We Got The PR!!

Well it's been a looooong year and a half, waiting for Canada to decide if they want us to become permanent residents.

Today they made their decision, and it's a YES!!!

We need to send off copies of our passports to London office, so we won't get the confirmation back in time to take with us for landing, so we'll need to get them posted off to Canada. Then all we have to do is take a trip accross to the USA, do some shopping, then activate our PR's on the way "home" ;-)

In other news...

We have a signed lease agreement for a house in Ancaster. It's a minimum 2 month lease, which is perfect, and we might find our dream home to buy in that time.

So just some direct debits to cancel, and some address changes to do. What a doddle!, lol.

Last family get-together

We invited everyone to our favourite restaurant for a last family doo. We chose the "World Buffet" round the corner from us. If you've never tried it, and there's one near you, DO IT NOW!!. It's amazing. I think it's the same people who owned the Ashoka, but so much better.

Ok, before that, Ailsa's mum treated us to a show at a nearby park. The event was called "Electric glen", and you will see why when you look at the photos I took:

2 weeks on Thursday

Yes, less than three weeks now.

Still to finalise our lease agreement for our rental in Canada, but almost there. Big thanks to Krista our realtor for helping us get this setup.

wee plug: Krista's page

Our house sale will hopefully be finalised soon. It would be nice to be heading over to Canada with a nice wee bank balance to get started with.

On the subject of the house sale. When you get your home report done, make sure you ask if the surveyor is on the lenders list for "rent to buy". If not, the purchaser will need to send out another surveyor (at his expense), and this can slow things down a little.

We are surviving at Camp Scott, but we are really missing our bed. Everything else we can do without, but you really need a good nights sleep when you are this stressed. As it turns out we are probably moving into a furnished house for a couple of months and could have held on to our stuff till we left here, but you just don't know what the future holds, despite your best planning.

Looking forward to Sunday night. We have arranged a wee get-together for the family at a local place called "World Buffet". It's an everything you can stuff in your gob affair, but there are stations all over the place offering everything from Pizza to Curry. I'll get some pictures.Oh, and they have a chocolate fountain with marshmallows and fruit, yum.

Hope you all have a nice weekend, and watch out for that meteor that;s going to narrowly miss flattening London, lol. Stupid news reporters

Ship details

For anyone sad enough to want to follow our ship's progress, here what you need to know...

 Dave n Ailsa's Container ship tracking website!

The ship's name is MSC Alyssa  you just type that in a box on the left (Go to vessel) and hit enter.

Bon Voyage!!

Ailsa says....

3 and a half weeks to go till move day and we are still fighting to get past every step of this journey!! Loving every minute though!
Still no sign of Passport requests unfortunately, still stalking the postie on that one!
Our house here in the UK is still "under offer" taking an age to get through the legal stage, we are both starting to get really concerned that it all falls through and goes back on the market just based on how long its taking.
Finding a house on the other side has been equally challenging, I think we have tried to rent 4 or 5 now and something has gone wrong in the last stages, our Realtor (Krista Hann) has been awesome and so helpful, feeling bad for putting her through the mill just to find a short term rental! Most rentals want you to stay for a year and don't like letting for less time. Really what we want to do is buy though so we start looking as soon as we land, have a few lined up to see but its so had to tell from pictures.
Got our bank account and a credit card set up when we were over in Dec (Scotia bank... great deal for immigrants) and now also have provisional approval for a mortgage so we know our budget which is great. Even that was traumatic though as our Canadian credit check came up with debt that wasn't ours, which we had to have unpicked and we also had to send a copy off our UK credit history to help solve that.
We have calls next week with tax experts on either side, apparently you have to complete a leaving the UK form for tax purposes... who knew?? lol
Having the relocation package really helps and is worth the 2 years of hard graft and politics to get it! Doing all this without a job lined up on the other side we were absolutely prepared to do, but would have been even more challenging, greatest of luck and respect to you guys going this route...

Camping in the house is certainly interesting... Oh to have a couch and a bed... the luxuries of life!! We have found ourselves going out for a drive just to get a comfy seat in the car - lol!! Last nights awesome Saturday entertainment was watching a little green boat shaped graphic of  the container ship destined to transport all of our life long collection of belongings, docking at Liverpool. Lol!! What did we all do before the internet provided such entertainment!! Its due to depart today... so i'm guessing the next couple of weeks will include much little green boat tracking!!


Now am off to go find a bed for the night, our air mattress has a puncture, not the best nights sleep ever, waking at 5:30am with half of you on the floor and the other half squished off the semi flat bed by a large dog isn't the best!!

 Ailsa.

Day 3, in the Big Brother House...

The Scott family are getting used to their new surroundings. There's a sense of excitement in the air, and even the dog seems more settled.

The next challenge is finding somewhere to live in Canada when we get off that plane.

The house sale is still moving along as it should, no surprises so far. Still don't know if it will be concluded before we leave the country.

Starting Monday, I will be contacting all the companies we pay each month, to cancel, or change addresses.

Tick tock! only 32 days !!!

Container Day

The run up to the container coming was a bit stressfull.
We had no idea how everything was going to happen, and what, if any preperations we should make. Should we file and sort everything in the house? should we put things in boxes or neat piles etc.

As it turns out, when a packing company says "we take care of everything" they actually mean it, lol.  The guys from Allied International (they bought over Pickfords) arrived promptly at 9am Monday, with a truck full of paking materials, introduced themselves, had a walk round with me and got started.

End of day one they left one of the couches un-wrapped, and the beds.

Day two was similar, arrived on time, worked all day.
Here's a word of warning though if you have pets: I had been keeping Hemi out the way for the two days, but towards the end of day two we thought he would be used to the guys. Unfortunately he snapped at one of the guys when he tried to pat him and gave him a nip. He obviously thought they guy was trying to put him in a box.
So, no matter how friendly you think your dog is, just keep him out the way for the entire time. This incident was reported to their head office, but hopefully it will go no further.

Day three Container Day!

 This is the 40 foot container, which is the biggest you will get for shipping. It's a little big for our needs, but we wouldn't get everything in the 20 footer.

Hemi was supervising operations:

The rain stayed off for the whole time the container got filled! yes, SHOCKER!, lol

Within 2 hours they were shoring it up and putting the security seal on it.

And then it was off, on it's 5 week voyage accross the atlantic. I will ad the vessel details later so you can track it, if you're sad like me, lol.

So that left us with this, and a very confused doggy:

We still have 5 weeks before we head over, so we went to Ailsa's folks to scrounge some temporary furniture. Full details of Camp Scott coming soon!

2 days till "P" day!

We have today and tomorrow to decide what goes in the container, and what goes in the cases and travels with us in 6 weeks.

Because on Monday morning, at 9am THIS will be here! (not actual truck but similar)

Personally I think a 40ft container is overkill for our wee house, but then again, we have a lot of junk. At least it means we can everything.

I'll get pictures of the actual truck arriving on Monday :-)

Shippers coming soon

Our shippers will be here on Monday morning to take everything to Canada!

So I have a week to sort out everything we want to keep/send/bin/donate

I also have an entire garage full of car stuff to sort through. I don't mind that part, but it's so damn cold out there. Would probably be better if we had some SNOW!!!

Seriously, WTF! where's ours!!!

That reminds me, I need to pack my wee Canadian flag.

Still waiting to hear back if we have got a house lease yet.

Somewhere to live

45 days, 20 hours to go.


We are organising a 6 month rental for when we arrive in Canada, with the help of Krista our realtor.

She is working hard for us, and is trying to secure a lease this weekend.

Will update with pictures if/when we get the good news.

House is sold!

So that wasn't so bad eh? lol

We are on track now for an easier transition to Canada, without the worry of what to do with an empty house back in the UK.

We are currently arranging a short term lease on a nice wee house in Ancaster, which is where we would like to eventually buy. All going well, our household items will arrive at the same time as us, maybe the next day, so we might be camping for a night in our new home in Canada. Sounds great to me.

Time to start calling phone companies, power companies and Insurance companies, and let them know we won't be needing their services for much longer. Oh, and council tax, I'm sure they will miss us.

I should maybe look up vets in Ancaster for the dog, among a million other things, lol.

Dog Logistics

Hemi's crate arrived today.

Cost about £130 delivered, from these guys:

zooplus

We went for the Retreiver/Husky size. Looks to be perfect, although I think someone may disagree, lol.

I contacted Glasgow airport to ask about the arrival procedure. Basically, we just walk him in through the airport, and find a big trolley for the crate. Once we get to Air transat to check in, they will come and collect him. At that point we put him in the crate and off he goes. See you in Canada boy!

Not sure what happens at the other side yet, but I'm sure we will work it out. As long as we have his rabies vaccination certificate and vaccination history to show his age etc it should be fine.

Canada requires EITHER, a rabies vacc certificate, OR a vets certificate to prove he he is coming from a rabies free country.

However, he is going to a country that DOES have rabies, so it makes sense to get him vaccinated.

I have just done a deal with a friend, to swap my Mondeo estate for his 4x4, so we can get the crate in and get it to the airport. Will just dump the car at the airport ;-), lol.

So that's the dog sorted.

Isle of Wight

Last trip before Canada!

Ailsa's Dad treated us all to a trip to the Isle of Wight, to celebrate Ailsa's 40th, and her mum's 70th. Ailsa's brother and family live there now, so we were all together for the last time in a while.

The weather was a bit grey and foggy, but hey, it's the middle of winter, so not too bad.

The sun did come out for 3 minutes when we got to the Needles, so Managed to get a couple of nice snaps.

It was great to see Mandy and Keith and the girls, and catch up.

Now we need to get our heads down and start planning our next trip.... the BIG one, lol.

Countdown

62 days, 8 hours, zero seconds, till we blast off.

Organised a Canadian bankers draft today. Bank of Scotland kind of sucked. They had never done one before and after half an hour tell me I need to go home for my passport. When I come back in they tell me I don't need it after all.

Anyway, should be with me in a few days, then I can forward it on to Canadian Immigration. This should be the last pile of cash we send them for a while.

Found a cute wee house for rent on Kijiji today. It's a bit far out, but in the right school catchment area. But at least new properties are starting to become available now after the Christmas lull. This one is very cheap, and has loads of land for the dog.

Logistics

So it's 3.26am, and my mind is spinning with all the organisation we need to do.

The biggest p.i.t.a is the dog. We love him dearly, but what a headache he is causing...

When we first arrive, we will be offered furnished accomodation for three months, but it is very unlikely the appartments will allow dogs. So that means finding somewhere for the dog till we find our long term lease, or buy a house. But we can't buy a house till we sell our house in Scotland.

The area we buy or lease directly affects which schools the kids will be allowed to attend. Further more, there is a high chance that the boys will be going to different schools because of the different ages and grading.

The most sensible choice is to take on a year lease on a house in the right area. As much as we want our Canadian Dream Home, it's very unlikely we will sell our own house before we move over. And even if we do, what are the chances that our dream home will be for sale at that time.

As I pointed out to Ailsa earlier today, the more decisions we make now, the easier it will all become. Like booking the flights for example, we have now made a date to work to and we must adhere to that now. So the next decision might just be choose a rental, pay the deposit and work to that. We shall see.

I need to start thinking about all the small details now, like closing accounts, phone contracts, subscriptions etc. Need to get school records, in fact I need to let the school know the kids won't be attending after the start of March, lol. 

On the subject of the kids...

Ross is excited. He had a teary moment earlier, at the thought of leaving his pals behind, but that lasted about 20 seconds. Kyle is not so excited, but I think he is more accepting of the concept than he was a year ago. We have assured him he can return to Scotland when he reaches adulthood, if he so desires, but it would be handy to get Canadian citizenship first, so he will always have the choice.

Parents..

It has occurred to me that I may not see my mum and dad for a very long time. They are currently in their house in Spain for winter and won't be back till after we have left for Canada. I may have to find some cheap flights and take a quick trip over to see her before we go. Not the end of the world, I do love her part of Spain.

Ailsa's folks will be over to visit us often I'm sure, so we're not too worried about them. We might even plan a family get-together at some point, with Sheila and Jen coming over from BC at the same time, that would be awesome.

More soon...

Flights booked!

We decided we had to set a date, so why not just book the flights and be done with it, lol.

We leave on March the 7th 2013. One-way flights are booked with Air Transat.

Happy New Year!

So this is the year!

We decided to  upgrade the second bedroom to make the house more sellable, so it now has fresh paint, new carpet and new bed covers etc. Lets hope the viewers start flooding in soon.

We have set a provisional leaving date of March 7th. We hope to book the flights, including the dog, next week. We have ordered his flight crate, so that should arrive in the next few days.

We had a very quiet Hogmany, with just the four of us at home. New years day we went to Ailsa's folks for dinner and had a lovely meal. Perhaps next year they will spend it with us.... in Canada.

November/December madness!!

After a year and a half of hard work and persuasion, on November the 18th Ailsa was at last offered a job transfer to the Burlington branch of her company in Canada.

As you can imagine, this was very exciting news for us all. It means we can apply for Temporary Work Permits, and start working and living in Canada as soon as we can get there, without needing to wait for Permanent Residency status.

To that end, we decided to book a short trip in December, to try and sort a few things out, like bank accounts and work permits. Ailsa was needing to go over for work anyway, so we only had to pay for flights for me.

So early December we headed to Canada with everything we needed to activate our TWP's, or so we hoped. 

The Temp Work Permits were much easier than we had feared. But then, we were well prepared, which is definitely the key. Do as much research before you go, and you should sail through.

So with our fresh TWP's in hand, we headed into our new country. First stop...Tim Hortons of course, lol

While Ailsa was working, I spent my time driving around exploring possible areas to settle. But despite visiting many new areas, it all came back to the town of Ancaster. It just fits us perfectly.

We successfully opened a bank account, got a credit card approved, and a pre-approved mortgage for when we need it. We also visited "Service Canada" where we arranged our new Social Insurance cards, which are needed for health and tax purposes.

A very worthwhile trip.

On returning to Scotland, lying on our doorstep was our Medical Exam requests, from Canadian Immigration. This is a vital step in the PR process, and if all is well, then the next step after that is passport requests in a couple of months.

We wasted no time, and had booked our meds for the the next couple of days. So they are now done and dusted. We now need to send CIC more money for our PR Fees, then after a few months we will hopefully have PR status. What a great couple of weeks.