Thankful Thursday - A New View

View from the deck of our summer rental home on Silver Star Mountain. Most days, we could see the city of Vernon below, along with Skaha Lake and a sliver of Okanagan Lake, from this height. The beauty of the mountains, forests and a summer of  serenity will be a treasured memory we carry  with us.

Rather than share an inspiration quote today, I thought I'd give a personal "thankful Thursday" catch up! Almost two weeks ago, we traded our mountain views (above), to lake views (below). The next six months, we get to enjoy living life in a beautiful lake view rental!

One of the many beautiful views from our latest rental home! We are now within walking distances to Okanagan Lake.

Another view of Okanangan Lake and a short hike from where we're now living.

This is our second short term rental and it's funny that at the beginning of this year, I had no idea that this was all in store for us.  Back in January, we had six months left on the lease of the home we were renting, and no immediate plans to move.  We had wonderful landlords and a comfortable home we liked.  My husband was in the middle of an out of province job, which meant he was living over 10 hours driving time away from us.  Then, in mid-February, just before I was about to travel over to work with my husband, our landlords gave us notice that they needed us to move out, by the end of April, as they would need to move into the property we were renting.

One view from the living room window at the mountain rental home. One look out this window convinced me that a summer spent here would be perfect for us!

Oh, the timing!

It came as a surprise and in the moment of being told, I am happy that I embraced the possibilities of what could BE, rather than grabbing hold of the fear and anxiety that can accompany change.  I decided in that instant to focus on the new adventure that now lay before us and not on the uncertainty, the not knowing what would happen next (but don't think that those thoughts didn't come into my mind, later ;o). I knew that my mindset was the only thing I could control - in this or any situation - and the best thing would be too make sure I consciously chose to be positive and face what came next (the best I could, while acknowledging that I was a bit scared, too).

A partial view from one corner of the living room windows in our lakeview rental home.

Immediately, I started thinking about all the packing ahead of me.  Which, is a bit ironic, because not even two weeks earlier, I had finally unpacked all the boxes from our move to that house eighteen months earlier and taken the empty boxes to a storage unit (where they could be ready for the next move). It was symbolic for me, a statement saying that we were home.  I had not done that ever before. I ALWAYS kept our boxes for moving with us - wherever we were renting, actually, never even completely unpacking (especially in the case of the move to Calgary where we started out renting the run down, hundred year old house that I named, Edith - not unpacking was my way of saying we were not staying, we were just passing through and not laying down any roots of permanency). 

Just a short hike (involving scrambling down some rocks ;o), from our current residence and just one of the spectacular natural settings we are currently relishing.

 Renting short term has shifted our perspectives, brought a few challenges and the overall changes have been good for us.  I didn't know that this was in store for us in 2018, but I am thankful for it and wonder what may come next. For now, here's to a new view!