First Day in our Rental House

Well we are sort of moved into our new house. It's a 3 bedroom bungalow with another bedroom and an office in the basement plus a rec room. Lots of room for our family. Here's a picture.
The guys are unloading the trailer now and the sorting and organizing has begun. We moved a few people from Church yesterday and then we moved ourselves into our new house at about 7:30pm. We found dinner waiting for us which was lovely and slept in our new beds. It's a bit weird sleeping in someone else's house with a combination of their decorations and your own belongings, it feels like a hotel and I'm sure it will take us a while to get settled in but we'll just keep working on it one day at a time.

The kids had a bit of a dust up about getting the bedrooms they wanted and so the girls finally agreed to share a room. It's a lovely big room so there's no worries about that. Jordan has a room on the main floor also and Chris, at his request, has the lone room in the basement with his own bathroom. He's happy to have the privacy and close proximity to the rec room and his closest neighbour is our office so that works out alright.

Jordan enjoyed his room too. But his morning had a bit of an ugly start when he went into the garage and discovered that the dog had a nasty poop in the middle of the floor for him to clean. Ah the lovely responsibilities of owning a dog! Chris has discovered the many joys of cutting the lawn with a ride on mower so I think this is one job he won't complain too much about doing. We're going to have a family meeting to discuss house rules and chores. I better cook them something nice for when I break the bad news to them :)

We've unpacked some of our boxes already and started to figure out what goes where. Over the next week I'm sure we're going to be changing things around until we are comfortable and can find things. Steve's working on getting the office functional and I'm working on the upstairs. It's a work in progress...especially since I'm obviously slacking to write this blog update.

Canadian Tire got that gas cap in for me and I got it today. I got some groceries too and still find that the prices are generally lower than Vancouver Island but more than Calgary. It really depends though. Milk costs more and fish is a cheaper, veggies are cheaper and there are great road side markets and vendors willing to give a good deal plus the many u-picks this time of year. The trick is to have a way of preserving the veggies for winter use. The garden here at the house has tomatoes ready for picking and zucchini for making chocolate cake, yum! Today I got the following:

10 lb local potatoes $3.50
5 lb local carrots $3
1 gallon blue berries $8
Large head of cabbage $1.50
1 HUGE rutabaga (5 lb) $1.25
cucumbers 75 cents each

I talked at length with the vendors and they said that they are on disability and retired so they go round to different farms getting the best deals they can and then sell it at the roadside. The berries they pick themselves and repackage. They sell on average about $700 per day for the summer and that means a net profit of about $200 each day. Not too bad eh? They're acting as middle man and retailer and making a healthy profit for a days work that doesn't involve heavy lifting, picking the veggies, or having to maintain a store front. They are still cheaper than the store and only a little more than buying direct from the farmer and of course they're conveniently located on the road to CFB Greenwood so it's a breeze for us to pop over.
Even in the store there were great produce deals. I love this time of year. Now to get organized so I can do some canning and get my cold storage room shelves stocked for winter!

Meghan and Kate (but mostly Meghan) have been playing with the girls across the street who are both in her same grade in school. It's nice for them to have other kids to play with. Hopefully the boys will continue meeting new people too.

We miss our friends the Mullens. Hi guys!! We got sort of comfortable there with the kids off doing their things and their property is beautiful. Some day we hope to find a piece of land like that too. We'll have to pinch pennies and make it happen!

Enough dreaming, time for work.