Canada - we're here and trying to blog!

OK, as I write this my count "up" clock shows it's been 12 days and 17 hours since this adventure started.
I'll give it a go to present a snippet of what's been going on on each day...

Wednesday 7th August
I had to stay up all night to get lots of paperwork things finished, pack my things and screw the wheels onto the dogs travel crates. Auntie Gill and Uncle Ron arrived at mum's house at 6.15am to give us a hand getting to the airport and onto the plane. They were great and I dread to think what chaos would have ensued if we'd not had their help.
I'd hired a van to get the dogs and the suitcases to the airport, and it was a good job I did:

To be fair to Air Transat, they took all our bags, car seat, pram, baby carrier and two dog crates in their stride. It took quite some time to get the dogs processed and off through security:

It then took ages to get us through security and into the departure hall, we had about 40 minutes before the plane was due to leave, and the screens were saying "Go to Gate..." - just enough time to buy some water and head to the gate then? Nope. Immediately announcements were made that it was final call for our flight, and just to spite us, the gate was the furthest one away. A brisk walk turned into a full on sprint once they started making Last Calls for the Armstrong group. Anyway, we made it, last ones on, but they had no issues with us using Dan's car seat for him (it was 6cm wider than their stated maximum width, but we weren't going to point that out to them). The flight was fine, the kids were well behaved, Lara got very good indeed at taking herself off to the toilet, she must have gone 12 times during the flight.

Immigration and customs at Calgary were no problem, everyone was very friendly and helpful, and the only casualty was that we lost one wheel off Jackson's crate - a design fault on the part of the wheel, nothing to do with my wheel-fixing ability! All our forms were stamped and we heaved our luggage into arrivals; it's 2pm local time, 9pm UK time now:

We're staying in the basement flat of another British expat in Cochrane for the first month, and Carolyn came out to collect as many passengers and bags as she could fit into her car, while I went and sorted out our hire car. Olga and I dropped Lara off at Carolyn's house and then took the dogs up to the kennels where they'll be spending a month:

That was a long day, but other than the dash through the airport, there were no disasters. The weather is a bit grim, warm but heavy rain showers.

Thursday 8th August

Regardless of how late we went to bed, jetlag had us up early on Thursday morning, like around 4.30am. That wasn't such a bad thing, it gave us chance to unpack a bit, and for Olga and I to sort out paperwork for today's agenda.  At 10am we went to the local branch of Scotiabank and finished the process of opening our bank account, which we'd started online a few weeks ago. Then  we went to meet Eric Boyd, the realtor ("estate agent") Olga had found to help us locate a house to buy. We viewed five properties in Cochrane that day. More rain today.

Friday 9th August

A wasted drive into downtown Calgary this morning, to try and sort out healthcare cards. We'd been given out of date information about where to register, but at least we had experienced the commute into downtown, and it's wasn't bad at all. More house viewings with Eric later, in the city of Airdrie, just north of Calgary, where we were also able to sort out our healthcare, so we're now covered in case of illness or injury, phew. Saw one very nice house in Airdrie which is definitely a contender. The weather improved as the day when on, it was lovely by mid afternoon, just in time for the weekend.

Saturday 10th August

Dan's starting to get the hang of getting over jetlag, he's waking around 5.30am now, everyone else seems to have adapted just fine. It's a bit misty, but Lara, Grandma, Danny and I head off to find the local river in the morning, to skim some stones. It's the Bow River, it's big and very fast flowing. It flooded 6 weeks ago, causing millions of dollars of damage around Calgary:

Later that morning we headed back into Calgary to have a walk around the park down by the Bow River, and by then the sun had come out:

After Calgary we headed out to Canmore, a lovely town in the mountains, about an hour's drive west of downtown. We'd stayed there for a few days during our holiday at Christmas, and we wanted to see what it looked like in Summer. The kids enjoyed the big car we'd rented, too:

Canmore was threatening with thunderstorms, this is something we've found - the weather can be lovely on the plain but 20 minutes later, it can all change. We parked by the town pond, where Olga and Lara had done some ice skating on our last trip:

And that will have to do for updates for now, it's exhausting just remembering how busy we've been for weeks!

More on the house hunting later...

Last night of normality

Here's a view of our office tonight, it's the last refuge of things that won't be packed tomorrow or Friday when the packers arrive. They're due to come here for 4 days and "wrap and pack" everything, and on the fifth day - next Wednesday - the 40-foot container will arrive outside and they'll load all of it into that.
That's the plan, anyway. So this evening we've been trying to clear the ground a little in some rooms so they can find something to do tomorrow. Stranglely, perhaps, we're going to tell them to start in the most-used room, the kitchen.  We've borrowed some crockery and cutlery from my mum, stuck it in a cupboard in the kitchen and stuck a note on the door of that cupboard saying "Please do NOT pack anything from this cupboard". That should do the trick. Everything else in a cupboard is fair game, though not everything on the worktops... there's no reason for us to take a toaster, kettle or microwave, whilst they might just work over there, we've got to have some fun buying new ones, with the right plug on!
It's proving quite difficult to balance everything at the moment; Olga and I are flat out with work commitments, partly by coincidence and partly because we need to get some jobs done before we go. We're also busy trying to cancel things, arrange things, sell things, buy things, pack things and throw things away. Danil has got in on the act by deciding tonight at midnight that he was bored sleeping in his own bed, so he's watching nursery rhymes on our eee-pad in the TV room while I write this post and try to get some more work done. Olga's committed to giving some online training tomorrow morning to three Kazakh gentlemen at between 10am and noon, and the packers are due to arrive between 9 and 10am. I've applied for a Canadian American Express card this evening, as we already have UK ones, and they tell me they'll just transfer our credit limit over to the new card, using our rental address (with owner's permission) but still they want a phone number, which I don't have...
So, I thought I'd get myself a Canadian SkypeIn number, that would work. Nope, the Canadian authorities haven't given Skype the correct license to do that yet, so I've had to use an American number, from Grand Falls, Montana. At least the number will work, if AmEx need to call me, it's not like I've lied..
That's typical of what we're going through at the moment. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel rushed up on us, and we've gone from feeling calm and collected about the whole thing to wondering if we'll sleep during the rest of July.
I think things will look quite different tomorrow, especially in our kitchen!

Lara Graduates from Reception

It was Lara's summer production today at school, and "Graduation" ceremony. She had even made her own mortar board hat, and was given a certificate. Her last day will be on Friday, although she has two birthday parties to attend before we fly to Calgary, so it won't be the last time she'll see her school friends:

The production was "The Gingerbread Man", and Lara played the part of the Old Lady. She was very confident, so those trips to drama and musical theatre classes have paid off!
When I told the admin lady in the school office that Lara wouldn't be returning in September, she was very disappointed: "Lara? Do you have to take her? She's lovely! Can't you take one of the naughty ones!?"
So, two more days of Reception, then it's time to prepare for Grade One, although we won't know where until we've found a house to buy over there. Olga's had some chats on the phone with an estate agent in Calgary, and we'll be viewing potential properties the morning after we arrive. There's no time to waste!

Oh, and that reminds me of something else Lara said that made me smile today - she said elevator instead of lift. We're planning on immersing ourselves fully in the culture, which means adapting to the language, so no more talk of estate agents, it's the Realtor from now on...

3 weeks to go...

It's all getting a bit exciting now!
Today I finally realised that the packers are coming next week to start, well, packing. Thursday to be precise.
Two weeks from today the container will arrive to take everything away, and three weeks from today we'll be flying from Manchester.
Wow. Most things are done though, there's not really much we can do at the moment - we can't pack anything, that's what the packers are coming to do. We can throw things away that we won't be taking, or sell things - we've made a profit on some of the baby things we've sold on eBay, so well done to Olga for buying it so cheap first time around!
Hire cars are booked, Sky has been given it's notice, but strangely very few service providers seem to want 30 days notice now. Most of the insurers & utilities providers have told me to call back nearer the time when I tried to cancel services with 30-something days to go.
Prospective tenants have been visiting the house, hopefully they've seen past the chaos that's going on. It can't have been as bad as when we viewed this place last year - there was a motorbike in the kitchen.
We'll be resigning from work soon - our last working day will be August 6th, with a new contract starting between our current employers and Olga and my new Canadian companies on August 7th. We're going straight on holiday for 10 days though - there's so much to do on the other side, not least buying mobile phones, a house, a car...
Lara was sweet today. She told me she couldn't get to sleep; I assumed it was because of the heat:

"No, Papa, I'm too excited!".
"What about, Lara?"
"The move!!!!"

She really is taking it very well, there doesn't seem to be any apprehension on her part, she really does seem to be excited about the whole idea. She doesn't seem bothered by having to start a new school, in fact we think she actually wants to be able to ride on a yellow school bus every day!

I had to do some shopping at Tesco on Monday, and it dawned on me then that I only needed one tub of butter (not the usual 2-for-1 offer), one small tomato ketchup, only one large kitchen roll... all those things that I've just bought in bulk before without thinking ("They'll get used eventually") aren't needed any more.
That was weird.

A Day Trip to London

I like making these video albums set to music, so here's another one.
On Saturday 6th July we got up a silly o'clock (4.15am) to catch an early train to London. The weather was brilliant, we went on the London Eye, had a picnic in St James' Park, walked past Buckingham Palace, went to the Natural History Museum and finally visited the pub near Notting Hill Gate where Olga worked 10 years ago while she was living in London.