Yesterday was a special day!
Beside the fact that it was a palindrome date and Groundhog Day, it was a day in which suddenly a lot pieces fell into place for us. We got the confirmation of the shipping date of our campervan to Europe and suddenly everything happened at once.
In my last blog I wrote we would use January to work on modifying our campervan to our taste and to give Omicron a chance to change its course. Well, we have done just that. The month flew by!
Beside our everyday life of work and school, we managed to squeeze a lot into the month.
Our zoo memberships were about to expire so we made sure we got one more day in to enjoy the animals that live so close to our home.
Ever since we moved to Winnipeg we have had a membership, it is now time to let it expire. New adventures are waiting for us.
Raija joined her online cooking class again, which is the highlight of her week, and Myron is still actively playing cornet and French horn. School projects are being made and books are read.
John and I researched a lot of aspects of our trip, mainly insurance related topics. There is a lot to organize once you decide to pack up and go. I spoke to the Homeschool department of the Manitoba Ministry of Education and registering the children there is on the list for the coming week. The children were eligible for their second dose of the Covid vaccine mid January and now we have a total of 10 vaccines together; we are all double vaxxed and John and I have our booster. We feel very protected!
And winter truly arrived with deepfreeze temperatures, windchills even colder, and a heap of snow.
We also continue to organize our belongings; packing up things we like to keep and bringing them to our storage unit, and donating unused items to local charities. The cats love it when we bring boxes into the house ;)
We printed off the first four months of 2022 on big sheets of paper, and hung them on the wall. This way we have a better visual of the months to come. Myron is keeping track of how many days we have left till we leave and Raija keeps on adding little things that have happened. For John and me it is a way to keep track of the things we still need to do and to be able to check of the ones we have done.
And just like that, January 31 was here. The day we had to decided whether we were going to terminate our rent or keep it longer. We were in de midst of organizing the shipment of the campervan but that did not go as smooth as we hoped for. Initially the German company SeaBridge we book through doubted we could register for a shipping at all as our car registration is Canadian and we are Dutch citizens. It took them a day to understand that our Permanent Resident Card gives us almost all the rights a Canadian citizen has. Once that was figured out they came back to us and asked whether we could provide a car registration with a VIN?! We were pretty sure the car registration did have the VIN but upon checking it, it turned out the insurance company had made a mistake and had put the serial number of the campervan as the VIN.... A trip to MPI resolved that issue but time was ticking, January 31 only had 24 hours... In the end we decided to take the plunge and terminate our rent as of March 31 and hope for the best.
And then came 2-2-'22.... We woke up that morning with an email from SeaBridge with the confirmation that Kleintje will be shipped from Halifax NS on April 7, sailing to Hamburg Germany in ten days! We were thrilled. This was the important piece we needed before we could start the rest of our preparations. And suddenly things went quickly; John handed in his resignation letter at work and we sent an email to the school informing them about the last school day for the children at the end of March. I spoke to my manager and I will put myself on a zero hour contract and this way I can keep my position within Sorenson Communications for when we return.
And tonight we booked our flights out of Halifax... it is all coming together.
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