Typical About Us page – might be worth a look

First off, welcome to the site. How about getting to know what we are all about.

For a number of years during the Victoria Day holiday in May, my lovely lady and I would make our way to Leamington Ontario on the shores of Lake Erie, to enjoy the Spring Migration of the songbirds through Point Pelee National Park. At the time, we had no ideas that we were Birders, we just liked to see all the pretty birds and take some nice pictures.

When we weren’t spending our time in the park, we would be out gallivanting through the area, seeing what we could see, and tossing around the idea of one day moving down here.

Everyone that we met was so nice, and the weather was almost always so nice, and the landscape, although mostly flat, was just so nice, and the air was so much cleaner than Toronto, and was (you guessed it) so nice.

Back in Toronto we would talk about one day retiring and moving to Southwestern Ontario, and maybe find a house that we could turn into a small nursing home, or maybe a bed and breakfast, or how about an Airbnb. We worked out the style of home that we would like, and what would be nice in the yard, and even when we felt we should make the change. Our goal was when we were in our early 60’s so that we still had the strength to follow our other dreams as well.

Fast forward to the autumn of 2018.

We had originally planned on taking a trip to Iceland and drive the Ring Road, but when we found out that our son and his lady had that on their bucket list, well, we decided to hold off until we could all go together. My lady and I had our time booked for holidays, so we decided to wander down to Pelee to observe the outbound Monarch Butterfly migration.

Apparently, we missed the big push through, by about 2 days. Instead of the thousands of butterflies, we saw maybe 50. Even then, that still was pretty cool.

The weather played against us, and since we had a week in the area, we started driving around and my lady got on her phone and began looking at houses for sale.

We got in touch with James, a realtor with Remax, and he took us to look at a few houses.

In short time, we found a home that we both agreed was perfect for us.

Was it the dream home that we had been thinking and planning about? Nope, not in the least. Much smaller than our dreams, not at all big enough for a nursing home, bed and breakfast or even Airbnb. But it was still perfect for us, and if a couple of people come to visit, there is room for them as well.

Now for the hard part. Going back to Toronto and telling family, friends and employers that our retirement plans have made a bit of an adjustment. No longer were we thinking 65, or even 63 years old, but just a couple of months away instead. Yup, returned from bird and butterfly watching in Pelee in October, and moving out of Toronto to a small town of Amherstburg (Where the heck is that?) by the end of December.

Flurry of activity looking after the sale of the old home, figuring out what we need to take with us, and wondering just how the heck we go about down-sizing, all in the space of a couple of months.

I figured I would be too frazzled to sell all our stuff on Kijiji, so we hired Max Sold to come in and auction off the stuff we didn’t need. They did a great job, and we got rid of most of what was up for sale.

So, here we are, at the end of the Detroit River, as it enters Lake Erie, in our perfect (for us) little home, with just a tiny bit of grass in the front yard, that our neighbour and my lady compete to cut first, and our back yard that has a nice deck and no grass, much, much smaller than we had in Toronto. We have great neighbours that are willing to help out anywhere they can, and we are learning to live our lives at a much slower pace.

We have officially become Birders and many of my posts will be about the birds, but we will still let you know about all the other goings-on in and around Amherstburg and the rest of our little adventures.

Thanks to Adam, who helped me get going with this Blog / Social Media thingy.

Thanks for checking in. There will be more to come soon.

Noel and Juliette.