Sander, Daniëlle & EmilyOur Family life...

Our Family life...

Canadian cold and snowshoeing…

After we opened the door from our Condo when we came back from our to short winter break in California we found a letter that the thermal unit (the whole door) would be replaced on that same day. After we watched up on some sleep the technicians came in the afternoon, within only minutes the whole unit was gone…outside it was about -14 degrees celsius and snowing and that made a 45 degree difference within 24 hours for us…

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You can imagine we felt really cold while waiting for the technicians to be finished in about an hour. After the unit was placed back we turned up the heating and soon it the temperature was back to normal again.

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On Thursday evening a colleague from Germany visited us, thanks for bringing the Whiskey! We decided early that day to go together to Jupiter Ascending, a movie, at the SilverCity across the street. The movie started but there was something wrong with the 3D image quality. After one of the other guests informed the staff is was resolved. The movie was good and when we left the theatre one of the employees handed out courtesy tickets for another movie because of the issue in the beginning. I love the service mentality here in Canada, you don’t even have to complain to get it…

And than it was time for a long weekend, we started early on Saturday with a visited to the Yorkdale Shopping centre. We went there to order a chair, we already looked at this chair for a long time but wanted to look for more options at other stores but nothing came close to this one…it’s in stock in the new jersey warehouse and we can pick it up in the local warehouse at the beginning of March and then our living room is finished!

Finished? Wasn’t there an Ottoman which still needed to be picked up? Yes there was and we did that today. The Ottoman is the perfect size, it’s much more convenient than the carton box we used the first months but…the it’s not the quality we would expect. One of the hinges is bend and the fabric is damaged. We send an e-mail with our remarks and within minutes after sending the mail we got a response back from John, our own furniture associate at the Crate & Barrel. A new one will be ordered for us to be built the same way and in the mean-time we can keep this one and use it as if it is ours. Again excellent service.

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That evening Danielle baked her famous Chocolate Chip cookies to bring the day after on a real Canadian adventure. Yes, I wanted to do something only die-hard Canadians would do… I planned to search for a geocache on a small island on Buckhorn Lake about 1:45 hours driving from our place. What’s so Canadian about geocaching you might think, the temperature. On this particular day the highest temperature was expected to be -20 degrees celsius with a windchill temperature somewhere close to -40 degrees celsius. And to get to the cache I needed to walk over the frozen snow-covered Buckhorn lake. Lucky for me the Geocache was placed by GEOmamma the mother of one of my coworkers and we were invited to visit their beautiful (and warm) cottage.

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The ride towards Ennismore was beautiful on its own and after a cup of tea and some cookies it was time to put on the snowshoes and walk over the lake. And I can tell you it was really cold, I never expected that you can actually feel the difference between -10, -20 or even -40 degrees but now I can tell you really cold starts at -30 or something. I felt things I’ve never felt before. After only minutes out there my face started to hurt, my coworkers laughed it away and told me to get used to it, it’s normal for real Canadians…oh boy I’ve got a long way to go before I can call myself a real Canadian I think…

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After posing for pictures in the middle of the lake and snowshoeing to Ground Zero it took me longer as usual to find the cache! It was made to blend in and normally I like the more creative geocaches but today I didn’t my hands started to hurt since my gloves aren’t suitable for Canadian winter weather…but I found it and I got some letters in the log, the pen gave up after being a couple of seconds out of my pockets.

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After warming up at a warm spot behind the island we started our walk back to the shore and the warm cottage. Although it was colder as I thought it was a really cool experience in every meaning of the word cool. I’m glad I did went out with this kind of weather to feel what a Canadian winter is about and in the end I was able to write my name down in the log of that geocache with difficulty level 4 and terrain level 5. After a warm lunch and a lot of small talk it was soon close to 4:pm and time to head home. Thanks for letting me experience this David and family!

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The monday was part of the long weekend as it was Family day, a statutory holiday which exists in Ontario since 2007, first time it took place was in 2008. We took it easy since we’ve quite busy week ahead of us but we decided to go see American Sniper in the VIP Movie Theatre at the Shops in Don Mills. It’s a great movie and with those full recliner seats and service in the theatre it got even better.

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Our first snowstorm…

Since I was not able to keep up with Danielle when walking with the windchill her in Toronto, I decided I also needed a warm coat. We ordered a Canada Goose The Chateau in Navy Blue. Unfortunately my size was sold out in the regular stores but I Canada Goose still sold it online in their web-store so I ordered… Besides ordering a warm jacket we decided that warm hiking boots would be a good addition to our wardrobe too. We found a nice BOGO at the Sportscheck at Yonge and Eglinton, Buy One Get One 50% off.

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On Tuesday we went to the movie Interstellar together at the movie-theatre we can see from living room, I still need to get used to the fact that we have everything around us in walking distance. 

And on Wednesday my Canada Goose Parka arrived and it was just in time for the first real snowstorm in Toronto this winter. We ended up having almost 25 centimetre of snow in about 24 hours. And despite the fact that it took me twice as long to get to the office and back from the office the sights were beautiful. To bad it only stayed for a couple of days. But at least we could test our new waterproof shoes and our jackets in a winter wonderland.

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Thursday our Crate & Barrel Lynx Grey Rug was finally delivered, and while we first thought it might be one foot too long it is the perfect size. It’s also a perfect fit to the rest of our furniture, although we still need to wait for our custom-made Ottoman which is planned for delivery in February.
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A nice thing to mention is also that for the first time in about 5 years the gas prices dropped below the dollar in Toronto. And in the meantime the presents for christmas started appearing under our christmas tree, I love the free gift wrapping service at the Yorkdale Shopping Centre.
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That Saturday our neighbours came back from their Cuba vacation (thanks for the Rum) and after picking them up we enjoyed Sushi at the Sushi Supreme, I think I already mentioned that they serve great Sushi didn’t I?

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