We stopped in Belleville to get gas with the hopes of getting some breakfast, too. While at the gas station, Brad asked a local CN worker if he might know of a good breakfast place. This is a great travel tip. Step out of your comfort zone and ask a local what they might recommend. We ended up at Jon's, a local spot that has been family-owned and in business for over fifty years. It was a charming, small-town restaurant with old-fashioned food in generous portions at a reasonable price. Our bellies were full and took up more room so it was a little harder to squeeze us all back in the truck.

Another hour or two and we crossed the border into Québec. It was the first time I had been there since I was a teenager. True, we really just drove straight through but it's always nice to see new things. It's amazing how many things are different in the same country and only a few hours from where you've lived most of your life. I love how they mark the lines between two lanes of traffic with straight and dotted lines so that you can only change lanes in one direction. It's brilliant. How come Ontario hasn't caught on to this discovery? There was a village outside of Montréal that I fell in love with. Why didn't I write the name down? It reminded me of a Cézanne painting. The one with the little town at the foot of a singular mountain in the middle of an otherwise flat landscape. It was beautiful.

Lunch was tricky. The last time I spoke conversational french was when I was sixteen. It's surprising how much I could remember but also embarrassing at how much I've forgotten. I think the Tim Horton's worker was very patient with me and I hope that she gave me extra points for effort. I have a hard time ordering bagels for five in english–toasted, not-toasted, sesame, cinnamon, plain cream cheese, herb and garlic cream cheese, butter, jam, no-jam, drinks–so I'm sure it wasn't easy for her to take my crazy order in broken, high-school french. But between the two of us we seemed to pull it all together.

By four o'clock we were through Québec City and heading up towards the New Brunswick border. I'm not sure where we crossed the time zone but it gets pretty dark in that corner of the world pretty early. With the lack of light and serious lack of traffic, it felt like ten o'clock. The difference in population marked itself on every step of this section. The trans-canada highway has a section without a median and on several occasions we saw tractors travelling on the highway without getting in anyone's way.

We stopped in Edmunston for dinner (ordered in English) and headed to Fredericton to stop for the night. To our uneducated surprise there is almost nothing in between the two. There was virtually no traffic, certainly nothing besides tractor-trailers. There were also no gas stations. We drove for about an hour hoping to see a gas station but barely passed any off-ramps. We trickled down to about 30 kms worth of gas and turned off what we thought would be the last possible exist where we could find some gas. There was nothing. Just a sign sending us to the nearest town about 10 kms down the road. The town was tiny. Maybe a population of about fifty. Even if they did have a gas station, which we never did find, there's no way it would have been open. We have CAA but knew that if we kept looking for the gas station we would have use it and it would be impossible to describe where we were. We decided the best thing to do would be to head back to the highway where we would at least know where we were. We had about 10 kms worth of gas left at this point. Feeling helpless and desperate we managed to draft behind a transport-trailer to the next exit where luckily there was a gas station right beside the off-ramp. Brad managed to put seventy-one litres in our seventy litre gas tank. I hope that truck driver knows that he saved us that night. We'll never forget it and we'll be sure to pay it forward.

After that last bit of excitement, we were happy to stop for the night even if the hotel we wanted was full and the one we had to stay in was was–to put it politely–less than desirable. The resulting sleep was also less than desirable. All in the spirit of adventure.

The packing frenzy ended at about four in the morning on Sunday. We weren't finished but we knew we would have to be back up at six-thirty in order to get the girls ready for school, take the mattresses out of the beds, pack away all of the bedding and put the things that would be coming with us in a pile so the movers would know not to touch it. Over the years I've discovered that two hours of sleep is the minimum requirement for me. Any less than that makes me feel worse than just staying up all night. Not that two hours of sleep feels good.

It took four, large, able-bodied men the better part of nine hours to pack all of our things. How did we acquire so much? I really thought they would have finished sooner but I know they were working their buns off. I have no complaints.

Once the girls were home from school it was really hard to keep them in one room, out of the way of the movers, with nothing, not even a piece of dust to entertain them. I put a box of pizza in the room with them which occupied them for a while but it wasn't long before they were picking fights with each other for entertainment value.

The lawyer was kind enough to come to our house so that we could sign all of the papers and hand over the keys. I can't really imagine how hard it would have been to finish everything up and go the lawyer with three restless kids. It really made a big difference in how smoothly the rest of the day went. Handing over the keys was one of the hardest parts of this whole experience. I still get choked up whenever I think about it. That house holds so many memories for us and as much as I know I've made the right decision, and no matter how ready I am to move on, I still found it hard to give away the key. It's not that I'll be letting the new people into my memories. It's that my love affair with that house and any chance we had of a future together ended when I handed over that key.

Brad managed to pack all of what was left in the house, into the truck: sleeping bags, pillows, activity bags, dishes, the telephone, the camera, the computer, four suitcases and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember. It was a sculptural work of art, the perfect Jenga puzzle. At almost any point during the trip we could pull an item out without disturbing the rest. I think this sort of packing can only be achieved when there are no air pockets. It was truly a sight to see.

I was lucky enough to see my best friend before leaving. I'm so glad that I got to hug her one last time but the tears that followed were too hard to swallow. Good-byes are the ultimate heart-string pullers.

Exhausted from packing, moving, crying and consoling, we headed out on the first leg of our 2000km journey to our new home–our new life. The 401 is a killer. All of those lights passing and pulling your eyes forward and backward was exhausting. I finally couldn't hang on any longer and I joined the girls in a most uncomfortable, neck-pulling sleep. I'm not sure how much time passed but Brad finally decided that he couldn't keep it together any longer, either. We pulled off the highway at a two-bit exchange and parked in a gas station parking lot and had a nap. I woke up about half-an-hour later shivering from the cold. I switched spots with Brad and drove until about one-thirty in the morning when I decided that I'd had enough.

We stopped at an incredibly nice, affordable Best Western in Kingston for the night. I couldn't stomach the thought of disecting the Jenga puzzle in the back so we just hopped out of the truck and into the hotel beds, clothes and all. The only regret I had was not bringing the toothbrushes in with us. I've never appreciated the mints at the front desk like I did that morning.

p.s. I thought I would find my lens cap after packing up our entire house but it never surfaced. I ended up buying a new one in Nova Scotia. I've already tied this one to the camera. I always hated doing that but I have to say, it's a lot better than having to buy a new one.

p.p.s. I don't have a way to load any pictures yet so until I do these will all be imageless posts.

We only have ten days left here in Ontario. My excitement is matched only by my fear.

There is nothing like packing up your entire family, moving them to a new place they've never been, where you don't know a soul, except the real estate agent that helped you to secure your new home and the daunting task of putting your business ideas into action to make you feel alive.

Detail of a house in Shelburne, Nova Scotia

When Brad and I were just dating and still in college, I used to spend a lot of time driving from Waterloo to New Hamburg. I had a regular driving route but every once in a while, when I was feeling dreamy or nostalgic, I would drive through Baden to get there. Almost in the middle of that small town was a really rundown property. The grounds were large and so overgrown that you could hardly catch a glimpse of the mansion held inside. The house itself was in need of a lot of care. The paint was a drab grey, fading and peeling rapidly. The windows had curtains that never moved and although I didn't sit out front and stare for hours on end, I know that the windows were never opened. I imagined the air inside to be stale and musty. I always drove by at night and there were never any lights on. The iron fence that surrounded it was bent in places, rusty and would probably need to be scaled in order to gain access. I'm not sure if these recollections are true or not but that's how the house exists in my head and I loved it. I loved that house.

The house was bought by the town shortly after we finished college and an unlimited amount of money and resources were thrown in its direction. It has become a pristine example of early Ontario architecture and design. It's beautiful now but I don't love it anymore. I don't like to drive by it and I don't fantasize about it like I used to. I drove by it last weekend and realized something very important about myself. I am in love with the possiblity. I was in love with that house when it was a neglected shell because it engaged my imagination and gave birth to dreams I wouldn't have otherwise thought of. Now that it's finished and its path defined, those dreams and ideas are gone and the house holds nothing for me.

People have often asked me how we could possibly leave our house when we've just finished all of this work. I always had a hard time explaining myself but after seeing that house in Baden I can explain it perfectly. Our house was full of possibility when we bought it. We gave birth to dreams we wouldn't have otherwise thought of. We put our imaginations to the test. We have turned it into something that we love but it's finished now. It holds no more room for imagination or experimentation or boundry breaking. It's done and I'm ready for new possibilities.

We're going to be moving into a big, beautiful, Victorian house in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. It's a house that will be perfect for dreaming and imagining and boundry breaking. I'm excited and I'm in love with the possibilities this holds for all of us.

I've lost the lens cap for my camera and I can't find it anywhere.

The girls and I painted an army of love rocks, loaded them into our bike baskets and then headed to the streets. We delivered over forty rocks to various hidden and not-so-hidden locations in the hopes that someone who really needed some extra love would find one. We put them on fence posts…

on sidewalk barriers…

even on an abandoned window sill.

The best part was watching the girls' reactions on our way home when they realized that some of them had already been "found."

Tabletop reflections.

This maple and oat scone was the perfect companion to my hot apple cider.

I'm a sucker for a pretty chandelier.

Bowling alley floor turned tabletop.

This past summer we spent an afternoon a week at Mermaid Camp without leaving our house.

We watched inspiring videos by the talented Dancing Mermaid.
Spread out a blanket in the backyard.
Armed ourselves with an arsenal of art supplies.
Had candid conversations about things from the videos. Things that we might not have otherwise talked about.
Ate tasty treats.
Listened to music.
Spent hours and hours creating.
And laughed our heads off being silly.

And now we can hardly wait for next summer when we can do it all again.
Thanks Mccabe.

Last week I took the time to see things that I might not normally have noticed

Curlicues on pumpkin stems
Ivy fingers sweeping bricks
A great bicycle decal
The fence in our neighbourhood park
The canopy over my street
Yellow orchids complimented by a purple sky
One tree with all of the colours of fall
A puddle with the reflection of leaves that look more like lace
The last of the cornflowers on an otherwise empty street corner
And handknit hats, a sure sign of winter being around the corner.

You can head over to the gallery if you would like to have a look.