• Jan 16: Decided to book a last minute trip to England


• Jan 17: Drove to Toronto for an evening flight to London Gatwick (7 hour flight)


• Jan 18: Landed at Gatwick, met with Peter and drove to Worthing.


• Jan 19: Inspected Worthing beach with hundreds of tonnes of timber washed up from a recent ship-wreck!


• Jan 20: Tasha, Gabe and I took a trip with Mum and Claire, to Warrington (6 hour drive) and visited Cathy, Fred, Alex and Meredith. Then went to Dad and Caroline's and stayed there for a few nights.


• Jan 21: Checked out the new shopping mall in Warrington town centre, with Mum and Claire.


• Jan 22:


• Jan 23: A very quiet day. Everyone is working or busy. Went to visit Martyn and Heather and watched Everton lose 1-0 to Chelsea in the Carling Cup semi-final, on TV.


• Jan 24: Met up with Tasha's family, including her Grandparents who were visiting.


• Jan 25: Moved from my Dad and Caroline's house to Tasha's parents for a few nights!


• Jan 28: Took Gabe to Mums and Tots at the Salvation Army in Warrington, then spent a couple of hours at a Playbarn and finally over to Chris and Jean's for a good afternoon of chatting, playing and catching up!


• Jan 29: Gabe starts to be sick.


• Jan 30: Went with Chris and Helen to watch Everton tie 0-0 in a very boring game against Tottenham. Went to Wrexham to stay at Helen and Mike's place. Gabe still sick.


• Jan 31: Set off with Helen and Claire for a few more days in Worthing. (another 6 Hour drive!). Gabe still sick.


• Feb 1: Gabe sicker.


• Feb 2: Went to A&E at Worthing Hospital to make sure everything was okay with Gabe. Typically, he starts to improve while we are sat in the waiting room


• Feb 3: Gabe is starting to get back to normal. Took Claire to Heathrow for her return flight to New Zealand. Emotional goodbyes.


• Feb 5: Helen took us to Gatwick (1 hour drive) for our return flight to Toronto (3 hour wait and 8 hour flight). Passed through immigration in Toronto, officially becoming Permanent Residents of Canada in the process (1 hour), collected bags and drove to London (2 hour drive). Found a flooded basement. Cried like a little girl (30 minutes). Made lots of phone calls (2 hours). Went to Jenn and Josh's place and relived the story of the last few days (2 hours). Blacked out in a comfy bed!

A Crazy Few Weeks

Sorry for the lack of blogging lately. To summarise, we spent 19 days back in England and then returned to Canada last Tuesday, to find a flooded basement, which has consumed almost every waking hour since then. It's been such a contrast, from relaxing in England with family, to running around, making phone calls and trying to restore heat and water to our house! It was a draining week but we now have a new furnace and our hot water is running again.
We now have a restoration company drying out and restoring our basement, and then we can buy and install a new washing maching and dryer, to replace the ruined ones we discovered last week!
After that, I'll need to take a trip to buy a whole new set of power tools and a bunch of other necessities, and then finally I can enjoy a relaxing coffee over a stack of bills!
We'll post some photos from our trip home soon. They're much nicer to look at than the photos we took of our basement for the insurance company!!!