Even the garbage trucks won't come here!

Photo 1 = The neighbours and our front yard. Love the port a potty, bet that's cold in the winter.

Photo 2 = Lunar landscaping in our own backyard.

We like our new home. Our back yard looks like the lunar surface. We have no lawn and no driveway. The street lights are not working. Most of the homes on our street are vacant and even the garbage trucks won’t come here (yet). There is a bright yellow digger parked in the backyard of the home across the street. 

New construction. We have become used to it. Our neighbours are the construction crew, Ben, Bill, Kevin and Luke et al. They arrive at 6.00 am and work quite late. They’re all very nice.  No one lives here yet, we're the first.

It has been such a busy time, but we finally have unpacked the essentials in our new home. It’s so nice to have a working kitchen, clothes in the wardrobe, and furniture in the right place. We finally got cable, internet, and ‘phone service too, and we have really been out of touch. We must have been the last people on the planet to find out the Chilean miners were rescued (fantastic news!).

I love the shoeless indoors part. I always asked people to take their shoes off on the carpet. Who knows what anyone has stepped in, and I don’t want it on my carpet. (Years ago my mother-in-law was quite offended that I asked her to remove her shoes indoors.) The cable guy came (on time), and he had booties over his shoes. The 2 fellows who installed the washer and dryer (on time) slipped their shoes off when they came in the house. I don’t have to ask anyone anymore. Love it!

We don’t have cell service yet, because there are so many plans and because we are mentally tired they don’t make any sense. If they still don’t make sense next week, then it’s not because we are tired ;)

There is a park with trails across the street where we live. We noticed that there are lots of parks and playgrounds around town.

Sophie loves it here. She eats well, loves to go on walks (more walks because she has no back yard), and lies in the sun and sleeps. She gets very tired you know. I don't know how a dog can sleep all night, get up and eat, have a short walk, and then sleep some more, but she's good at it.

I was in a store the day before Thanksgiving, and 1 hour before closing I noticed that curtain rails were 50% off. I didn’t have any measurements, and the sale ended in 1 hour, so I bought several rails, used the ones that fit and returned the ones that didn’t . Love a bargain.

Kids have started school and are very happy. Grades 7 and 8 have recess here twice a day, so younger two are very happy, since they don’t have recess in Florida schools after kindergarten.

There’s still more to unpack, but the major unpacking is done. Isn’t there always still more to unpack? Moving into a smaller home is good because it forces one to get rid of things you no longer need. For now I’m able to store it in the garage and get to it later.

It is so warm here for October. I cannot believe it is so warm. We are enjoying it, but I expect the weather will change one day like someone flicking a switch. I know, I’ve already seen the Canadian Tire commercial where the guy pays a toll, and he is snowed in before he can drive through the gate. Eric is ready for winter, he has his car scraper in the car. Last week he had to scrape frost off the car, and he thought this was fun. Let’s see how this plays out when we are removing several inches of snow off the car, scraping the hard frozen ice from the windows, the key is frozen in the lock and we need hot water to free it, and the car engine won’t turn over because we can’t get the car in the garage because of all the boxes we still haven’t unpacked, lol.