Howdie from Alexandria, Ontario!
Believe it or not, moving South is going to mean moving backward for us in Internet technology!! We're going from wonderful high speed to dial up. Ugh!! Still, we've got access to the Internet...and that is grand!
So...finally, we received news that funds were transferred...at least mostly! Can you believe this? Our original closing date was February 20. At the end of the banking day of MARCH 16, our lawyers received the funds from our buyer's bank & other lawyer. To top that off, the buyer is short by a few $ and will have to cough that up today. I could say more...but it might not be polite enough for public viewing!!!!
After a whirlwind of last minute packing, a good-bye dinner at The Navigator, not enough time to say good-bye to all of our friends, getting 22 pieces of luggage (ie everything from hockey bags to decent sized moving boxes) and one large dog cage checked in for our flight on Sunday, I was about to go get the kids. My thinking was...Go get the kids from our friends' place, bring them back to house and tour through it to say good-bye, load children and dog into truck...and off we go to the airport. Well, as you may have gathered from previouse entries...my life never runs smoothly!!! Just as I was loading the carry-on luggage (including our VCR in my knapsack!!!) into the truck...Maas decided to spice things up by running away. I was FURIOUS!!!! I was pretty much tempted to leave him so that someone could turn him into a few pair of mits!!!!! (Sorry to those of you who find that cruel...but it just lets you know how ()(&#@**(& angry I was!!) I had no time to try and find him, which would have been fruitless anyway. Maas has major attitude when on the loose. As my friend Vivian will attest, he laughs at you when you make any attempt to catch him. Damn Dog!
I drove madly down to our friends' place, got the kids, drove back to our neck of the woods (hah...with no trees) and stopped at my neighbour's. I have to let you know that Lindsay and her roomie, Michelle, are the wonderful people who spent their Sunday morning helping me get the dog cage and 18 of those pieces of luggage checked in!!! (Brent had loaded everything into the truck before leaving for work at 6:30 that morning.) Lorraine, who also took care of the kids so that said luggage could get to airport, was going down on the same flight and took responsibility for the other 4 pieces.
So, as I was saying, I stopped at Lindsay's before going back to our house for our good-bye tour. She opened her door. I said, completely deflated, "Maas ran away." She understood my manic panic as she has helped "save Maas" before. Thankfully, Lindsay has two four-legged canine kids of her own. She got Tig to get into her car and started the search. Maas may not come to a human when bounding freely, empting fate as he runs across roads, but another member of his species will get him in a flash! Eventually, with no minutes to spare, our inconsiderate beast jumped into the back of Lindsay's car to hook up with his pal.
We were off. The kids and I never had a chance to go back in the house for our good-bye. Sad, really. This was Kaisa's only home and the only one that Alexander remembers. Since I was a teenager, it was the longest homestead (??) I had had, too.
No more mishaps after that. Other than the fact that I was suffering from complete lack of sleep and the kids had no use for napping on the plane, that is until the last 20 minutes when Kaisa drifted off, the flight went smoothly. We arrived at the airport to be greeted by our wonderful friends, Roxanne, Mark, and their son, Jackson, my Dad (aka GRANDPA!), my friend, Eleanor, and her two little people. El's appearance was a welcomed surprise! Rox and Mark brought both their vehicles and, like Lindsay, Michelle, and Lorraine, deserve a huge amount of credit for keeping the actual transition from North to South as sane as possible. The only challenge after we got everything loaded into the three vehicles was fog. Roxanne, my kids, and I went together in her van. It had taken us two hours to get ourselves sorted out - between getting luggage off that "track", getting it loaded into the vehicles, a stop at Tim Horton's for nourishment in the car, and a pee break! By the time we left the airport, darkness had set in, which made the fog that much more challenging to deal with. Mark and Dad weren't bothered by it. But Roxanne and I were pretty releived to pull into my folks' driveway.
And that, I guess, is really that!!
Well, at least from my vantage point. Poor Brent got back to Iqaluit that night, after a full day of not flying but being stuck in some major snow with the Twin Otter on skis and digging it out for 5 hours. At that point, we were still supposed to be closing our deal up North on Monday. Brent went to work and got the last of the cleaning done in time to catch 3 hours of sleep before going off to fly for the day on Monday. Imagine how he felt when he learned there had been yet another delay!!!! He has found it really hard to go back every day while we wait for the new owner's things to get sorted out and to finally take possession.
So, with only one full banking day to get everything else done, Brent will be here on Monday night, we're off to the lawyer's on Tuesday morning - First Day of Spring - and should be moved into our new house later that day!
I have taken the kids to see the house. Alexander's most impresed with the size of the yard!!! The two of them are going to spend a lot of time outdoors!! Even though it was raining that day, after they did a quick tour of the place, they got Grandma to join them in exploring Alexander's "Biggest Yard I Ever Saw!" We've had a few other adventures, too. Alexander spent a day at Cooper Marsh being a "Mad Scientist" - part of a March Break program. We went into Ottawa to go swimming, visited the Museum of Nature with our friends from Iqaluit, Neida and Aiden, who were down for a medical, went for dinner with Alexander's Godmother and my cousin, Diana, and took a trip to Parliament Hill - where we went up the Peace Tower...and, perhaps more impressive to Alexander and Kaisa, saw and touched a statue of Terry Fox.
So, there you have it! As always...Life is never dull!!!
Gabrielle
PS Sorry there aren't any pictures. We'll have to get ourselves settled in our new home before I can add anymore.
