The sad goodbye

So as some of you know, moving to Africa for us has meant we need to give away our dog. He is a 3 1/2 year old wonderful chocolate lab names Sanka. We could physically take him with us, but his quality of life would plummet. The heat, the bugs, the disease, not to mention no place to go for runs or swims, and people who would hate him and try to poison him (im not even joking). So we had to make the hard choice to love him enough to give him a good here where he would be happy. I am getting tears in my eyes all over again even typing this.

Well our good friends Clark and Jenn and their son Carter are taking Sanka. I am reassured that he will be well loved, maybe even spoiled, and still have a great life. But letting go of him was sooo hard. We told Bennett to say bye to sanka, that he was leaving to go live with someone else, and Bennett gave him huge hugs and love while Paul and I watched and both cried. Then sunday night we brought him to C & J's house and left him. I cried for a long time. We love our dog. WHy is letting go so hard? If we clearly didnt know that this was what we were supposed to do in life we would never put ourselves through the torture.

We also had to leave Bennett and Arielle behind with the grandparents for a few weeks while we are in training which is killing me too. We have never been away from bennett more than one night. I know they will be having lots of fun, i just hate not being there with them. This too shall pass.

SO I guess I am going through a natural process of grieving. I know it will continue to happen, especially as we leave our family when we fly to Niger. *sigh* I know grief is natural and God is with me through it all. But its still awful and we appreciate your prayers.

Giving the love

The BIG Thank Yous

So we are almost out of our house. I say almost because we still have a few little piles of scattered junk lying around to get rid of, and our truck to pack for Quebec. But our storage is all moved out and the shipping container is all packed and ready for pickup Monday am. There is some hard stuff coming later today...but i'll save that for a post a few days from now.

So i wanted to say thank you to some people who helped us tremendously over the past little while with the gigantic work load of logistics and moving far away. Please indulge me to list a few of you :)

Thank you first of all for all of those who love and have prayed for us during this very stressful time.

Thank you to my neighbors Gina and Janet, for your oft offered childcare so I could pack, for towels so i could pack mine,for our organizing the scrapbook memory sheets which are precious, and for having a little champagne send-off.

To Kirk for helping us with all the physical labour and finally emptying our garage ;)

To Dad, Chad and Michelle - for giving up your vacation time and taking time off work to come pack like crazy. Chad you are shrink wrap king and michelle - i dont know how i would have done it without you.

To Bryan and Lisa for staying that extra while back up here to be part of our days, build things with paul and helping us pack and throwing the family get together for us. And for storing some of our stuff!

The container has begun to be packed!!


To Danielle - for taking our couches to love and for helping pack and making us supper.

To Kristi -for making the diaper run to Costco for me even though you are moving too and have no kids. Im sure the stares you got were pretty funny! In case anyone was wondering, 13 cases of diapers is over $600!! Yikes.



To all our family who came for our commissioning. It was so special you were there.

To Captain Mike for stopping by and giving us free Fire Department t-shirts :)

Its hard to believe that we leave for out East tomorrow. Wow. We will update along the way as we can!!

High in the sky

So this past weekend we had the other half of our Christmas "adventure gifts". Paul took me gliding. Yup, those planes with no engines..and I got to fly one! Of course there was an instructor in the back seat, but i still flew :)

We arrived at noon to find ourselves the only students there. This meant great 1 on 1 time with the instructors and veterans. We walked around the glider and learned about it and theory of glider flight, then got in the plane! I was surprised at how small the cockpit was. The hatch is just over the top of my head and there isnt much room anywhere. I settled in and we hooked up behind the tow plane. He pulled us along the runway until we took off, then he towed us up to 5000 feet about ground (8000 feet above sea level). Then i pulled the big yellow knob and released the tow cable and we were off!!



The cockpit is smaller than it looks. the glass almost touched my head






It was amazing. I wasnt nervous at all, which was great, but i was a bit queasy. I am on boats and rollercoasters too and nothing i can do about it sadly, just cursed with a sensitive inner ear balance. Anyhow, we were up about 25 minutes. We would glide around looking for areas of lift (upward air currents) to get more elevation and then circle around and over the fields. It was beautiful to see it all from above.

I took the controls and he guided me through banks and turns and levelling off. Its cool how senstive the controls are and it doesnt take much force. Then we came down and Paul went up for a flight. He loved it and it all came back to him since he did years of gliding when he was a teenager. He got to fly for most of the flight.

I wasnt sure if I wanted to go up again since my stomach was so queasy the first time, but i figured i only get the chance to experience this once, so who cares about little motion sickness! Suck it up Princess! SO i got back into my iron horse and we took off again. This time i felt better overall. We stayed up quite a while and found a really good lift current over a dark farmers field (dark=better chance of lift because of radiant heat). We tucked into the lift and started a long series of tight spirals to keep us going up. We went up almost 1500 feet more in elevation just from this lift..all with no engine! Then the tight spirals got the best of me with all that moving around. Thankfully I had brought a baggie...you get the drift of what i mean. :P

As soon as we left the spirals I felt totally fine again and we flew a little bit more before we landed. Paul had a blast and loved every minute of it.

What an amazing experience!!






(11 days until we leave now..packing in full force....20 foot shipping container is on my driveway....Its coming too soon! AAHHHH)