Macleod Momentum

We have had a marvelous time exploring down town Ottawa! It is incredible gorgeous and steeped in history. The one thing that humbled me is the AMOUNT of people that are celebrated at every turn. There are monuments for so many people, plaques, busts and displays honouring COUNTLESS people that made Canada Canada. First thing this morning we took in the House of Commons tour. I remember as a kid looking at pictures of it during Social Studies. I also remember my parents watching the live broadcast from time to time. It was truly awesome to be able to see it in person. What we saw today was actually a temporary House of Commons. As luck should have it, the ENTIRE Parliament is under construction for the next 10 years! But that’s ok because they moved the entire House of Commons exactly as it was.   We learned (or relearned) so much about our government. The tour guide told us where the dignitaries sit and why, how the general process works, and a few interesting fa...

Do you know the song Sugar Sugar? It’s a song from the 60’s by a band named The Archie’s. If you’re unfamiliar with it, I encourage you to look it up. Not only does Nola love to read Archie comics, she has fallen in love with that song. She’s also a solid 9.5 years old. She’s been begging to use my phone so she could listen to songs. She made her own play list and asked me to download certain songs for her to listen to. I obliged, however, it has become an inconvenience! Realizing she IS in fact the age of having her own music device, we started looking around. What is the modern day Walkman? I immediately asked the Facebook world for thoughts and opinions. The stipulations were pretty firm for us: no internet, no data, no games, etc. A music device was all it would be. After a short visit to Best Buy for something else, I took a look and asked the clerk some questions. It came down to this. And the girls LOVE it! They share it and have their own separate playlists. It’s very smal...

This past week found us in Ontario. Many people we talked with asked us if we would be taking the American route to the east. Early on we had decided we would go straight through Canada because we never have before and we don’t know when we would actually get the chance to do it again! People continually warned us it was VERY boring and that there “wasn’t much to see”. My mom even said it was as boring as Saskatchewan, just different! It did not deter us…but man were they right! We left Winnipeg on Friday August 9 th and made it to Dryden, Ontario. It was a perfect, quiet little over night spot with a playground nearby for the girls. After we unhitched the trailer, we headed into town to check out their little suspension bridge. Nola loves this kind of thing, whereas Heidi becomes VERY nervous! It was enjoyable but we got ATTACKED by mosquito's. The next day, we got to Thunder Bay. It’s a quaint little city and we had one day to spend there. We hit the tourist infor...

This week has been full of little adventures! We are getting settled into our tiny home 🏠 and enjoying it thoroughly. I’ve realized the mess can get out of hand VERY quickly, but in the same token it gets cleaned up very quickly which is nice! I’m realizing just how small my fridge is and I’m learning how to downsize my groceries considerably. It’ll take a bit to get used to groceries every four days and this limited space. We really enjoyed our stay in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. This place has special ties for me in particular because my grandparents immigrated just South West of here. In 1951, my Opa and his brother Adam came to Canada. They docked in Halifax and rode the train all the way to Moose Jaw. Here they got off and nobody was waiting for them. At 21 years old, my Opa didn’t speak a word of English nor did his 23 year old brother. They spent the night sleeping on the seats of the train station and in the morning a kindly CPR attendant bought them breakfast at a local ca...

We have officially flown the coop! 🦅 Today is the day we left. Can you even believe this is what we’ve done? One thing that has come up a number of times that always seems to surprise me is when people say this is “brave”. I never once stopped to consider how brave this actually is. Yes, it’s uncomfortable and unknown but I was reluctant to wear a badge of “brave”. I’ve considered this over the last month quite thoughtfully and decided I will wear that word with pride. We ARE brave! The last few days have certainly been a whirlwind. We had made plans to physically move out of our house on Monday. We had the sea can in the driveway and we had much of the house boxed up. We used very good movers to help us play Tetrus in the sea can, but to no avail everything did NOT fit! We were SCRAMBLING! We called around to storage facilities and couldn’t believe that we would pay $153 for a 10 x 10 storage unit but the entire sea can was costing us $125 per month!! Yikes! Thankfully, good fr...