settling in

Its a little difficult to get too comfortable, here in our temp housing, knowing that we could be moving in the next couple of weeks.

The car arrived yesterday, FINALLY. We had to drive out all the way to Saint-Marie to get it - what a pain. There were a bunch of things that we transported with the car - so it was really nice to see things that we were familiar with, (clothes kitchen stuff etc) - especially the car. I hope it does well through winter.

I think I'm just gonna have to buy a usb cable for camera it would be nice to upoads pics... plus we are running out of memory on the cards.

Quebec is wierd - its definetely a smaller city than Van, T.O and Montreal but, physically, it has a big city feel - with the multiple of big autoroutes. It feels expansive and spread out. Unlike Metro-Vancity which feels, geographically, small. The people here are nice though. Generally speaking its seems more people seem to like little kids. And people on the street and on the roads seem more courteous. The prius, with its bc plates, gets alot of curious looks.

School starts tomorrow, my gig starts on tuesday - its gonna take us a while to really settle in. hopefully we can find a place soon. We put an offer on a house today...waiting to hear back by tomorrow!

5 days in...

... and we have already had our fair share of poutine, smoked meat, and crepes. a couple days ago I ordered un big mac et des frites - that was really wierd. It is at first a little embarassing to try to speak in french but we are all gettin used to it. Some people are able to pick up, right away, that we speak english - even before we talk... not sure how they are doing that or how we are 'telling'. maybe need to eat more poutine.

we've logged in quite a few kms familiarizing ourselves with the neighborhoods. checked out a library, met a nice family, walked around maguire street and then went to les galeries de la capital -what a contrast. montcalm area is really charming, and of course downtown is amazing, if not confusing and overwhelming.

The girls and I saw Cirque du Soleil with dean&lena - that was very cool. They will watch it again with Rowena probably a couple times this week before school starts. Dante is starting to shout alot now. He is very loud.

I'm gonna be saying "its kinda wierd how..." alot; Everthing closes early here. How the traffic lights work. How the streets work. Pedestrians can cross corner to corner on ' walk' lights. alot of the white folk here are so well tanned! (beacoup passe de vacance au sud). Mac's = Couche-Tard (i keep saying that everytime I see one) . people talk 'round here. we are not coming "home" after this vacation ;)

Here is my "its kinda cool how..." section; Vieux-Quebec is fortified by thick walls. There is an old world feel about the city. People are friendly. They have Ecobus - so cool! There is beer in the grocery stores!! The beer is so much cheaper than in Van. The housing is afffordable. We are actually here to stay....let the adventures begin!

ps. once we get our cables we will start to upload some pics.

Hey guys! We're in Quebec now, and it's really nice so far!!!! I should start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...

Well, I guessed it would be SUPER COLD in Quebec, but heck I was wrong! The second we stepped out of that airplane WOW I was sweating!! We actually took two airplanes; one to Toronto from Vancouver and one to Quebec from Toronto. On the first plane, I watched 17 again and Hannah Montana, and a very vivid dream about living in outer space because earth blew up.......(awkward..) Well, on the second plane I watched a movie called only, about to 12 year old kids who fall in love in the course of one day.. I didn't finish it - phew! - it was so boring anyway!! Anywho, we rented, and are renting, a BIG BIG BIG truck and it's really nice. I'll send pictures in a while, well, A.S.A.P. Well, "revenons a nos moutons" -Madame Grenier, we're renting a temporary house - well - apartement. It's super small and in my room, my sisters bed and mine are like thisclosetogether! But it's a place that I'm proud to call home. (*sigh*). I miss everyone SOSOSOSO much. Well, on the bright side, we went to a shop called Ketto (look it up!) and it's simply DARLING!! I'll send my class and some individual people and teachers some gifts, but bear in mind, if I don;t get you anything (i'm not rich) I still love you.......

..unless you told one of my REAL FRIENDS that you're glad I'm leaving - left, than I'm upset with you, but I still love you!!! Well, it's like 12 o clock now, so I better get some rest. OMIGOD I almost forgot; my Auntie and Uncle came to Quebec from Toronto for they're anniversary, so we're lunching with them tomorrow, and tonight---------"drum roll please" -various M.C's in various movies------------ WE WATCHED CIRQUE DU SOLEIL-- FREE STREET SHOW!!! FOR FREE!! It was good and all for FREE!! did I mention it was free ?!?!?!. . cuz it was! Well, I miss you, and I hope to see you soon. You can't write, only e.mail because we don't have a..what was it?..ah yes, a PIOBOX..or was it P.Obox...P.O. box?? Well, whatever it is, e.mail me!!!

Love you all!

I hope this entry goes through!!

Love lots,

)< @ Y | @

Cirque de Vargas

Dean and Lena are in town! Dan and the girls went to watch the Cirque du Soleil street show. I stayed behind with Dante because it starts pretty late and he would have been fussy half way through it. He's also back to a normal schedule now and I don't want to mess that up for him. I'm having some nice quite time to myself too!

While Dan was at his meeting at the studio, Kayla, Dante and I(Kiara stayed home) wandered around downtown. Dan's meeting was pretty long so we had plenty of time to explore.

We picked up a couple of books from the Pantoute. Kiara is into Les Chevaliers d'Emeraud (Knights of the Emrald City), so I bought her book three. I bought her the first two books of the series on our trip here in April.

We came across this super cute and super big toy store! They had Barbapapa toys! I wish my mom kept our Barbapapa squeezy toys from when I was a kid. Kayla had some fun bending giant pipe cleaners. Dante loved it there too! He freaked out when he saw a huge inflated soccer ball hanging from the ceiling!

'ooooh, sacca bauw! nice! socca bauw! nice!'

Kayla and I didn't see it at first but he kept screaming 'sacca bauwee! NIIIIIIICE!" Until we finally took notice. I'm so glad we remembered to pack a ball with us! A nice SOFT one. He's one active kid, I tell ya!! It's all good... having to chase hime around will be good for me! I'm still looking like I'm about 4 months preggers! He'll be my little fitness trainer!

Kayla and I were looking everywhere for an art supply shop and just before Dan got out of his meeting we found one! It was almost right across from his studio too! So, Kay was happy get a couple of sketch books and markers. Those girls are addicted to reading and art! I was glad to pick those up for them. Kayla had been spending too much time experimenting with make up. For now, I prefer that she gets creating on paper than on her face! :) Oh, the teenage phase everyone has warned us about is here.

Patrice was kind enough to take us around a couple of neigborhoods and he brought us to a snack place for some authentic poutine. I do hope we find a house soon. I cant wait to get our funiture and stuff back. Ubi is only covering our stay here for a month. I hope that's enough time for us to find a new home!

Dan and the girls are back! :) I'm getting mixed reviews about the show. They all got rained on during the show.... it was crowded... Kiara lost a shoe and found it. But they loved it!

Back to house hunting online! :)

I want to post pics soon! We just need to find our usb cable!

recap of our first couples of days

So, we're now on our 3rd day here. We arrived late on Tuesday night and we were all so exhausted by the time we found our temporary home. It took us a while to get out of the airport because some 'tetris-ing' had to be done in order for us to fit all our luggage into the truck. But we did it! We had dinner at a St Hubert just a stone's throw away from where we're staying. That was the first time Dante had been a challenge to keep content at a restaurant. Poor kid... the sudden change in his schedule has made him uneasy. But now he's adjusted! We're all getting used to the time change now. I'm so glad we're close to a lot of markets, shops and restaurants.

We had a very slow start on Wednesday. I think we woke up around noon, which was 9am back in Vancouver. Then Dan and Kayla went to IGA to pick up a few groceries and some lunch. We also finally got our internet connection working... yay! Later on we made a trip to Loblaws(like superstore). One of my pet peeves is when grocery baggers mix up edible foods with items such as liquid cleaners or cold items with dry foods! I always group my groceries accordingly on the conveyer to make things easier on the bagger. BUT this fellow was one sour grape! I wanted to stop him and bag my own groceries! But I was too slow with my french. I must practice how to say 'please let me bag my own groceries'!

Anyway, later that evening we Dan set up the webcam my parents gave to us. We skyped with them...we were so happy to see each other! Dante was 'hugging' his lolo(grandpa) on the webcam. So cute!

We had an earlier start on day two: yesterday. We met up with one of the hr ladies from Ubi at to register for our Quebec care cards. She was very helpful with providing us with information and willing to take us around to help us run our errands. We drove with the whole family to the studio to meet some more people and have some lunch. It was so beautiful outside and Dante was getting pretty loud so we decided to eat at a nearby park along with the lady who recruited Dan. On the was out I ran into a couple of very familiar faces!! Matt and Ian! I used to work with Ian at Ubi Vancouver(aka Action Pants) works for another studio here in QC. Matt was just flown in for an interview. It was a pleasant surprise, indeed. They walked with us to the park.

After eating dinner at 'home' we went to Costco to pick up a few more items including an air filter. My allergies are full blown here. I don't know what's causing it... maybe it's seasonal. My eyes were totally bloodshot... I've been using visine. I hope the Arius allergy pills work!

Today, I made everyone wake up early! Yay! Dan will be going back to the studio to meet with his team again (sans sa famille). He'll drop us off at a mall on the way there. It's raining outside and we need buy some crafting thing to do. books and maybe a board game as well. We won't be picking ours from the storage until we move out of this temp home. So, I promised the girls we'll buy some of those things. It's so hard to rent dvd's or borrow books without a permanent address! If this rain keeps up we can hang out at one of the bigger libraries here!

I must say that I'm getting used to staying here. I still can't believe we're not going back! At times we feel like we're just on vacation.... staying in a fully furnished vacation home! I'm glad it's fully stocked with everything we need... except food. The only thing we had to buy was a can opener because the one here doesn't work well.

Later on we are going to meet up with Patrice, who used to work at ESS back in Vancouver. He's going to take us around the neighborhood we are looking to live in.

Ok, not all our entries will be so detailed. I just though it would be nice to log our first few days here. :) I hope all is well with everyone back home. We miss you! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

stuff

How are we gonna get all our stuff with us to the apartment? It was questions that was bugging me the moment we left the house. We took 4 cars to the airport including Dad's big truck. 3 taxis? rent 2 cars? Naah... upgrade the rental to a Ford Flex. Even in Metallic Chocolate... it doesn't loook that great. But it sure fits alot of stuff. And it guzzles.











It is a good thing Rowena played so much tetris otherwise we would never have gotten everything to fit in the boot.

the kitchen sink is in one of those boxes.

2 more sleeps...

...and we are sleepless.

we've been trying to make up 'lost' time with friends and family and get ourselves set to go at the same time - in hindsight, better planning would have made for easier time through all of this. ah-well, lessons learned.

the house is empty. we have 1 spoon, 1 fork, a kettle, some food in the fridge... and a bit of junk to let go of. just sorting, purging and cleaning left to do. looking at the bare rooms and cupboards, its hard to believe that this is where the girls grew up... such a big part of our lives. every stain on the floor and streak on the wall has a story or memory of us. its only been 8 years here and it seems like it has been so much more - i guess it has been fun.

i hope we look back on all this fondly.

heavy lidsszzzzzzzz

10 days...

Even with Rowena and the kids at home things are still moving a little slower than we thought. Mostly because we are sorting and purging lots of small stuff and miscellaneous items. So we have the weekend and a bit of next week before the movers come.

We've also taken a few quotes to have the car shipped out east it looks like we will be spending somewhere between 900-1200 dollars for door-to-door service. It would have been nice to drive across the country and I think it might even be cheaper!

We've been noticing that Dante has been very whinny, drooly and touching his gums alot... his molars must finally be coming out. If he is still like this next week... it is not going to be a fun plane ride.