I’m happy to announce… the house is bought and paid for! So EXCITING! Even though we’ve been working on the house for a few weeks, it has taken forever to officially close. It’s a good thing for you too because I’d have very little to write about had we not, and you’d have a far more arduous afternoon trying to fill that extra 4.5 minutes of your day. I’m so glad you’re as happy about this as me.

The worst is over (or so I hope) after copious papers being signed, then lost by the airlines, then redone and notarized, debts incurred, and the long, long, long waiting period for us to get to this day. Now the fun can begin!

Step 1: Moving: My least favorite of all of the steps to come, but a necessary evil nonetheless. Hopefully J can do most of this while I spend my time looking very busy, writing blogs about his packing progress. Keep up the good work honey! Oh, and you missed a box by the table. Thanks!

Step 2: Wait for our sealift.  For my non-northern friends, let me explain. We live in a very remote location where everything is either flown in daily from the south (usually Ottawa or Montreal) or shipped up in the brief summer season when the sea ice breaks up and you can access our coastal city. The most cost effective way to bring things up is by boat, which means once a year you try to think of everything you can possibly need for the next 12 months – 160 rolls of toilet paper, 20L of vinegar, 5 cases of wine, 20Kg of flour, 15 cans of paint, etc. – then you take it to the docks, wait two months, and eventually it arrives on your front doorstep in Iqaluit. Yay! So, we did our big sealift shop in May, and now we wait. We were lucky enough to get a place on the first ship, and although it’s been delayed due to the sea ice not breaking up quickly enough, it is expected to arrive next Wednesday if we’re lucky.

Step 3: Unpack sealift. This,my friends, is like Christmas in July, but SO much better because this time Santa brought you wine AND Pellegrino! Okay, maybe you don’t ask Santa for those things, but once you live in the Arctic long enough, they’ll start to sound pretty good after a while.

Step 4: Start the home renovations. This year we’ll be keeping the renos fairly economical  – considering we just spent the remainder of our life-savings on toilet paper and flour – but they will be fun and hopefully a little dramatic nonetheless. This summer’s improvements will largely consist of repainting all of the beige/wood kitchen cabinets; removing kitchen bulkhead cabinets to open the kitchen up; removing some of the wood-panel wainscotting in the living room; painting the living room, bathrooms and master bedroom; installing new hardware in bathrooms; replacing most all light fixtures, light switch plates (no more yellow-beige light switches!), and I’m sure there’s more, but that’ll get us to the end of August for now.