar’s corpses
Lay limp in my head.
For each day is born –
But is already dead.

Don’t can’t ask why I cry,
As you show me your back,
When each passing day
Is just grey.
And then black.

You can tell I was going through a hard time. I felt like I had been abandoned by my family, and was literally living in a wasteland of sadness. It was almost unbearable.

Shortly after Oliver was born we desperately needed another form of income to fund Matt's schooling, and pay for our now larger family. So I started taking freelance photography jobs for families in the area and in Winnipeg. I had taken some photos of my own baby and they'd been admired by a few people, and that sort of got the ball rolling. I never really decided "Okay, now I'm going to be a photographer!" But it just sort of... happened to me.

During that summer I was already working very hard to make extra money and look after Oliver while Matt decided what he wanted to do with his life. Another school year was coming up and he was absolutely terrified of it. So many courses he'd have to retake, so many professors he'd have to face, all the while knowing that the original five-year-plan had somehow become an eight-year-plan and that this nightmare we were stuck in was stretching on and on because he just couldn't figure out the solution. One night we were talking, and figured out that he just wasn't interested in becoming a math teacher. He thought he was, but he just wasn't. He loved numbers, but just couldn't stand math. So that very night we went online to look at other courses that were available to him and we stumbled upon Red River College. That's where we discovered the Business programs they had to offer, and suddenly for the first time in a long time I saw Matt light up. He seemed excited, giddy, ready for a change. And then and there we decided we were going to pursue this.

We looked into it, and it looked amazing. So we went over everything, the costs, and time required, the courses he wanted to take, and decided he was going to enrol in a one-year program so he could start working a real job. He felt restless, and needed to be productive with something he was passionate about, so desperately. But the decision was a tough one, since we also knew that by switching to Red River he'd be essentially saying goodbye to all of the work he'd already put in at the University, as well as saying goodbye to all of the military funding (since they don't fund college programs that don't immediately lead to a degree.) But we decided that happiness was far more important, and Matt enrolled at Red River.

Suddenly I got excited. One more year? Only one more year of Matt's schooling and I'd be outta' here?? Really? I couldn't believe it. It seemed so close I could almost taste it! Then Matt attended an orientation at the college and came back with some interesting news.

He told me that he could continue on, and take the one-year course he was enrolled in, or he could be really serious about accounting and go straight for the two-year course, with the hopes he'd be closer to a CGA in the end, and have a much better paying job. He told me that even if he took the one-year course, down the line he would need the additional schooling, and that we'd have to pay for it while living on our own if we waited.

The most practical decision was right in front of our eyes, so we decided the two-year course it was. My heart broke yet another time. I didn't think it was possible, but yet again the possibility for escape was dangled in front of me and then cruelly torn away. It was almost unbearable. But I took some deep breaths and tried to remember: I am blessed. I have everything I need. I am surrounded by wonderful things. God is looking out for me.

Over the next few months my photography business grew more busy, and Matt began school at Red River. He was in love. He had found it, and he knew it.

He went to school with a smile on his face, and returned home even happier. He was connecting with people, he was on fire for what he was learning, he was so ready to excel academically and it couldn't have made me happier. We had finally found the right dream for him, and now we were right on track to making it happen. All the while, however, I felt like my dreams were sort of standing still as I continued to watch his come true. Our entire income was my photography income as well as a small amount of money given to us generously by Matt's mom - money he would have been entitled to by the government had he not broken the stipulation that he couldn't get married. Since his mom didn't think this was fair she continued to give Matt his share of this money and we wouldn't have been able to make it without it. 

We paid Matt's mom a bit of rent for a big chunk of time while living there. It wasn't a lot, but quite frankly we couldn't afford a lot. There were months when we just had to tell her "We just don't have it." because money was just that tight. We had to pay for Matt's tuitions essentially out of my income alone, which at the time really wasn't all that much. At this point we still hadn't put a single penny away into savings for our house and my dreams were looking more distant than ever before.

As Matt continued to go to school, he had to put in long hours in the evenings to study and finish homework. So I was busy with a little one from first thing in the morning until late at night when he finally went to bed. Matt and I barely got any alone time, and I had to spend any free minutes I got editing photos from the photo sessions that seemed to just keep coming and coming. It was frantic, and hectic, and absolutely exhausting.

And it only got more busy from there. There were days when we could barely talk to each other because every second was spent just busy. I would edit photos all night long, and he would study all night long, we'd barely sleep, work our minds absolutely raw, and then have to function like normal human beings in the world.

It also, for a while, seemed like everyone thought we were doing pretty well for ourselves. We must have been putting on a pretty good show in public because back at home we were definitely struggling to stay above water. We were putting pennies into our savings, trying our hardest to invest in our new beautiful little boy, and maintain a new marriage that was inches away from crumbling under the pressure. But somehow our friends and family thought we were just rolling in the dough, and I'll never really understand why. We were literally counting every single dollar and couldn't do without any of it.

Shortly after Oliver turned 1-year-old, we decided to start trying for another baby. Money was coming in more regularly now from my business, we could see the home stretch a little over a year away, and had high hopes to be in a house soon enough. Things were settling down a bit and we always knew we wanted our babies to be close together in age. After one month of trying, again we discovered that we were pregnant. Time to figure everything out again.

We never really thought we'd need room for two kids for very long, since we had it in our minds that we'd be in a house the instant Matt was finished school. We thought baby #2 would surely be only a few months old at that time and it would be easy as pie. It's almost funny to think back at our optimism now. Even then we seemed so young and naive.

Matt worked for a construction company over that summer and we managed to accumulate a good chunk of money to put into our savings. We used my photography income to pay for his tuitions, since I was working full time at photography now (AND full time as a mom) so I had a substantial income to contribute. Shortly after his second school year began, however, we realized that he still had $6000 of student loans hanging around from his University days and that it would hurt us if we ever wanted to get a mortgage. We also knew it didn't make any sense for us to take on more debt (a mortgage) with this existing debt hanging around. So again we made the difficult decision to use the money Matt had earned over the summer to pay for his student loans, and a bit of new equipment for my business so I could continue to bring in a substantial income.

That fall and winter were probably the hardest of our lives. Since I was big and pregnant I had to stop working for a couple of months and Matt wasn't bringing in any money. To add to it, a large portion of the money he was receiving for his schooling was now being given to another member of his family who was also enrolled in schooling. So we had much less income to depend on each month (actually, almost none.) We had to make it by on the family allowance we received for Oliver, and the little bits of money that trickled in from other places. Not only that, but we had another baby coming any day and needed some new things for him that we just couldn't afford. We didn't even know how we would pay for the cost of our room at the hospital.

I managed to put together a birthday party for Oliver on a shoe-string budget, and Matt's mom bought us a bassinet as a baby gift which we greatly appreciated. My mom also purchased me a c-section recovery girdle ($$$) which was also a godsend.

Theodore was born and it was a magical time. We couldn't have felt more complete and incredible as a family, like we could take on the world. He was definitely tricky at first, and just as colicky as Oliver was (if not more so) but we cracked his code and got into a routine. We were finally starting to realize that this was our situation, this was our plight, and we just had to make the best of it. Matt's mom, and we, learned boundaries and rules in the home, balance and how not to take everything quite so seriously. We learned how to truly be grateful, how to be proud of our accomplishments, and how to let things roll off. Not everything had to be a lesson teaching moment, we didn't always have to "stand on principle," we didn't always have to stress or do things by the book, or impress people. Life began to feel a teensy tiny bit easier for a while.

I still had my episodes, though. Moments of absolute and complete overcoming sorrow. I cried because this just wasn't the home I wanted for my babies. I cried because nobody would ever see the pictures on the walls, because they'd never visit. I cried because my family would miss out on my babies growing up, and nobody would get to see Theodore as a tiny little newborn because I was so desperately far away. But most days I could keep a happy face on. Most days I could see the beauty in these little lives I'd created and make it through to another day. Most days I experienced genuine happiness. The balance we'd struck was helping me to soldier on, and the promise of a new beginning right around the corner was enough.

When Matt was finally finished school, we didn't have a single dollar in savings. Not a one. After almost three years of living here in this apartment, we had nothing to show for it. We had two beautiful babies, Matt had a certificate, but we didn't have a penny. So we thought we might move into an apartment in Altona for a while so we could save up some money for a house. I wasn't looking forward to living in an apartment with two kids, but I was willing to give it a try if I was going to be where I wanted to be. But again, logic came into the picture.

We realized, first, that we didn't want to live in Altona. We'd already done the Altona thing, we knew what it was all about, and it didn't need our positive presence. We wanted to go where we were needed, and where we could start a new and fresh beginning for ourselves. So we decided to stick close to Altona, but also close to Winnipeg to keep the job market open for Matt.

Very shortly after finishing school Matt got a job as a Fund Accountant for Great West Life Insurance, working in the Investor's Group. An incredible opportunity, and extremely timely. After his very first day there, he told me "I love it. I love everything about it. I have an incredible job." An absolute answer to prayer.

We decided that the best decision would be to stay in the apartment here at his Mom's house until we could save up enough money for a house. If it was either: live in an apartment for a couple of years and then buy a house, or live with my mother-in-law for half a year and then buy a house, the decision seemed obvious. But once more, my dream was pulled further away from me. I kept the faith, though. I soldiered on.

Around this point we truly realized the error in our ways, how self indulgent we had been, how immature and carelessly we'd spent a lot of our time, how ungrateful we may have seemed at times, and how we'd let our negatively overtake us and we felt ashamed and embarrassed. Right then and there we gave it all to the universe. We put it all up to God and said "You take this. You take care of us. You tell us where to live and what we should do with the family you've given us."

We had been trying to figure it out on our own, and just carrying God along for the ride. We completely forgot that there's a power so much greater than us that could step in and save the day at any time. Sure we'd cried out to him before, sure we regularly prayed and worshiped, but it never occurred to us to let him actually make the decisions.

So we let go. We stopped worrying about how these dreams would come true. We stopped worrying that they would ever come true. We assumed they would, we assumed the money would just come in, and that everything would work out exactly the way it was meant to.

We made a mental plan that surely by October or November we would be in the house of our dreams. Surely. We didn't want to move in the winter again, but we were prepared to.

Only six weeks later - and no word of a lie - we had MORE than enough for a down payment for a house. Money just started to pour in from our careers. Next thing we knew we were looking at houses, we were allowing ourselves to visualize a home. Visualize ourselves in the space, entertaining in the kitchen, sleeping in the bedroom, opening presents in the living room. We gave in to it. We got our hopes up. Which is exactly the opposite of what I feel like I've always told myself.

Next thing we knew, there it was. The perfect house. It had been on the market for a while, still hadn't sold, and the owner wanted to sell it so badly, so that he could finally relocate for his job. And then there we were, cash in hand, ready to take it for him. We answered his prayers, and he answered ours. Just like that. Neatly and perfectly.

And suddenly, in what seems like the blink of an eye, all of our struggles, hard work, and long seemingly endless hours toiling away and dreaming are finally coming together in this one beautiful and incredible moment. My dream - our dream - is gleaming before us.

We had a lot of help, especially from Matt's mom who so graciously let us take over her basement for almost three years. Even though we tried to inconvenience her as little as possible, she did donate us the space in which we started our family for minimal rent, and we'll always be grateful for that gift. And my dad who has always gone above and beyond, despite his lack of financial ease, to visit us as often as possible. He's visited us more than anyone and been that one little string making us feel as though we still have a connection to the rest of the world. We couldn't be more grateful for that either.

I apologize if you helped us on our journey and I've forgotten to thank or mention you! You should know that everything you've done is so so important, even if it's escaping me now! (This is a long post, and wasn't intended to be an Oscar Thank-You speech!)

But I just have to say that we are just so proud of ourselves.

We feel like we've just accomplished a marathon. We feel like we trained, we toiled, we ran, we were nearly defeated, and then we did it. We finally did it. And we worked so unbelievably hard for it. Without any big financial hand outs. Nobody bought this house for us. Nobody put in the work to earn us that money but us. Nobody endured the hardships and trials and persevered except us, and the universe, God, looking out for us and helping us onward. 

We were supported by family, held up and encouraged, and given some important tools to make it happen, and definitely couldn't have made it happen without their generosity, but we also feel an immense sense of pride and accomplishment in our own efforts. We did it. We finally did it. And we deserve to feel proud.

And now all I can do is imagine the long days of just spending time with my family. Seeing my friends, having coffee and play dates, heading out to Altona to swim in the pool. I imagine Christmas morning with the sun streaming in through the window, game nights with the kids playing down in the basement, going for long evening walks along the non-gravel street or heading down a few houses to visit with our amazing neighbours and their children. Sure we'll have to keep working, because hard work is important and using your time to the fullest is essential, but we're going to be coming from such a place of peace and accomplishment. The fulfillment of fruits earned. Reaping what we sowed. 

It will be glorious.