Molson went on a road trip. He wanted to know all about our country so we took him to Ottawa.
The first thing he came through was the Byward Market:

He thought it was a charming little place with lots of restaurants and shops.
Then he did a tour of Parliament:

He looked behind the Houses of Parliament and, surprise, surprise, he found a place full of cats! The cats also live in some type of kitty-mansion.

And what a nice view of the Ottawa river from behind Parliament.

And the back of Parliament is round. And there’s a burnt bell from some fired that occurred some time ago.

And here’s Molson being totally touristy and posing in Parliament Hill.

The following day Molson decided to be active and took a hike in Gatineau Park, in Quebec. It was beautiful with streaming water that he wanted to drink all the time.

He also saw some granite rocks that he kind of wanted to take back home to make a kitchen counter top.

He posed for a nice picture.

But he started to get tired. For some reason he doubted this was the way to make it to the pub.

So he took time for some playing and another rest.

Molson was tired by the next day, but he did not want to miss the wonders of Highway 2. He saw the Air Force base in Trenton and the Brighton post office.

By the end of it he was knackered and he just had to take a nap.

It is December and I haven’t updated this blog in two months! I think it’s the longest it’s ever been between updates.
I just have been so busy, and happy, Molson is a great dog but it takes lots of our time, I barely have time for cooking anymore, so I haven’t been making anything special.
But I have taken up crochet, so I expanded my repertoire from knitting to crochet. Basically I was making a scarf and it was too skinny, I decided to do a round of single crochet and I liked the look of it a lot, I remembered that I had a book called Crochet Scarves!: 16 Hip Projects for Dressing Up Your Look by Candy Jensen, so I went and fetched it and made a whole scarf with Noro Silk Garden. I enjoyed doing it a lot and it was so fast, compared to knitting. So I made a trip to Romni Wools and got the materials for making the Orchard Mitts and the Leaf Pepper Hat (”teen” model”) from the Fall 2009 issue of Interweave Crochet. I made the mitts in about 1.5 weeks and the hat has been taking me a bit more. I’m done with the red but I am still to start with the contrast colour. I’m very excited about that, though.
I guess that’s all the updates I got for now. I’ll keep you posted and will probably have a recipe soon (I took the pictures, I just haven’t sat and written it down).

When we were looking for a new condo to buy we had one big consideration, we wanted a dog. Both James and I had dogs when we lived with our parents and we wanted to have one ourselves, especially now that there were two people in the household, it would be easier to take care of him if it was two of us.

We were advised to look for dogs that were given up because of health or death of their owners, and to watch out for dogs given up for behavioural issues, since we wouldn’t have time to work with the dog on those problems.

We looked for available dogs on Petfinder and liked a black lab mix called Max. He lived with a jack russel terrier and a cat, and his owner couldn’t take care of him because she had been sick. The adoption agency is called Adopt-A-Dog Save-A-Life and we sent the application on July 22nd. Almost two weeks later, we had our home visit. They do the home visit to ensure that the house is good for the dog, that there are no hazards… and that we are not freaks (we tried to hide it, haha).

After the home visit on August 5th, they called me and asked me if we would be interested in Molson. Molson was in more urgent need of “rescue” because his owner could not take care of him anymore. Also he was used to being alone, while Max was probably going to be lonely, being used to being in a house where there were other dogs and cats. Molson looked super cute on his pictures and we agreed to go visit him and potentially adopting him.

We reserved a car to go all the way to Markham, by then I was pretty convinced we were going to get him, but we still had to meet him. We went to his house and took him for a walk. Here we are when we had just met.

We totally fell in love with him (as we were expecting!). So we brought him home.

Molson is an adorable dog. He is a purebred Labrador, he will be turning eight in December and he is very well behaved. He is used to being inside, but loves to go for his walk.

He has been a little bit nervous, I think because he doesn’t know what’s going on. I think he is waiting for his previous owner to come any minute and pick him up. He got a little bit of diarrhea, probably because he is excited/nervous. But he has taken to us and gets excited to see James or me.
I am so glad we got him, I will have all this week to be with him and get him used to us and the house before starting my new job on August 17. Then he’ll stay here during the workday, but I’ll come right after work for his walk.