LondGone

Just like explosive diarrhoea  after a long bout of constipation, here comes an explosion of pictures now that I finally got a memory card reader to unload pictures from our cameras (some photos are still lost in my accidentally packed iPhone which I hope to get back in a couple of weeks).

Well, maybe I could've gone for a less disgusting metaphor. Like a rainstorm after a long dry spell or... Whatever, who cares. Pictures time.

These are actually left over from our trip to Israel in April-May, but it's cute, so it goes in anyway.

Blake loves suitcases!

It's always a pleasure to discover Blake has been playing with the camera.

I mentioned in an earlier post that Blake has decided to repaint parts of my study while the packers were stealing our life and sticking it into boxes. Here is the damning proof.

It's beautiful art, but it kinda had to go, don't you think?

Boxes, boxes, boxes. I can't wait to unpack and go through all of them in Winnipeg... Ugh.

Our truck, which Blake adored staring at. By the end of the day it was fully packed. You couldn't even squeeze in a box of tictacs.

Poor Leo and Dexter were exiled to the back yard for most of the day as the door to the house had to remain open most of the time.

Blake couldn't be exiled into the back yard so I was doomed to keep running out after him instead of making sure that, oh I don't know, my iPhone doesn't get into a box and sent away. Stuff like that. Yeah, I'm still bitter about it.

Our wonderful skip. We filled it up twice, which is a lot of crap that we didn't send off in boxes over to Winnipeg. Could've probably filled it up a third time if we planned things better....

My brainy Janey helping us pack and fold. ♥ A bunch of friends dropped in during the day and made it a bit more fun to rip out every remaining trace of ourselves from what was our home for the last nine years and stick it either in a suitcase or the trash.

Our lovely friend Mariana (holding Blake in the above picture) dropped in to cook us a goodbye lunch. By then we had barely any plates left so we improvised with what we had and it turned out to be one of the most fun dinner parties we ever had - simply because it was so unexpected and a great way to say goodbye one more time. We even got to use some paper cups left over from Blake's first birthday!

Pavel the Marvel (Marianna's brother) took apart out bed and the last day was spent on the mattress alone. Well, not for me anyway. I napped for a couple of hours on the carpet in my room as I found it - for some reason - very difficult to go to sleep.

Floor cuddles with Yoe are the best!

CSI Finchley

In the evening, when packing should've gone into overdrive more friends came over. Instead of hugging and sending them away we had yet another dinner party, moments before the dinning room table was taken away. We had pizza and it was delicious.

As morning got closer more and more stuff was removed from the house by Pavel who did a great job. He even saved us by removing lots of trash we didn't put in the skip in time before it was removed (lots and lots of trash). It was a race against time to empty the entire house before we left it in the morning. The house was mostly emptied, but mostly does not equal completely.

We ended up knowingly over-packing our suitcases with the knowledge that we will have to pay extra. We were immigrating across the ocean, not going on some holiday in Spain. I had to leave my lovely Nando's sauce bottles behind only to find out you can get them in Canada too. Joy! At the last hour before the taxi arrived I started just grabbing things and throwing them away without giving it too much thought. Any single socks or items of clothes we would never wear again and probably even some we might've : it all had to go.

And then that was it. The house was suddenly completely empty once all of our suitcases were in the taxi and Blake was strapped into his car seat which was also coming with us. This was no longer our home. Our dogs weren't there any more or any of our stuff. But it still felt like home, carrying with it nine years of memories both good and bad. Sheer joy side by side with unbearable stress. Sweet moments of happiness side by side with painful loss. We left Kato behind, our first Great Dane, his ashes scattered in the park only a few steps away from our doorway.

We left a bit late and were worried we were going to miss our plane, but fortunately we didn't. We needed a porter to help us with all the suitcases and we got a moron who dropped them repeatedly (I hope my X-Box survived the torture). When we got on-board Blake fell asleep and even when he woke up he behaved perfectly. Let me put it this way: I managed to watch three full movies and a TV show without interruption (Thor - OK action movie, Meet Dave - barely watch-able Eddie Murphy comedy and The Adjustment Bureau which had an original concept - mind numbingly stupid, but original).

We arrived in Toronto and I got my work visa.

And that was the end of our time in London, UK. Even now I have to keep reminding myself of that fact. While it has sank in that we were leaving the UK for good, it still hasn't sank in that we have actually done it already.

More about our time in Toronto later. Now we wait for our new car to be shipped from Winnipeg and our dogs to arrive from England and then embark on our adventure driving to Winnipeg from Toronto. So it's not over yet...

--Mickey