Canada Eh?

**I took the day off yesterday. Everyone deserves a day to regroup and honestly I had to get a few things done around the house and just didn't have the time to blog. This morning I am up and at em' and raring to go!

So many people have asked me why I moved to Canada versus Hunk moving to the States. I thought I'd take the time to discuss this as well as why WE decided to build our own home instead of living in one of our "old" houses. Two topics that frequently arise when families "blend".

The decision to move to Canada was not easy. Let me re-phrase that. The decision to move to Canada was easy, but required a lot of thinking on my part. I never had a doubt that Big Girl and I would do the moving (the two older boys were either in university or working in the States). Having been a Military Family for so long, we never set out permanent roots or got extremely attached to one place. Hunk and the two younger kids, however, had never moved or had been away from family and I felt at the time it was better, at their ages, tho leave their support system in place.

My first, very own home in NJ.

My decisions, though initially easy, became somewhat of a personal issue. Big Girl had just lost her father, was just beginning her first year of high school and was heavily involved in dance. She was surrounded by so many good close friends that were her support throughout  her daddy's illness and death. THAT made it tough.  I for the first time ever had thoughts of, "wow I own my own home, my own car, have a career and love where I am in life." I had begun to re-decorate the interior of my old Victorian home and had bought my dream car, a red Volvo XC90. A move to Canada would mean giving it all up and going to a country I had only recently visited and fallen in love with. So many reasons to move, yet so many reasons to stay.

I balanced this all out with the wisdom that Hunk's very nice job was in Canada. His parents were in Canada. His dad was battling Cancer and his mother needed the support that Hunk and the kids offered her emotionally. They were very close and very attached. In my heart I knew the right decision was for us to "blend" here. So we did.

Looking in the rear view mirror I know I made the best decision for us. Though in the soggy market it took forever to sell my home in NJ, it finally did sell. I left my wonderful friends and teaching job on the promise from Hunk that I would not have to work in Canada. I haven't. (well not outside of our home anyway!) Hunk drove a van down from Canada and we packed all the things we would need immediately and headed to the Great White North. On a funny side note: as we crossed the border into Canada, the Canadian Customs officer asked why I was coming to Canada to which I answered "I'm moving here!" His reply.."Um Ma'am, you can't just move to Canada." After being directed to head indoors for an interview, and almost 3 hours later, we discovered that they were much more interested in Big Girl having a school permit (to the tune of 120.00) than in us immigrating. Although we had already filed our Immigration packet and were already married.

This is not our actual home, but the model home of our home.

So where did we live? The weekend we were engaged (June 2007) we decided the next step would be to find a place to live. We both knew we did not want to live in Toronto. And Hunk knew he didn't want to live in Scarborough. He and the young kids had been living either with his in-laws or with his parents until now. We thought East was less congested and less expensive than West so we set out that weekend to find the perfect place to set our roots. After looking at one community after another and too many model homes to mention, we narrowed our list and finally settled on Oshawa. The community we chose fed into the best schools both public and catholic and had a safe environment for our kids to spread out and enjoy their growing years. Two weeks later we signed the papers and gave deposits to begin building our dream home here. During our construction we were lucky blessed to find a townhouse within our school district that we called home for 6 months. Oh, how we loved that little house! We still ride by and admire it and remember the great times we had there!

Because furniture would not fit into a van, and we would need a place to lay our heads and plop our bodies, we took the plunge and bought new furniture to fill our townhouse. Since Hunk had never had any furniture and our new home was larger than any home I had ever lived in, we bought the items we knew we would need anyway. When our house was ready in March of 2008, we returned to NJ, hired a mover and emptied the house and moved it all to our new home in Canada.

Months crept by and I learned to live with the "old" stuff while secretly in my heart lusting after new furniture. I finally convinced myself and Hunk, that the antique, Victorian styled furniture was not conducive to our open floor plan new home. What I was really thinking was I want our stuff  not my old stuff. I wanted to create our family's new home with our new memories and not be surrounded by the furniture that had memories of yesterday. Another side note: I LOVE antiques. I LOVE heritage and old things from family members, but I needed to continue with my fresh-new-life approach. Having said that I did keep a variety of smaller furniture and other nick-knacks for "posterity."

Today, our house is OUR house. We have lived here slightly over three years. We have painted walls, decorated rooms, added a pool and fancy landscaping, and are in the early stages of planning to finish our basement and re-landscape our front yard. To look inside you would certainly find some of our past, some of future and a LOT of our present! This BLENDED family is busy and that is evidenced throughout our home and our lives!



The Family Room before we painted and added crown moulding.

Have an awesome weekend! The weather man/woman promises us "BBQ" weather this weekend. Not sure what that means, but I'll let you know on Monday!