A beautiful fall day

Today was an unbelievably beautiful day here in Calgary - upper 60's, blue, blue skies, and all the trees are changing colors. This Southern California girl cannot get over the trees! So, Katherine, Lauren and I packed a lunch and headed out to Prince's Island Park- right downtown (actually a block from Pete's office). I would liken it to Central Park (but much smaller). There are lovely trails, two rivers, geese, ducks, a restaurant, and a beautiful children's playground. There were lots of people walking around, playing with their kids, having picnics and taking pictures of the beautiful trees. I, too, decided to take lots of pictures...unfortunately, someone in our house changed the setting on the camera and so all the pictures turned out rather dark. I'm posting a few anyway...use your imagination to paint beautiful yellows and greens and some reds. While we were eating the trees kept "snowing" leaves on us! Lovely!

Walking to school

Katherine loves, loves, loves that we live close enough to her school that we can walk. When we lived in Long Beach she would always ask me if we could walk to her school. So, we have begun a routine of walking the couple of blocks to her school. This week was gorgeous here - I am posting this to remember how nice it was when we are freezing.

Bizzaro world

Impressions of Canada....it is a nice place to live. The weird thing for me is that a lot of things are very similar to living in the US, but there are enough differences that it makes it a weird situation. You often forget you are in a different country and then something snaps you out of that illusion. Some examples....
1. All government signs are in french and english....and for that matter all products in stores are in french and english.



2. Restrooms are called washrooms. And for some reason there are no seat covers in any bathroom.

3. We have US television stations (The Today show is from a Boston channel, and PBS is from Seattle), but the most recent Top Chef season (the one that just ended in the US) is not premiering for another couple of weeks.

4. Boxes and cans of food are labeled in metric amounts - hard when you are following a recipe using cups and ounces.

5. There is no Barnes and Noble, but there is a store called "Chapters" with a membership card very similar to B&N.

I could go on....what it reminds me of is the Seinfeld episode when Elaine gets new friends that resemble her old gang, but they are just different enough to be annoying.

Trading Places

On September 4th, we left our beloved Long Beach to start out on a 1550 mile trek up to Calgary, Canada and to start out on a totally new adventure. With dog, cat, Katherine and Lauren we set out on the 610 headed north. Three days later we made it to our new home for the next two years.

It's such an extreme difference - when we left Long Beach, the average temperature was in the upper 80's. Since we've been in Calgary the average high has been in the low 50's.





September has been all about trading things....
we traded sunny, beach weather for cloudy, basement weather...
we traded an outside lifestyle for a mostly inside lifestyle...
we traded a very busy, overly scheduled life for a much quieter, less-scheduled life (for now)
we traded two kids in all day preschool/day care for one kid in a 3 day/week (2.5 hours a day) preschool
and the list continues....

trading places is OK every once in a while - it expands your appreciation for difference. I'm trying to remember that.

a note of caution

So, it's been a couple of years since I last updated any sort of blog (allthingskatherine.blogspot.com). I had all good intentions of blogging regularly, but there was just no time for blogging most days. Since I am no longer working a paying job, and I have no life outside of my house (for now), I thought I might just be better positioned to blog for real this time. And, since we are living far, far away from any friends or family, this might just be the perfect storm. Keep your fingers crossed.