Finally - Home Owners!

We did it - we bought a house!

It's a gorgeous detached home in Toronto's east end literally just steps from the Danforth and less than a five minute drive from The Beaches. And we got it for asking! After some previous homes we were interested in going for between 70-100K over asking... we were starting to get pretty down. Highlights include:
- 2 fireplaces, 1 of which is in our bedroom. All that's missing is a bear skin rug. But then again, if Lola keeps acting up she may soon find herself face down in front of the fireplace.
- a huge kitchen with a refurbished 1950s stove, which includes two ovens. George can now make roast chicken and chocolate cookies at the same time.
- built in bookshelves
- bathroom with a tin ceiling
- a canopy of trees over the house
- second floor balcony
- third floor loft/office
- and much more!

Needless to say George and I are on cloud 36. Closing is Aug 28 and tonight I've started going through our stuff and getting rid of the junk we'll never use. We spent the last weekend inspecting BBQs at Rona and found the one we want. I can't wait to have our first Saturday evening steak BBQ with a couple of beers.

Pictures to follow.

Whale Watching

George was working the Victoria flight with a 24-hour stopover a few weeks back so I booked off a couple of days and joined him out there.

With basically one day at our disposal, we decided to do something that has been on both our "to do" lists for years; go whale watching! So we dropped our $80 each and hopped on a relatively small yellow zodiak with 6 others and headed out into the Pacific Ocean in search of Orcas, also known as Killer Whales.

Half the fun was flying across incredibly large waves at top speed and bouncing around. Our tour guide's advice was to pretend you're riding a horse.

After about two hours, we ended up close to the Vancouver's coast and inbetween two pods of whales. Damn, what a site. They must have had a good feeding because they were actually jumping out of the water! And we even saw one calf swimming beside his mother. Marineland has nothing on seeing these incredible animals in the natural habitat.

On our way back to shore we even found ourselves surrounded by dolphins. However, these dolphins weren't the 'friendly' ones you think of... they kept their distance from our boat.

It was the best $80 we ever spent.