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Hi Joy,

Great to hear you've decided to have the big adventure! Sounds like it's going to be a close call with the timing (ie. hubby turning 31 so soon) so I hope it all works out in just the nick of time.

We travelled over here (living in North Vancouver, BC) in October last year with our one year old daughter. It is actually super easy with the Visa situation - when we lined up at the airport in Canada to get our WHP Visa, they just processed mine and my husband's first and then added our daughter's name on to one of ours. So we didn't bring any formal paperwork for her (except, of course, her passport), it is just assumed that she'll be doing whatever we'll be doing. If I recall correctly, it was pretty arbitrary whose Visa they added her name onto (ie. either mine or my hubby's), and it just so happened they added her to mine. Which was lucky as I then went on to travel with her alone back to Oz a few months ago and I'm sure it made it less hassle having her name on my Visa. So maybe have a think about if you're planning on doing any further travel without your hubby (or vice versa) and if so, make sure your child's name is added to that parent. Hope that makes sense?

I haven't used childcare here, but from what I can tell it is cheaper than Oz. My friend works in a family day care, and it's about $60 a day. Family daycares are super popular/common here. Don't know about "group" daycares, but I guess it would be similar in price range. This website might be of some help... http://www.theshortylist.ca/

Hope this helps! Let me know if there's any other questions you might have, as we have probably asked them ourselves in our 12mths over here!

Ange

Hi Joy,

So sorry for not replying earlier, I didn't realise you had a posted a reply so now feel very rude. Sorry!

We did find a place before we left Oz. What we did was decide whereabouts in Vancouver we'd like to be, and then went on www.vrbo.com and found a suitable place. They have listings for accommodation called Vacation Rentals, which is basically where people rent fully furnished houses/apartments for weekly/monthly stays. So we decided we wanted to live in North Vancouver (due to proximity to the mountains) and found a suitable apartment on that website. It was fabulous - we turned up, had a warm welcome from the owners who lived upstairs from the basement suite we were renting. It was perfect moving straight in with the bed freshly made, phone and internet all hooked up and a fridge just ready to be filled. We booked to stay for a month, and ended up staying 2. After that, we rented a fully furnished apartment not far away (for 3mths) and after that moved to a fully furnished house that we've been living in for about a year now.

For us, it worked to rent fully furnished places as we knew we wouldn't be staying more than a year or so, and the hassle of furnishing a house was a bit beyond me. However, if you're staying for any longer, I'd definitely recommend renting a non-furnished place and getting all you need. It's super cheap to buy furniture and homewares in the US, and soo much can be bought cheaply (if not for free) off Craigslist.

Craigslist is where we found the furnished accommodation after we had already been in the Vacation Rental for 2mths. However, using www.vrbo.com for the first 2mths was fabulous, as we could just turn up and feel at home...

Let me know if you have any other questions! I totally remember having all these things to consider, and some things can just seem so foreign that it's a bit scary. But it actually works out to be pretty easy in the end!