Mamaranting’s Weblog

Well, I miss the EPL for sure.  I miss the ease of using the website, I miss that you can check out music, I miss the ‘bestsellers’ wall, which meant that even though you might be number 1502 on the waiting list for a book, you just might get lucky and find it there!

The library here has a website, but no spot to list titles of books that I want to read, I can renew or place holds on books on it too-just like EPL, it’s not the most user-friendly system for sure.

You wanna know what I really love though?  The librarians are the SAME ladies that worked there when I was a kid!  They recognized me and everything!  One of the approached me and Katie to tell me about the pre-school reading group and to see if she would be interested.  Another one called me the other day to tell me about the ‘Paws to Read’ program wondering if my oldest would like it.  Today Alex went into the library and read to a dog!  It was so much fun, and of course the bad mommy forgot the camera!  If they hear us talking about a book they offer to help find it, and if they can’t find it right away they will put it aside for us when they do.

Makes me realize that my love of reading might not have just been my parents encouragement, that these great librarians may have played a part in it too!

I wonder if they still have the summer reading contests?  I used to love those!

So, for all my friends in Alberta, in NS they have snow days.  Days where if the weather is too nasty, they call off school.  As a SAHM, it’s a good day.  Usually all extra-curricular activities are called off as well, so it’s nice and relaxing for us.  Next year when I’m a student myself, it won’t be so nice.  As a rule, the University doesn’t call off classes unless it’s really, really bad, and even then will just call off one segment of the day at a time (AM classes could be cancelled, but not PM if things clear up.)  I’m sure there will be more than a few days when the kids are coming along with me-which I’m sure they will love!

We had a nice big breakfast, played in the snow for a while, played Wii-I love the golf game that came with it!-and are heading out for supper.  The weather has cleared up now, there’s just a wind warning and we won’t be going to far.

Yesterday we went on a tour of the newest boat added to the Marine Atlantic’s fleet for their trips between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.  The new ship is being leased from a European company, it was last used to transport people between Helsinki and Estonia.  Here’s a link to some more details on it:

http://www.marine-atlantic.ca/en/NewVessel/newvessel.shtml

The kids were so excited, they are fascinated with the boats that come in and out of the harbor, and during the summer months when the cruise ships come in, it’s always a big deal to see one.  We are lucky enough to be able to see a large part of the harbor, and the harbor mouth from our front door.

My mother’s best friend works on the boats, so when they announced an open house, she made sure that we were on the list to tour it.  It’s a beautiful boat, but not really functional for what Marine Atlantic needs it for, IMO.  During the European trips, if the crossing is over 10 hours long, you are required to buy a cabin.  Not so here, so there is one main public bathroom, with 4 stalls.  Yep, just 4.  They are hoping to have almost 900 people per crossing, and you are not required to buy a cabin-the cabins have private bathrooms in them.  I’ll give you a minute to digest that info.  Also, there are long chairs everywhere.  Long, couch-style chairs.  The stewards are going to have a bitch of a time keeping people from sleeping on the chairs.  Reminder to myself-if I ever take the Vision to Nfld, I’m buying a cabin!

Here are some pictures from the sightseeing trip!

The first picture is the view from one of the restaurants, the red and white boat you see is a coast-guard boat, I’m pretty sure it’s one of the icebreakers.

The second one is a picture from one of the restaurants on the ship.  There will be a buffett-style restaurant, a snack place for fast food, and a sit-down restaurant that will only operate on the evening crossings.

Then we are 7 stories up from the water line.  The ship is 10 stories tall, 3 of those stories are for cars and trucks.

The next picture is of the dance floor and the lounge area.  See the long chairs?  They are hoping to have entertainment on board during the busy summer months.

Lastly is a head of garlic that I saw on the bridge.  One of the officers there told me that the Greek crew who once worked on the ship put it there, and it hasn’t left the bridge.  It’s supposed to be good luck, and he told me that there are actually heads of garlic all over the ship!

Well, the move went successfully-obviously!-but I haven’t had a chance to blog about it yet.  Well, I’m going to be a horrible blogger and cheat-I’m going to cut and paste my notes from Facebook to here!

My Move!

Well, here’s the lowdown on the cross-country move. We have been preparing and building up to this for months, and now it’s so close! The mover is supposed to drop by today and just check everything out-we live in a townhouse complex, so he might need a second truck as the big moving truck might be too big to fit in here.

The actual move might be happening as early as this Saturday!

That may actually be a blessing in disguise, that way I don’t have to clean around furniture and boxes, nor do I have to spend a 10 hour day cleaning! But, I’ll worry about that after the place is empty!

Then we will hang around in Edmonton while Shawn finishes his last week of work for a while-then it’s on the road! We’ll be heading east from Edmonton to either Winnipeg or Regina then down to the states. We’ll be heading back north in the Niagra region for a visit with some friends, family, a trip to the CN tower, Marineland and the hockey hall of fame! Then we’ll head north to Quebec City-spend a bit of time there, then it’s to NB! We’ll probably be driving straight through NB and NS to Cape Breton, where I will collapse and swear on my life that I will never attempt to do such a crazy trip with 2 small kids ever again! LOL!

I plan on updating whenever I can, and I’ll be online for the next week at least!

Well, the stuff is all loaded up and we are heading to Jenny’s for a couple of days before we take off. The loading went well, bunch of Newfies loaded it all up-there was something comforting about that aspect of it all! It made for a fun afternoon for sure. LOL!

Well, with the help of dad who has made the trip a few times, we sat down today with the maps and planned out the route. We’ve decided not to go through the US at all, so northern Ont here we come!

We’re heading out from Calgary early tomorrow, planning on making it to Regina then stopping for the night. Couple of days to take us through northern Ont, take the ferry from Manitoulin Island then down to the Toronto area for a couple of days. Visit some friends and family there, hit Marineland, the CN tower and the Hockey Hall of Fame! Maybe even get some shopping in if we have time, but I’m not too worried about that, we don’t have room for much!

After we’re done in Toronto, we’ll be heading to Quebec City for at least a day, but that depends on how we feel and how eager we are to just get to NS! We’ll try to make Quebec City-Cape Breton in a day, but that’s a long drive so we may stop in Moncton/Fredricton area for a night. It all depends on when our stuff will get there too, if it takes a while we might as well stay on the road and enjoy the trip.

I was a bit sad to leave Edmonton, really sad to leave Jenny especially, but we’ll be seeing her in a month or so anyways! I was sad to leave my friends too. Edmonton was a great place, lots of opportunities and lots of things to do. I’m a product of my environment though, just can’t live anywheres….too cold in the winter, too hot in the summer, that sort of thing! Also Edmonton is growing fast, and suffering the growing pains of becoming a big city. Now that we have kids we want to slow down a bit, look for a place that is close to a city, but still far enough away that we have our space. Financially that would take us a lot longer to achieve in Edmonton than in the Halifax area. If it doesn’t work out there for us, we’ll just move on and try someplace else! I don’t mind the adventure, and I’m always eager to try new places and things. Things are picking up in Halifax though, and now that Shawn is in the union, that will help too.

I’m getting a lot of comments and strange looks from people, I think some are pinning us into the category of ‘use and abuse Alberta’s opportunities, then leave when we’ve had our fill’ That pisses me off. For one thing, so what if we did-the province would have a hard time running if it weren`t for non-Albertan workers. For another thing, we gave it a chance. We were here for ten years! We had our children here, got them involved in the local amenities available, took part in the festivals, travelled around. We didn`t sit around and bitch and moan about how much we missed home-as I have heard so many people do!

We gave it a chance and it wasn`t for us-is that so bad-OK, it would be a lot more effective if I could put a question mark at the end of that sentence, but I`m on Dad`s laptop, and I can`t! All I get is É when I try!!! LOL!!!

Anyway, I`m sad I`m leaving but excited about what is ahead of us.

Well, we’ve been here for a week now actually. We are without a computer, just got telephone service yesterday, and won’t have TV service for another week. Welcome to Cape Breton! Also we’ve been busy setting up the house and enjoying the rest of the summer!

We’re here!!!
So, our trip. It was long. Painfully long-if I had of realized I probably wouldn’t have driven it. Common question in our car for the week? ‘Are we STILL in Ontario?’ ‘Yes, honey we’re STILL in Ontario’. I swear it was like a Twilight Zone episode or something-that province just keeps going on and on!!!!!

All in all it took us ten days. That’s with 2.5 days in Toronto, and a day lost in Sudbury due to car repairs. Just outside of Sudbury we started to hear a loud whining noise out of the front end of the car-one of the wheel bearings was shot. Luckily the dealership got us out of there by lunchtime, and it was covered by warranty to boot! At the same time that the car was in the shop, Katie was at the Dr’s-she got a fly bite on her lower eyelid that had become infected. Some antibiotic cream cleared that right up!

We kept the days short for the kids-Shawn and I aren’t too keen on driving anyway so short days were better. The worst was Northern Ontario. It’s a beautiful part of Canada, but man it is horrible to drive! Single lanes, curves and turns, speed limit of 90! Shawn got a speeding ticket too! It was only a matter of time, both him and I were cruising through the area pretty quickly!

We spent a day in Niagra Falls and then a day in Toronto as well. We saw the falls and went to Marineland, which was really fun! Then we headed to Janice and Bobby’s where we had a lot of fun. Got some laundry done, ate some good home-cooked meals, and had a wonderful time with them-thanks again guys!

We skipped visiting Quebec City-our furniture was here, and we were pretty sick of living out of suitcases-we just wanted to get home.

The kids were wonderful, I was worried about how they would deal with the driving, but they were on their best behaviour! Not much fighting, hardly any whining, it was wonderful!

Man you really get an appreciation for the size and beauty of this country when you drive across it! It was something I’ll never forget, but also something that I’m not sure I’ll ever want to do again!

Settling In

So, we’re here, and life is getting back to normal.

Alex has started school, her teacher is a former teacher of Shawn’s and a friend of my moms so I was happy about that! Alex is doing well, she is a little bit behind because of the change out of the French Immersion program (I expected that). However, Miss Fleming says that she is catching up quickly and is great when it comes to paying attention and asking for help! The teacher and I have no worries academically, and her teacher says she is getting along well socially too. The social part was what I was worried about-it’s hard being a new kid, but she is excited to go to school and comes home talking about her classmates. She also has made friends in the neighborhood too.

Katie is still on the list for pre-school. She misses Alex something fierce when Alex is at school. Katie loves being here though, first thing in the AM they both want to go outside, and Katie’s socks are black because she loves going around with no shoes!!!

There’s been a couple of surprises since we moved back. Good and bad ones, I won’t get into the bad ones. I underestimated the weirdness of being a stranger in a familiar place-it’s a surreal feeling! I know the area like the back of my hand, but I don’t know the people anymore at all!

The lack of good shopping has bothered me more than I thought too-I guess I am a shopaholic!!! LOL!!

It’s been hard trying to track down programs for the kids too-it’s not advertised very well. I have got them in gymnastics, which was the most important for the kids, they really wanted to stick with that. We are thinking of Brownies for Alex and maybe figure skating for the both of them too. It’s hard without a computer….so much of everyday life depends on it for me!!!

There are moments of clarity when our decision to move just feels so right though. Last night at a tiny little bar listening to a bluegrass band play while I laughed and talked with Shawn and my friends felt great-the bar was small, had a great mellow crowd, the beer was cheap, it was great!!!!! Last week after school one day we picked Alex up, took her home to drop off her books, then went for a walk. We walked along the cliffs, explored WW2 barracks that were used to defend the harbor, then went down to the beach. There was a firepit there with some wood still not burned around it, so Shawn made a fire and we sat by the fire and watched the kids make sandcastles and play in the water. The beach was clean, empty and quiet-we had it to ourselves most of the afternoon-it’s also a ten minute walk from our house! We look out our front door and watch the Nfld ferry leave the harbor, we watch huge cruise ships coming in and leaving. We couldn’t do that in Edmonton.

Anyway, gotta go out to my Aunt’s house for a combo birthday dinner for me and my mom!

One of the great things about having a yard is that I can have a garden!  This fall I planted about 50 spring bulbs, and yesterday I noticed that one has sprouted.  I think that it is a crocus, not sure as by the end of the planting I just started to throw things in the ground!  It has been warm here, I wonder if it’s just because of that or did I not plant them deep enough?  I hope that a few survive the winter, I’m excited to see how they look!  Here’s a pic of my poor sprout.  It’s freezing rain out there now, so I doubt it will survive much longer:

I’m back by popular demand!  Ok, it was Jane, but she demanded quite sternly!  Made me scared!  OK, she was perfectly nice about the whole thing-I’d been thinking of coming back lately.

Well, the move is done.  We are here, and it is more of a shock to my system than I had originally thought!  Yep, it was my idea.  Yep, I grew up here.  Yep, I’m the only one having trouble with it!  Damned Murphy’s Laws.

Anyway, just wanted to pop in and say I’m here, I’ll be back to posting regularily when the holidays are over.  I’ll be back when I can!

Well, we are at t-14 days for the move now.  Holy crap, where’d the time go?  I won’t be on here much for the next little while-I am hoping to get a laptop for the trip cross-Canada so I can update that way, but we’ll see.

Between the warm weather, packing, cleaning, trying to get the kids out to local attractions one last time I won’t have too much time to blog.

I will still be on Facebook and checking emails though, so  you know how to get a hold of me!

Well, we had our last moving sale and sold the car all on the same weekend!  I’m glad that we got the car sold, and got what we wanted for it too!  It will be hard going back to being a one-car family again, but I’m within walking distance to the grocery store, and as long as I have things planned in advance I can just drive hubby to work and have the car!  The only thing with that is hubby gets up really early to go to work-too early for my liking!  But, you gotta do what you gotta do!

The moving sale didn’t quite make as much as last time, but I was OK with that-I just wanted it all gone!  I priced everything really cheap and basically took whatever people wanted to offer, so it was much easier.

I had a guy laugh at me and call me an ‘old hippie’ because of my musical tastes!  LOL!!!  I thought that was funny!

Another thing that was funny/shocking happened today after the sale was all done.  Hubby and I loaded the last of the junk to take to the local donation centre, and when we returned the rest of the yard was empty!  My neighbors had come by and taken all the rest of the stuff.  I wouldn’t have cared except that some of the leftover stuff was also for sale online, and some of the stuff had been paid for already!  So, I had to go knocking on doors to track down my stuff.  Luckily another neighbor was out in their drive with their own sale, so they told me who they saw around.  All I cared about was getting the stuff back that had been paid for by/promised to others.  What really pissed me off was that one family tried to blame it all on their little girl, who is 7!  If Alex came home with a crapload of free stuff, including a high chair-I’d be wanting to find out where it came from, and I’d make her return it until I got the full story!  Hubby thinks that they told her to take the stuff and just wanted someone to blame for it.  Poor kid, growing up in that house!

I did get a really nice tripod and tripod head from my neighbor’s moving sale-for $25 bucks!

I am not a patient person.  Patient with my kids, absolutely.  Patient with my friends and family, for sure!  Patient with customers, yes!

Patient with waiting for a certain date?  No way.  Patient when waiting to hear back from the movers with a specific moving day?  Nope.  Patient when waiting to have another garage sale (I’m a sucker for punishment, yes I am!) Nope!  It’s getting so close yet so far!  I just want to blink my eyes and have it happen!

Times are so tight, money is so tight, I’m just nervous that it won’t all fit together properly!!!

Busy day planned for today, but since I have no desire to actually get up and do anything, here I am.  The kids are going to a BBQ today, and I’ve got a 101 things to do while they are gone with my MIL.

One of the things I need to do is get a haircut, with a new stylist which I am not very please about.  Once I find a good stylist-and it takes me a while!-I like to stick with them.  I was really hoping to see Chrissy once more before I moved, maybe I’ll go for a quick trim right before we go.  I hope that I don’t have a hard time finding someone when we move, this haircut is kind of high-maintenance cutting wise.

I think that I’ll make Sunday our garage-sale prep day.  After, we can borrow a page from Jane’s book and go out in the evening to a local park for a BBQ and some s’mores!  Sounds good to me!