House, house.

At this time last year we were moving into our home here in Granthams feeling very happy, grateful, excited to settle into our West Coast lives after leaving Montreal. It's been an interesting year in this house. It's been a good home in a lot of ways-- in the summer we were a minute or two stroll down to the beach, we gardened, stared out the window endlessly at this beautiful place, we've had lots of guests come and stay, and Sebastian has had a fairly open, safe space to roam.
But there have been some hard times, too. We've had a mentally unstable, disrespectful and at times irate landlord. We've had small pockets of mould in all corners of the house, a mudroom and closest spontaneously explode into black, green, pink mould. We've had three different people living downstairs, the last two weren't and aren't ideal for a family home, although it's been good to challenge our perceptions of people so dissimilar to us, and learn how to live in a house with them. Lately, we've had weekly real estate showings that we've had to leave for. We've learned somethings here. One, being cheap on heat in the winter on the West Coast isn't worth it for the mould reasons; two, sadly, don't assume people are trustworthy; and, three, we really, really want a stable home and we want to stay here on the Sunshine Coast.
We kept our eye on the real estate and rental market all winter, poised to leave this place when our lease came up. We thought about buying a house, took a look at some places, thought of creative ways we could manage the finances (rental suites, B&Bs, buying land with friends). In the end we found a beautiful house to rent and decided to go for it. It's just down the road, so we can stay in Granthams which we're so happy about, it's closer to the beach, a house all to ourselves, hardwood floors, beautiful views of the islands, ocean, mountains, there's a garden and sweet little yard, a tiny guest cottage for our friends, a hot tub, a wood stove, an extra room for a second creature in the next couple of years, and on and on. It feels like a real family home, a place we can settle into without worrying about leaving. It's a bit too big for us right now, and a bit expensive but we took optimistically knowing we'll grow into it, hoping we can do it justice. We're feeling just as happy, grateful and excited as we were last year, but also a bit more grounded about what we want and don't want. We'll post some pictures of our new place once we move in and in the meantime, here are some shots of the household Ham:

Where the Wild Things Are Monster aka Sebastian's "baby"

spontaneous downward dogs are big around here these days

getting into the marshmallows with isla