Welcome to the frozen north!!

Wow it has been a long time since I have done a post. We are now in Toronto!! Yes that is what we have been doing for the last 2 months or so. Moving is one thing, but moving to a different county is a whole other ballgame. Can’t say Shawn or I would recommend it to anyone, in fact I am not sure we will ever move again.

We have had many many headaches to say the least. Lets see the first involved tarantulas!! Yes tarantulas! We got a call from our movers that there may be tarantulas in our stuff when they started to unload into storage in Toronto. Hmmm, the “large hairy spiders” changed from the size of a fist to the size of a loonie. Shawn and I were a little unphased by this and were more concerned about the cost of fumigating or damaging our stuff than some spiders. We have been living in where coyotes, snakes, scorpions, and gekos frequent your backyard. Anyway, so now our stuff is in a trailer in the cold and the company will pay for any damages. We figure the spiders were probably living in the mast of the sailboats stored outside.

Well then we had issues with moving money which involved a trip back to buffalo, fedexing, and changing exchange companies. As well we found out about a some fraud in my name at Bell Canada when we got cell phones. And then we are now having issues with getting drivers licenses. This on top of selling our house, buying a house, finding daycare, importing our cars, etc… Basically I have been doing paperwork full time for the last 4 weeks and we are still not done!!

On a more positive note… Our house in Phoenix has closed last week so we are happy. I also got a job at York Central Hospital (part-time –woohoo!) as their geriatric clinical nurse specialist/Nurse Practitioner. I don’t start work until next week, but then I have 2 weeks off for Christmas. We also bought a house!! And move in on December 22nd!! We bought in Woodbrdige, by Ilsington and Rutherford (west of Von Mills mall).

We are living in a hotel suite right now so I only have a laptop. I’ll post pictures in the new year of Carter once we get settled in our new house.

Holden is living in Bracebridge (and basically Carter has been too) with grandma and grandpa Willett until we move into the new house. I think Holden is more of a Canadian dog now than a desert dog. He loves the snow!! The dog loves to roll in the snow, eat it, and chase squirrels.

Carter doesn’t seem to mind the cold either. He’s been out helping grandpa load wood into the truck, long walks outside, and even out for rides in the sled. He knows what snow is and can even say snow (he crinkles his nose when he says it, too funny!). He is starting to repeat alot of words but some are much clearer than others. He can say no, yah, mama, dada, dog, hot, dirty, grandpa, tree, tractor, cracker, door, down, banana, pee-ew (& he plugs his nose), etc… He’s pretty funny because he likes to change his expression or tone when he says certain words. Grandpa Willett is having a great time since Carter can say Grandpa pretty clear but doesn’t say grandma. Grandma and grandpa have been taking him swimming regularly so now he is becomming quite the litter swimmer. He’s even gone down the water slide on his own. We also put the christmas tree up last weekend, with non breakable ornaments on the bottoms (someone likes to check them out). Carter likes to stare at the tree and say “ahhhh”, and get all excited… he likes the Christmas tree… wait till he see it with presents!!

Anyway by next week we hope to be fairly organized, that we can finally start to enjoy being in Toronto. By the way — it has snowed a tonne here since we arrived… so much for Shawn saying it doesn’t snow much in Toronto! At least it is pretty.