Bundle up, it's cold out there...

A month? Never… really? Yup. A month it is. We have been ‘landed immigrants’ of this beautiful land for one whole month. Our eleven suitcases decanted & lined up in the garage, our home has slowly filled room by room, we’ve bought everything from tin openers to TV’s and everything in between. It’s amazing what you take for granted, years of growing a home, I need a paperclip – Oh we don’t have any.

As I sit, the children and Andy are watching a movie and the roast is bubbling away, the house is full of competing smells from the oven to the Christmas tree – I’ve never had a Christmas tree that smelled – and smelled good! At first I thought someone was smoking marijuana in the basement, seriously, I couldn’t understand what this massive smell was, hanging in the air. Did you know they could smell so strongly? It’s beautiful. The tree, quite the most perfect Christmas tree I ever did see.

We looked forward to the tree buying day… they grow here all over the place (funny that!) Christmas tree ‘we cut’ signs everywhere. We just had to do that, experience the ‘cutting’ – an “I want that one” moment, if you get my drift. Off scurries the man in dungarees and a checked shirt, hands so rough that he probably hasn’t even heard of Swarfega…. (that’s for girls) off he kerthumps with his saw, one zip & it’s yours. Timbeeeeeeer.

Well, as it goes, we had none of that! We did try, we drove in, looked at the trees all lined up waiting for their fate (I swear they drooped deliberately) felt completely out of our depth and then drove out again, wheel spinning out of the driveway like Thelma & Louise – straight to the local supermarket & bought our beautifully coiffed, stunningly scented, Canadian Christmas Tree. Cop out? Well, probably, but there’s only so many times a day you can blame your naivety on being “English”, sometimes you just want to ‘be’.

So, it’s here, it’s installed and it’s perfect. Twinkling away in the corner – the corner that was seriously lacking a piece of furniture, no need for that now for another few weeks. The house is positively Christmassy, it’s perfect. Andy borrowed a ladder from a kindly neighbour and spent a hilarious hour or two in the dark (he’s determined to be the ‘weird English neighbour’) installing the newly-bought (temperamental) Christmas lights onto pre-installed hooks on the fascia boards and plugged into pre-installed sockets – solely for the purpose of Christmas lights – switched indoors. They don’t just do Christmas here they do Christmas BIG – and I love it! Even the lawns peppered with herds of illuminated reindeer and “Happy Holidays” signs don’t make me recoil like they do in England, what’s happened to me? Aren’t I supposed to be all English and snobby about it? I just get into the spirit of it here and somehow it’s so inoffensive, it’s for the kids & they love it too. Bah Humbug. I’m not buying an inflatable snowman for anyone and you can’t make me. I’m only a teeny bit concerned that our house light are blue (my choice) and red (Amélie’s) making our roof apex look like it’s waiting for the ‘white’ to advertise the Brits have arrived. Toe curling thought…

So, a month of shopping, flat packed furniture, cars and trucks. A month of new schools, bus trauma and PAC (PTA) meetings. A month of old friends and new friends, of introductions and explanations, and a month of finding our feet – one step at a time. What’s been the hardest bit? I guess we’d all say different things. For Amélie, probably the forced independence of having to ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’ of bus rides without mummy and big schools, although she’d say she loves it, she’s made great friends already and thinks her teacher is wonderful. It must be pretty scary to be six here sometimes. For Tom, well, I’ll come back to Tom. For Andy, I’d say the worry of work, maybe.. ever the worrier, and lack of security – balanced out by the wonders of modern technology shrinking the globe and allowing him to continue to work for ever-faithful UK clients. Money out, out, out, he clutches his heart with every purchase…! For me? The hardest bit has probably been having to absorb so much of the ‘different’ all at once. I’m the kind of girl that has to stop and slowly take it all in, allowing my senses to build up the bigger picture; I’m easily overwhelmed with detail and emigration, new culture, new everything just isn’t conducive with my modus operandi. When you realise that a simple trip to Sainsbury’s when you grab the tea bags and the gravy powder without thinking is all out of the window. Now each & everything on the list has to be scrutinised, each label read, each price considered, nothing looks the same, you can’t just run and grab you have to read so many words, who would have thought that shopping would be so darn challenging. So that’s my hardest bit, and my take on Andy & Amélie’s, how about Tom? My portable mini-me. He is seemingly untouched by any of it. He is so unbelievably flexible and 'comme si comme ça' about the whole move. He has absorbed Canada like he lived here for the last ten of his nine years. I am truly amazed by his unflustered, pragmatic approach. He is the ‘head down, bottom up’ kind of kid that I never really saw in our Greatham bubble, he has just got on with it. When quizzed tonight about his best bit and hardest bit he shrugged his shoulders and said “..well, I guess the hardest bit was on my way to school on the first day worrying what my teacher was going to be like – and the best bit was when I arrived to see that she was great”. That’s my boy. Chill out mum, it’s no big deal, it’s not like we moved country or anything…

So, the weather has begun to turn, Autumn is fading, the beautiful leaves are all but gone, the temperatures are steadily dropping and the pool hasn’t thawed now for over a week. It’s minus nineteen tonight… We’ve had a peppering of snow with the promise of more on the way soon and have invested in much more sensible winter footwear. Christmas is around the corner and we’ll be stuffing our pockets full of tissues for the children’s school concert later this week, the big inauguration – never the same unless you have mascara streaming down your cheeks. Every time we pull up the driveway in my ‘van’ or Andy’s ‘truck’ it feels more like home, we miss it when we’re not here and Jules and Andy are bedding in, thinking of our family and friends a lot and finally being able to take my mother’s advice seriously – we’ll never go out without a shovel & a blanket in the car, somehow it seems a bit more appropriate here – thanks Mum!