Hello! What the heck have we been up to? In mid-December, we said goodbye to Montréal and all our friends and flew with most of our possessions in a few suitcases to Calgary – “Destination Zero” of our trip!
December
J For me it started with 4 weeks off because I decided to quit my job and start a new one! Definitely took a decent amount of time to recover from all the massive changes all at once (different city, job, people, routine, weather, bed, etc)! I enjoyed having lots of family time, sleeping in, and seeing old friends.
W December was… a transition, and a whirlwind. I think I didn’t have time to catch my breath until Christmas was over, and by then I had to process so much change that it was overwhelming. Stress will express itself somehow – for me it reached a breaking point with driving everywhere all of a sudden. But we’re lucky we had the landing that we did: with family, in a place that was familiar to us. And we did do lots of fun things with people that we love!
Sheila, Gwen, and Wei-Wei went to get their nails done before Christmas and went out for dinner after! ~~Gurlz nite~~!!!
Delicious delicious hot pot while David & Hannah were still in town.
The first time since we’d been dating that Wei-Wei experienced full Linton-Hall Christmas, including the Sharma-Halls!
We didn’t have time to make a yule log for Christmas (and also there was an overabundance of food and desserts), so we made it for boxing day, including meringue mushrooms! Freddie & Flora had fun decorating.
We rang in 2023 at Cayla’s in Canmore.
Her and her roommates threw a rad party including an elaborate team-based tournament of games. It was awesome, and Wei-Wei & Brodie (aka Team Brei-Brei) won.
January
J January was pretty different! Haha! I started a new job, and it was the beginning of a new year, and the end of holidays, friends leaving, etc. Honestly I struggled a little bit. I really felt the loss of my Montreal life (friends, routine, having my own place, dance community, etc), and I didn’t really have a great replacement for those things in Calgary. Eventually I made an effort to reach out to old friends, and organize dance sessions, so that improved things – but January brought me back down to earth when it comes to my expectations of what travelling is going to feel like!!
W I’m glad I eventually got accustomed to driving around independently. I also started taking ski lessons at Winsport to prepare for our two weeks in Rossland! I think we were both feeling lonely in January as things calmed down and we settled back into the monotony of daily life, but with the undertone of uncertainty of not being where we were used to being. We played Terraria online with friends and tried to stay in touch as best we could, but losing our support system was hard.
We celebrated Lunar New Year in January – Wei-Wei cooked for 3 days!
We made red-braised pork belly, long-life noodles, egg dumpling soup, cucumber salad, and rice balls with crushed peanuts and brown sugar syrup for dessert.
We spent two weeks staying with Gwen & Jeff & Fred & Flora at the end of January.
We started with a fun weekend visiting the Science Centre and making Star Wars themed cookies!
February
J Our two weeks staying at Gwen & Jeff’s was simultaneously refreshing, tiring and lovely. We celebrated two birthdays: one for Flora, and one for Wei-Wei. I started Mandarin lessons and forced myself to figure out a reliable exercise routine that I can do at home. I felt that we really bonded with the kids and that was super special to me. It’s not often you get a chance to do that!
W We always say this, but getting to spend time with G&J&F&F is really special. Especially staying with them for 2 weeks, it’s a special kind of a privilege to be able to get a “preview” of parenting, with all of its ups and downs. I feel really lucky to be part of their lives in this way!
I feel I’ve been a bit of a downer throughout this post –– don’t get me wrong, I have spent some lovely time with family that I really cherish, but the time period described in this post has been a big adjustment, with lots and lots of lows. I feel compelled to be honest even if it’s not nice, just because it could be so easy to only talk about highlights. The only thing that has been routine has been my struggle with finding routine.
On February 10, we drove 7 hours to Magna Bay!
We split the drive –– participating in road trips was pretty much the whole reason WW learned to drive, so she was pretty pleased!
We also posted some more photos here.
