Will and I have been discussing moving out of town for probably nine years. But despite getting many job offers in different cities there just hasn't been something yet that felt like the right thing to do.
Moving to Prince George first came up seriously in our talks in June of 2023 and it wasn't until August '23 that we first mentioned it to someone else.
In September we made a trip to Prince George, mainly to visit with our friends but also to determine if the town was an easy no or not.
It wasn't.
We went again in November to meet with the missionary pastor of the church there and figure out what church life was like and what sort of a need there was. Will went to a mechanic shop hoping to meet with the owner and see if there'd be any interest in hiring him in the future. Unfortunately the boss was on vacation so Will had a video call interview with him and a manager later in the month.
In January '24 we started actively looking for houses and discussed this big move with our church elder and care group.
In February we had told most of our friends about the plans to move and had our first showing via video call of a dream property - two houses on 70 acres.
We had some mixed feelings about it after viewing online and decided for the time being to let it rest and keep looking.
In March we went to PG again. That 70 acres was off the market at the time but we still drove past it.
We confirmed with the church of our plans to move.
Will had four interviews that resulted in three job offers.
In April the 70 acres came back on the market and Will went in person to view it.
Needed a lot of work but had so much potential.
We placed an offer which was accepted.
We were ecstatic!
Only the day before closing it fell through.
The next weekend Will and I headed up together to look at another house in a whirlwind of a trip.
In PG for less than 12 hours.
Leaving after work on Friday to look at a house Saturday morning and head back home noon on Saturday. Very handy that PG is 'only' an 8hr drive from Langley.
Going into the showing our only concern was the location, as it was a bit further from Will's work (he'd accepted a job offer by now) and from church than we were hoping.
Once we got there the house was nothing like the pictures. I was trying to figure it out and I pulled the listing up on my phone - the furniture was all different! The photos were much older and showed a younger house and property.
We also found out that someone who had been previously incarcerated for manslaughter lived just two doors down - not a great selling feature for the homeowner to let slip...
So we drove home with no offer.
We inquired about two other properties that caught our eye, both with accepted offers already placed.
In May we got into our car accident which put a huge pause on our house hunt. Our lives were filled with ICBC paperwork and EI forms. Finding a new vehicle for our family was much more pressing than a future home.
Along the way we had come up with a timeline of sorts. Working backwards from Baby being due in August, we'd want to be moved in July, so we would have to have purchased a house in June.
Well, with Will still off work from the accident, it was already June. And we had no house.
We looked briefly into renting something.
Then Will asked our friend in PG, Jared, if he was serious about an offer he had made months ago for us to live in a trailer on their property. And he had been serious.
So then we began to look at trailers to buy. It was helpful to have Will at home because he could go to look at trailers during the day. We went as a family once, just him and I with Delilah, and he even took Delilah one-on-one one day, and James another.
A week and a half through June we closed on a trailer!
Another friend hooked us up with a seacan to store everything that wouldn't fit in the trailer
Very exciting to watch the crane truck deliver it
Our exact move date was unsure at this time, somewhere in the week of July 8th was our plan.
Delilah and I made a paperchain countdown calendar.
It looked so small in the end that I recounted the chains to make sure we had the correct amount. We did. 3 weeks just really isn't all that much time.
On June 15th our trailer got delivered!
It was a rainy morning and the kids still had their pajamas on but they covered up in raingear and boots and headed out to watch the arrival.
That Saturday was actually a very busy day for us and we only had some brief pockets of time to check it out in between activities.
This is in the boys' room
Delilah's loft
Living room
Kitchen
Sunday was Father's Day and we had a picnic in the trailer.
I spent the first week cleaning the trailer (it previously was owned by a farm hand, not filthy, but not deep cleaned either) and was very excited once that was finished to move some things into our new home!
With school out for the summer we got to have Madi help us go on a shopping trip to IKEA for kids mattresses and a few other things
Packing boxes emptied out our house pretty quickly.
It was fun, exciting, scary, and terifying all at the same time.
Putting in an office chair mat to protect the carpet under our table from the unavoidable spills that happen with kids.
Disassembling the kids beds.
These boys were a little unsure of the loud drill, but got over it quickly and were helping Will collect all the screws and other little pieces.
Up in Delilah's loft we bought her some baskets to line her shelves with her many, many, treasures.
And Will installed a vent fan (on the left) to bring some airfloor into the boys' bedroom which is below.
When we removed the rv mattress that was in the loft we found that they had only had the first three or so feet carpeted and underneath the mattress there was just plywood. So we bought a roll of almost matching carpet to fill the missing space.
Our first dinner in the trailer!
Our apartment getting emptier and emptier
First sleep in the trailer!
We did a test run before we moved to help work out some of the kinks before the real move date.
And this was the night before our move day!
I just about filled this whole paper with things to do.
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