Well hello! It’s been a while, as expected, but we have some recap to do!
Christmas happened and we had no plans, but that was great. We had a nice veggie roast and had some chats with our families throughout the day.
Snowboarding
Kim went out snowboarding with a colleague. They went for an evening and got back fairly late, but had a really fun time! Kim basically had to re-learn from scratch, but her friend was happy to teach her again.
Kim loved it so much and is going again this coming Tuesday!
Another Dog!
We fostered another dog! August, the previous dog, went on to a long term foster and we didn’t have a dog for a bit, but then we went down to the boarder to pick up Harper!
He’s a very good boy! He’s a German Shepherd, Husky, Malamute & retriever mix!
Very lovable dog who loves cuddles and we’ve loved having him around.
We took him out to Steveston today. He loves car rides and seemed to enjoy Steveston and meeting all the dogs. We let him run around a bit (on the lead) and he was having a great time.
A New Job!
Curtis is starting a new job in a week!
Curtis will be joining Legible, where Kim works, as their solo IT person (as a Senior IT Specialist). He’s very excited and glad to be able to get in and help them out with IT and also advance his career!
On Wednesday 3rd November, Kim went out to the airport to help people unload dogs that had been rescued from China.
This took a very long time, about 3 hours or so, but after it was done Kim was offered a dog to foster! The foster had pulled out, so she got the chance to foster a 1.5 year old Samoyed for about a month or so.
The dog was so good! He was a little hyper when we got him and he did pee inside overnight on the first night, but other than that, he was awesome to have around!
We got him some toys, treats and a bed (which he doesn’t use) and just hung out with him for a bit.
On the Sunday, Curtis went to hockey and then Kim got an Uber out to catch his game a little later!
Whilst Kim was out, she setup cameras to check on the dog to see how he was. We weren’t sure how he is being left alone, but turns out he’s fine!
Unfortunately, once we got home, we took him out for a walk and he vomited many times. We then had to take him to an overnight vet, which took 3+ hours and we didn’t get to sleep until 4:30am!
The vet thought he was just a little sick and gave him a little medication and fluids to get him sorted.
The place we fostered from then complained that we took him to the vet and seem to be refusing to refund us for the treatment now, which is very fun.
He was sick for most of the week this week, but has now improved a lot!
We likely won’t foster again from these people, either, as they keep saying the dog will be leaving within the next day and then we hear nothing…It’s all a little crazy and we got no information on the dog, either!
Kim took him out today to hang out with another dog and her friend and he was a very good boy!
We did get to go out for dinner on Tuesday for Kim’s birthday, too. Kim’s friend came over to pet sit and we walked down to Gastown to a French restaurant we went to when we first moved to Vancouver.
The food was alright but the service was pretty awful. We probably won’t be heading back there.
We still have the dog now, even though we’ve been told he’s going 3 times! We are still awaiting a call from them to tell us more about the plan, but for now, we are having a great time chilling with the awesome, chill doggo.
On Saturday, Curtis was up at a good time to go and get a haircut. He had a really great barber, actually! She was new at the shop but she was very nice and did a great job. Curtis’ll definately be going back to her for his next cut.
Right after that, Curtis walked back home and met Kim, before we walked for about 30 minutes to get to a park for a BBQ with Curtis’ hockey team which the team organised!
Not too many people turned up, but it was nice to have a bit of down time in the blistering sun, eat some food and have some drinks.
We headed back home and Kim went out to get a few items at some stores and Curtis watched the first Leafs pre season game!
Sunday 26 September 2021
On Sundaymorning, we were up early and got ourselves some croissants for breakfast.
We left the apartment into the lovely rain and drove for about an hour up to Langley to a farm!
Kim had booked an alpaca walking experience for us both as Curtis’ favourite animal is the alpaca.
We got there and were handed an alpaca right away. We were able to walk them for a bit and then we got to a field where we met many more alpacas and got to feed them whilst we learned all about them.
We got to see the pigs, chickens & rabbits followed by some cows that came to say hello!
We headed back home after we were there for a while and once we got back we were pretty hungry, so we went out for an impromptu late lunch!
We went to Water St Cafe, which is down in Gastown.
We may have got far too much food, though on the plus side, we had dinner for the next night!
We got some mixed breads along with a cheese caprise, which was very delicious. The bread was really good too.
We finished that and for some reason, we order a meal each. Kim got a carbonara and Curtis got meatball pasta.
We had very little of our meals as it was a little too much for us! But we did have a few drinks which were delicious.
We walked back home in the rain and when we got home we did some relaxing for the remainder of the evening.
We officially got accepted for permanent residence here in Canada!
So what does that mean?
This means we no longer have any restrictions like we did on our permits and we can stay here in Canada for 5 years before we need to renew it (which is apparently easy).
What next?
We need to get our PR cards, which we can do online and once we get those, we can get our new SIN (social insurance number).
Once that’s done, the process is done! Then, we’re able to come and go as we please and work here as we please for 5 years.
This is all exciting! We are glad the process is finally done and we’re residents of Canada!
We’re back! Hello! We went on a little trip to Sunshine Coast for Curtis’ birthday. You can read about it here.
On Tuesday 14th September, in the evening, we drove out to Horseshoe Bay to catch a ferry out to Sunshine Coast. Whilst it is not an island, it’s technically connected, there’s no other way to get there without a boat, so we took the ferry.
The ferry arrived late, but that didn’t make much difference to us, other than the fact we were hungry!
There weren’t many people on the boat, so it was quick and easy to get ourselves some food. We ate that and then the ride was pretty much over. (it’s only 40 minutes).
We drove off the boat and drove on to our first accomodation, which was a cute little cabin!
Here’s a low quality video of the cabin!
When we arrived, the cabin was incredibly cold as the windows were open, but after a bit of time with the fire on it got nice and toasty. We arrived fairly late, so once we got settled we watched a little bit of TV before sleeping.
Here’s another low quality video of the cabin!
Day 2
We woke up in the awesome cabin and drove down to Gibsons for a spot of breakfast.
We got a breakfast bagel each from a cafe there. The staff were wonderful (and one was British!) which made it a very nice experience.
Once we had our breakfast, we had heard that people were filming down the street for a holiday film! We went down to check that out, but not much was happening at the time, other than there being some fake snow on the floor.
We walked around Gibsons for a bit as there was a nice little marina area and the sun was shining!
After walking for a bit, we found a park to go to for a hike/walk!
We drove to Cliff Gilker Park where it said there were waterfalls and hiking trails, which sounded perfect.
The walk was through the forest with nice big trees and some really nice little wooden bridges!
We saw the waterfall, but it wasn’t really much of a waterfall, but still peaceful.
We walked around here for quite a while, mostly to just find all the bridges…we love bridges!
Once we left here, we drove to a petting zoo to let some animals, but unfortunately it was closed on that day, so we turned around and drove to something nearby that we found, called Robert’s Creek Pier.
Robert’s Creek is a small town with some nice little buildings that we looked at and when we went down to the pier we nearly got blown over it was so windy!
Wind!
We drove back to the cabin and had a look online for some places to get food and also a look for other things to do whilst we were in the area.
We eventually found a place for dinner, which was a Mexican place. Luckily, they were able to seat us once we got there (they were very busy!) And we grabbed ourselves some pretty tasty Mexican food!
We went back to the cabin and watched a bit of TV and relaxed.
Whilst relaxing, we heard some noises outside, so we checked and sure enough, it was a BEAR! We saw him right next to our cabin trying to get at the bins, but we think he scared himself away when he knocked over the bin.
It was our first time seeing a bear in the wild and it was pretty large and right outside!
Day 3 – Curtis’ Birthday!
We woke up, got ready and left the cabin to grab some breakfast.
We went to a cafe (after a bit of back and forth between two) and managed to get a seat. It was pretty small and busy!
We had to wait 45 minutes for our food, which seemed pretty long, and when we got the food it was…Alright. It looked good but wasn’t incredible. Curtis had a smoked salmon and dill cream eggs benedict whilst Kim had a breakfast bowl.
We left here and tried to go to a few cool looking spots with nice views, hikes and waterfalls, but they all seemed to be closed for some reason!
We ended up finding a park near the new cabin we were moving to, so we sat there for a bit and stared into the water.
We checked in to the new cabin and it was not quite as we thought. It looked like a cabin, but was pretty large. It was quite dark and just not as good as we hoped. But it did look cool!
Looks cool outside, right?
We relaxed for a bit once we got in. The weather had started to deteriate, which we knew was going to happen, so we prepared to just hunker down and do very little.
Kim found a really nice brewery called Batch44 and we headed there for some drinks and dinner. Kim also found out there was a quiz, so we entered that and didalright! We weren’t last, which is a win!
We headed back to the cabin and got some really good sleep.
Day 4
It was raining all day, so we just slept and stayed in, watching some TV and playing card games.
We went and got pizza for dinner. Nothing fancy but a bit of a tradition for lazy days!
There was a large wind/rain storm which blew over a power line! This caused us to have an outage and, as the power line was laying on the only bit of road in/out of the town, we were stuck in the dark!
We were able to get some candles from a neighbour and we spent the night playing cards and chatting. It was kinda nice, in a way.
We didn’t get too cold and headed to bed. We were however awoken around 02:00 when the power came back on! But we were glad that was able to get sorted.
Day 5 – The Final Day
We woke up and got some breakfast at a diner style place and then looked for something to do before we needed to catch our boat.
We found somewhere called secret beach (it was sign posted, so not very secret!) And we had a wander around on the beach and the logs that were on there.
Pretty nice place!
Kim found a nice rope swing and had some fun on that!
We took the ferry home and drove back. It seemed to take far less time!
We got home and made some dinner and then it was time for Curtis to play hockey. He’s finished his 3rd game now and is really enjoying being back out there on the ice.
Curtis has a goal and two assists already, all of which came from the last game!
And there we have it!
That was our sunshine coast trip. We hope you enjoyed having a blog to read again. We had some fun times and we were excited to share it with you.
Maybe we’ll have some other fun stuff coming up at some point, but we hope everyone is well.
It’s been an awesome 1656 posts, but now, we think the time is right to stop with daily blogs.
Why?!
Well, after this long of daily blogging, it can be a lot of work. Of course, COVID hasn’t been great for content and posting about work each day is fairly mundane (for both us and you) and difficult.
Don’t get us wrong, we’ve loved sharing our lives with everyone. For something that started just to keep a few family members in the know whilst we travelled, to something that has grown far more than we expected…It’s been awesome.
We now have all of these memories on a site we can visit whenever we want to see the awesome things we’ve done. That’s amazing.
What Now?
We’ll still be around & we’ll still post here!
We want to only post when it’s something exciting, important or interesting.
If we go on a trip, we’ll post, for sure.
We’re not sure if it’ll be daily, weekly, a roundup or whatever, but it’ll be something. We don’t want to give a specific schedule because we don’t want to put that time constraint on ourselves.
What you should know is that the content should be far more interesting, engaging and just overall better!
Goodbye For Now
We guess this is goodbye…for now.
Thank you all SO MUCH for the continued support.
Apparently 750 people follow this blog, and they’re just the subscribed people. 750!
What an insane number.
We’ve posted for over 1600 daysin a row.
We didn’t miss a day!
We have had nearly 40,000 views on this blog. That’s another insane number. Thank you.
We’ve hunted for wifi to get the blog uploaded countless times, in countless countries. We wouldn’t change that for the world. That was part of our travel experience and it was fun (at times).
This will be tough.
For over 3 years we have had a daily blog uploaded, so it’ll be tough and weird not to upload a blog, starting tomorrow.
Again, we have things we want to do, and things that’ll happen throughout our lives and as these things happen, or we go to cool places, we’ll absolutely upload a blog (or some blogs) all about our experiences.
Who knows when the next blog post will be. Maybe tomorrow (though unlikely) maybe next week, maybe next month…
All we know is that we are so thankful for everyone that has engaged with us and our blog over the three years.
THANK YOU ALL!
We’ll see you here at some point, for sure.
Feel free to continue staying connected with us on our Facebook, or through each of our Instagram pages!
If you’ve not seen all of our blogs, we recommend going to the visited places page and checking out all the places! There’s some cool things in there.
We got ourselves ready in the morning, had some breakfast, and got packed up and ready to go.
We changed the bed sheets and tidied up, as well as packed all of our stuff away.
Afternoon Tea
We took Linda for afternoon tea at 11:45.
The place seemed alright, but everything was just okay, which was pretty disappointing.
We headed back to Linda’s and hung out with her for a bit more before we had to leave and say goodbye until next time!
Leaving Victoria
We drove up to get our car cleaned at the car wash that we had bought a ticket for before but didn’t get to use on Wednesday.
We were waiting and a woman managed to make her car battery die right at the entrance to the car wash, so it took quite a while to actually get our car washed, so it was good that we left at such a good time!
We left the car wash after it was done and went to the supermarket and picked up a salad to eat on the boat.
We got onto the boat and got a pretty good spot! Masks are now mandatory again indoors, which includes the ferry, which is great!
We ate our salad and then we just relaxed. We were told there were whales, but we didn’t see them when we looked!
We got back to Vancouver and drove home, which took less time than expected.
We got back home and just did very little. Kim had a nice bath with bath salts she bought at her massage and we just relaxed.
Curtis got a bit more sleep this morning and then he jumped on a call with a colleague to figure out some strange permission issues.
There was a team meeting and once that was done, he had some tickets to get done as well as having to call someone and get something fixed for them.
Throughout the day, when he had time, Curtis got the packing done and a few things around the apartment, like taking out the rubbish.
Kim’s Day
Kim left early-ish and took laptops over to the office she was working from during the day.
After that, she went and got some breakfast and even took Curtis a croissant and coffee!
She got some of the laptops sorted today and it was nice to be in an office with colleagues.
Kim left the office around 13:00 and went bowling! She organised this with people from her company and a fun company event!
After bowling, Kim headed back home.
Away We Go!
Off to the island we go!
After work, we drove out to the ferry terminal and took the ferry over to Vancouver Island! We have a fun 10 days planned and we’ll be visiting Kim’s great auntie Linda for the first time in quite a while.
We got some easy food on the ferry and then drove out to Port Alberni! We’ll arrive there super late, but then we’ll be up early tomorrow to do some exploring!
We’re super happy to have some time to travel around and see things, whilst being careful, of course.
Curtis started the day with a meeting at 09:00. This was with his team but also with another team. This meeting was an update on how the offices are coming along and remaining items for returning to the office.
He had a lot of admin to get done today, so he did that, and then it was mostly tickets for the rest of the day.
There was an office-wide meeting in the afternoon, just to discuss a few important things and also just have a bit of fun.
Kim’s Day
Kim started with an interview and then had a catch up after to chat about how it went. She then joined a 1-1 with a teammate to check in on them. Then Kim joined the weekly department meeting.
Towards the middle of the day Kim joined two calls about recruitment planning and what that might look like. She also joined a recruitment call to update the exec team about a couple of live roles.
Towards the end of the day Kim had a 1-1 and then joined another interview. She finished the day with a connect about two roles, it was a great way to end the day.
Evening
We went out to Canadian Tire to get Kim a trolly for work. It was nice to get outside!
We got some take out for dinner and once we ate that, we did some cleaning and some other house work in preparation for going away for 10 days!
We also had to pack, so we did that, and then we hung out and watched some TV.
Curtis had another orientation at 09:00 this morning which went really well and the person was also very nice.
He had a team meeting after that and then did some tickets followed by another meeting to discuss a new process.
Curtis had to get a list of people that took chairs home which he needed to take from the ticket system.
Once that was done, he had some lunch and then reviewed some security systems to check for anything of note.
There were more tickets to do in the afternoon and then he had a bit of spare time to get some more Norwegian homework done.
Kim’s Day
To start the day Kim joined a meeting to discuss next steps with candidates for a role, it was great to get on the same page. She then later joined a 1-1 meeting with an employee to see how they are settling in to their new role.
Kim then had a call with a new starter where they asked how they could support Kim’s teams! It was wild to be offered support and someone turn to the department and ask ‘what can I take off of your plate’, which was so lovely and maybe even a little odd! She then had another 1-1 with a new employee to see how their onboarding went.
To start the afternoon Kim had a sit down with her manager to go over events planning as the plan she had for Friday may be ruined by rain! She then joined a meeting to discuss teams and planning with a department manager before joining an interview.
After the interview Kim joined another planning meeting about a different department. She then had a quick review of the interview before joining a weekly recruitment meeting for the same team.
In the evening Kim was able to really sink her teeth into some admin. She started making some steps in the planning for Friday and she was able to get a few salary based tasks done.
Evening
Kim did a little more work in the evening after she had an appointment and then we had some dinner. Everything outside smelled so good for some reason, all day, many different excellent smells so we were hungry for most of the day!
Kim did some more work after dinner and then we relaxed for the evening watching some TV.
Mr & Mrs Hale 