Greg and I moved to Fort MacLeod in February 2014. It's a town of about 3,000 people I think, and it very much has a small town feel. We came here because eventually we plan to build and permanently settle about 5 minutes out of town. More immediate reasons were financial and practical. We weren't huge fans of living in Calgary (read "Big City, Little Friends" to find out why). Soon after I wrote that, Greg decided for sure not to go back to school, and his sister-in-law inherited a tiny little mobile home from an old lady that she had befriended. We said we would come down for a week and clean the place out for her. The lady (Mrs. Elhert) was a hoarder...like badly. We took 3 days to clear out all of the junk from her house. Then we took another 2 days to clean the place. 4 truck loads to the dump and 3 to Salvation army later, we had the place cleaned and painted. We decided to move in there. Rent and utilities are about a third of what we were paying in Calgary and the house is way closer to Greg's family and my relatives.
Soon after we moved, Greg's sister, brother-in-law and 5 kids moved about 7 minutes away. Since moving, we have really enjoyed the town/area. We visit either Steven and Sonja (and their 4 girls) or Hetty and Brent (and their 5 kids) every week or two. Both of them live right near town. We can do all of our groceries and shopping in town if we want, and I'm finally starting to understand and utilize our grocery store's rewards program (PC Plus). We've built 3 parks in town; one is amazing! Another is right down the street from us. We go to a church a couple blocks away which is a whole blog in itself, but we have made some great friends there. We also have some friends right down the street who we see often.
We live on the "wrong side of the tracks" (ok...I don't know why I put that in quotes. It literally is the wrong side of the tracks). Probably around 70% of the houses on our blocks smell like pot on a regular basis. There are occasionally drunk people passed out on the road. There are more suicides and murders per capita on this side of the tracks than there are in most places. This all seems bad, but it means all the theft, happens on the other side of town because that's where the rich people live. We maybe lock our doors half the time when we're gone and have yet to be robbed (it may be because our house looks like it would be better burnt, but hey we like it).
My favourite part is probably that at least once a week, we get a visit from Greg's Uncle Gerald. He is a 70ish year old man who's wife really struggles with depression. He sometimes just needs to come over to feel a little joy and have a cup of coffee and we are always more than happy to oblige! He drives school bus twice a day and owns the building that houses the post office in town. He used to farm, but when that got too much, he and Aunt Rita moved into town and bought a nice house on the right side of the tracks. He loves Annalyn and even fed her an entire bowl of soup the other day. Whenever he needs help moving something in the Post Office, he comes over and picks Greg up. He also happily helped us renovate our kitchen one evening (he stayed and helped from about 6PM-10PM). We really like Uncle Gerald and feel that we can be a blessing to him.
Another big plus of living here is my bi-weekly lunches/coffee's with my sister-in-law Ellen. She works in the medical clinic in town and comes over about twice a week just to cuddle Annalyn, talk, eat, and drink coffee. It's really nice and breaks up the day very nicely.
As far as our house goes, we bought it for $7,000 (probably above market value in all honesty). We've made some fantastic improvements in it since living here. First, we cleaned it out and painted. Then we added a shed in the back yard which meant we could switch our bedroom from the tiny 5' by 7'6" room into the 12'6" by 15' room. It also meant that we could store our bikes outside rather than in the house (that's one thing we don't trust outside around our neighbourhood). It also meant that we could prepare the tiny room for the arrival of Annalyn. We painted it brown and turquoise and got a crib and change table along with some colourful bins from Ikea. It's actually a super cute little room. Next we added a front porch. Now this may not seem like a big deal, but our old entrance went through our bedroom which meant when Uncle Gerald came for a 8:00 AM visit on a Saturday morning and just walked in, we were very grateful that Annalyn had woken up at 6:30. It also meant we could take our freezer out of our bedroom and put it somewhere more fitting. It also meant that the wind didn't whip through our house and make it -7 C right next to that door. Our next improvement seemed like my favourite at the time, but thinking back, the other ones were all huge too! It was a new kitchen! Our old kitchen had about 3 square feet worth of counters, incredibly inexcusable cupboards, very little storage, stained counters, cupboards that were falling apart, and no oven or stove. Now our kitchen is beautiful! It has about 10 sq feet of counter, loads of cupboards, a big pantry, a microwave, and a stove and convection oven. It's very nice. The next improvement was mostly for Greg, but I have come to enjoy immensely too. We got a nice little cast iron wood stove. We spent a couple days building a hearth and mantle for it and then put the stove in. It has made our living room so incredibly cozy and reduced our heating bill! We've spent a bit of money on this house, but it has become so much more livable and people actually like visiting us now (at first Greg's mom was repulsed that Greg would make his wife live in such a dump).
We just had someone agree to buy our house. We loose possession on March 1. We're not really sure where we're going to live yet, but we'll figure it out. If we end up moving out of Fort Macleod, I'll really miss it, but I'm sure other places have big advantages too. We might move to Monarch which is halfway between Fort Macleod and Lethbridge. Otherwise, maybe we'll move to Shaughnessy which is closer to all my side relatives and Lethbridge. I guess we'll see what happens. Wherever we end up, I'm sure we'll love that too, and hey, if we don't, we can always just re-uproot!
No comments:
Post a Comment