Good news - no, Great news!

We've sold our house!!!  Woohoo!

This has been by far one of the most stressful weeks this year so far.  I've never experienced so many highs and lows within such a small space of time.

Our house has been listed since the middle to end of May this year and whilst we have had many, and I mean many, viewings we just weren't getting any offers.  It was frustrating to say the least as we also weren't getting any negative feedback either so we didn't feel there was anything we could actually do to improve our situation.  Any comments we did have back as reasons for not buying our house were things like "the house is too far from the lake", which short of physically picking up the house and moving it down the back yard 50 metres or so, we couldn't do much about.  We eventually did the only thing we could do and that was to drop the price!  This had the effect of causing some interest and in the last few weeks we've been averaging 2-3 viewings a week, sometimes more.

Last Saturday a couple (first time buyers) came to look the place over, they liked it so came back the next day, Sunday, and were here for 2 1/2 hours!  They said they would write up an offer on Monday.  Monday came and went, no offer, Tuesday came and went and by 5pm there was still no offer.  Our stand-in Realtor called to say that she was expecting an offer from them that evening but hey, I've got someone else who wants to look at the property this evening, between 7:45pm and 8:15pm?  So, off we troop with the children to Dairy Queen for desert.

At around 10:00pm our Realtor calls to say she has received an offer and will be round shortly to go through it.  We are cautiously excited.  We shouldn't have been.  It was an horrendous offer, way short of the asking price, especially as we had already dropped substantially.  To be perfectly honest we were quite insulted as they had insisted that almost any item not screwed down was included in the deal and still offered less than they knew we paid for the house last year!  An hour of ranting and raving later and we decided to sleep on it.

Wednesday dawns, the plot thickens.  Our Realtor calls their Realtor (hereinafter called the 1st party) and explains how we are less than happy with their offer, explains our reasons why and reports back that he now understands why.  Our Realtor then calls us to say that the second viewers (hereinafter called the 2nd party) the previous night went very well indeed and that they would like to come back to view the house in daylight this very afternoon.  If they like the house as much as they did the previous night they are going to write an offer there and then!  Woohoo!  Meanwhile, the 1st party's Realtor calls to ask if we are going to counter offer "my party will go higher!".  Shortly after our Realtor calls to say that the 2nd party, loved the house and are currently writing an offer.  Double Woohoo!  Now, get this, 10 minutes after that our Realtor calls again to say the 2nd party wrote the offer, signed it, put it in an envelope and sealed it, left their Realtor and within minutes called and said they wanted to hold off putting the offer in.  Woonot!  Apparently they did not want to get in to a bidding war, which I can understand, but this was very frustrating as to be perfectly frank if their offer had been a good one we would have accepted it because the 1st party had really got our backs up!

So, back to 1st party for us and the counter offer which we drew up around 4:30pm and gave them only until 7:00pm to accept or reject.  They took it to the wire and we had to wait until 7:00pm on the dot for their phone call but accept they did.

So whilst we are all feeling quite euphoric at the moment it is being balance out by the sheer and utter terror of having to pack up and move countries (again) all within the space of 5weeks!!!

Watch this space, I'm sure this isn't over yet...

Happy Birthday Winsay!

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear Winsay
Happy birthday to you!

It's actually Linsay but Noah has trouble pronouncing his L's and as we have now acquired another friend called Lindsay it can get very confusing around here, so Winsay was born!

And what better way to spend your birthday than getting together with your friends and scrapbooking?  No, there is no better way, except we won't be scrapbooking but will be finishing the Christmas cards we started last week.

Hurricane Ophelia or just a storm in a teacup?

Apparently Hurricane Ophelia is en-route to Nova Scotia!

I say apparently because there is really no mention of it on the  Environment Canada - Halifax Weather website and you'd think there would be, wouldn't you?  I mean it's being mentioned on the news, on the radio, it's even being discussed on the Kindred Creations online scrapbooking community boards.  But no mention of it in the 5 day weather forecast?  According to todays 5 day weather forecast, Saturday, which is when Ophelia may reach us, is supposed to be:

Cloudy. Periods of rain beginning in the morning. Risk of
a thundershower late in the evening. Amount 15 to 25 mm. Wind becoming
east 20 km/h in the morning then increasing to 30 gusting to 50 late in
the day. High 20.

Will we have a hurricane or not?  After much digging around Environment Canada I did manage to find a satellite picture of Hurricane Ophelia along with projections for the most predicted path of travel, which can be found here.  Now don't forget that this link is being updated at regular intervals so by the time you read this and then click on the link the situation could have totally changed, which will leave me looking not a little stupid and totally make a mockery of all I have written in this post!

As of writing this, Hurricane Ophelia is not even correctly named, officially she is now Sub-Tropical Storm Ophelia but it is possible that she could briefly regain hurricane strength today as she is still over warm water.  Is it just me and the way I think, but is anyone else imagining Ophelia lounging on a cloud, resting, having a nap so that she can feel stronger when she wakes up?  No?  Didn't think so...

Anyway.  A sub-tropical storm doesn't sound too bad, does it?  The winds may only reach gusts of up to 90km/h, see that's much better, isn't it???

So in summary, Hurricane Ophelia who is no longer Hurricane Ophelia but Sub-Tropical Storm Ophelia will move in a north-east direction along the coast of Nova Scotia and somewhere along the way could once again become Hurricane Ophelia but will change once again to Sub-Tropical Storm Ophelia, hopefully, before reaching coastal Nova Scotia.  Phew!

I don't mind as long as it doesn't interfere with the  all day crop I'm planning on attending on Saturday!

And finally I am going to show you this current satellite image because I like it.  As usual just click on the thumbnail for an enlarged view.  Oh, and Ophelia is the big orange blob, lol!

Gone to scrap

At long last I have managed to get down to some scrapbooking.  It feels like forever since I've got my cardstock, scissors and glue out to play.  I blame the children!  They and their school holidays severely upset my artistic timetable.

And what is even better than creating a LO?  One that just comes together, simply, easily and you just know is right.  Richard and I were talking earlier about how Katarina, when she first started talking, always said 'kenzu' instead of thank you.  We thought it was so cute and even when she started saying thank you properly we still used to say kenzu sometimes because it was funny.

Anyway, talking and reminiscing about this made me want to scrap the memory, after all this is why I do what I do.  So I immediately went through my photo storage boxes to find an appropriate photo for that time period.  This photo is one of my favourites and I thought it was apt because it almost looks like she is bowing as if to say 'thank you'.

It's a departure from my usual style but I have to say I am
really pleased with this layout.  It's very simple but that's just the
way I like it.  It was inspired in part by one of Renee Pearson's recent blogs, which was recommended recently by Michelle, (Renee's blog can be found here), where she talked about how legendary designer Roger Black
considers red, black and white the perfect colour palette: striking,
readable and in perfect contrast. And partly because I recently
acquired a copy of Heidi Swapp's 'Love Your Handwriting' book and I am
slowly trying to learn to love my handwriting!

The most wonderful time of the year!

Yes, it's that time of the year again - school is back!  Woohoo!  It will come as no surprise to my family and friends that I have found my first proper experience of the long Canadian summer holidays a little trying to say the least.

When we arrived in June last year we took the children out of school a week before we arrived and so I knew that we were all going to be at home together for quite a long time, 13 weeks in all if I remember rightly.  However, having just moved to a new country we had so much to do, not least of which was buying a new home, that the time really did just fly by.  Before I knew it the first day of school arrived and they were off!

This year we obviously haven't had all those other things to keep us busy.  Here they usually break up around the 3rd week of June but don't go back until the 2nd week of September, 11 weeks in all (and yes, I've counted! LOL!).  This is basically twice as long as the UK school holidays which I found to be plenty long enough for the girls.  Now, I know most Canadians put their children in to a couple of summer camps, sometimes more, but this wasn't an option for us, or at least I was hoping it wouldn't be!  Having put our house up for sale in May we really didn't expect to be here over the summer or if we were then only for a part of it and we thought that this would be spent frantically trying to pack.  Obviously we are still here so they could have gone to camp.  {me now kicking myself}

Considering the length of time they've been home we have had a good summer break together but I knew the girls were really looking forward to returning to school, mainly I think because they would be attending a brand new school.  Last year the girls were bussed to an out of district school, Rockingham Elementary, and this wasn't ideal, largely in part due to the fact that they had to catch the bus at 7:30am.  Ugh, me and early mornings do not a good mix make.  The sub-division we live in has now grown sufficiently to necessitate it's own school and so Kingswood Elementary was built and completed in late August this year, yes the end of last month!  The school was pretty much ready by the skin of its teeth, or should that be bricks?  And the bus pick up time?  A far more civilised 8:13am, yeah!

Here are the girls, all dressed up (just click on the thumbnail for an enlargement), excited because they have new lunch bags, new backpacks and new clothes!

Don't they look smart?  Obviously I have lots of the obligatory "Back to School" scrapbooking photos!  I was very proud of my girls today.  The both had great first days and came home so excited and chatting about their days.  And the best part for them both?  "No homework yet mum, not till next week anyway!"
             

And we're back

Landed in Halifax at around 9:30pm on Saturday evening but by the time we had gone through the rigmorale of customs, collected our luggage and driven home it was almost 11pm.

It's amazing how tired we all still seem considering that there is no jet lag to overcome, Bermuda being in the same time zone as Nova Scotia.  So, due to the feeling of complete exhaustion I will keep this first posting brief.

Suffice it to say we had a fabulous time and I will share all with you over the next few days.  I have managed to upload some of the many photos taken into an album, which you can find in the right hand column, so you at least have something to look at and can get a flavour of the holiday.

Will catch up with you all soon.