I’ve been looking through a mass amount of photos recently and have found that my heart is slowly breaking at the thought of moving back to Denver and missing so much. Ugh. My family… my mom. And my nieces and nephews; they’ll grow so much! Help me deal with my separation anxieties and allow me to share some memories….
Do you remember this basketball game? Conor was quite the cheerleader and Dyl’s pretty much grown an additional foot since.
Cora – always my girl! And Finn. I love it when that little boy laughs.
Can’t we play horsie one more time?
Baking with the Babes
And my family… I’ll have to upload some videos sometime soon because pictures and words just cannot fully explain the McNeills. We’re way too deep.
With Denver only a month away, I can’t help but feel somewhat torn. It’s going to be just as hard as last time no matter how excited I am to go back to Denver. And you know, I think Christmas will be just as hard too.
With only 24 days left until the big interview in Montreal, life is becoming a bit of a nail biter. Today I had my immigration medical to which I was instructed to bring $260 cash. I felt concerned about how legite this was going to be, however considering the location (Signal Hill, Calgary) and the posh-ness of the office, I think it was okay. Anyways, I don’t have any choice really since this guy is the only Doc in Alberta that is “qualified” to do this exam, which by the way reminded me a lot of my last physical. Oh except for the part when I was told I had to get the HPV vaccination or else my petition would surely be denied. And may I say that after forking out $189 for that first of 3 vaccinations, I’m all for girls getting it for free in school. It sure hurts like a (fill in the blank). Following that I went and had some blood drawn to be tested for HIV and syphilis. After the kind lady at the lab wrote “TIT” in a red marker on my requisition form I felt a little like I shouldn’t be sitting in the waiting room near any living, breathing body because I was quite possibly the whore of all the earth. No worries people, these are standard issues tests which I’m sure will be returned to me negative as I am a blood donor amongst other reasons. Following the blood test, it was time for a good ol’ chest x-ray. If you’ve ever had one and your female, I’m sure you can relate to my awkwardness and inability to place my finger on whether I felt like the paper bag princess or some sort of armoured super hero in that crazy blue paper wrap top they put me in. I love the question, “is there any possibility you might be pregnant?”
Let’s do a quick visual re-cap of why I’m doing this….
Got it! I’m doing all of this in the name of love and for the sake of being able to touch and hold all of my belongings again! Oh and because I really like Denver, Co.
I’m a big Martha Stewart fan. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t care one lick that she went to prison. Women aren’t meant to do business anyways. 
Because I’m such a fanatic, anything Martha Stewartish is always on my wish list. I own the Homemaking Handbook (which isn’t quite the size of a handbook but is very handy), Martha Stewart Cookies (with photos for every cookies and square) and Natalia gave me some Martha books right before I slipped out of the USA. I also have a subscription to Martha Stewart Living. And now I am the proud owner of Martha Stewart’s Cooking School, which Conor picked up for me on Saturday and my mother and I poured over this weekend. I’m so excited to try out new technics and totally take cooking to a completely new level as I aspire to become Martha herself. And when I say become Martha herself I mean the collection of homes, gadgets and of course, the know-how.
Because of my second job at Gap, I received a pretty great discount at Old Navy this week. Conor and I trooped all the way to Market Mall to peruse the shelves of our old stomping grounds in hopes that they would be better staffed than the Old Navy in Chinook mall; add to that an H&M, Apple Store and American Apparel and Market Mall becomes a pretty appealing visit.
It became quickly apparent that we needed a mesh shopping bag to contain all of the goodies we were discovering. When I went to try on a couple of shirts, an employee looked at Conor with his half-full mesh bag and fist full of women’s t-shirts and asked if I wanted to try all of those on. Imagine saucer-sized eyes. From then on, Conor made a point to tell every employee that our load was not all for us and that some of it was indeed gifts. Because really, truly we’re not that huge of shoppers and especially as a couple. We left massively satisfied with two big paper bags and the happiness of our good deals. Sigh.
Need I say more?
On another note, I love doing this Catalogue Katie thing. It is so fun and I feel like it’s really helped encourage me to class it up and have a little bit more style. I’m glad to have these photos documenting this time in my life and I think one day my children and grandchildren will be grateful for them. I think I will too! I already love knowing that my youth and beauty and been captured and will remain timeless if only in a bunch of photos.
