Napoleon: Bold and Beautiful

We had a nice visit today from our friends Sean & Michelle and their 4.5 month old baby, Napoleon. He's very handsome, and quite the character, and we love him even if he pee'd on the floor 3 times. He's just a baby, after all.

He wasn't too sold on the idea of country living, and when we took him outside for a walk he tried to hide under the car. But, I think he could appreciate the rural life in time (or in the summer when it's not so chilly!).

Here are some pics for your enjoyment:

Sporting his winter coat

"Please Rob, can I have one?"

"I'm a cat, I'm a kitty cat, and I play with yarn and I meow meow meow!"

Hangin' with uncle Robie

Snowy!

We survived the big winter storm! More than 40cm of snow fell in certain parts of Ontario. We had about 25cm here. Poor Rob - it was a non-stop mission to keep the driveway clear, and now we have some very impressive snowdrifts.

Hopefully it'll stay on the ground until Christmas - yay white Chrimbo!

It's a balmy -5 degrees celcius now, and I have to get back upstairs and get sanding! Hopefully today is the last day and our floors will be ready by Christmas! I'll post pictures of them when they are done!

More winter fun (and not so fun sanding)

Yesterday and today were spent working on our poor floors. There's been sanding, scraping off paint, using a heat gun to melt oil paint, and two occasions where I tried to electrocute myself by running over the power cord with my belt sander. Good timezzz!

We did take a break to walk the doggies in the fields next to our house. Yesterday was sunny and sparkly. Today was a bit greyer and snowy.

Tomorrow is the Millbrook Santa Claus parade! Woo woo! I'll be sure to take some pictures for you!

Home sweet home

OOOOOh! We got possession of the house on Thursday and had a crazy chaotic fun weekend getting things organized there.

It's such a GREAT house - we're soo excited. Even the craziest winter blizzard weather couldn't dampen our spirits. Not snow, nor sleet, nor ice, nor wind could keep us from moving in!

Rob & his friend Dennis spent all of Friday driving a rented moving truck and collecting our possessions from all over. I was busy unpacking and getting the house ready. There are certainly a few bumps that need ironing out - e.g. no storm windows so it's a pretty chilly house. Also, we ripped out the carpet from the upstairs hall and found some floors in a pretty poor state of disrepair!

Here are some pics for ya!

Putting insulating film on the drafty windows

Floors in need of some TLC

Our lil' dining room, ready for Christmas!


A blizzardy wintry wonderland out the front door

Lots of friends came to visit, including Tanya and her dog Charlie

more pics

Emily - sister and photographer extrodinaire, joined me at Emer's for lunch last week and took a great series of pics of the cutest dog in the world (aka Lulu) and the cutest baby in the world (aka Bernie). Enjoy!

Winter wonderland

Sorry I've been so MIA! Been busy actually earning a living for a few days, having some interviews, and hanging' with the family in Peterborough.

We get possession of the house on Thursday! Yay yay yay! I thought you'd appreciate seeing it in some winter splendour.

Sooooo pretty! I can't wait to get in there! We have a big list of chores to do, including ripping up some carpeting and sanding the original old pine floors. We also have to hang our Christmas lights! Woo woo!

I'll post more pics after Thursday. Can't wait!!!!!!

Home on the range

We had a great weekend. We went to visit my Uncle David at his house near Lake Erie. It is such a beautiful spot, and his house is so great and full of hundreds of treasures. We actually got some sun on Saturday, and went for a fun walk along the ravine on his property. Then we cut through some corn fields, and passed by some old tobbaco kilns.

We had a great time with them, and ate really well, and slept well. I can't wait to invite myself again for another visit!

cornfields n' old tobacco kilns

david's house


hangin' on the side porch

three tobacco kilns

On Sunday we drove to Grand Bend and visited our friends Dan & Erin and their two boys. More great food and great company! I wish we could have weekends like that EVERY weekend!

We're heading to Ottawa next weekend, which will be FUN! And then, we'll be getting ready to take possession of the house. Very exciting!

Skyline

My lil' sis Emily was here the other day with her fancy new camera and took some great pics, including this one from our balcony. It almost makes the Gardiner Expressway look pretty!

Hey, I'm famous

At least in this article from the Herts Advertiser. Har har! Thanks Liz!

http://www.hertsad.co.uk/content/herts/news/story.aspx?brand=HADOnline&category=News&tBrand=herts24&tCategory=newshadnew&itemid=WEED01%20Nov%202007%2012%3A31%3A09%3A543

Boomer n' Me

I had the great pleasure of babysitting my friend's doggy this weekend. His name is Boomer, and he's pretty darn cute.


We had a very fun weekend, and explored many paths, peed on many trees (Boomer - not me). The weather was great all weekend and it was probably one of the last proper fall weekends. I just checked the forecast for next week and it's about to start getting pretty chilly. I hope my coddled 'used to mild english winter' bones can survive.

Here are some pics of fun with Boomer:

Rise of the Loon

So, basically, Rob & I could not have chosen a worse time to move home. The Canadian dollar reached a 37-year high today. This means that all our hard earned wee pounds, which we had to leave tucked safe and sound into our bank in England, are going to have to stay over there for the foreseable future. Not great when you have a house purchase looming, and a certain someone is still unemployed (note to self: lady of leisure lunches to stop until dollar crumbles... which might happen sometime in the next decade or so).

Lofty loonie
HEATHER SCOFFIELD
Globe and Mail Update
October 29, 2007 at 1:00 PM EDT

OTTAWA — The Canadian dollar has reached its highest level since it began to float freely in 1970.

Read the rest of the article here:

http://www.reportonbusiness.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071029.wloonie1029/BNStory/robNews/home

Git along little doggy

Had a very fun afternoon with my lovely friend Emer, and her baby Bernie, and of course Lulu, the wonderdog. It was Lulu's 1 year birthday on Saturday, so I bought her a beautiful Halloween costume to celebrate. She seemed to quite like it.

We also went for a great walk, enjoying the dreamy weather, and stopped and had a coffee and a piece of pumpkin cake - yum!

The job search isn't going well - I don't think it's going to be easy to find a 2 or 3 month contract... Doh! The search will continue tomorrow.

Here's Lulu in her beautiful outfit, and then her trying to lick Bernadette to death!

Wacky Weather

It's supposed to be a whopping 26 degrees today in Toronto. Hellooooo! It's LATE October.

We were dreading moving back to Canada because winter was looming, but hey, if the weather stays like this, I'll be tootally enjoying the fall! (And I can't help but notice that it's only 12 degrees in St Albans today. Har har har!).

Homes: temporary and permanent

So, real estate has been top of our minds for the past few weeks.

We knew that we wanted to rent an apartment in Toronto for a few months, while we looked for a house to buy, and to give us the chance to get settled and spend some time with friends in the big city. (To you Brits, it IS a big city by Canadian standards. Compared to London, however, it's more of a rural village, but, it's as big as they come in this lightly populated former colony).

After much stress and hassle, we finally found a condo to rent on the 17th floor of a brand new building at the foot of Yonge Street, which is the longest street in Canada, and forms the main north/south route through the city and beyond. It's north facing, and the cost almost makes rental prices in St Albans seem reasonable, but, it'll do for a few months.

The view from our balcony - downtown Toronto

Balcony view - towards the CN Tower

Inside the condo - from kitchen towards living room

We were very relieved the finally get a place in Toronto. BUT, there were more permanent, and exciting things in the works. Two days after Rob landed, we went to view a house that we'd seen online that we quite liked the look of. It's in a wee town called Millbrook, about an hours drive from Toronto.

My mom and dad had already done a reccie for us, when we'd still been in England, and had reported back that it was a pretty great house, in a great location - the last house on a dead-end street, overlooking the Mill Pond, for which Millbrook gets its name. Anyway, to make a long story short, we put an offer in (after some heart-stopping stressful moments, and heart palpitations about spending that much money in one transation). We are having a home inspection done on Thursday, to make sure it's not secretly filled with rats or asbestos, and then providing that all that goes well, it's ours and we take possession of it on 29th November. Woo woo woooo!

Here are some pictures:

The front of the house

The kitchen

One of the bedrooms (there are 3 in total)

The dining room

The front porch (just the place for drinking a giant port & lemonade, methinks)


The view from the front of the house

Back in the land of bears and beavers

So, after living in the UK for two years, 8 months, and 25 days, we moved back to Canada. Actually, I came first, on September 25th, and Rob arrived later, on October 9th.

It's been a busy few weeks. I've been spending time getting caught up with family and friends, and we've found a condo to rent in downtown Toronto, and also a house to buy in Millbrook (a very cute town about an hour from Toronto).

I've had some serious culture shock getting back into the Canadian way of life - I've had to stop myself from saying 'trousers', 'pudding', and 'mobile', and am slowly adding North American words and spelling back into my life. The dreaded Canadian upspeak has crept back into my voice when asking questions. I guess that's good because for the first few days I was getting a lot of abuse from people saying I had a funny accent. I think you Brits reading this will agree that I never had any hint of the limey twang in my voice - as proven by my innability to say water or yoghurt the proper way.

I'd be lying if I said it hasn't been really weird being back here. We have both been really missing England, and St Albans, and especially all of the friends that we made there. But, we're looking forward to an onslaught of British houseguests in the near future.

Here are a few pics to give you an idea of what life has been like for the past 25 days!

Charley and me hangin' in Ottawa

Oggy and Penny enjoying some fall foliage

Charley helping with the gardening

A frisky cow getting intimate with Charley's foot at the Ottawa Experimental Farm (and yes, that's Lee's 'up the duff' belly in the picture too!)