the citadel

So here we are on rue Denis... its picturesque to say the least. I'm not sure how old this house is but you can see from the pictures that it definitely has character. It feels like we are in Europe. the roads are very narrow and everything is made of huge bricks or rocks. Here is Kayla sitting at the park in front of the house that we are staying in (on the left corner, the white house)

Kiara - reading a book... the window looks out onto a park that is right beside/below the citadel.

a bunch of neat old gadgets on the mantle

the garage was really tight - about 3-4cm getting in and only about a foot once inside.

We are also a stones throw away from Chateau Frontenac. We can actually see it from the balcony.

Every day at 1200h and at 2130h one of the canons on the citadel fires a round. Because we are so close we can really feel it and even though we expect it punctual, it is always startles us.

moving again

So we have to move to another apartment again...sigh. The one we are in now is "booked" ...initially we thought we would be able to extend our stay - not so. We did find a house but we can't move in there until Oct.1st

I've been having difficulty finding a place - been looking for a week. I would not have thought that it would be so busy here at this time - but a apparently the "high" season goes all the way till the end of september.

There is a place that we may have secured that is, literally, beside the citadel, over looking the st.lawrence. It is an absolutely beautiful old row house. The propriateur is also an artist and has maintained the old world charm. I can guarantee that Rowena will take a billion pictures there.

Kinda sucks for the girls not having a proper place for homework etc and for Dante not able to run around and break things. We all cannot wait till October.

backfilling with pics

I'm starting to 'backfill' some of the previous posts with pictures now.


Here is a neat little swing I have been seeing alot of here - its perfect for warm days.









We had an orientation for parents at the girls' school today. It was actually for Kayla's class - because she is now in highschool, aka premiere secondaire. I think I understood about 1/5 of the entire talk and that was mostly because they were accompanied by slides.


It's kinda neat to be a minority again - brings me back to when I was a kid. Wait a sec, mmm maybe its not so good - I got picked on alot. It boggles peoples minds around here that anglophone speaking asians would even be in quebec, let alone send their kids to francophone schools. I think most are just curious and fortunately a number of those are kind and welcoming. Unlike our neighbors below - although with all the racquet we make I can hardly blame them.

I took a french assessment today for placement in a class. I'll be joining the intermediate/advance class because I could not remember all my verb conjugations. Mme.Sadro would be dissappointed.

a better way to beat the street

before robo-cop.... there was segway-cop. I'm pretty sure I can outrun these guys... I guess Maguire street doesn't see much crime.









We took Dante to Cirque du Soleil - he loved it. Got a little spooked at some parts. I had to hold him the whole time - he didn't want to go on the shoulders or stand on the stroller, my back was sore after an hour











Dante is continuing with his jedi/ninja/gymnast training. He is almost up to a full minute just hanging. He can't quite pull up yet though. We'll be working on that over the coming weeks. he is very cute.

Montmorency Falls

Here are some pics from our picnic at Montmorency Falls.

changes and places

Mmmm... where do I begin?

This week was just absolutely insane! Our prius finally arrived, we made an offer on a house, and the girls had their interview with the school directors. And all went very well!

We all woke up super early to pick it up way up north to the boonies. I wan't comfortable leaving the kids so we dragged them with us. Our car was late and the kids were grumpy but when our car finally arrived we were so thrilled! Enought wiht the gas guzzling rentals!! yay!

After many days of looking at houses... we finally picked one. Our offer was accepted and so now we're just looking for an inspector. I hope the inspection goes well. The location and size of the house and lot is just right for us.

The girls' first day of classes is today. Yesteday was orientation day and we got a full tour of the school. They are so cute. They were so excited last night and were having fun sorting their school stuff. Kayla is excited to have a locker! Grade seven is 1st year secondary here. I can't believe I have two high school kids! They both want to take Spanish so they will have to do some after school classes so they can catch up with the other girls who had been taking Spanish since primary school. For their second elective they both chose drama. The school offers the IB programme in the 3rd year and Kiara was given the option to do it! I'm so proud that she chose to do it but I just hope she won't be overloaded with homework! The only thing we don't like is that they only have PE twice in a seven day cycle... so just once a week. But they plan on doing some extracurricular sports outside their time table. Plus we plan on doing a lot of biking and swimming here.

The girls will be continuing their violin studies at the school too. They have a special program for violinists and pianists. Their private lessons will be scheduled into their timetable. They'll just have to switch form doing the LCM (London College of Music) to RCM (Royal Conservatory of Music) but their pretty much similar. The music director still needs to asses their skills. The kid's music certificates, grades, music and violins are in storage all the way in Montreal. So we have to rent violins for them for now.

We can't wait to move and get the rest of our things moved in. I know Dante misses his crib. He's sooooo super cute! He loves throwing and kicking his soccer balls. This morning we played for two hours... just kicking, rolling and throwing balls! That tired him out and gave me some quite time to do some chores. He's sleeping schedule is back to normal now. It was difficult for a couple of weeks because of all the house viewing we were doing and other relocation madness we had to take care of.

Sigh... a lot of change! But it's all so exciting!! :) I can't wait to see Dan and the girls and hear abou their first day of work and school!!

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!