Hi Zachary!!!

I thought I would put the main purpose of this blog to use and send a shout out to Zach. I miss you alot and I can't wait to see you on Tuesday. We'll get to spend so much time together and do lots of fun things! I love you!!!!

Home Sweet Home

We're living in a 2 bedroom, above ground basement apartment. It's really nice and quite big. Chris made the decision on it by himself while visiting St. John's for a little over a day and while it was difficult for me to trust him to find us a place, I had no other choice. He made a good decision!!! Please excuse the bareness, our furniture and other belongings have yet to arrive. Once we have the place set up, we'll update the photos.

Our house

View when you walk in the front door

Kitchen

View from the kitchen

Living Room

Laundry room once we get our washer and dryer

Bathroom (off of the laundry room)

Master bedroom

The second bedroom which will be Chris' office, or study, which will double as a guest room when we have vistors (which we will have, right???)

We made it!

We're finally in St. John's! We left Toronto at 8:30am Saturday August 23/08 and arrived in St. John's at 6:15pm Monday August 25/08. It was exhausting but also fun. It gave us a chance to see parts of Canada we never thought we'd see and allowed us lots of time in the car to enjoy eachothers company and talk (what else is there to do?) which usually gets sidelined by things like t.v. and the computer.

Our first stop was in Bangor, Maine. Maine doesn't seem to have much in the way of scenery and their highway system (until we got to the Interstate) goes through small towns and past people's houses. It's only 1 lane of driving and the drivers in Maine are quite comfortable staying at the speed limit or below, so that was frustrating. As well, there were alot of bends and turns which made the trip even longer.

The next day we drove through New Brunswick where we were fortunate enough to meet up with our friend Bowlin in Fredricton. It was nice to see a friendly face en route, and the fact that we hadn't seen Bowlin in a year made it even better. We were able to grab some lunch and Bowlin showed us around Fredricton.

New Brunswick had beautiful scenery, and it was amazing how much it changed right at the Maine/NB border. Lots of mountains and farms, and a way better highway!!!! From New Brunswick we drove through Nova Scotia to North Sydney to catch our ferry. Nova Scotia's highway was very frustrating to navigate, 1 lane and again the inhabitants are content to drive BELOW the speed limit. I must say though that Nova Scotia was the only province/state that had a nice welcome centre and provincial/state sign. I live for those, I love taking either a photo of them or a photo of me in front of them and so I was quite disappointed for the majority of the trip. Luckily some other people were taking their photo at the Nova Scotia sign and took ours for us.

The ferry ride was uneventful. We left 1.5 hours after we were scheduled to (are we on Newfoundland time already??) but as soon as we hit the cabin we both went to sleep. We only got 5 hours of sleep that night and seeing as we had already been on the road for 2 days we were quite exhausted. Walking on the ferry was a bit difficult as it rocked alot. The best part of the ferry ride was that our budgie, Kermit, didn't die in the car!!!! We were (well I was) apprehensive about leaving him in the car especially when Chris said he couldn't guarantee he'd be ok (WHAT???? no guarantee??) so I made Chris look in on him first when we got back to the car. The worst part of the ferry ride for me at least was the scalding hot shower - how is that suppose to wake me up at 6am????

And finally we've reached 'The Rock'. And what a warm welcome it was too - rain, wind, fog (sometimes as thick as pea soup). How can the people in Newfoundland be so nice if they have to contend with this all the time? The scenery was great, lots of mountains, and although the highway was, for the most part, 1 lane, people don't drive below the speed limit and so it wasn't as frustrating as Maine or Nova Scotia.