We’ve been in our new city for 3 months now. What a fun time we’ve had already.

While we anticipated a lot of the reasons we were moving ahead of leaving Hamilton, there have been some unexpected (or at least semi-unexpected) things that have cropped up that make us all the more grateful for our new home.

We’re insanely blessed: let me be abundantly clear. This post is not meant to be a humblebrag, but a post of gratitude for the long list of things below. Don’t think we don’t know good we have it. We know!

1. Backyard space

This one isn’t a surprise to find on this list, but it gets the #1 spot because it’s gotta be the thing we’d give up last on this list.

A bigger backyard was a non-negotiable for us. Our old backyard was a 16’x16’ shoebox. It served us well for a time, but knowing how much our kids love being outside (Leo’s outside as I type this lol), it was one of the biggest priorities for us that we wouldn’t consider a house that didn’t have a big backyard.

What we didn’t anticipate was being able to have all of these things in 1 backyard:

A shed to store outdoor stuff (winter tires, lawn mower)
A fire pit
A work-shed home office
A playground for the kids
A swing hanging from one of our 2 giant maple trees
A deck big enough for a lounge area, dining area, and hot tub
A concrete pad for the kids to ride cars
and a grass field more than big enough to throw a baseball back and forth

Years from now, we’ll still pause to look at each other and ask, “How the heck do we live here??”

2. Hot tub

Even when we got word that our offer was accepted and we’d be inheriting a hot tub, I wasn’t particularly excited about the prospect. Sure, cool perk, but nothing to write home about.

Friends, I am officially converted. Hot tubs are fantastic. I’d argue that having your own hot tub trumps having a friend with a hot tub for 2 really important reasons:

You can use it every single night and have only a quick towel-off before crawling into bed with relaxed muscles
It’s a lot more awkward to skinny dip in your friend’s hot tub

It doesn’t stop there for us.

We have a gigantic hot tub. A 7 seater. Almost 1500 litres. Thing is a monster, which is great because our kids treat it like a mini-pool by jumping off the step and creating a huge splash.

Our favourite way to use it, however, is selfishly. We will wait until the kids go to bed sometimes before sneaking in just the two of us. It’s not abnormal that we might spend 90 minutes hanging out and chatting. It’s been great for Leanne and I to reconnect in this way. Phones stay inside (out of necessity but now out of preference), no TVs or books or anything else to distract. Great conversation in a relaxing environment.

3. Lunch at the pizza shop

Probably once a week we head down to Old School Pizza Co. to have lunch and visit my parents for 45 minutes. The kids are so familiar with the shop now that they will let themselves behind the counter to ask politely for a can of pop. They also have no problem running around the dining room and flopping onto the floor mats to play with their toys. We have a preferred table and Leo will pretty much refuse to sit anywhere else in the restaurant.

This ritual has been one we (and my parents) are super fond of. We love that the kids get even more face time with Grandma & Grandpa, and we love that we get more pizza lol.

4. Tuesday morning babysitting

In a similar vein, once a week my parents will take our kids for the morning / afternoon so that Leanne can do some running around, or just catch her breath. This Tuesday morning rhythm is nice for a lot of reasons, not the least of which being the extra opportunity for our kids to bond with their grandparents.

It has long been a desire of ours to make sure our kids have very visible grandparents in their lives. We think that there is a ton of value in this for everyone involved, and some of the amazing memories we have with our grandparents have inspired us to want to provide that same opportunity for our kids.

On top of that, I love that it’s an opportunity for Leanne to relax and be alone for just a couple hours a week. My drives to and from my company’s office on Wednesdays give me a bit of time to be by myself, even if it’s just in between bouts of seeing more people. Independence is good, and connecting with your grandparents is good, and these Tuesday morning visits are able to benefit us all in that regard.

5. One Night Only!

I had been hoping to start a regular movie night (titled One Night Only!) with a rotating cast of people (my wife one week, my best friend another week, my brothers another), and I’ve now had a bit of a movie night with every one of those groups and it has been fantastic.

We inherited a finished basement in this house, and we knew that a gigantic sectional couch was destined to be there. Proud to have a couch that fills our space, a relatively big TV (even though it looks tiny on the big blank wall), and a sound system that makes movies sound so much better.

Movies are a deep passion of mine (as evidenced in posts like my analysis of the Cinematography of Ocean’s Eleven (2001) and through my love of screenwriting). Having a proper space to enjoy them—with other people—is something I consider a huge blessing in this house.

6. Fast food & ice cream

We’ve only done this a handful of times, but it’s been a huge success with the kids and we’re planning on making it a bit of a ritual.

Friday nights, we’ve been taking the kids out to Wendy’s to practice our familial eating at a restaurant, and then we’ve been heading down to the fantastic Shaw’s Ice Cream on the edge of town to cap off our outing. We pop open the back hatch of the van and let the kids crawl around the front seats between bites of soft serve.

The reasons we moved to St. Thomas began and ended with our kids, so falling into little outings like this has been something we are very excited with. This is what it’s all about for us.

Bonus: Sometimes we’ll spice things up and head out to a park like St. Thomas’ Elevated Park in between dinner and ice cream.

7. Dining outside

Our old back deck was hardly big enough for our outdoor sofa and our recycling bins. Our new back deck is big enough to not only have that sofa, but also have a hot tub and a dining area where we can eat outside around a table.

Despite being an introvert, my wife has imparted to me her heart’s desire to entertain guests and make many feel welcome in our home. Our outdoor space gives us more opportunity to do exactly that, and that’s something we’re thrilled about.

We bought the cheapest table and chairs that money can buy from Home Depot, and it’s going to hold us over until we can spend more money on something nicer. But we hardly care about that, because it was never about having the nicest stuff: it was always about serving our family and guests. Our current setup does that. What more could we want?

8. Short visits

Make no mistake: hanging out with our families feeds my soul. That being said, it can become difficult to squeeze an entire day (because they’re 2 hours away) into your schedule to hang out with family, so it ends up happening less often.

Enter: the short visit.

We’ve been able to have more frequent, shorter visits with our family since moving here because coming to and from each other’s houses is not as big of an ordeal.

It means you don’t need to set aside an entire day to see each other. Sometimes it can just be 15 minutes between errands, or 2 hours for a meal. Either way, we love it. We think it benefits everyone.

We’ve been able to see our families more in the last 3 months than we have in the past 3 years (part of that is due to COVID, but nonetheless).

9. No TV in the living room

This wasn’t something we were super planning for, but it happened and we’re super happy about it and never going back.

As I write this, I’m sitting in our living room (adjacent to the kitchen and dining room) and there’s no TV on in the background.

Instead, this space is dedicated to playing guitar, reading, or hanging out with company. We don’t spend a ton of time on devices in here: it’s about being together, even if we’re doing individual things.

You don’t realize how often you have the TV on until you take it away. It’s kind of staggering. This is a great wake up call.

We love that this “limitation” of our living room forces us into different habits. We regularly stop to look around and praise the fact that we don’t have TV up here. It’s downstairs in our family room where the big comfy sofa is; where the objective of the room is to enjoy TV without having to contend with the rest of what’s going on.

It also means we have separate spaces for kids and adults when entertaining. Kids can enjoy the family room with the TV and the adjacent kids’ room (with all the toys and play mats you could imagine). The living room is intended for hanging out, chatting, reading.

10. The dog house

Last on this list but far from the least is the Dog House; my affectionately named future work-shed / home office.

Before I can move my office in, I’ve got a bunch of work to do like fixing the bulging concrete floor, patching up the hole left from the wood stove, running some more electrical and ethernet, and other small things pertaining to those.

I’ve begun the process of that small mountain of work and am really excited about the day I get to move in. Eventually there will also be a built-in desk with shelving, but all of that will come a little later and with time.

Until then, I’ll just stare longingly at the Dog House and imagine what it will be like at the end of the summer when I get to use it every day. It will be good!

We Love St. Thomas

It was a big decision to leave Hamilton behind, but in our very short time here, we’ve been reminded again and again why we did it.

Seeing the positive impact it’s had on our kids and on our marriage in this short amount of time has made it worth it a hundred times over.

More than ever, we are happy and blessed to call this new place home. We know there’ll be more and more reasons we love this place as time goes by. Can’t wait to add to the list!

10 of Our Favourite Things About Living in St. Thomas (So Far)