Cats, Cars & Unpacking (and yes the long awaited pictures of the house)

The arrival of our belongings - at long last!!

On a rainy day in May our container arrived with all of our belongings. It was very surreal to see all of our stuff being unloaded and made the move seem very real.  Within 2 hours everything was off the truck and in the house. Imogen had her cot and we had our big TV yey! We have unpacked most of our stuff but still have boxes of books and CDs here and there - its going to take a while to find a place for everything but this house is starting to feel more like home.

THE HOUSE!!!

Many of you have been asking of pictures of the house, I wanted to get most of the things unpacked and the house set up before I took photos. We live in a 3 bedroom detached house, over here they go more by square foot - ours is just under 1900sqft. Downstairs is open planned, kitchen, dining, living and office area with hard wood floor. There is a downstairs toilet and laundry room and a double garage. We have a large undeveloped basement which is great for storing everything. Outside we have a good sized decked area leading to grass. Upstairs there are 3 good sized bedrooms. Ours has a master en-suite with a corner bath tub, two sinks and a standalone shower. There is also a family bathroom on this floor and what people over here call a bonus/family room. This room is our TV room and is one of the larger rooms in our house. The house has views of 'downtown' from the front and the glorious Rocky Mountains from the bedroom window. So here are some photos and a couple of the lake across the road.

 Arrival of Gizmo

After many weeks apart we were finally re-united with Gizmo. He had a long trip which started in a Z4, then onto a forklift truck, then a plane, another forklift, a van and finally our car! Needless to say he was very happy to see us. It has taken him a couple of weeks to make himself at home.

Cats and Dogs need to be licensed here and there are strict rules as well. Dogs are not allowed of leash unless on your property or with in a designated no leash zone, these are usually situated well away from children's parks. Cat are not allowed of your property at all. This is problematic as try telling a cat not to follow his instincts and explore, even more so problematic as we so not have a fence around our property. He has shown a desire to leave the house and we have spoken about getting him a kitty leash lol but can't bring ourselves to do it.

Chariot

Wanting to make the most of the great outdoors and the arrival of our bikes we invested in a 2nd hand chariot for Imogen. I have only ever seen these once or twice in the UK, they are very popular over here. Imogen doesn't seem to mind being pulled about and we can store a lot in there so can take a picnic, balls, toys with us. 

I'm free!
Alastair has bought his commuter car so I am now able to go out further than the local park during the day.

I say Tomato, you say Toma'y'to..,. I say Mobile - you say Cell... I say boot you say....
So in my last blog I mentioned I'd like to include bits about the differences over here.
I mentioned the mail and how this is delivered. No one has letter boxes on the front of their house, nor do we have the stereotypical north American post box at the end of our drives. Instead we have large boxes on every street with smaller numbered boxes (not with your house number, with a key number).

This is where your mail is posted and collected from. Everyday the post man opens the whole front of the boxes and sorts out the mail. Any parcels are left in a large box at the bottom and a key for that box is placed in your box. You then have to post the key back through the post box. So every day around 5pm Imogen and I take a little walk down to the post box to see if any thing has been left. We are not looking forward to this in winter - this responsibility may be passed over to Alastair to do on his way home - hop out and back in the car!

We have both noticed that drivers are very courteous here. When crossing the road in the burbs drivers stop to let you cross (you don't get this downtown). A friend I have made who is from Toronto says that this is a Calgary thing!
Quite often you have an extra assistant at the store to pack your bags and then ask to help you out of the store. I am yet to take them up on this offer but think come winter I may say yes!

  

So here are some facts and figures for you number boffins out there! 

Location	Size (in sqmi)	Elevation (airports)	Population	Notes:
UK	94,060sq mi		58,789,194
Grtr Manchester	493sq mi	125ft	2,600,100
Manchester City	44.7 sq mi		464,200
Northern Ireland	5,345 sq mi		1,685,267
County Antrim	1,098 sq mi	(Aldergrove) 268f	616,384
Belfast	44.4 sq mi	(George Best) 15ft	65,500
Canada	3,854,085 sq mi		32,623,490	50 x bigger than UK!
Alberta	255,541 sq mi		3,724,832	2.7 x bigger than the UK yet less population than Greater Manchester and Northern Ireland put together.
Calgary Met Area	1,972 sq mi	3640ft	1,079,310
Calgary City	280.5 sq mi	Royal Oak (where we live): 4134ft	988,193

 Out and About

Last weekend we made the most of our time and went back to a place near Elbow Falls called Allen Bill and finally got to use our Cobb BBQ which was rather successful and something we want to do again soon. We really love being able to drive to these wonderful places. here are some photo's of that day.

 We also went and had a walk around Cochrane Ranch to do a spot of Geocaching.

Canada Day

Canada Day is Canada's birthday. It is the day that three British colonies became a single country - Canada on 1st July 1867.

It is a national holiday and celebrated by all. We headed down to Princes Island Park for the festivities. A lot of people were wearing red, there were bands, stalls and fun activities for all. It was VERY BUSY as you can see from the picture of the bridge!(another link about the park)

 Canada day weekend was a long weekend for us. We spent the Saturday at a friends house having a house warming BBQ. It was extremely warm, luckily we could go down to the river to cool off - however we were attacked by mosquito's! Ouch! and have spent the last few days suffering for it.

Here are some photo's of Imogen playing in the paddling pool, at the park and at the splash park. Its been so hot here lately that Imogen's bath time has been in the paddling pool most nights! Imogen and I went to our first splash park this week also. Imogen really enjoyed herself. there are a few of these around the city. We are really starting to realise how much this city is geared up for families!

 

 

 




















It is the start of Calgary Stampede this week and of course the royals are visiting on Thursday also! I am going to try and make it down to the parade on Friday and hopefully to an event next week.  Soooo that's it for now from me, feel free to comment - I do like hearing from you and as always I hope you enjoy reading what we have been up to!

Birthdays, Moving, Cars and Work!

So whats happened since the last time I posted - it feels so long ago! 

Zoo

zzzZZZZZZZZ!

We visited Calgary Zoo while Alastair was still off work, It wasn't too busy and you could get pretty close to a lot of the animals. The animals here ranged from Tigers to Bears, Hippo's to Gorilla's. They are building a Penguin Plunge which will open next year - something to look forward to!

Canmore & Lake Louise

Whilst still in 'holiday mode' we were trying to get in as many outings as we could before our time would be spent packing, shopping and - getting back to "reality!" In two separate trips we went to Canmore and Lake Louise.

Photo's of Canmore: 

Alastair and I have visited Lake Louise before, the last time we were here we and it looked like this:

And now I + Imogen & the lake looked like this!: (yes we are stood on a frozen lake!)

Whilst here we met with Matt (Alastair's Cousin) - He lives in a Log Cabin with the most amazing view from his living room window. As you can see the snow was still on the ground - but the sun was still shining!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

As many of you may know Ally's and my birthday are close together. For my birthday this year we spent it in Banff, we revisited the spot that we got engaged and ate Elk burgers! yum yum, we also experienced the delight of bubble tea! hmmmm..... I think its a bit of a marmite thing!

For Alastair's Birthday we went to swimming to a rather impressive indoor water park and for - yup another burger yum yum!

Car

The day before Alastair's Birthday we bought our car- what a lovely gift for him! We now drive an SUV (welcome to Canada!)! in the form of an Nissan Murano, surprisingly for the size it is very easy to drive and because every one drives BIG vehicles out here you don't feel too big.

House!!!

We have a house! We moved in the weekend of 14th May to a lovely very spacious 3 bed, doubled garage, detached house in the community of Royal Oak in the NW of the city.

Across the road we have a lake, with some Muskrats and various birds. Either end of the street there is a play park (one with a pirate ship!) and round the corner a nature reserve. We have wild Jackrabbits (which is actually a Hare) running through our gardens. It is fun to watch but I'm sure we will find them a nuisance at some point! Our furniture should be here in the next week, so when we have set up I will upload some photo's, but for now enjoy the Jackrabbit in my front garden.

We waved goodbye to our temporary accommodation in Cochrane promising to visit and keep in touch and prepared ourselves for a few days with out internet and weeks with out TV!!! (this lasted 4 days until Ally cracked and bought a new TV).

Moving in was not without drama - firstly there was a mess up at the hire car company which meant us being delayed for nearly 3hrs and ending up with a pickup truck rather than the Ford transit like van we had originally ordered. Never less, off we went to Ikea to get a dining table and other moving in things, and then to The Brick to collect our glorious bed.

We drove in convoy (ally in the pick up, me following in the Murano) all the way across the city on many different freeways and junctions. It was on the last freeway, just before the last junction that the mattress and bed on the back of the pickup decided to fly off due to a massive gust of wind went sprawling across the freeway toward me and bringing traffic to a halt. No one was injured and people got out there cars to help which was really nice. We made it the rest of the way home safe and sound.

So that's it for now, but I would just like to say that despite the many snowy photo's in this blog it has not rained (apart from yesterday) in weeks and there also has not been snow on the ground in weeks! As I am typing this I am enjoying a drink on my deck whilst waiting for the BBQ to heat up!
Next time I post I want to include a bit more about the cultural differences here - like drivers stopping when you want to cross the road, even when you are not at a crossing and how you collect your post!

West Bound and Up!

So this is our first post that will cover a lot of what has happened in the last week - and a bit!! I promise this will be the only really long post! The blog is here to keep in contact with people who don't use Facebook, and also give a much more in-depth goings on in to our day to day/week to week lives here.

Packing

Just over a week ago we watched the removal company pack up the whole of our house into a van and drive away. We were left with a kettle, toaster and pan - and managed to survive for 3 days! 

For those who have never moved country before - it was interesting to watch the removal men wrap large and weirdly shaped items in bubble wrap. There can not be any gaps in the wrapping to prevent bugs etc travelling abroad. Check out the bike: 

Our last few days were spent saying goodbye to friends and family we had not yet had chance to, re-homing our fish (thanks Mo), waving good bye to Gizmo for the next month, frantically cleaning, giving away items we were not taking and many trips to the dump! We finally finished on Friday evening near midnight and managed to get a half decent nights sleep before our early start on Saturday.

Goodbye Kendal Road

(this photo was taken some time ago, it was actually a rather sunny and warm morning when we left!)

Alastair and I have lived in this home for the last 3years and only since the birth of Imogen have we gotten to know our neighbours better and developed an emotional attachment to a house. We were both surprised about how we felt when we were leaving our home for the last time knowing we will never return to that house.

Departure, Flight and LANDING!! 

Our flight went with out a delay or problem! Imogen was pretty well behaved and we managed to watch a film whilst she slept!
We landed local time 11.30 am and got a lift from one of the very helpful White Hat Volunteers  from the airoplane to imigration - normally a 6minute walk so we were very thankful for this!

And..... We're in!!

We joined the very long immigration queue excited and nervous as this is it, this was the moment we had been working towards for what seemed like forever! 3 ques, countless questions, signing of official documents and list checking we were granted Permanent Residency, yippee! And whilst we were waiting in our many queue's a very helpful attendant had off loaded our mountain of bags, push chair etc and was waiting for us at the other side! Now all that was left was to go and get our free cow boy hats! Oh and wrap up very warm as it was in the minuses and snow!

Downtown Calgary

We spent our first few days in downtown Calgary so we were in easy reach of all the places we needed to go to get our SIN numbers, phone contracts etc We woke up Sunday morning to fresh snow fall on the street below, and by dinner time (it being Sunday so they were a little less prompt) street cleaners had been out clearing all the snow off the sidewalk.We were very impressed, tho still left wishing we had taken the big push chair and not the stroller! 

Although extremely cold it was bearable as long as we dressed right for the temperature .Imogen all snug in her cosy toes and several layers and Ally and I with thermals and fleeces. The sun was shining so we really didn't care too much!

Cochrane

We - or rather Alastair - had arranged to stay out of town whilst we searched for a car and a house. We are staying in a Small(ish) town 40mins out of Calgary in a walk out basement/garden room. A short walk from the Bow River (pics to follow soon).  We are planning to hopefully find our permanent accommodation as it is close to the area we would like to live in.
When we arrived we felt that we would like to live here as it has a lovely feel about the town, it isn't over populated and close to the Bow river and the Mountains, however, the commute to work for Ally would take the best part of an hour.

Spot the Newbys!

Ally and I were very kindly invited by the owners of our accommodation to a party to celebrate their birthday. So upstairs we went with Imogen in arm. We soon noticed that no one was wearing shoes, hmmm. And then as I thought back in the day I had noticed that all of the houses we had gone to look at the owner or re-alter had taken their shoes of on entry to the house (even if it was empty!) Ooops! 

We soon rectified the problem and discovered the practical reason for this - It is because of the salt on the road to clear the snow, it helps to save cleaning/damaging the floors with dirty foot prints.

At the party we met some other British Expats who live in the town and were able to share our thoughts/experiences and advice.

Easter

Happy Eater everybody!

Our first Easter away has passed with out us really realizing, it really didn't feel like Easter to us because of everything going on. We spent Good Friday house searching, Saturday in Cochrane shopping and then at a B'day party, and on Sunday we went to Canmore where we had lunch and had a stroll around town. We were kindly invited to a BBQ by a family we had met the evening before. They lived a 40min drive away from where we are staying, they were really in the sticks, so much so that they don't have an address, no post is delivered or garbage collected, but my was it a beautiful setting. There was still deep snow on the ground, but again the sun was shining so the cold didn't really matter. We were invited to go and look at the Red Deer River that flows near the property. On the walk down thru the thick snow we saw a Bald Headed Eagle fly above us, it was amazing.

Ok.. so I'm going to leave it there, Today we went to the Zoo but I will write about that in a few days time.  Oh I nearly forgot - I drove an automatic car for the 1st time on the 'wrong' side of the road!! Quite impressed with my self! I hope this hasn't been too much to read at once and I promise to make them shorter and more regular from now on!!