Update

So, since the big news has probably sunk in by now, we can now go back to a day-to-day basis :)
Thanks for all the nice messages though. So nice to read!
Everything is going well. We had an appointment with the midwife on Wednesday, and she was happy with how things are progressing. She also found the heartbeat, which is always reassuring (we'd seen it on the 8 week ultra sound, but that was almost 5 weeks ago), and weird and special at the same time.

In the meantime life just continues as usual. Work is good and busy, but fun. Spring is around the corner, finally, and I can't wait to spend more time outside of the office! The nice weather is also a great excuse to take Zora for long walks when I get home from work. My favourite walk is in the Greenbelt, where yesterday I stumbled across a coyote or wolf, just enjoying the sun fairly close to the trail:

It kept an eye on me, but didn't move. It was hidden a little bit, but still clearly visible. Definitely cool! And only 10 min walk from our house! Better keep an eye on Zora, she'd make a good dinner :)

Nolan is doing well. Getting excited about the nice weather as well, which should mean lots of running! My running is almost non-existent, but I walk a lot every day so at least I get enough exercise in. And it's great to have Zora. She forces us to get out, and we all love it! We're also looking forward to getting the backyard ready again for the summer. Add some colour and excitement to it. The crocuses are finally blooming and the tulips are coming up as well, so hopefully they'll bloom soon as well. This weekend we're going to cut down the willow tree beside our house (it's too close for our foundation), but we'll use its cuttings to green up the outside of the fence and create some privacy. Hopefully they'll take off!

The cats are doing well too. They're totally used to Zora now. Murphy and Zora play together, while Fertile just wants Zora to leave her alone (and Zora respects that), and she just goes her way. It works!

So all in all life is good. And actually quite normal. The fact that we're getting a little addition to the family still feels a bit surreal, but I'm sure it will feel real soon enough!

1+1=3

Finally some real news... Nolan and I thought that a puppy and two cats is not enough for our little household. So, we'll be getting an additional MacAfee somewhere in the fall of 2013! (in case you're wondering, yes, I'm pregnant!)

So far things are going really well, and we're both excited about this new adventure. I think we definitely have a lot to learn, but I'm sure we can do this. And as a good start: Zora graduated from her Level 1 Obedience class last night, and hopefully that taught us some parenting skills as well.

We will keep you posted on all the developments, but will leave some time to let this sink in first.

After all, never say never!

Long time...

Since I last posted. Almost a month ago. I guess there is just not much to tell these days! Spring is still a long way away (we haven't seen our lawn since December, as it is still covered by several inches of snow). But some birds are coming back, such as the robins and the red-winged blackbirds, so spring can't be too far away. And the fact that the days are so much longer (or so it feels) also makes it a bit easier.

Nolan was fighting a nasty flu bog for a while. We even ended up at the hospital, since they wanted to take chest x-rays to make sure he didn't have pneumonia. Luckily that was not the case, and he seems to finally get over his cough (four weeks later...).

Zora is doing great. Still puppy-hyper, but also very happy and getting better at her obedience classes, although we still have some things to learn. But she'll get there. She is definitely a great addition to the family; even Murphy thinks so! They play together quite a bit and look each other up, so that's a good sign. Fertile is indifferent, but she's old and as long as she can sleep in her bed in the sun, life is good for her (so we're hoping for a bit more sunshine...).

Work is also good but busy. We're getting close to year-end (our fiscal year runs April 1 - March 31), which is always a busy time. But I'm having fun, and that's the main thing. And next week will be a short one. I get Friday and Monday off for Easter, and decided to take Thursday off as well, so a nice long long weekend. Too bad Nolan has to work Monday :)

We went to see Whitehorse last night. A band we saw play at Bluesfest a few years ago and really enjoyed it a lot. They played at the NAC last night, and absolutely rocked. Very much worth it! And a great way to start celebrating being together for six years (today six years ago we met for the first time in person, at the Chapters in Kanata. Who knew we would actually end up in Kanata!).

Besides that, life is pretty much the same. Running has been pushed to the background. With Nolan sick, I walked Zora a lot, and didn't always have the energy to run as well. We finally started again today, so hopefully we can bring it back up again to reasonable distances this summer. And when Zora is old enough, she can join us. Right now we just walk her quite a bit, trying to keep her calm. But we can walk her for an hour, and then she easily runs like an idiot in our backyard for another 30 min. Too much energy!! I guess it keeps us in shape as well.

Happy Easter!

Guest post by Tina!

The following was written by our dear friend Tina, who recently spent some time with us. Thanks Tina for taking the time to write this!

When my husband and I found ourselves with a free long weekend in February, our thoughts immediately turned to Ottawa. While the city is a fabulous place in the winter, we also wanted to spend our time off with our dear friends Katalijn and Nolan.

While they are technically Riley’s longtime friends, their recent addition to my life has enriched it in every way.

They kindly offered to let us stay in their house… which was actually a bed and breakfast in our case since they not only housed us, but fed us (delicious food) and entertained us. I’m still waiting for the bill to show up in the mail ;)

We packed up our one and a half year old daughter, made the five hour trip and spent several days with this wonderful couple.

There were many highlights of the weekend. The first was meeting Zora – the amazing puppy Nolan and Kat adopted from the humane society. She’s a lovely dog and so well behaved. Nolan and Kat are doing a great job at obedience training.

Another highlight was a girls’ night out at the curling rink. I filled in for Nolan, which the other team members agreed was an improvement in every way - haha. I hadn’t thrown a rock since my teenage days, but I was able to make some respectable shots by the middle of the game. Kat was one of the stars of the night, but my second rock in the last end was considered by the other team as the throw of the game. Word got around and there were several offers from national women’s teams to serve as a spare. Unfortunately, the money offered was not enough, so I’m going to stick to recreational curling for now.

Kat and Nolan also took us to the greenbelt, where we fed chickadees out of the palms of our hands. My daughter was fascinated that birds were coming to eat out of mommy’s hands. A wonderful experience.

We look forward to our next get together with Nolan and Kat. We wish they lived closer to Toronto, but it is always nice to know they are only a five hour drive – or an e-mail - away.

Zora

As some of you know by now, we have a small addition to our little family. Her name is Zora and she's four months old. No, we did not go out and adopt a baby, Zora is a dog!

We started talking seriously about a dog again when we came back from Europe, and we've been regular visitors of the Humane Society lately. Part of it was to make sure that Nolan would also be comfortable with dogs, and of course to see if there was anything that piqued our interest. We'd been checking the website as well. Regularly I might add... And a little puppy showed up about a week and a half ago. But of course, puppies are popular and within a few hours she was listed as 'adoption pending'. Fine, we were not too sure about a puppy anyway. But the next day, she was still there, and available for adoption.  That was Thursday, and by the end of the day, she was 'adoption pending' once again. By then we were sure that someone had picked her and would give her a good home. Well low and behold, by Friday evening she was available again. We'd decided to go to the Humane Society first thing Saturday morning to check her out, but more to reassure ourselves that she was not the puppy for us (we've thought before we thought the right dog, but then saw it in person and it was not 'our' dog. Well, Zora was different. It was pretty much love at first sight (but then, who doesn't love puppies?!?!). She was much smaller than we had anticipated. On the website she was listed as a German Shepherd/ Shiba Inu mix. So we expected a pretty stocky dog type. But she was anything but that. She was small, thin but fairly long legs and skinny. But super cute and friendly! When we met her and spent some time with her, we both fell in love with her. So when Nolan said that maybe we should look into adopting her, who was I to say no?? I really wanted to make sure that he was comfortable with it, since it's a pretty big commitment for both of us, especially a puppy. So we started the adoption process, but decided to pick her up on Monday so we would have time to get the house ready, and not rush into it by picking her up end of day Saturday (we couldn't pick her up on Sunday).

Since she's not house trained we bought a crate to help with the house training, and a pen to give her extra space when we are home, and to give Zora and the cats a chance to get to know each other without direct contact right away.

So far things are going really well. The cats are adapting, especially Murphy is very curious and spends a bit of time every morning and evening checking Zora out in her crate or pen. Fertile is a bit more shy, but she's the type of cat that if a dog is too close, she'll let them know so we're not too worried about her. They both seem very relaxed, and are doing much better than we'd anticipated. It probably helps that Zora is just a puppy (and a small one), so she's not too intimidating. And she doesn't bark or get excited when she sees the cats, so that helps as well.

The house training is going well too. She seems to be picking it up quickly. Nolan and I are taking turns being on 'puppy' duty, which really means working from home, and getting up at night, but she's worth it. And we're both lucky that we can work from home (especially me). My boss is a big dog fan, and most of the people I work with are not in Ottawa anyway, so it's very easy to work from remote locations (i.e. home).

Of course some pictures:

We had a pretty big snow storm yesterday (which was great because now all the holes underneath the fence are covered so she doesn't have to be on the leash in the back yard anymore), and by the end of the day, we had so much snow that Zora pretty much had to swim through it. But it didn't slow her down! She is incredibly fast, and loves to explore the world. My mom said that she might be (part) whippet. It would definitely explain her small paws and physique, as well as her speed and her quiet character (when she's not playing!). It means that she might make a really good running partner! Anyway, we are very happy with her, and think she's a great addition to our family.

 Talking about running... We haven't done much of that lately. It's partly the weather, travelling, busy lives, now a dog, but we're planning on getting back into it soon :)

Everything else is going well, so there is not much else to report on!

Winter is here!

This is what the weather forecast looked like a week ago:

A week later it turns out that this forecast was somewhat accurate, except that it turned out to be much colder than expected! On Wednesday morning Nolan posted this picture:

The -28 came with a windchill of pretty close to -40. So yes, pretty cold! I missed out on some of the cold in Ottawa, since I was hiding in Sault Ste Marie. For you who don't know where Sault Ste Marie is, it's about 800 km Northwest of Ottawa. And it was almost colder than Ottawa! I was visiting colleagues at the Great Lakes Forestry Centre and attended a seminar of Enhanced Forest Inventory at Sault College. The hotel I was staying at was a good half hour walk from GLFC and I managed to walk in every morning, even in -28 temperatures (and wind chill of -35). As long as you dress for it, it's definitely bearable. The week itself was very good as well, and made me realize again how valuable some face2face time can be, and how much I like spending time in the regions. Not that Ottawa is bad, but still...

The canal is now officially open for skating, so I might just have to bring my skates to work for a quick skate at lunch time!

Finally...

Nolan's been bugging me that I haven't updated my blog in a while. 'I'm checking every day, and there is nothing new to see. Don't you think it's time for an update?'  Maybe time to update the background picture as well, since we're not in a fall season anymore. A picture of a deepfreeze with serious ice build-up would be more appropriate.

But I'll take this opportunity to post some pictures of Paris and the Netherlands. We had a great trip, had a wonderful Christmas with my parents and Gijsbert (too bad Monika and Rob were not there, but understandable), caught up with good friends and enjoyed Paris. Too bad nothing was going on for New Year's. But still, it was fun.

A beautiful rainbow on our way back from Wijk bij Duurstede to Amerongen.

Dams were open in the Rijn due to the high water level.

Le Sacre Coeur

Moi

...

Le Louvre

Notre Dame

Louvre (and the line up to get in)

Locks of love

Does this need an explanation?

Arc de triomphe

Eiffel tower all lit up.  It will get the blinking lights going for about 2 min every hour on the hour. And that's what happened at New Year's. Nothing more than that. Just some blinking lights. Oh well...

I might have to photoshop my head in.

There were some cool lights though.

The weirdest thing happened on our last day in Paris though. The hotel we stayed at was nice and one of those typical Paris-type hotels. Nothing strange about it. We had breakfast at the hotel every morning, which included those delicacies that France is known. Yum!

Our last evening at the hotel, I had a shower, but noticed that the water was getting cold. Yep, we ran out of hot water. They told us that the hot water tank was broken, and since it's January 1st, no technician could come. They'd fix it tomorrow. That put a bit of damper on things, since we wouldn't be able to shower the next morning (our last morning before taking the train back to Amsterdam).

The next morning we wanted to go downstairs for breakfast, but there would be no breakfast. They were busy packing the place up! We asked about breakfast, but they told us we had to go somewhere else because they were closing that day!! As in, this is the last day we're open and having guests! So weird... We had breakfast and then came back to the hotel to pick up our stuff and checked out. I did mention that we were disappointed we didn't have hot water so we did have a nice discount. But it was still very strange how the hotel just 'closed'. Luckily we went home that day, so we were not affected too badly. But it made for a good story!