Well we are finally here.

Arrived May 7 courtesy of Zoom Airlines.

We stayed for a while with friends before closing on the house.

The first few days were taken up with getting drivers licenses, sin numbers and filling in forms for medicare. All remarkably straightforward.

We bought lots of stuff in preparation for moving into the house. All the new small electicals etc that we would need.

Also bought a van. 2000 Dodge caravan.

House closing didn't really go as it should.

The man we bought it from wasn't out on the day of closing until 9pm.

We arrived to walk through the property with our realtor at 1pm and the house was still full of boxes etc.

The garage had even more stuff in it. 

We arranged through the lawyers that he would be out of the house, old freezer included by 7pm and out of the garage in a week. They held back $3000 to make sure.

Well we went back to the house at 7pm. no one was there except 2 cats and a dog.

He eventually turned up and took them away. We locked up and returned to our friends house.

Since then we have cleaned and cleaned and painted and painted and it is begining to feel better in here.

It had been left quite dirty.

We got the house last Wednesday and moved in on Saturday after a lot of cleaning.

But it is begining to take shape and the land will be nice . We must have close to 30 acres.

We have spent the last two days painting out the two main floor bedrooms, as we have new carpets coming for them on Monday.

We are also painting the kitchen cupboards (inside & out) as they are old and a bit dull and we can't afford to put a new one in until we start earning some dollars. 

Just when we thought we were winning, ants started appearing in the kitchen, so we have put down stuff and hope they will be gone in a week (that what it said on the bottle).

we had been told by our shippers that the container should dock in Halifax around May 22, but the agent this end has informed us that that is a mistake and it doesn't dock until the 29.

So thats an extra week we hadn't planned on.

But all in all we are settling down now.

I would have loved to buy a brand new lovely Canadian house, but this place has all the infrastructure that we need (barn, big double garage and land) in the location that we want, so compomises had to be made.

It will all be nice when it is done and I will look back on this last week and laugh (possibly histerically).

The worst thing was that our dog who should have been flying over on June 4 with our son got really ill after we left (either liver cance or infection) and had to be put down on Monday.

Not being around for the couple of weeks that he was sick and being with him at the end was really hard.

Our son had to do it and that wasn't fair on him either.

So although it has not been the easiest of beginings in some ways, we like it here.

People are genuinely very friendly here in Moncton and the athmosphere very relaxed.

If it wasn't for the upset with the dog I would feel quite at home already, but then I would feel bad about him even if we were back in the UK.

Anyway I will update soon.