We’re in!

Well after a very turbulent moving in day, and an even more rocky few weeks run up with childcare issues and an unsettled toddler, we are in!

As of July 26^th we finally have our forever home in Rural Bighorn. Deep in the woods but with a surprisingly busy social scene, I think we are going to be very happy here.

Our exciting moving in day was basically ruined by a lazy mortgage broker, and very bad phone reception. Long story short after 7 hours of waiting around we were allowed to be given the keys and had to rent the house for two days while the broker pulled his socks up and finally filed his paperwork.

Thankfully there Is a little loophole in the buying process where if the bank will not release the funds on the day of exchange you can do a “tenancy at will” which means you can still move in but you have to rent the house from the original owners for that time, as well as pay any interest on their bridging loans if they are waiting on the funds. We did that….. and I sent the mortgage broker the bill!

If one more person uses “covid” as an excuse, I think I’m going to scream. Thankfully he paid it, no questions asked.

Rocket has been moved around lots of different day homes recently because our regular one would not let him go if he was coughing.

Not sure if you have seen the news recently but basically the whole of British Columbia is on fire and Canmore has been covered in smoke pretty much all summer. It’s a rare day when you can actually see the mountains and there have been air quality warnings asking us all to limit our outside activity to an hour. Put a 2 year old in that environment, and I’m not surprised he’s coughing, I feel like i’ve been smoking 40 a day! That, on top of the fact the poor little bugger has inherited my terrible hay fever meant we had no choice but to pull him out of that day home because she wouldn’t listen to us about his medication, and wouldn’t give it to him so he coughed and sneezed all day and obviously these days that means you have the plague! *sigh… thanks again covid*

Finding reliable childcare in this town is not easy! Some big decisions to be made in the coming months about where he settles next.

So, he’s been pretty unsettled as we slot him in to places during summer holidays. Hopefully we can find something consistent soon, but for now it will be a character-building time in his life. He seems to love the house, looping around the kitchen on his bike and running around outside. His new found freedom will hopefully make up for the uncertainty. He’s also getting very hand with a paint brush!

There is plenty for us to do at the house, something we can’t wait to get our hands on. Here are a few of the scruffier areas of the house that need attention straight away, but for now…. We can’t wait to get our hands dirty!

The biggest challenge we have had so far are wasps!!! Little bastards. The first couple of days you could here a constant buzzing. We noticed a lot around but as the smoke came back over in the sky and the weather got even dryer there just seemed to be more and more. Henry and I found 4 nests! There are probably more, but this is just what we found around the decking. Last week the exterminator came and took away a HUGE wasp nest (apparently it had 4 layers of nest within it and about 400 eggs GROSS) 2 hornet’s nests, and some sort of hybrid monster wasp nest. GREAT! Perks of living in the country, I guess. Although next summer we will be ready for the little gits!

Other wildlife includes a beautiful little hummingbird that comes to my kitchen window, lots of deer and baby deer, squirrels, bats, owls and magpies!

Watch this space for updates as we finish of areas of the house. Henry is hard at work cutting the forest of grass down.

The first big tidy up …… the garage!