Hey There!
I want to talk about the challenge of change…It’s been a very very long time since I put my fingers to the keyboard and wrote a long personal blog post. But you see, the thing is…I’ve been pretty much MIA for the last 2 years. COVID hit, we all went into hiding and then my husband and I decided to make some life altering changes to our lives!!
Wanna hear about it? Keep reading…
As some of you may know, I am Canadian and I had been living in Buffalo NY for the last 20yrs. with my husband. We both really like/love Buffalo, the people, the food (OMG 😱 the food is amazing) not to mention the selection of pretty much what ever your heart desires. There is a store somewhere not too far that has it.
I had been running my business for many years from my home office and I loved working with people who truly wanted to succeed and had the drive to learn how to put into place what I was teaching them.
Then COVID hit. Everything slowed down, I slowed down.
But this pandemic had massive silver linings for my husband and I. Things we to this day are extremely grateful for. If you believe in angels or spirit guides or higher power….they all aligned to make the next set of events happen very smoothly!
1st! We got Flossie! What is a Flossie? Well she is an AKA registered Golden Retriever. Meet Flossie…
Without knowing what the next months were in store for us, we happily brought home our new puppy!
Then one day my husband asked me what I wanted to do. (Like he often does, looking for ideas on what to do that day) However my answer was blunt and to the point. I said,
“I want to move back to Canada”
his reply, “ok”.
Now you have to imagine my shock!! Because I had been telling him for a few years that I had been wanting to move back to Canada. So I asked him again, just in case he didn’t hear me properly and when I asked if he was sure, he replied with “yes!”
I asked a few more times over the next couple days, and then that was it. I was sure and it was time to start putting the wheels in motion!!!
Now imagine living in a house for 44 years! 44 years! That’s how long my husband lived in our house. Me? 20yrs. So you can imagine the “stuff” that had accumulated over the years!!
So…we set a time frame to get the house sorted and up for sale. My husband’s only caveat was that we do not move to Northern Ontario in the winter! 🥶 ❄️ As much as I wanted to get going, I truly didn’t want him to be a popsicle for the first 6 months living in Canada.
That is when all the sorting, giving away, selling, tossing off everything in the house began. Cleaning, painting and getting the house all spiffed up to sell.
If you are reading this from the Buffalo area, you are familiar with Matt Quagliano. That is who we decided to go with. Right from the beginning he was on the ball and took most of the stress away from us when it came to selling the house. I put him in our alignment category…he was a major part of making this change as smooth as possible!
The house went up for sale and that weekend we had the open houses/multiple showings and by Wednesday the following week we accepted an offer.
Now it was really getting real!
This was Marie Kondo on steroids type clearing out! Some was easy to get rid of…other stuff not so much. It’s amazing how many items have emotions connected to them. Everything from love to guilt to happy emotions. We ran the gamut and with each other for support we were able to give away, sell or toss everything that had to go.
Did I mention? Everything we were taking with us had to fit into the back of a F150?! Plus 2 dogs. The scaling back was extreme! Even our closets! I was quite surprised how much room our clothes took in the back of the truck. Oh….and the truck just had a tonneau cover, no cap to allow us to bring more with us. Just pretty much what ever would fit in the back of the truck under the cover and in the back seat of the truck.
The house was sold, but we still didn’t have any place to live in Canada yet. At the time of crossing, you couldn’t just go visit because the border was closed. I was able to secure a cute little AirBNB for our 2 weeks quarantine that took dogs and then I scoured the websites and facebook marketplace for apartments. It is quite difficult getting an apartment from another country without being able to actually go see it. I was able to find a lease takeover on facebook marketplace and we went thru the MANY steps to get approved for this place. I’d also like to point out that, we had only seen photos of this place before moving in! Thankfully it was just as nice as the photos portrayed them to be. The twist? We got approved for this place the last day we were to leave and still had to put our change of address in the mail. We were given the wrong address. This didn’t come to light until we were already in Canada at our AirBNB in quarantine.
Ok, so we get everything sorted, the house sold, all the forms and whatnots filled out for crossing the border, dog vet papers in hand, AirBNB booked, apartment ready for our arrival and thru all of this our cosmic force was aligned to make this happen as smoothly as possible. We crossed the border with absolutely no issues one year ago today.
I really cannot explain to you the feeling I experienced when we crossed the border. I managed to keep myself together until we were finished with the border agents. But as soon as we started to drive away, all the emotions and relief that had built up over the last year just poured out. I was a snotty mess!
Once quarantine was finished, we got our Canadian bank accounts sorted, visited with family and headed to our new home. Now remember, we still just had what was in the back of the truck to live with. The day we arrived in our town we hit Canadian Tire and bought some camp chairs and an inflatable bed. The next morning started the furniture shopping! Which was slim pickings because it was still the pandemic and shops in this area had just opened up about 2 weeks before we arrived. Stock was slim and there wasn’t much to choose from that could be delivered that day or the next day. But thanks to a couple locally owned furniture shops we were able to sleep in real beds and sit on a sofa within 24 and 48hrs of arriving!
Today marks one year since we crossed the border and made Canada our new permanent home and we’ve been more active outdoors in the last year than we had been in the 20+ I was in Buffalo NY.
There is something about the air here, it really makes you want to get outside and breath in that fresh sweet air.
If you’ve read this far, thank you. Keep watching for more, this lifestyle needs to be shared ❤️
xo