FINALLY!

It's been a very long time coming, but it's finally official!! Dan and I received my Partner Migration Visa today!! YEE HAA!! I cannot believe how stressful it all was, but I think it was all worth it for the final outcome:) We're both so relieved and very excited for the next step! Although I will be very sad to say goodbye to friends, family and the valley, I am so very excited to move forward with my/our live(s)! We fly out on November 21st which is a week and half away. Today will be my last day of work and it will be nice to finally have some time to relax, catch out breaths and gear up to fly out! :D Wish us luck in our future endeavors. And I hope that you all keep in touch!!! If you need contact details, just let me know. I'm thinking my next post will be when we're on the other side of the world. Chow for now :)

Stressed Out!

Well you could say it's been a crazy few weeks! My Mum and I went off on a little road trip last week for a week. Visited my lovely Uncle, Aunty and two little cousins (Landon was born 2 months ago and Addy is 2 now :) plus my Grandma on Bowen Island for the first few days. It was great to see all of them, catch up and see that they're settling into their new home nicely. Such a beautiful little island. After a visit with them, we drove my Grandma back to Kelowna and spent a couple of days there visiting other family. It is always nice to be with family and catch up! So it was a fun little road trip :)

You could say that our migration visa for Australia has been a huge pain in the butt. Not the application so much, more the medical side of things. After weeks of many phone calls (which I have now memorized the number, lame) to the Doctor's office trying to figure out how they messed up on it not once, but twice and dealing with a couple of incompetent and unprofessional people, I finally found out they lost one of my forms (the one that's supposed to go with my xray C.D.). So I have had to go and get a brand new xray done and re-do the form with it as well. I have just got off the phone with both doctor's offices and I'm hoping it will finally be sorted and sent off to my case worker tomorrow. And I know my case worker said that once she has the form and as long as everything is clear that she can finalize our visa application quickly after that. So cross our fingers, hope and pray that it will ALL be over and done with by the end of next week!!

So as long as everything goes smoothly from here on, Dan and I are planning to be out of here by the middle of November at the very latest. We are looking forward to moving on with our lives as they have been in limbo for quite awhile now. It has been a very frustrating, stressful and long several months (application has taken 8 months, supposed to take 6 at the most). But hope for the best! We have lots of plans, goals and ideas for our future and can't wait to get going and moving forward. I hope that all of your lives are happy and full.

Cheers for now :)

What's been going on...

Fall's officially here and such beautiful colors all around! I have to say I do enjoy fall when it's not raining, windy and miserable. When the sun shines it's so nice to go for a walk through the forest and enjoy the beautiful colors.

On another note, we are still here in Canada. Dan and I were expecting to be in Australia by now but of course these types of things tend to take longer than expected (good ol' government paperwork:). But on a good note, I don't believe we'll be waiting for much longer. There was a mix up with all of my medical documents which has made us wait that much longer, but a few phone calls and a lot of stressin' we managed to sort it out and they're now in our case worker's hands and she can finalize the visa application soon. :) We're hoping!

We had a busy week last week including two garage sales and moving into my mum's new place. We managed to get rid of the majority of our stuff in the garage sale, the rest was donated to the salvation army. So nice to be rid of it all and not have to keep lugging it all around! The move was pretty easy as we didn't have too much stuff, two truck loads and a couple of hours and we were in. It's nice to be spending time with mum and my brother (he's living here as well while he goes back to school) before we go. Plus it helps on the car side of things as Dan and I are car-less and both my mum and brother have a car we are able to borrow.

So you could say that we're pretty much ready to get up and go as soon as this application's been finalized. There are a few last minute loose ends to tie up and can't do them until we know the date of our flight. So we just sit back, relax and wait (and hopefully not too much longer!).

So we don't have a car here in Canada as you know, but we do have one waiting for us in Australia. It's a Holden Gemini '84 with only 82000 km's! You could say it's a Sunday driven car. And of course Dan's going to be putting his spin on it ie; big fancy tires. So cute and I love it, although it will be interesting learning to drive on the opposite side of the road. Wish me luck! It's going to be like learning to drive all over again.

Well, that's it for now. Keep you all posted about our migration application. Thinking of you all. xxx

Here's Humphree!

Our Special Day...

So I've wanted a tattoo for quite a long time and my mum and I thought it would be a great idea to share the moment together! It hurt like hell, but it was so worth it and hard to believe b/c of the pain but it was fun too!! Here's a few photos for you all. Enjoy :)

..more pictures to come once they heal....

Another Two Weeks...

Well it’s been another crazy couple of weeks. It all started on our last weekend. Our migration visa is still chugging along at government pace. I received an email a few weeks ago saying that they were in a position to move forward and required a full medical check and chest x-ray from me by a doctor on their panel. And of course, the closest one is in Victoria, so off we went for a road trip last weekend.

We decided to head down the day before and spend some time with a few friends and have some fun, which we did. J But we noticed while we were down there that my car’s heat kept fluctuating, plus all the water we kept adding to the coolant kept disappearing. Uhoh! So to be on the safe side, after my appointment on the Friday morning before we drove home we got the pressure checked in the engine. Sure enough, one of the head gaskets had blown. Crap! Plus the quote to get it fixed was way more money than what I had paid for the damn thing. So off to the wreckers it got towed. L Dan and I killed several hours in Victoria; went to the Imax and saw Hubble, shopped, ate, sat in the harbor, luckily it was a nice day out and then we caught the Greyhound Bus home. You could say that was a long day and now I’m car-less. L It couldn’t of waited another month and half?!!!

Just helped my Mum move into her new home the other day. Three truck loads! You could say that we were all pooched by the end of the day. But now she’s a house owner and so excited! You could say that I am for her too! It’s been a long time coming, but now she can make her nest again. And we all have a home to come home to. J

So we’re hoping to find out soon about our migration visa, fingers still crossed! It will be another couple of weeks before my medical information gets sent in, but once they have all of that then they can finalize our application and then hopefully we can book a flight! A road trip will be in store before we fly out, but we can’t plan that until we know what’s going on. So we just enjoy our time here for now. It will be a quite few weeks, not having a car makes things a little more complicated, but no car bills is a plus I suppose. J Glad I have good friends and family around to spend time with!

Autumn is in the air...

? Worth It ?

Does anybody read my blog?? Just need to make sure I'm not wasting my time. The hole point of this is so my family and friends who don't live near me can still feel like they're involved in my life ie; see what I'm doing, read what I've been up to. Just leave me a comment and let me know if it is worth it or not. Cheers :)

Summer Time...

Well, yet again, I thought it must be time to give ya'll a little Brenna update. So far this summer Dan and I have done a whole lot of working, swimming and waiting (for migration visa). We have been enjoying the local water hole's almost every weekend in the Comox Valley, they are super convenient in the heat of the summer!

We have yet to receive word on our migration visa as per getting approved. I did receive an email the other day requesting I get a medical examination, police record check and few other things done. So once I have sent all of the documents in, I have been told that our application will be finalized after reviewing those documents. Fingers & toes crossed everything goes through within the next month and half and I get approved!! Send us luck!

Dan and I got to see The Cat Empire up the mountain the other week. They were really good! An Australian band for those of you who don't know who I'm talking about. And if you've never heard any of their music, I recommend downloading it for a listen, very talented band!

We got to go fishing yesterday on a friends boat which was super fun! I always love being out on the water, even if we didn't catch anything :P We also went tubing down the Puntledge River last week which is always a good time! It took us about an hour to go down, so just sit back, relax and enjoy the view. We were supposed to go again today with several people, but it's raining out, our first day of rain since June I believe. Oh well, next week I guess.

Well, here are a bunch of photos for you. Hope the summer (and winter for some) is treating you all well. Chow for now.

Now this is how you sun bathe!

Catch of the Day.

Comox Valley Build, Bail & Sail. Can you guess who bailed first?

No rolling, just chillin'.

Log Rolling at Comox Lake

Floatin' Along

Goin' for a tube down the Puntledge River

Dan Swimming Along - Barber's Hole

The Cat Empire - Mount Washington

Cheeeesseee! (my big bro :) - Stotan Falls

Cute Couple :P - Stotan Falls

Stotan Falls

His bed obviously wasn't comfy enough.

I don't know what's going on in this photo...

Steve Urkel?

ORIGINAL PAINTING FOR SALE!

7ft x 4ft ORIGINAL PAINTING FOR SALE!

Unique Vancouver Island Artist; Dave Oram.

On plywood, comes with fittings to hang.

$800 OBO.

LET ME KNOW IF YOU'RE INTERESTED!

Limbo

Hello all!

I thought it might be time to put something new up for you all even though not too much new has happened over the last couple of months. For the most part I've been working and on my time off trying to soak up the sunshine while it lasts. :) Had a couple of good visit's with my Dad, hard to say goodbye at the end of his last visit b/c I don't know when I'll be seeing him again. All my goodbye's are going to be hard but I know I'm on my way to something exciting and new and who knows what will happen in the future.

Dan and I still haven't heard anything back about my migration visa which make's me stressed out more and more each day, but still have fingers crossed that it will go through soon. I'm thinking if I don't hear anything back by the end of the month that I may give them a call, hopefully they can give us some sort of idea of what's going on?! So it's basically the hurry up and wait game. Can't really move forward much more until we know what's going on, so sit back and relax I suppose.

Here are a few more photo's from England for you b/c I know some of you wanted to see more:) Hope life is treating you all well.

xxx

It's been awhile...

Well it's been awhile since my last post, I thought it might be time to update you all again. As you might of guessed I am finally home and have been for about 3.5 weeks now. Back into the routine again and it didn't take long which is always kind of disappointing after such an amazing trip, but nice to have the comforts of home back.

Since I've been back I got to visit with Dan's mum and aunt for a couple of days before they flew back home. They were here for about 3 weeks in total, touring around B.C. together with Dan as their chauffeur/tour guide. On May 28th Dan and I got to attend Danielle and Dave's beautiful little wedding. The bride was gorgeous and the groom was handsome and I just want to say congratulations to both of you!! So happy for you two!!

Dan and I are still waiting to hear back about our migration visa. It could take up to October until we hear anything about it which is really annoying because we're both so anxious to get it approved!! So cross your fingers for as. We're still planning and organizing to leave around October. So many things to do to move to another continent, who knew?! So we'll be plugging away at that to do list all summer long.

Other than all of that, not a whole lot else. No real plans for the rest of the summer yet, but I'm sure we'll manage to fit in some camping trips and some other trips as well. I think we'll be lying low for the most part at least until we start to really get ready for our big move. Hope life's treating you all well!

The local bear from Mt. Washington, we saw him two days after I got home from England

The Groom and his Groomsmen

The Bride and her Bridesmaids

Dan and I