So just before Christmas Rusty and I were looking for unique gifts to add to our very not unique gift cards that we were sending to family this year.  You see since we have had so many changes the last couple of months the biggest of these being our move to PEI, it has been a whirlwind bunch of weeks…..  So foregoing the usual thoughtful hand crafted gifts for Christmas we had to do something a little simpler.  We were at the Saturday farmers market in Charlottetown meeting up with our wood guy and a particular booth caught our attention…John McFarlane runs the booth and he has so many cool unique gift ideas and PEI books….Rusty found the book “Letters from the Manse” by Joan Archibald Colborne….it caught his eye cause…we live in a former manse.  We picked up the book for Rusty’s mom…..so when we got home i perused a couple of pages and then read the book cover to cover …….it intrigued me deeply.  What a wonderful story of two people who started out on a beautiful life together in ministry.

This story is the account of  2 years of their lives in pei and it really made me think nostalgically especially cause our home was a manse back in 1920’s….about 20 years before Joan’s story……. well to make a long story short I think I might like to try a little penning and writing and telling of the story of Rusty and I here for the very first time in PEI.

I am thinking that once a week, like Joan, I will write a letter to friends and family like in the olden days talking about the life we’ve lived each week:)  Some of my letters will be sent by mail and a copy will always be posted here on my blog.  I want to bring back to life some aspects of the olden days as we embark on this journey and try our hand at being more self-sufficient as well.

So I decided the January would be an awesome time to start this journey of new beginnings:)

so here we go:

January 5, 2014

Hello Folks……

Its been about 6-7 weeks since we officially became residents of PEI.  We arrived November 14th, 2013 and checked into our hotel….crashed because it had been a long drive from Whitby, ON.  we had to be up early friday morning so that we could get to do our final inspection of the house and meet with the lawyer to make things official.  So everything went well and we now own our very first old farms house in pei.  Since that time we dug a new well….unpacked the moving van, set up a new temporary bathroom…..roughed in new plumbing for the well, got our water heater up and running, installed a new wood stove, stacked 2 cords of firewood and settled into new life as islanders.

We have had 5 nasty snow storms in 2 weeks around christmas…..shoveling more snow then we know how to deal with but have taken it all in and have met some really nice people along the way.  We celebrated our first Christmas in our new home and skyped with you our family which made the distance feel not so far after all.

So know that we have had a chance to catch out breath, I look back thinking wow a lot has happened:).  So much that it would take a couple blogs just to catch up on everything so I will start with this past week for now.  In the past week we celebrated new years, skyping with you guys has been so nice.  So now that the holidays are behind us we take a step forward and prepare to get going on the house.  Well Rusty got a call from Eddie, a used truck salesman and hopefully he will have a nice used pick-up for him:).  This pick up is going to be so useful for the renos of the house so we are so excited:)  We have had a nasty cold snap…..its been so cold the last couple days -25 and -27 with a windchill of -38 and -39, we have never experienced such cold:(  thank God for the woodstove it is wonderfully toasty.  So we are getting stir crazy to start renos on the house, Russ has been at his drafting table drawing up the current floor plan of the house and discussing the changes we want to make to the rooms.  I can’t wait to see the end result…. we will take lots of pictures as we go and let you all know how things go.  Today was a warmer -9 and sunny.  Russ was out in the yard shoveling snow like usual and he heard a screaming noise he looked around and found a huge bald eagle ontop a evergreen tree across the yard on Orville’s side…..incredible…it was there for a while…..then we discovered fox foot prints all around our property we can’t wait to see it in person.  so when we were out in the yard…we decided we would go for a short ride….we went to Cavendish National Park it was beautiful between the ice chunks in the ocean shore, the sun set the wild fox it was a beautiful end to a beautiful day.  Well by my next letter we should hopefully have an update on renos….and the truck……  In the mean time….don’t forget to let us know how things are going on your end.  We always appreciate updates on our family and friends.  So I must go and stoke the fire….and get ready for our next freezing rain/rain/snow event for tomorrow…..love you guys…..hugs and kisses

Vanessa & Russ
The Old Manse
Pleasant Valley, PEI

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