Our 1st full day

Well I cant tell you how jet lagged we are. I know its only a 3 hour time change but its huge. We were ready for bed before the sun had even set and we usually are late people. The kids usually go to bed real late and sleep in till till 10am, but being 3 hrs later. They are now waking up at 7am and going to be around 8pm. We hadnt even had dinner yet and we were all ready for bed. It was the first time in months that we were awake showered and fed before Ze even left for practice. But that also meant i was alone with the kids for a long long time, with no car, no phone, no internet, no TV, and no idea where a park even was. It was a long day. Thankfully i walked to the corner market and ran into my neighbor next door who has a 2yr old son. She told me of a park a few blocks away, so later that afternoon, I took Thais to the park. Ze went got a ride from our friend adrian to the grocery store and he stocked up. I spent the afternoon on our porch getting to know our upstair neighbors. This house used to be 3 story one family home, but it has been turned into 3 separate apartments. the basement is one, the middle floor is another and the upstairs its own also. we live in the middle floor, the biggest i assume.

Upstairs is 2 women on the Canadian National soccer team. They just got back sunday from Brasil where they got 3rd place in the Pan america games. They now have 3 weeks off before going to asia for the olympics. But they went out and bought a 10 wks old baby chihuahua, of which Thais already loves to hold its leash.
Downstairs was the guy who got traded to montreal for us, we only got to talk to him a few minutes before he took the red eye flight to montreal and he moved into our old apartment, so i befriended him hoping he would answer my phone and forward me my mail. But i just found out that Alan and mely who also got traded with us from montreal to vancouver will be moving in below us. I am really excited for this. Mely and I just met a little over 6 wks ago when her fiance got traded from puerto rico to montreal, but in that 6 wks we have become good friends and now we find ourselves in vancouver together. So this should be fun. Its a small, old house with thin walls, so i feel like we are all room mates and not really neighbors but its a house full of soccer people so it should work out just fine. As long as they dont mind Tiago crying in the middle of the night, lol!
Our first full day was not very exciting, just getting to know our neighbors and get some groceries but we did find a park. I still have no idea where exactly we live to the water or the stadium or anything for that matter, but its only day 2. So far so good! off to bed, as we adjust to the time change, the kids arent. so i need as much sleep as possible. Wish me luck!

Vancouver (Heather Place)

Well after lunch and the kids took a nap, Ze and i decieded to go for a walk. We have always loved to travel and explore and see new cities, we just kind of got used to montreal once we got kids, but we are very excited to have that excitement back to discover new places again. So off we went. We went towards downtown, we assume since it had a bunch of tall buildings. It is amazing to see the Rocky Mts behind downtown. We have no idea of what anything is or where exactly we live to anything else. We just went walking. We found a 7/11 which i have not had in yrs and some other stores we were familiar with. We noticed the huge asian influence in the city and have yet to find one latin person yet. It is different to not hear french or spanish anywhere and everything is in english, but easy to get used to at the same time. The buses run on cables and lots of cute fresh markets everywhere. I hear they have great sushi here too. We walked and walked and eventually turned up a street back towards our house. And just my luck. it was named Heather St. We spent at least 30 mins just running around finding everything that had Heather in the name and taking pictures. Not to Ze's approval of course. But to me it is a sign... This is my new home, fate was telling me, " This is Heather Place".

Our New Home

We finally landed and Bob and Todd picked us up as we needed two cars with all of our stuff. They drove us straight to our new home and unloaded and the kids went down for their afternoon nap, even though it was only noon it was 3pm back in montreal. So Bob drove ze around and showed him some stuff, picked us up some lunch and we hung out for a couple hours. Our old friends Adrian and Asheiko came over and spent some time with us too. they used to live next door to us in montreal 3 yrs ago. before babies so it will take some time to adjust to us having kids. we used to go out drinking and dancing now they see us changing diapers and watching cartoons. kind of crazy how much can change in 2 yrs. so this is our new home, before we got our hands on it. As i type this 3 days later, let me tell you, it does not look like this anymore and our 25 boxes havnt even arrived yet. We were going to move to a bigger but older house, but it was far away from everything. We like this location even though it is a smaller apartment, we are only here till Oct. So i think we can stick it out for 2 months, plus all our friends all live walking distance away, so that makes up for a lot.

The plane ride

So flying cross country non stop with 2 kids under 2 sounds like a cruel joke to play on somebody, but its really just our life. we started off on the right foot but it went way wrong when Ze accidently checked one of our carry on bags. The one with all the electronics. Now thats just wrong. But we still did have the lap tops and dvds in Ze's pack back so we should be ok and we were. The kids ended up being great on the plane. they both were asleep by take off as we woke them up early for the flight. they slept for an hr or so, woke up we had some food and played and walked awhile. Tiago went back to sleep and i turned on dora for thais and before you know it we were there already. Ze and i both were surprisingly shocked, yet proud and happy of course also. but we wont push our luck like that too many more times. it could have gone terribly wrong. Thankfully we just have fantastic children and a lot of patience.

The rest of our good byes

Well my in my last blog i had said the hardest part was still to come and i was right. After i posted that blog we took some groups photos and then it was really time to say good bye and it turned into a cry fest. I knew it would be sad but never thought it would have been that sad. It was saying good bye to the girls that was the hardest. I will see the guys again in 2 weeks actually when they come to vancouver to play against ze. but the ladies... i dont know when i will ever see them again. Cello's mom and sister were just visiting from argentina, so i dont know if i will ever see them again unless i go to argentina. but cello is like my brother and has been for 5 yrs now and his mom knew it. she is the one who started my cry fest, she thanked me for taking care of her son all these yrs when she cant. and how my babies are like her grandchildren and then i just lost it. but if i thought that was hard. saying goodbye to leo's wife vero was THE hardest. she is easily a 2nd mother to my children. she has always been right there to help me with the kids. For 2 yrs, since my babies were born it has always been me and her. other players wives have come and gone but me and vero have always been the only 2 girls in everything, surrounded by all these men. i honestly couldnt have had my 2 babies this close together without the help of vero. she is an amazing woman and friend i will miss her dearly. then of course i had to say good bye to Francois but again i know i will see him again sooner than later, hopefully, so we had some tears as a time in our life has come to an end but now we just have new memories to make in different cities. They all left the house, it was quite and i went to my room and just fell on the bed and cried. i was leaving the only family i have had for 4 yrs now on a daily basis and i dont know when i will ever see them again. more so my kids wont have them in their lives everyday anymore. yes we have email and phone but the daily visits are over. so then my loving husband comes in and pats my back and asks me, "you ready to give the kids a bath?" and that was that. i had to move on and get ready for bed as we had a plane to catch in 6 hrs. oh and to top it all off, my camera battery died. so these are the only pixs i have.

The Final countdown

Well I am about to lose internet and i wanted to come say good bye. I have only cried once so far but most of my closest friends are still sitting in my living room as i type this. so the hardest part is yet to come. I cant describe my sadness, but i am trying to hide it with my happiness. and i thought pregnancy hormones were bad, this is waaaay worse. we have spent the day surround by loved ones and i couldnt have asked for a better way to spend my last day. These people are my family and i cant imagine my life wothout them but i have no choice in the matter. So i got about 8 hours till we are out of montreal for ever, but here are some photos of our goodbyes. i will have to post the rest when i get internet in Vancouver. Thanks for all your well wishes and we will let you know when we get set up. Good Bye Montreal and thank you for the best years of our life!!!

30 hours and counting....

Well the chaos is in full effect but at least we see an end to it coming soon. In about 30 hours we will be on the plane, to the next chapter of our lives.... but for nowwwwwwwwww its packing, packing and more packing. Today was our last business day here so we had to go to the bank, doctors, post office and all that stuff. Then our best friend Cello came over and helped us back even more. We had to disassemble everything and put the house furniture back to the way it was when we got here. The kids room now has 2 twins beds in it and Thais is so confused. Its kind of funny. Her bed, shelves, tables, chairs, toys, books, dolls, are all gone. Actually im not even sure where she will sleep tonight or tomorrow. Oops! Oh well it had to be done. We are up to 25 boxes and still have a few more to go but we are a lot closer.
I got real sad today and when I had to say goodbye to people I know i will never ever see or talk to again, like our doctors and stuff. People who have been so great to us and been there when our babies were born and so on. Its one thing to move and come back to visit, but we dont plan on ever coming back, so its a bit weird. I have called a few locals and left the oddest messages, example, "Hi its heather, just wanted to let you know we got traded and are leaving forever. So wanted to say goodbye" I mean who says that on a machine?? But i didnt want them to think i left without saying goodbye so i had to.
Anyways we are about to sit down and watch Vancouver play aganst Seattle on tv, watch our new team mates. Go Vancouver!!!
Here are some pixs of today, one more day and we are out of here!!!