Another hot day means another lake. This morning we took it a little slower and did some housework before leaving for an adventure. We loaded up the truck and drove out of the driveway just before 10:00 am. Yes, that is a slow morning.
We arrived at the Sharbot Lake Provincial Park about an hour later. We unloaded our kayak and blew up the paddle board.
We drove into Sharbot Lake and stopped for a treat.
Today’s blog is brought to you by the extinct penny. In February 2013, the Royal Canadian Mint stopped distributing pennies to financial institutions. At that time I was working for a large credit union in Saskatchewan. A few months later I resigned. The two events had nothing to do with each other but the CEO acknowledged my resignation and tied the two together in his update to staff.
Like most, we still have a few of these coins but for the most part you don’t see the one cent around too much in Canada.
Yesterday we went out for lunch. Stephen gave me a Mother’s Day gift that just keeps giving. It was a gift card for downtown Kingston. What a perfect gift!! Today’s choice was Copper Penny. It felt like coming home. 😂
We enjoyed a good lunch and were not disappointed with our stop.
We came home after our Kingston errands were completed and Penny, the neighborhood cat arrived at 8:30 for her evening meal.
Oh and one more Penny thing…a few months ago I asked my cuz if she made bubble bath. Denise makes soaps, bath bombs, creams and so much more at her SOAP SHACK. She said that she doesn’t anymore but a little while later she showed up with this!
The penny may be extinct but the name lives on. I’m thankful that Ron kept this old coin around!
Sometimes you just need to be in that place. That place for me is Bon Echo Provincial Park. It has many happy memories of childhood camping. It now gives me peace. Even on a busy Friday afternoon, we can find a quiet place to enjoy the lake.
We left home just before noon with a packed lunch. We put the canoe in at the creek and paddled along the main beach.
Yes, some days you just to find your place to breathe a little deeper and make new memories.
The time is getting closer and closer to our move date. Every time we do something now, we wonder is that the last time before we move?
Yesterday, we headed to Waterton with our snowshoes, wood, lunch and games. The drive down was beautiful. It was a gorgeous day and the mountains looked spectacular with their winter coats. We drove down the Akimina Parkway. There were very few cars and the big horn sheep were enjoying the quiet road.
We were stopped a couple of times going in and they did not seem at all concerned that we wanted to get somewhere.
We parked at the road closure and put our snowshoes on. There was a nice path through the “woods” that we took.
It was almost theee kilometres to Cameron Lake. The temperature was very mild and, for the most part, we were sheltered from the wind.
We arrived at the lake and could hear laughing somewhere but no sign of anyone. It’s quite different in the summer when the place is crawling with people. We had a little rest in the shelter before starting back on the road.
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| Painting on the window |
The snow was good for snowshoeing but so much less than other years. We have to keep going higher in the mountains to find the white stuff.
Once we got back to the truck, we headed down to the village. The sheep had moved to the side of the road.
We found a little warming hut and Ron started a fire. I made our lunch and some hot drinks.
We burned up all of our wood because we are assuming that that was our last time for an afternoon fire in Waterton.
19 days until our move day!
Let’s step back a few months…we listed out house in Pincher Creek on August 13th. We had quite a few initial showings through the month but no offers. In September, we spent the month in Ontario, hoping for a sale while we were away. We only had a couple showings through that time. In October, the showings picked up but still no offers. Our contract with our realtor was due to expire on November 12th. We thought at that time, we would take the house off the market for winter and start fresh in the spring.
We had a request for a second showing on November 3rd and nothing happened. I was sitting on the couch 3 days later when I received a text from our realtor that an offer was coming in. The first thing that we noticed was that they had picked December 11th as a closing date. We knew that wouldn’t work for us unless we wanted to be homeless for a while. We signed it back changing the closing date to February 15th. On November 16th, the conditions were cleared and by the 18th, we were driving to Calgary. We flew the next day to Ottawa and arrived at our hotel for a week to house shop.
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| Some hotel visitors |
Jenn took the day off to join us and the realtor to start house shopping. I had previously sent my organized spreadsheet to our realtor to list the houses that we wanted to see with explanations of why they interested us. We were prepared.
November 19th - Day One - we were excited! We had 8 houses on the agenda. Our top choice sold before we got to look at it. Our second choice had an offer come in as we drove into the driveway. Another house owner wanted to change the showing to the next day. We stumbled through some other showings where we just couldn’t see us living for one reason or another.
November 20th - Day Two - another full day of listings which meant more driving than the previous day. We looked at some city home with tiny driveways and match box backyards. We toured houses with no closets and then stumbled on one showing where a tenant had moved in the day before and didn’t allow us to see the home.
November 21st - Day Three - we pushed our circle a little further out and ended up in areas where we had never been before. We felt like it was bit of a wasted day. We did not feel comfortable in any of the homes that we walked into but we did have some laughs. One house was built in the 1980’s. It looked like no one was living in it although it did have bed sheets hanging half out of the dryer. There was a gremlin on the roof. 👻
November 22nd - Day Four - we decided to put in an offer on a house in Kingston. The house was nice enough. The garage was a decent size. The deck was super tiny and the backyard not much bigger and it backed out on a busy street. It would be a central location between Jenn and my parents.
November 23rd - Day Five - The offer was signed back and when we sent it back, the seller didn’t want to play the game and so we walked away from an empty house.
It was now the weekend and our time was up at the hotel. The first week of house shopping was on the RCMP and now the expenses were on us. We moved to Napanee to be with mom and dad.
Week two began and, instead of excitement, we felt urgency. We wanted to get this done. Mom joined us to take a look at one house a second time and one other house. We decided to put in an offer on the house that we had seen twice. The setting was very nice. The house felt cozy and the decks were amazing. The owners had added a clause that they needed to get a good well test on their property before we could clear our conditions. There test was to be done on the Friday. Our inspections were lined up for the following Tuesday.
We felt we had some free time and so we did some Christmas shopping, enjoyed a church banquet with mom and dad and went to church with Jenn and the girls.
On Tuesday, we headed to the house. We were anxious to get the inspections done and be able to get back home to decorate our house for Christmas. The house inspection was going well. There was a good water flow but then the quality of the water was drawn to our attention. I sipped on a glass of water that tasted like I should be gargling. It had a very high salt content.
The next day, we searched out some water treatment places and did some online investigation. We knew that the water consisted of 1770 Total Disolved Solids.
That night, we were more than exhausted, frustrated and felt deflated.
A new house came on the market and so we added it to some of the old listings that we hadn’t looked at yet. The weather was a little nasty but we continued our hunt for a house. I think both of us felt that we were going to have to settle for something that was good enough. We looked at all of the houses on our list. Our realtor had been so patient with us. We saw a nice house in a not so nice location. We saw nice locations with not so nice houses. We came to the end of our list and I was ready to cry. Another new listing came on in the afternoon. Our realtor called and got us in for 6:00 pm. My hopes weren’t high and Ron hadn’t even looked at the listing.
We walked in the door and it didn’t take us long to know that this was our forever home. Our realtor went right home and drew up the offer. The offer was accepted the next day. Inspections were lined up for the next Monday.
We were cautiously optimistic that things would work out. We went to a banquet at Jenn’s church on Saturday night. We did a walk through candy cane lane before the banquet. We went to mom and dad’s church on Sunday.
Monday arrived and we were at the house with the inspectors. The water level was good. The dissolvable solids were in the acceptable range were in the “sweet spot” for drinking! The house inspector was pleased which put a smile on our faces. We left the house, booked our flights and were off to Ottawa within hours. We flew home the next morning.
We are not homeless! It only took us looking at over 30 houses.
P.S. next blog will include Christmas decorations and mountain pictures!
When the cold and snow comes, you have two choices:
