Busy with paint, paint and more paint.....needing a golf break!!!

Finally a bit of sun following days and days of grey and drizzle.

Well, the sun finally came out.   What a relief following what seemed to be record rains these past several days.  Not a bad thing, in my view - because it made for painting the interior of our new home so much easier.  Sunny days make for outdoor desires.  Rain and cloud makes for indoor work.  It has been a relentless effort to get the painting done.  It's coming along nicely.  No photos of worth yet but that will soon appear on the blog.

So with the weather girl forecasting sun for the weekend - Sunday being the better of the two - I organized our regular foursome for a round of golf @ King's Links Golf  by the sea.  

This is a challenging course but fun to play.  If the wind picks up this course plays like a Scottish golf course.  If it's just a breeze, then it plays more to our level.  Either way, a day on the links is better than any day in an office (or painting, for that matter).

http://www.kingslinks.ca/index1.php

Not a whole lot more to report at this time.  Simply been busy with painting this home....and bringing order to each room as the paint dries.

More photos and banter in the coming days.

Thanks for dropping by.

Mt. Baker; Unpacking; Stealing a ride on a sunny afternoon!

Close up view of Mt. Baker, WA - taken from our upstairs window.

Working to settle into our new home, we have been keeping busy with unpacking.  It's all going well. 

I have been busy building my workshop in the garage.  It's better than 90% completed.

Jeanette is moving wall pictures around to get the right fit and location.

We have decided to paint the entire house.  That process started yesterday.  The prep work is well underway and the kitchen will be the first room to have a colour change.

Applying painter's tape.

It was so beautiful on Wednesday afternoon - with temperatures hovering near 15 degrees Celsius - so we chose to skip out and take advantage of a two hour motorcycle ride.

View of Mt. Baker taken from a horse farm near our new home.

The motorcycle had not been ridden since our last major ride to Borrego Springs, CA.

Ready to go. First ride from the new home.

We headed north toward the mighty Fraser River.  Below is some of the scenery along the way.  Just love the gentle switchback roads leading to the river.  The beauty of this area is the endless roads with twists and turns - in all directions.

Golden Ears Provincial Park - So beautiful with the recent snow.

Typical roads all around us.

Gentle and heavily forested switchbacks.

It may be hard for some to imagine this but the weather here this past Wednesday was better than in Palm Springs, CA.

Eastern View.  We rode up to the end of a really small Government of Canada dock on the Fraser River, BC.  If one doesn't know where this dock is, one could not easily find it.  It is really well hidden.  We love to take riding breaks here.

Northern View.  Golden Ears Provincial Park fronted by a cedar shingle mill along the north shore of the Fraser River.

Golden Ears radiating in the late afternoon sun.

We hung around the dock and took in the scenery.  The fish boats sat still.  No sign of any fishing activities. All was quiet and peaceful.

Jeanette is enjoying a well deserved break from moving houses.

Western View.  The stillness of the Fraser River made for a picture post card.

Following a good break looking around the area, we headed eastward, along the river, towards Abbotsford, BC.  Below are a few photos Jeanette took along the way.

Stunning!

Farmland.

Heading back home on the back roads.  THANKS FOR DROPPING IN.

Now in the new house...and with internet connections as of today.

New home in south Langley.

Well, it has been some time since our last blog.  We've been very busy with sorting through stuff, packing, pushing stuff out the door and on to Big Brothers, Canadian Diabetes Assn., and other worthy social causes.  We easily dispensed of over 120 boxes of stuff we no longer needed or wanted.  Someone else could make use of the goods.  It's very liberating to get rid of stuff.  Less is more, in our view!


With our Wells Cargo trailer, we loaded and moved all of our boxed goods, plants, outdoor furniture, books, and so on.  With the help of some good friends, we loaded and unloaded three full trailer loads in record time.

Even the neighbour's cat, Jackson, was wondering what the fuss was all about.

By packing ourselves - after so many corporate moves made possible with professional packers and movers - it was a worthwhile exercise to  rid our lives of stuff we didn't need or want. Yippee!!

Good friend, Denis L. was an amazing helper.  We worked hard and fast.....with just rewards?  Too early in the day for that....but it was a worthy thought!

Good friend, Rick C., came by to help unload the first load of boxes and brought some bubbly along too!  How nice that was!!!

OK!  Where to unload and put stuff???

We had identified each box with its destination in the new home.  That made for easy work with few questions asked.

One load almost completed.

This first load was completed last Tuesday - within a few hours after the legal completion on this new property.

Furniture movers showed up on time this past Friday to load our furniture for the 20 minute journey east to south Langley.

The movers had an easy time with no boxes in the way.

It took the movers three hours to load up the house.  We were thrilled with the care and attention they took with our stuff.  Every bit of furniture was wrapped with moving blankets.....just the way it should be done!

Once loaded we drove the 20 minutes due east to our new home.

Our 5th wheel was safely parked on a neighbour's driveway....while the furniture movers were busy on our driveway.

So, with our previous home left empty, I led the way to our new home and Jeanette followed the moving truck.

Moving truck in the heart of White Rock, BC...heading due east.

Ready to unload at the new home.  We got lucky with the weather.  It called for rain but we managed to avoid any moisture.  Yeah to that!

Once arrived at the new home, the three furniture movers had all of our stuff unloaded and sorted out in the respective rooms.  That only took three and a half hours. 

These guys did a great job of moving us.

We were quite happy with the service these movers provided.  They were were meticulous and cautious.  We suffered no damage - not even a scratch that we could see.

 Sunday morning was a bright sunny...and ideal to bring the fiver to its new home.

Checking out the best way to back into it's new spot.

Jeanette ran around grabbing some photos. 

In the coming days we'll take some photos of the progress with the move, putting stuff away, finalizing how the furniture will rest in each room and how the fiver rests in its rightful spot on the west side of our new home.

We have moved from a busy urban area to a semi rural area.  We now reside in the Bakerview area of South Langley, BC.  Below is a view taken from our new front yard.

That's Mount Baker in the background.  Not a great shot....but we'll take more when the skies are bright, blue and clear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our neighbours are peacocks, little frogs, deer, horses and coyotes.  Quite a nice change from the former hustle and bustle, ambulance, fire and police sirens, transit buses and truck traffic.

Thanks for dropping in.....!  A blog about moving is not the most interesting read (or photo layout) but many of you wondered how things were going.  Well, it's going!.  Another couple of weeks and this place will be ship shape.

Packing and moving....some musings!

Walls are looking bare.

As of this writing, we are about 75% sorted and packed.  It has been going well.  After 21 years in the same home, it is amazing what one accumulates over time.

Stuff!!!

Several organizations; including Big Brothers, Canadian Diabetes Association, Disabilities groups and so on, will benefit from this move.  Just this morning, we placed several items and boxes of good stuff on the curb for pick up.  

Bookshelves are empty.  A whack of books were donated to the Rotary Club book fair.  Monies generated from these sales are put right back into the community.  Books that do not sell are sold to a paper recyclers. 

The fine china is well packed and awaits its trip to the new home.

Good friends and neighbours - across our cul de sac - are in Palm Springs and offered up their driveway to store our 5th wheel during the move.  It fits in there well.

Cynthia, a very good friend of Jeanette's - and, like Jeanette, a retired RN - came by to help out.

This move is proving to be a cleansing one.  Whereas in the past we would keep stuff when we moved, this one is all about getting rid of things that are no longer relevant.  It does feel good to rid oneself of material things with little or no relevance or importance.  When we unpack once in our new home, we realize there will be even more stuff that will go out of the door.

The skies opened up and it stopped raining.  We chose to load up all of our outdoor plants and planters and haul those to the new house.  The 1,000 lb dolly really made life easy.  Moving some huge planters was child's play with this dolly.

Backed in on the side of the new house. Below is a good photo to show where our 5th wheel will rest when we are home from our travels.

Not being overly selective about placement of the planters and plants.  Jeanette will have something to say about that as time moves forward.  I can guarantee one thing though, these plants will move at least once more....and to another location on these grounds.

 

So, the idea was to get a bit ahead of the work we face.  Although we do not take possession till the 15th of March, the previous owner has moved out.  We got the OK to place outdoor plants and furniture in the yard.  That is most helpful.

Jeanette got busy with the camera and took these photos....while you know who kept unloading plants.

We even moved our prized wildlife.  This fella didn't fight too hard when I carried him over here.  He fits right in here too.

Hmmm.....I see a lot of work ahead to get this place into the kind of shape we will want.  That, I look forward to.

Great potential.

The home we are vacating is 25 years old.  It has been completely renovated.  When we moved to White Rock, BC, - from Calgary, Alberta - 30 years ago, this community was smaller, quieter and it was a great place to raise our kids.  It is still a great community.

With both of our children raised, educated and living full lives in the Province of Alberta, Jeanette and I chose to shift our priorities. We wanted less yard work, home maintenance, and a noisy environment. We wished for a more pastoral and quiet area.We also wanted a low maintenance yard.  We wanted to downsize but this home is not any smaller than our last one....so, we consider this a 'right size' move.

This is a low maintenance yard....with a programmable sprinkler system.  No lawn to cut.....or to have someone look after.  There are no hedges that required a whack of labour at our present home.  It is located 22 minutes east of our current home, in a smaller community, and we face agricultural land reserve. The land across from us is to remain agricultural......at least until some politician's jeans are greased with $$$ and the land is turned over for development.  We were assured by the municipality that this would never happen.  Hmmmm... where have I heard that before?

Our goal is to travel more - with the motorcycle and with the RV.  We wish to spend our winter months traipsing around the sunnier climes of the southern US and Mexico, and to spend the sunny and most beautiful summers motorcycling our gorgeous Provinces of British Columbia and Alberta. 

More time for this.....!

With our children in the Province next to us - Alberta - we also plan to visit there too.  With the freedom to up and ride, up and drive, or up and RV, our living options open right up for us with this move.

....and more time for this!

Well,  it's time to get back to the business of packing and moving.  We will moving all of the boxes ourselves and we have hired professional movers to look after our furniture.  With possession of the new place on Tuesday, the 15th of March, we will have 2 1/2 days to move our boxes before our furniture movers take over on Friday, March 18th.

Agricultural land across from our new front yard....looking south east.

Front yard, looking south west.

5th wheel parking area at the new home.

Wishing all a very good day.  Thanks for dropping in.