Our first week

Well, what a packed first week we've had. The first few days were filled with the boring admin type stuff of registering for Alberta Healthcare, SIN numbers, car hire, driving licences, appointments with our bank manager to sort out bank cards, savings accounts, credit cards etc, and shopping for basic food supplies and other essentials such as a hairdryer!
We also reminded ourselves of the areas of Okotoks and quickly decided that we really want to live up on the ridge to the north of Sheep River. Crystal Shores or Drake Landing for us! (and we're veering towards Drake Landing at the moment).
We've tried to keep the boredom in check for the children by interspersing the mundane jobs with more interesting things such as trips to local restaurants, the trip into the city, to the movies, etc but it's been a little dull for them so far.

Yesterday we decided that as we plan to live up on the ridge, and we're currently renting up here anyway, we may as well bite the bullet and get them into school. Jaz has been desperate to start for the last few days although Jake is less keen (no surprises there then!). So we went up to Dr Morris Gibson elementary school yesterday afternoon and enrolled them. They start on Monday but are going to visit their teacher this Friday and take a tour of the school.

We live too close for the school bus (which they are gutted about) so they will need to walk about 15 mins. It's a nice walk with one main road to cross - and here's the difference with back in England - they will walk by themselves. It's not cool for your parents to walk you and not really considered necessary here. Even 5 year olds walk by themselves, cross the roads etc. Here in Canada, the pedestrian is king, and when we tried the walk out yesterday, the traffic just spontaneously stops to let you across at any junction! I've never experienced anything like it. It's going to seem quite alien to us at first to just let them go, but there is something really nice about it too. It is like going back in time to when I was small, when you could play out for hours without supervision. All the subdivisions (housing developments) here have very strict speed restrictions and there isn't the paranoia of 'stranger danger' at all. Nevertheless, we will walk with them for the first day, then up to the main road on day 2, then they're on their own! I've been drumming it into Jake that he needs to take care of his sister, hold her hand across the road etc, so fingers crossed he takes it on board - you never can tell with Jake!
We've got a mortgage pre-approved now, so we start house-hunting in earnest over the next day or so. It's more expensive up here on the ridge as the school has a fantastic reputation so it is a desireable area. We will have to compromise on the size of house that we were considering as we don't want to overstretch ourselves before we get jobs sorted. Neil is already being offered jobs in sales! He's not sure it's for him, but it might be a starting point until he finds his niche. Once the kids are in school, we'll have time to start writing resumes and job hunting in earnest.
Here are some photos of us at Princes Island, on the Bow river just north of downtown Calgary. It was darned cold (-4) but a beautiful place, and we enjoyed the afternoon sunshine, followed up by a lovely hot chocolate!