Wherefore art thou, Furniture?

Well hello there! An update from the land of (now melted) snow and ice at last!

We moved into our house on February 2nd - hurrah! It's flipping enormous, they don't seem to do small houses in Canada. Our whare in New Zealand was 100 square meters all up, this place is over twice that size. Lucky we've always had way more furniture than house, huh ;) 

It also has such fantabulous features as this little balcony thingee overlooking the lounge, purpose built for me to recreate 'Don't cry for me Argentina'. Disturbingly this is what I've always wanted ;) The kids are thrilled with the stairs, as Jarvis has had a thing for a few years now about really wanting a house with stairs. Long before the whole 'skip the country and move to Canad

a' business came up, Jarvis told me we really needed to get rid of our old house and get one with stairs.

One of my favourite things (besides the evita balcony) is the sewing room/office. There's actually a room we can leave set up permanently for sewing. It's not a guest bedroom, it's actually a spare room.  The desk was a good score - it was in pieces in the garage, and my fabulous husband reassembled it for me to use as a sewing desk :) Now I just need my sewing stuff to arrive!

Really we just want all of our stuff to arrive. It sucks being at the mercy of the sea! Initially it should have been here February 20th...then March first, then March sixth. It *should* get to Vancouver today, which means by next week the airbed can be deflated, and the house won't echo like a cave any more ;)  Don't get me wrong, I'm so happy to be camping in our own house than renting someone else's, but I've actually been dreaming about sleeping in our bed, then waking up to realise that we're still on a borrowed air mattress.

And having over a month in the house without the furniture means I've had a whole lot of time to plan where I want stuff to go! Which means I can get the moving men to put things on the right floor, avoiding the need to move bookcases and stuff up and down staircases when I change my mind about where it needs to go! (find the silver lining!)

Anyway, so far so good - we have somewhere to live, the kids are loving school & preschool, and I'm figuring out all of the logistical stuff to keep us ticking along. Winning :)

View from the 18th Floor...

Not too shabby, huh. 

Since arriving here three and a bit weeks ago, we've been living in a condo on the 18th floor, smack bang in the middle of town. Awesome to have somewhere to live, as opposed to nowhere! Big congratulations to those who live in an apartment with kids & don't go entirely crazy though - these two are not designed for the indoors & it's been a struggle to keep them entertained (and contained) the past few weeks, especially while the weather outside was particularly wild & chilly. 

Thanks to one really spectacularly fabulous real estate guy, and a marvellous mortgage broker, we're moving in a week, into our own house! You have to pay a fairly epic premium to get a mortgage as someone new to Canada, but after selling our house in NZ, and considering how crazy low the interest rates are here compared with NZ, we figured we might as well put down some roots. Stay tuned for our new whare, come Tuesday next week!

'Til then, I'll hang on the deck on the 18th floor (in my coat), have a glass of wine, and admire the pretty spectacular view of Lake Okanagan. 

Don't forget your snow pants!

                                        

It's quite the challenge for a newbie to snow to get the kids out the door in the morning correctly attired for the day. On Jarvis' first day at school, I had no idea he'd need his snow pants, or that he really should show up to school wearing them as they have to play outside until the bell goes at 8.30! Soggy child? Hmm. Whoops.  Then one day last week, Olive had removed her snow pants from her bag before we left the house - half hour drive back across town, another half hour back to preschool, to make the all important Snow Pants Delivery. My somewhat shambolic organisation methods were way easier when it didn't really matter if the kids even had shoes! 

This morning he'd left his snow pants, and his mittens, in the classroom - we had to get a teacher to sneak us inside the building so he could hunt the whole lot down & get himself warm, it was about minus three outside so his trackpants weren't really going to cut it! 

It's a little weird adjusting to the way school works here, in NZ I was in the school so much that I could wander in & out whenever I fancied, all the kids knew my name, and I could just rock into the staff room and make myself a cup of tea any old time. I'm going to fill in the police form you need to volunteer in class here, that way I can infiltrate & see what's going on in there for myself ;) 

There are logistical matters with all of this clothing too - you can't wear a puffy jacket in a carseat, so the boot gets loaded up with an explosion of down and nylon, which children then get bundled into when we reach our destination. And as Olive and I are only at school for a few minutes, I think we spend longer putting on & taking off her warm stuff than we actually spend doing the drop off!

I think I need a whiteboard checklist at the front door to make sure everyone's got every single thing they need before we leave the building! And we need to get ready to leave about ten minutes before we need to go, as it takes that long to get it all together...

But, once they're all in their snowman costumes, these two crazy critters absolutely love the snow. Olive spends her whole day at preschool doing roly poleys down snowy hills, they think it's absolutely brilliant. Nice of Kelowna to put such a display on for us too, a couple of days after we arrived they had the biggest snowfall they'd had in 40 years! 

So, we're here, Olive thinks she's actually turned into Queen Elsa, and Jarvis has found some buddies who enjoy Lego Ninjago as much as he does. Winning, I think? 

xx K

Kia ora, Kelowna!

Well, here we are! Canada ahoy! Moving across the world is good for ones sense of adventure ;) 

We've been here almost three weeks - the kids have a new school and preschool, we're temporarily living in the middle of town, in a condo on the 18th floor! Soon we'll shift out to a suburb closer to work and school, but for now it's nice being able to get my bearings around town, and get less terrified of driving on roads with other cars (not much traffic in Motueka!) and snow! 

I'll make an effort to be a good blogger now that I should have something cool to write about! 

xx k 

And the rest!

Other stuff that's happened this year!

Jarvis turned five - see his fab Minion birthday cake!

Toasting marshmallows in the driveway. 

Going swimming in the sea - I hate swimming in the sea, but did it anyway! And it wasn't so bad ;) 

Starting School

Playing football in the garden

Lots of trips to Golden Bay

That day Jarvis cut ALL of Olive's hair off. That was quite the day. 

Lots of adventures. That kinda sums it up. 

So...what's been going on round here?

Ahhh, crazy times. My wonderfully awesome husband is in Canada right now on business, I've been hanging with these two monkeys for almost four weeks now. Thank goodness we get on a plane on Sunday afternoon & join him there for a three week holiday. Hooray! 

Ways to stay amused whilst he's away - host a Thermomix demo. I want a thermomix, and have dreamed about them every freaking night since the guy came & showed my friends & I how amazingly fabulous they are. 

This critter turned three. Three! 

This guy is now five & a half - he's loving school (but secretly a little excited about his extended holiday - we conveniently leave for Canada on the last day of the school holidays!) 

And here we have some La La Loopsy dollies on a tropical island of some sort. All the creativity. 

And that's us for now! Stay tuned for gorgeous photos from our impending trip to Canada :)  

Birthday Girl

A birthday party for a lovely wee girl who's turning two...

Olive has just realised that a real pony has turned up at her birthday party. Thanks to our gorgeous friends, who decorated their pony, Symphony, just like a gigantic My Little Pony :) 

What a wonderful day!