Hello my friends!
I am thrilled you are here! Are you looking for easy vegan recipes? Or you like gardening and want to find out how we grow beautiful fruit and vegetables organically on a small urban lot in Zone 7-8, Canada? Or maybe you like DIY projects and are searching for new ideas for the next one?
Maybe all of the above?
I am thrilled to welcome you to our blog! It is still at a “baby” stage, but I like it and am trying to nurture it and take good care of it 🙂
So, grab a cup of coffee/tea/water and have a sit if you want to learn more about us 🙂
My husband and I were both born in one of the former Soviet Republics, in a city of over 2 million people.
It may seem like we had no chance of meeting each other in a big city given we were not living in the same neighbourhood and had no common friends.
But it was a destiny 🙂
In my second year after completing high school, I was taking an Admin Assistant program.
One day, I came to the school to find out that the classes got cancelled that day. Not really sure what to do since I was not home anyway, and being poor to go shopping, I decided to visit my mom at her workplace.
I got there in no time, and my mom gave me a tour of the place. Since it was still early in the morning, there were not many people to meet there, but one guy. She had introduced us, and we chatted for a minute or two, and then I left.
Two weeks later, after bugging my mom almost daily, that guy and another lady from their office visited us at our home. He showed up with a huge bouquet of roses, and I found it a very nice gesture (well, to be honest, I really loved it) 🙂
We got married two years later. We don’t have the fancy wedding pictures to show you, as there was no real wedding party. There was no engagement even. My husband has never asked me if I wanted to marry him. He just booked a date in a civic office and informed me we were getting married in a few days.
Wait, WHAT???
Don’t get me wrong, we were not in some kind of a seventh world country (which does not even exist). Nope. As I have already mentioned – it was a DESTINY 🙂
I got pregnant right away, and two months later we found out that we had twins. We were so excited! We were jumping, and making plans, and felt so happy. But. those kids were never born. I lost them just a week after the ultrasound.
Do you know the words to describe what I felt then?
I don’t.
I thought something was wrong with me.
Then I thought we were not good enough to have kids. I thought many other thoughts, but in the end, I made myself believe that I would never have kids. I tried to tell myself I was young, and it was not the end of the world, and we could probably adopt a baby later.
Almost 3 months later we found out I was pregnant again.
It was a complicated pregnancy, and I spent almost 3 months in total in a hospital.
Our first son Vlad was born just a few days before the due date, and he was perfect! Tiny, always hungry, and just perfect 🙂
We don’t really have baby pictures of him, but here are a few of us with the big boy 🙂
He was 2 years and 5 months when we left our home country. We were in a new country. No relatives, just a few new friends. I loved the place, but I did not feel it was MY home.
And then, one day I got a phone call.
My mom passed away when she was just 47. Nobody expected it at all. It was just one day she was there, and the next day she was gone. I flew to her funeral the same day. After I got back to my husband and our son, it took me a long time to get back to “normal”. However, the feeling that I was not living in the right place just got worse. We had tried it in one country, and then moved to another, and then got back to the previous one.
After some research, and more research, and some more research, I asked my husband what he thought if we moved to Canada. Well, he did not get excited about it at all. And here was I. I told him that I would move there even if he did not want to come there with me and our son.
Crazy, right?
I guess he had agreed to submit the immigration application only hoping that we would never get approved.
At the same time, our son started asking for a brother, or a sister, or at least a dog or a cat. And he got it. The cat 🙂
And later the cat got kittens 🙂
But it only helped temporarily. Our son was still asking for a brother or a sister. The thought of getting pregnant again, and going through all the complications was not appealing to me. At. All. But deep inside me, I knew it was not good for him to be the only child.
So, he got a brother.
Aren’t they cute?
Two months after Alan was born, we learned that he needed to have heart surgery. The two months before the surgery were not easy for us. I will never ever wish to anyone, not even to the worst of my enemies (not sure if I have any, though) to go through what we have gone back then. However, he made it! He is a strong young man!
Back to the Canadian immigration process.
We got a phone call from the Canadian Embassy asking to bring our passports for visas in May 2009. We’d booked our flights for June, long before we got our passports back from the embassy. Yes, I know we ARE crazy :). But a few weeks later we were on the plane on our way to the new life in Saskatchewan. The British Airways had lost Alan’s stroller, and we never got it back. But we were so happy to arrive at our new home 🙂 Which looked like this
in summer
and in winter
We had built (literally) our first house ever there.
Nevertheless, since there was no pediatric cardiologist available there (for Alan’s check-ups), after 4.5 years living in SK, we decided to move to British Columbia, to a smaller city just about an hour drive from Vancouver.
I told ya – we are crazy 🙂
But we had to sell our beautiful house…
We bought our second house in December 2015, right before Christmas. It was our dream-come-true Christmas wish we had asked from Santa a year earlier 🙂
It is an older house. When other people were getting ready for the holidays, we were painting the walls and replacing the old carpets and laminate floors. We had no chance to decorate it for the holidays. But we were happy 🙂
We have since done a few projects in the house and will keep on sharing them with you. We love gardening, but we had a backyard full of weeds. We have built our garden from scratch, planting fruit trees, veggies, berries and flowers (of course).
I have been vegan for 4 years now. It was an overnight switch. I came across an article and a video on animal abuse and it made me sick to the stomach. I could not believe people could be that cruel to defenceless animals. The next day I woke up, and that was it. Well, I can’t say it was an easy change, but I feel it was the right decision for me! Did you want to grab some easy and delicious vegan recipes?
Are you a DIY-er? a gardener? looking for some inspiration or funny and not-so-funny life stories? want some vegan recipes and menus? Subscribe to our newsletter and get them all delivered to your inbox 🙂
My husband and I both work full-time jobs, I also take classes at the university. I decided to start a blog, mainly to document our family journey, and to share some of our experiences with you.
We are a simple family.
But life can be crazy sometimes, right? This is how the name for the blog came up.
Some more facts about our family:
We chose the name Vlad (short from Vladislav – meaning Glorious) for our older son, long before we even got married. We just decided, that if one day we get married and have a son, he will be Vlad.
Alan was supposed to be Ron when we learned we were pregnant with the second boy. When he was born, Vlad looked at him and said the baby did not look like Ron.
Do you know how Rons look like? 🙂
So he was just a ‘baby’ for almost a month after he was born, until one day I was listening to Alan’s Parson Project Old and Wise song which I looooove. That was when Alan was “born” again 🙂
English is not our first language. Not even the second one. So, if you see any typos or grammatical errors, you will know why. If it bothers you, please let us know and we will fix it.
Constructive criticism is welcome!
Please don’t be rude, unless you perfectly speak/read/write at least 5 languages 😉 Why 5? I don’t know, maybe because my husband speaks 4, and I just like the number 🙂
Though we did not have a wedding party (and no wedding dress) when we got married, I decided to wear a real wedding dress at our 20th wedding anniversary to surprise my husband. That was a great party, and my very good friend helped me to organize it. I will later share a post about it too as it was a fun anniversary.
Thank you for stopping by! Please share your comments and let me know if there is anything specific you want to see here.
Hugs,
Nat
