Here comes Fall ... and Halloween!

Fall is already here with its brisk cool air, the greens have gone to their warmer hues. We have a lot of deciduous trees in our block and its gets really windy at times. Raking leaves is fun the first time... by the 4th and 5th times its really not.

for Halloween Superman will be delivering candies to all the kids

home sweet home

Finally moving somewhere we know that we won't be leaving for a while...

Dante inspection - he doesn't like the curtains that were left

Dante picks his room and starts unpacking his stuff, the most import first, of course...

Over the coming months we will put our mark on the rest of the house...

We have a few improvements that we must make and we have a TON of ideas for what we want to do... just have to make sure that we set realistic expectations against our budget :( We may have to start a new blog just for the house ideas.

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.