Lots of news...

Where to begin? I know I have not been a very good blogger lately, but I do have a bit of an excuse! For the past few months our thoughts and discussions have been pretty consumed by one topic - where to live when we return to Canada - and I didn't want to make all of you have to listen to the endless talks, and back and forth, until a decision had been made. It was bad enough that I made my friend A hear it every day! Anyway, it's all settled now so I can update you all on the plans.

But first, the second distraction - our threesome has become two. We've lost a member of our team. Two weeks ago now, we lost our beloved Buggy. I won't get into details, and most of you already know what happened, but it was sudden and a shock, but he didn't have to suffer for very long and we were able to say our goodbyes and hold him in our arms when he died. It has been absolutely devastating for both of us, Buggy was everything to us and we miss him desperately. He was the best friend, a constant companion, and endlessly entertaining. We will never forget him.

But every day gets a little bit easier. While we can't move on, we need to move forward. And here I come to the plans for our return home! A much happier topic. :)

After much debate and discussion, Noise and I have made the decision to relocate to Toronto. As I say, it took months to make this decision, so I will not bore you with all the factors. But we are very excited about Toronto, and a bit scared as well. We're hoping that if we handled London we can handle Toronto, but that remains to be seen. The biggest factor at the end of the day was that Noise was being offered an excellent opportunity with his firm at the Toronto office, and the job opportunities in Ottawa were not as promising in terms of career advancement. We are hoping to be able to enjoy some of the cultural and entertainment experiences offered in Toronto. In particular, we are keen Leafs fans and Jays fans, so we're looking forward to the chance to see some live action. The Jays in particular are fun, because you can rock up to the Skydome (sorry, Rogers Centre - stupid name) for an afternoon game and buy tickets on the spot. I am also hoping to be able to get out to Wonderland once or twice a summer as well. I do think that Toronto is not as good for outdoorsy sports as Ottawa - but at least it has lovely beaches and places to swim! Our biggest problem is that neither of us knows Toronto that well and we're not sure where to live! But we didn't know Ottawa that well when we moved there either, and we had no idea about London!!! So we'll sort it out. Certainly we'll rent for awhile until we figure out where we really want to live - be it more downtown like Yonge and Eglinton, suburbia either east or west, or north of the city in Richmond Hill or somewhere. I have lots of friends in the Toronto area, and they have all made suggestions to help us out.

We are very sad to not be returning to Ottawa and the friends we left behind there. It is my greatest wish that we will be able to maintain those friendships as they mean the world to us. On a brighter note, though, both Noise and my best friends live just outside Toronto (one east and one west) and we are excited to be able to visit with them more.

So it is with mixed emotions that we make this move, but the overwhelming feeling is one of excitement and anticipation. And if we hate it there is nothing to make us stay! It's our country, we can go where we want!

The timing has only been hammered out last week. We will both be finishing work here at the end of May, and are planning to be leaving London around the first of June. Our plans include 6 or 7 weeks traveling through Asia before we arrive in Toronto mid-to-late July. Noise begins work in Toronto on August 30th, so we should have a month to sort out various things like somewhere to live, buying a car, reclaiming our Ontario drivers' licenses, etc. We're hoping to spend most of that time in Gananoque with our families. We've missed them very much.

Now we're into the thick of planning the trip through Asia on the way home. Our itinerary has varied widely, but now I think we have come up with the basic outline. We're looking to concentrate on 4 countries, rather than peek into a lot but not really see them. Our plans include India (Delhi and the Taj Mahal, Mumbai), Thailand (the beaches of Phuket and Koh Phi Phi, the jungle of Chiang Mai, Bangkok), Vietnam (Saigon, the beaches of Nha Trang and Hoi An, Hanoi and a boat trip on Halong Bay), and China (Shanghai, the terracotta warriors in Xian, and Beijing and the Great Wall). Then we plan to fly from Beijing to Toronto. It promises to be amazing, although I think after 6 weeks in Asia we will be happy to get home and see a Tim Hortons on every corner!

So that's what's been happening with us, and why I've been so slow to post any updates. There have been lots of little things as well, which were overshadowed by events (particularly by Buggy's death). We've just spent 3 days skiing in the French Alps last week. The trip was already booked and paid for and we were due to leave the day after Buggy died. We decided to go ahead and found it to be a very good distraction in the first few days of grief. We stayed in La Tania and skiied into Courchevel most days and the skiing was amazing. Also trying to concentrate on not killing myself was a good distraction from thinking about Buggy. :)

We've got a couple of events coming up as well. We were walking down the Strand on the weekend and saw advertisements for a show by Megan Mullally so we stopped in and bought tickets for this Saturday. Also we bought tickets ages ago for a concert by Julie Andrews - her first since her botched throat surgery - in May at the O2 which it looks like we will be able to go to after all. There was some question of whether we would leave here May 1st but now we're going to stay until June. We also still want to get to Amsterdam for a weekend, which we'll probably try to do in March, and I've got a girls' weekend coming up in Lanzarote, Canary Islands, in the middle of March. I'm planning to attend Crufts dog show (the British equivalent of Westminster in New York) with my friend A in March - we're going to watch one of our clients, a beagle breeder, while she shows the boys. And if we've got any other time left over there's still a lot of England that we haven't seen! We are now (sadly) able to up and go on a whim some weekend, instead of needing to arrange boarding for Buggy, or find a pet-friendly hotel, and book a car to take him. So perhaps we'll take a few weekends away.

First and foremost in my mind at the moment, though, is the Olympics!!! We get 24/7 coverage on Eurosport, although of course most of the events happen in the middle of the night here. :) The beauty of it, too, is that Eurosport is completely unbiased. They show all the competitors and they don't cheer for anyone (except the Brits but there aren't that many of them!) It's fantastic. Next week I have taken some days off (I had holidays to use up) and plan to watch all the ice dancing live. Gotta provide family support! Even though the rest of the fam is actually attending the Olympics, I will provide the UK support. Go T&B!! Thanks to friends and family at home, we have our red mittens and wear them and wave at the tv (ok, that's mainly me) when the Canadians are competing. And on Saturday we stopped by Trafalgar Square where there were Olympic celebrations going on and someone asked us where we got our mitts and could they buy them somewhere nearby. We had to dash his hopes and tell him that they had been sent to us from Canada (not to mention that for months they were impossible to find!)

So there you go. You are up to date and I can stop feeling guilty that I haven't posted a blog entry. Now that things are starting to be in motion for the move home, I will try to keep you updated as things happen.

Go Canada Go!!!