For Everyone Only: Floods, fights, friends & canola fields.

Oh hey there!

One of the most humbling/amazing things about marriage that i’m discovering is our ability to forgive each other and move on. Saturday was just not the best day. It just seemed that we both were having bad days individually and together. The day kept ebbing and flowing - small argument, tense hours, start talking again, small argument, ignoring each other, slowly start talking again... repeat, repeat. It was so frustrating! The day finally ended in us watching some Parks and Rec - which was good to just laugh side by side, if not totally together, and forget the day. I ended up feeling completely exhausted by 9:30 and I was eager for tomorrow so I went to bed and Mark had his own time. The next morning I woke up super early, walked and got coffee and enjoyed the sunshine and early morning neighbourhood sounds of birds chirping and squirrels jumping from fence posts to branches. Once I got home I realized all the built up tenseness from the day before was gone. We hugged in the bedroom and said things like ‘What was up with yesterday?’ ‘Lets not do that again.’ And proceeded to have a much better day of treating each other with patience, analyzing the day before only slightly, singing in the car and lake swimming. It wasn’t a perfect day, it seems like every day we are apologizing to each other for our tone or hurtful words. I especially need to work on my tone and what I want to communicate to Mark - the other day Mark said (and I quote) ‘Your words can either be the tops to my towers, or can corrode my foundations’ ... I don’t know if he was quoting something or if he came up with that on his own, but it was a good visual for me and kind of scary. It’s crazy how much power we have to speak into this one person’s life - and we can speak truth and love or ... corrode their foundations with hurt and lies. There is a lifetime of impact there. It’s.. such a scary honor. And on a daily basis, I just can’t get over how unreal it feels to have someone who sees me in my ugliest, meanest, most frustrated days and who moves past it wordlessly with me. Whenever Mark and I have a particularly good conversation where we feel like we were dealing with root issues we kind of get giddy and say things like ‘We’re getting better at this, huh?!’ or ‘We have so much to learn! Haha!’ We can’t help but feel so excited with progress and it’s amazing because you just know you have so much time to learn it all, together.

Our friends Andrew and Tessa came to visit last week. It was such a great visit. Almost too good. When they left I felt their absence acutely. How eeeassy it was to be around them. How much we laughed. Last friday night Mark was working and I knew Amy and Aaron were out of town and I almost just had to laugh (bitterly) to myself cause I literally had no one else to call. I had a pretty decent night at home, in fact it was my first night alone in some time. But it made me just miss people in B.C so much. Anyhoo. That’s a bit of a sob story... The truth is I can feel myself starting to like Calgary more and more. It is seriously beautiful here right now. And there is a gritty Albertan strength that I admire and respect, especially since the flood and all the loss people have experienced. They all just love this place so much, you almost can’t help but start to love it too. And now that I have a job (I got a job!!) I will probably start to meet more people and have tons of work friends, just like Emilie ;)

Here are some pictures from lately... which should probably be split into three different posts.. but who has time for that, right? Here they are in one go.

The day the flood got really bad Mark and I both had off work and so we went walking around the neighbourhood. At this point it was still raining like a banshee.

We were a little flabbergasted and completely soaked to the bone.

So, a couple days ago, we went to some of the areas by the Elbow River to see how bad things were. Remember Mark's favourite bridge pictured below? (a month or so ago)

This is it's current condition. :( So sad! It was such a great bridge.

Some of the oldest neighbourhoods in Calgary were affected the worst. So, so sad.

Most of the houses we could see completely through because they were gutting the entire bottom floors, hence all the wood in their front yards.

Trying to dry some rugs out.

Mark and I were both so shocked walking through these neighbourhoods just because there is no damage in our own neighbourhood and so were a little bit removed from the whole situation... also we have no TV so we weren't watching all the News reports. This was a reality check. And then thinking about those in High River who still aren't back in their homes... Unbelievable what water can destroy.

Tessa and Andrew arrived in the midst of the flood.