We all went down with the sickness bug after Christmas and it took quite a time to shake it off but we are all fit now.
Today the Laver family have been in Canada 3 1/2 years, whooo, it's been a rollercoaster of a ride but all good fun!
Isaac turned 18 at the beginning of January, he got a place to do refrigeration and air conditioning in St Andrews this September and we went to visit his new student accommodation a couple of weeks ago. He will be living in a big house which has room for 8 students and is 1 block away from the sea and the college he'll be attending. He already knows 3 of his housemates as they are either school or church friends. He's in his final semester at school and is going out on a coop placement to work for a local company called ET mechanical to start to learn the trade.
Isaac surprised us with a gift of a table he made in his cabinet class at school. It is nearly 8' long and is beautifully finished.
At the beginning of January I had a conference in Toronto to attend. There was very little free time during the conference but after it finished and before I had to go to the airport I did get to go up the CN tower which was great. Unfortunately as I was eating dessert I got the text to say my flight was cancelled and I had to rush back to my hotel to get booked on another flight and find accommodation for the extra night. Thankfully David managed to get me booked on a flight the next day so I was very fortunate as some travellers were stuck most of the week.
Harriet is busy teaching Shadow all sorts of tricks, he can sit, lie down, roll over, high five, high ten, jump through hoops and run through tunnels. The dogs still have their mad half hours but on the whole they are much calmer than when we first got Shadow.
This winter has been really weird, lots of snow before Christmas (about 3'), then lots of rain melting nearly all of it again and really cold bitter weather. We've had small amounts of snow but mainly temperatures of -20's and -30's which means fuel bills are sky high and we've burnt huge amounts of wood. At least we're in February now so the end of another winter is nigh!
We've outgrown our little smallholding and if we want to continue farming we need more land. Just before Christmas we were approached to see if we would like to buy a farm the other side of Harvey. With the busyness of Christmas and then being ill we only got to look at the property a couple of weeks ago. After visiting the bank and negotiating with the owners we have had an offer accepted on the property. Unfortunately this means we need to sell our place before we can move so we are busy trying to finish the DIY which could take sometime. Then we can put it up for sale- anyone want a little house in Harvey? We don't have a set time limit but would like to move as soon as we can.
Isaac's birthday
My view in Toronto
The pool I enjoyed swimming in till it got to -34 degrees then I went in the sauna!
Up the CN tower
The table Isaac made for us
