After having our first son, I knew there had to be something more than waking up before the sun to get ready for work and drop our son off to daycare. Something more than driving for an hour to get to work over a distance that should only take 30 minutes and turning off my computer right at 5:00 pm as my co-workers and boss looked at me with judgmental eyes (they did not have kids at that time). I had to rush to get to daycare so I was not late. My husband worked downtown Toronto so his commute was even longer. As most families know, once you get home you have your evening routine of dinner, family time, getting ready for bed and the next day—and there’s never enough time to get it all done.
As our family grew with another son, I was having a hard time finding work-life balance. So I created my own business, Time Solution, and became a virtual assistant by utilizing my years of executive assistant experience. This would allow me to be my own boss, work my own hours and be home for my kids. This was a great solution for my family and things were going well.
But even with my business doing well and my husband having a good job we were still feeling like we were drowning with financial stress and fighting for time. At this point, we found out we were having our third baby, this time a girl. This changed things once again and we really wanted to have a better quality of life. After a lot of discussion about what we wanted and how to make our life and our children’s lives better, my husband suggested we move out of the big city. My support system, which includes my parents, my siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends were all in Toronto. My thought was that sure, we could move out of the city but still be nearby. But no, my husband had bigger plans and wanted to move out of the province.
So in April of 2012, just four months after having our third child, we moved our family to New Brunswick, Canada. The province is bilingual and that is a bonus for us as my husband is French and we want our children to also know French. The cost of living is a lot less here, which makes it feasible for our family. Luckily, my husband was able to find a great job within months and the great thing about being a Virtual Assistant is that I can work from anywhere in the world. We now live in the country just about 30 minutes away from Moncton. Our home is an old country house a little fixer upper but we love it. We have a huge area of land surrounding our home with lots of trees around. In the summer, we spend our time in our vegetable garden, go to the beach, which is five minutes from home, and enjoy watching our seasonal friends outside our window—hummingbirds, blue jays, rabbits and chipmunks. We also prep for the winter and get all our firewood ready.
We now spend a lot of quality time as a family. A much simpler life but we would not change it. It really feels like we are vacationing on a daily basis. The only thing missing is we are so far away from our family and friends. But they visit us as much as they can, which is great. We also try to go back to Toronto once a year. We are making new friends here and are blessed with having two amazing neighbours who are there to lend a helping hand or show us the ropes on how to live in the country.