Jenna & Jeremy

Graduation!!

2011-04-30T00:23:00.000-04:00

I'M DONE!!! It's official, as of 3:30 pm today, Fri. Apr. 29th 2011. I'm officially done school, done being a student! It's weird and definitely hasn't sunk in yet. Most of my clinic shifts ended very anticlimactically but my Thursday one was a bit more poignant as it was my last RSNC shift and I had cleaned out my office moments before leaving. Then today I was at the Queen West Community Health Centre. I saw my last four patients of my internship today and then our supervisor, Dr. Jenab, took us out for lunch. It was a nice little celebration of finishing 4 years at CCNM.

Now I get some time off before I do a 6-day NPLEX II course. You must remember my NPLEX I posts from 2 years ago...well it's back and it's bigger, meaner, and much harder. It's the final part of the licensing exam that we need to pass in order to start practicing as naturopathic doctors. I'll do this course to get organized and prepare myself and then start my main studying in June and July (and write the exam in August).

But enough about that! Let's just focus on the good stuff for now and try not to think about what's looming ahead LOL

Easter

2011-04-30T00:17:00.000-04:00

Jeremy and I had a good Easter weekend. A lot of it was spent shopping for new furniture and unpacking some of our stuff, but we also got to visit with friends and family.

We met the Easter bunny!

On Friday we had dinner at my Nana's house. Venessa was there and cute as ever! Her new brother or sister is going to be here any day now :)

On Sunday we had a brunch with Jeremy's family. We hadn't seen everyone in awhile so it was nice to catch up with them!

On Monday I had a minor surgery exam...my last CCNM exam ever!! It seems quite surreal!

What Lies Ahead?

2011-04-16T19:15:00.000-04:00

Well first of all...I'm finally caught up! YAY!!! That was a lot of backlogged posting.

There are quite a few changes coming up for us though. I'm done school in exactly 2 weeks!! That means clinic is OVER!!! It's crazy that that day is already almost here. I won't be jumping for joy just yet though. I'm writing NPLEX Part Two this August, and thus will be studying for most of the summer. It's a 4-5 day exam covering pretty much everything we have ever learned in the last 4 years. It's going to be very intense and I'm pretty scared about it! I'm taking a prep course in May which is held at my school, so even though I'll technically be done there, I won't really be done until after I'm finished writing the exam in August (and that's only if I pass :P).

I do get to look forward to graduation and my prom/formal at the end of May. Those will be fun and it will be nice to celebrate all of the hard work that we've all put in over the past 4 years!

Jeremy and I are also moving and are leaving Toronto. There are many reasons for our decision, not just the fact that I'm done school. We hope to save up for a house and free up some money for more travel before we start the whole family thing :P And we've realized that we're not really the big city types. We would much prefer being out in the country where we can have a garden to grow our own foods and go for bike rides each day, without all the crowds and concrete of the big city. We're really looking forward to moving as this next chapter starts in our lives :)

I don't think I posted regarding Jeremy's new job (well not so new now), but he started working at Fidelity Investments in the Graphic Design and Multimedia Department last November. He's really doing great there and is very fortunate to work at such a great place. He'll be continuing to work there after we move as he'll be taking the GO Train into Toronto instead of the subway (another thing which he's looking forward to!)

Also...we're expecting a new baby in the family! Jessica is pregnant with baby #2, and Venessa will soon be gaining a baby brother or sister. She's due in May (just a couple of weeks!), so I'm sure I will have some news fairly soon :)

I think that's about it for now. I will try to keep this thing better updated than I have over the past year.

3 Year Anniversary & Valentine's Day

2011-04-16T19:04:00.000-04:00

February 2nd 2011 was our 3 year anniversary! Where has the time gone? We went to the Keg (gift certifcates from my parents...thanks guys!) and had some steaks. Here are our desserts!

Jeremy got me some personalized gifts. I don't have a pic of one of them but it's a heart that hangs in the kitchen with a poem on it. The other is a desk ornament that holds a rose. Jeremy wrote a poem on it!

Jeremy also surprised me with some Valentine's chocolates :P Soo bad but it was a nice treat!

On Valentine's Day I was working in the lab at clinic. I got an email saying there was a delivery for me, which I was really confused about, but then once I contacted them I found out that they were already closed minutes after sending the email, so I had to wait until the next day to get my package. Well...I'm sure you can guess what it was:

They were beautiful roses and an adorable teddy! Thank you, baby!! Love you <3

Our First Christmas on Our Own

2011-04-16T18:30:00.000-04:00

Although we've spent two Christmases together (one at my parents house and one at Jeremy's mom's house), we had never been alone on Christmas morning. This year, that changed! We had our own little Christmas morning in our apartment.

Jeremy's 26th Birthday!

2011-04-16T18:21:00.000-04:00

He turned 26 last November. He's a little scared as he's now officially past the mid-20 age and now on his way to 30!! I think I spoiled him a bit too much and got him too many presents: some small ones plus the Zombie Shooting Gallery and the Time Machine shown below:

Later that night we went to Sushi Ya Japan (our favourite sushi restaurant!) for dinner with Jeremy's friends.

Venessa's 1st Birthday!

2011-04-16T18:12:00.000-04:00

It was Oct. 16th 2010...I know, quite long ago but I couldn't not post some pictures of the day! She was so cute in her little blue dress, and was so spoiled as she received tons and tons of gifts!

Our gifts for Venessa:

There's the birthday girl!

Opening presents:

She loved the blanket we got her so much that she hugged it!! :)

Venessa reading her cards haha

Jessica (mommy) and Venessa

Time to eat cake!!

With her mom and dad on her birthday:

Playing with cousin Violet:

Happy (very very belated) Thanksgiving!

2011-04-16T15:47:00.002-04:00

Chris & Marni's Wedding

2011-04-16T15:46:00.000-04:00

Chris is a good friend of Jeremy's. Him and Marni got married on Oct. 8th 2010.

The venue was really pretty!

Centerpiece

Beautiful cake!

Us dancing <3

East Coast of Canada Trip

2011-04-16T15:00:00.002-04:00

Jeremy and I drove out to the east coast last September for my friend, Marie's wedding in New Brunswick. We extended it a little bit and also visited Quebec, other areas of New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia. It was a great trip and so nice to stay in our own country and see how other Canadians lived and how different the scenery is.

In Quebec, we stayed in Quebec City and did a lot of walking so we could see as much as possible. We drove from there to Grand Falls, New Brunswick, which is near where the wedding was taking place.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?fbid=791606971847&id=72615483&aid=2395537&l=53adc43a4a

The wedding was so beautiful even though a hurricane was going through the area that weekend! We left from Grand Falls and drove all the way across to PEI. We got to cross Confederation Bridge, which was neat but you can't see much. We were recommended to try Cow's Ice Cream once we got to PEI. Best recommendation EVER!! That was our addiction for our 2 day stay on the island haha.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?fbid=792296774477&id=72615483&aid=2395953&l=ecbe5bd887

We visited Green Gables while in PEI (I've been an Anne fan for a long time now...since I was a kid!). We took the car ferry off of PEI and over to Nova Scotia where we then drove up to Cape Breton Island so that we could drive the Cabot Trail! Lots of driving lol...Jeremy was such a good sport :)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?fbid=794931694077&id=72615483&aid=2397251&l=34c9568611

The Cabot Trail was beautiful and we had such a great time driving around it. We camped one of the nights in a lighthouse cabin and boy oh boy it was cold! It was one of our most memorable nights too though. We were planning on grilling burgers or something and arrived to find very tiny grill pits and pouring rain. We persisted though, and amongst millions of mosquitos and downpours, Jeremy not only started a big fire but also cooked our dinner! What a wilderness guy lol :P

We hiked middle head trail and the skyline trail on the Cabot Trail, which added so much to our experience. And they definitely weren't hard. I'd highly recommend getting out of the car and doing something like that. There's so much to see that isn't accessible by car. And we saw not only 1 moose but 2! And one was a baby!! Definitely the highlight of our hike :)

After finishing the Cabot Trail we stayed the night in Mabou, NS and then drove back to New Brunswick, this time staying in the southern part of the province and visiting the Bay of Fundy. We went to Hopewell Rocks both at high and low tide to see the differences. It was neat to be witness to the force of nature and how powerful it is.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?fbid=818531345187&id=72615483&aid=2411960&l=d9171a8069

After our second Hopewell Rocks trip, we visited the Fundy Trail Parkway before heading to Saint John for our last night of the trip. We stayed in a really neat historic apartment run by Chipman Hill Suites. It was very unique, and a great way to spend our last night. We did some exploring of the town before heading to bed for our early morning and our 14 hour :S drive back home!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?fbid=822402197967&id=72615483&aid=2413516&l=e2b2f71f12

I would've posted pictures but there is sooo many that I couldn't even begin to choose some to post without choosing a bunch of them. I figured linking to my facebook albums would be easier :) There should be a montage sometime in the future...I have to get started on it first though haha

Cutie!!

2011-04-16T14:37:00.000-04:00

Venessa post!

Toronto CityPASS

2011-04-16T14:27:00.000-04:00

We were tourists in our own city last summer. It would be our last summer here before we move away after I'm finished school, so we figured we'd go see some of its attractions and what it has to offer.

We got it from here: http://www.citypass.com/toronto

I posted all of our pictures on facebook:

Here are a couple of our favourites:

First stop = Ontario Science Centre

It was neat but more for kids...not much for us to do there.

Next was the Toronto Zoo!

The zoo is always great and was probably our favourite stop out of the 5.

Next up was the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). Believe it or not, I had never been there before even though I've lived within an hour of it my whole life!

Next was the CN Tower!

There was a little replica of the tower and we posed with it:

We didn't realize until afterwards that when Jeremy posed with it, all this lightning stuff came out of nowhere haha! It fit well with his pose though :P

Similar to my situation with the ROM, Jeremy had never been up the CN Tower even though he's lived in the area his whole life! He was scared of the heights though, so only I have a picture on the glass floor :P

Our last stop was Casa Loma. Very beautiful castle, but there is no air conditioning, and especially when you climb flights and flights of stairs to go to the top of one of the pillars (which is solid stone)...it gets just a little stuffy and hard to breathe. It would be better to visit it on a spring or fall day probably.

Life in Toronto

2011-04-15T18:29:00.000-04:00

Here's our apartment!

In the summer, we loved going on walks with Alexa to the various parks and trails in the area. Here we are last summer at a fountain.

New Haircut

2011-04-15T18:06:00.000-04:00

Alexa and I both got our haircut on the same day lol!

Weekend at the Cottage

2011-04-15T16:54:00.000-04:00

Doesn't that look like the most beautiful, peaceful place ever? That's my cottage! We were there for the Canada Day long weekend last year.

We stopped off at the cabin first, which is in Bobcaygeon.

Yeah...it's pretty much a shack haha. We used to stay in a trailer when we were younger.

I used to swim in this pond all the time as a kid! lol It was always just me, my brother, and my 3 male cousins, so I became a bit of a tomboy for awhile haha

Now back on the road and on the way to the cottage:

It's the sign tree, we're almost there!

There it is! It's kind of old (from the 70s). My great uncle and siblings cleared the whole property and built it themselves.

Poms at the door :P

Putting in the dock

Putting in the boat

Trailer is set up!

Rachael and Bryanne out on the paddle boat

This was Jeremy's first time up there. He did a lot of fishing as a kid and teen and wanted to try out this lake. He was very excited, despite the fact that our motor boat was broken and he'd have to row the entire lake lol.

Unfortunately, there are very few fish in this lake. It has a lot of boat traffic and is quite narrow, so most of them are probably scared. This was the one of the few fish he caught (and released of course)

I tried fishing off the dock but I didn't like it! I feel so bad hooking fish :S

Alexa came out with us on the 2nd and 3rd day we were there. She became very enthralled and entertained by the fishing lure that Jeremy kept casting out haha

And lastly, here's one of my all-time favourite pictures of Alexa. She found a dragonfly and instead of bothering it just watched it and sniffed it. It was so cute!

Jeremy Graduated!!

2011-04-14T14:38:00.000-04:00

He finished his 3D Animation and Multimedia Program with Honours in June 2010. I attended his convocation:

Quite blurry, but this is him receiving his diploma on the big screen!

Jeremy and the rest of his program outside after convocation:

Look at him being all cute and waiving :P

Us!! So proud of you, baby. I love you!

What's all that Ruckus?

2011-04-14T14:03:00.000-04:00

It's Rachael's horse!! I never posted about him before, but I had some pictures lying around so I figured a couple could go up here.

Ruckus:

Jenna's 25th Birthday!

2011-04-14T13:54:00.001-04:00

By this post you can see just how far behind I am in updating this blog LOL. My birthday was almost a year ago! I figured, just a little update was in order though.

I had a great birthday dinner with my friends from CCNM at live. Live is a raw food restaurant. It was quite good and the desserts are amazing, especially given that they're not cooked and don't have the traditional ingredients in them!

From top left down and then from bottom right up: Jeremy, me (Jenna), Sherina, Priya, Marie, Collin.

I also had a little birthday party at my parents house and Venessa came to celebrate!!

New Zealand Photo & Video Montages

2011-04-14T13:45:00.002-04:00

I know, it's been almost two years since we went on this trip!! But I finally got around to uploading our montages onto youtube, so here they are!

Auckland (beginning of trip)

Raglan & Cambridge

Waitomo Caves & New Plymouth

Wanganui

Wellington

Napier

Wairata Station & Whakatane

Rotorua

Tauranga, Whitianga, Coromandel

Christchurch

Auckland (end of trip)

Our Western Caribbean Cruise - Photo & Video Montage

2011-04-14T12:48:00.002-04:00

Our Ship, The Carnival Glory

Belize City, Belize

Roatan Island, Honduras

Cozumel, Mexico and Grand Cayman Islands

Our Western Caribbean Cruise - Grand Cayman Islands

2011-04-13T19:48:00.001-04:00

The last stop of our cruise before heading back to Miami and then heading home :( We had to tender into this port as well due to shallower waters and coral reef, etc.

This was how far our ship was parked out in the ocean:

These guys backed up traffic on the road on our way to our excursion for the day:

Our excursion was with Fat Fish Adventures today. First up was a jet ski trip out to Stingray City! You could either ride your own or share with another person. Jeremy and I shared one (he drove lol). It was quite the wild ride! If there was no strap on his lifejacket for me to hold onto, I would've surely flew off multiple times haha! It was incredibly bumpy going over the ocean waves. Basically like going over jump after jump after jump. We got air many times. Nothing like a boat or jet ski on the lake at the cottage lol. Also, the salt water gets in your eyes. When we were out in the deeper and wavier waters, my eyes were closed because the salt water got in them and stung them. Nevertheless, it was an very neat and fun experience and was great having our own transportation out to the stingrays (most people get hoarded onto a boat, which can often be crowded - especially those run by the cruise lines).

Coming into the mangrove area from the ocean:

Heading back out again! Here is where it really got bumpy :P

STINGRAYS!!! They still had their stingers but would not use them unless threatened or stepped on - I've never heard of anyone being injured at stingray city. It was a little scary at first having them brush against you! They were like excited dogs though. They knew people come with treats and were eager to come see us.

The best thing about them is that they're not domesticated or kept in cages. They're wild and can come and go as they please. This was the major reason we decided to do this excursion rather than a dolphin one.

Jeremy playing with a stingray:

Jeremy kisses the stingray!

Me playing with the stingray:

Stingray massage:

Kisses for stingray!

Us with a stingray:

The last part of our excursion was snorkeling. We drove a little ways away from stingray city and snorkeled for about a half hour or so.

Here I am all decked out in my gear haha :P

Super snorkeler, Jeremy:

Towel animal of the day:

We added him to the collection LOL

Our Western Caribbean Cruise - Roatan Island, Honduras

2011-04-12T21:08:00.006-04:00

Our third stop of the cruise was Roatan Island, Honduras! It was also our earliest stop of the trip...7:00 am or something crazy like that lol. The excitement more than makes up for the initial tiredness though. Because of currents and winds, we weren't able to dock at the normal location and had to be brought to the other side of the island. Thus, we spent the entire time approaching the island in the lobby waiting to get out (and therefore no pics for our arrival).

We booked a private tour with Bodden Tours. It was great! Our guide, Brett took us to all the places we wanted to go. Here are a few pics on our way to our first stop :)

We first stopped at the Iguana Farm. It was a nice place, and there were no fences or areas where the iguanas were separated from you...they just walked all over the place! We fed them leaves, which they seemed to enjoy. There were also some other animals here, although not too many. There was also a beautiful area by the ocean.

These guys were too funny and so entertaining with their constant babbling :P

By the ocean:

Us feeding the iguanas :)

Roatan's fire station:

Our next stop was at a place called Carambola Gardens. We had heard that there were great views of the island at the top of a mountain/hill in here.

It was very beautiful in here! Lots of lush tropical greenery :)

It was a bit of a maze at times, but we found the mountain trail.

And we made it to the top!! It was sooo sticky and humid and hot in that forest. We were drenched! It was worth it to get to the top though!

Our next stop was probably my favourite...Victor's Monkey Business! Victor Boddon of Boddon Tours has a bunch of monkeys and parrots as well as a couple of other animals in his backyard. What's unique about them (at least for me), is that you actually get to go INTO the cage and play with them. How cool is that?

Deer are actually the national animal of Honduras:

A sloth!

Feeding the birds:

What a little cutie!

It's MONKEY time!!!

I love the lady in the back of this pic HAHAHA! I swear, it wasn't that bad :P

Brett took us to one of Roatan's restaurants and we got to try one of the specialties, Iguana. It wasn't even on the menu, so we never would've got to try it without him.

We drove along the ocean to our next stop. Look, there's our ship!

We visited a school in Roatan. We wanted to give the kids school supplies or something along that line but our guide said that they get so much of that stuff...so it would be better to get them something fun, like candy!

Here's Jeremy and our guide, Brett, at the end of our tour:

Us in front of our ship (Carnival Glory) before we had to leave:

View on the ship of the port area as we pulled away from Roatan:

The one drink we bought during the trip...and we don't even drink alcohol LOL!! We had a non-alcoholic pina colada...we just wanted the coconut cup haha :P

We came back to our room to find our next towel buddy of the trip:

Towel buddies hanging out in front of the port holes:

Next destination: Grand Cayman Islands! Stay tuned :)

Love Stuck

2010-11-29T22:06:00.004-05:00

We are filming in January next year and can't wait to get started. We have two solid, awesome actors who want to be involved for the leads and a great story with awesome dialogue.

Log Line - A famous actress gets caught in an elevator with Every-Joe-Somebody and falls head over heels with him because he is the only guy to ever talk to her like a real person and not a monetary gain in their lives.

Problems arise when the elevator doors open after five hours to hordes of paparazzi flashing their cameras as the two are still half naked. Will Vivian Chase win Ben's heart back? Only time and healing will tell.

Thanks to everyone who is supporting us and who has faith in me to do an awesome job!

Jeremy

This post concerns people who want to invest in a cool flick. Kinda a cross between 500 Days of Summer and Clerks. If you're a fan, this movie is for you.

Me and a few buddies are making it in January and are seeking out further investors.

What this means is, you can donate a few bucks and be apart of our film. How you ask?

Get invited to TIFF premiers, get a personal DvD for your collection, get your name in the movie CREDITS!

So, we have set up a few set amounts:

$100 bucks gets you an invite to the Premier, a DvD and your name at the end of the film under Associate Producer!

$250 bucks gets you the same thing, however your name will be at the start of the film before the movie begins! People will be forced to see your name on the screen! It will be under the title EXECUTIVE Producer!

Awesome I know.

Now if you are not interested in either of those amounts, might be too much or too little. You can always contact us for more in depth inquires and we can work something out.

Like say, If you wanted to give us $20 bucks, (not a huge stretch) we would put you at the end of the movie in the credits under Special Thanks.

Something like that.

Thank you to everyone who has already shown their support, and hey, if you know anyone else that wants to be apart of the production, invite them to the facebook group or direct them to this website!

Jeremy Thornhill

Forms of payment accepted: cash, cheque, paypal, credit card (via paypal)

Our Western Caribbean Cruise - Belize City, Belize

2010-11-07T11:44:00.002-05:00

We arrived here bright and early...well actually it wasn't even very bright yet!

We had to dock pretty far away from land because of the shallow waters and lots of coral there. It took us about 15 minutes by boat to arrive from our ship to Belize.

Once we got to the shore, we entered into the port area. It was a little different than we were used to...there were gates keeping people out of this area and guards protecting it. When you went outside, you were bombarded by people trying to sell things to you. We had to go meet a group for our cave tubing! Once we were all there, they put us into a van and drove us to the caves. It was about an hour drive from the port area, so we had lots of time and opportunity to see a lot of Belize City! We drove right through the more urban areas before heading out into the country.

It was quite a culture shock for us...we had never been anywhere that had a lot of really run-down houses and where there was quite a bit of poverty. It was definitely an eye-opener for us.

The schools:

The hospital:

There was a grocery store that seemed to be in the middle of nowhere!

These trees were really neat...like fans!

Police station

Our guide told us there were stories and legends told about these mountains - they were shaped like a lying down man.

We've arrived at the caves! Nohoch Ch'en - a national reserve.

Cave tubes!

Walking to the caves! It was about an hour walk. Because we were in the rainforest in Central America, there are many different animals, bugs, etc. I had read that sometimes huge, poisonous snakes have slithered across the path right in front of someone...I was pretty scared!! Luckily that never happened to me, but belive me, I was keeping my eye out for them! "Red and black - friend of Jack, red and yellow - kill a fellow."

We were ironically paired with a family who lives just an hour away from us in Niagara Falls. Here we are walking to the caves.

We were all instructed to soak ourselves in the river so that we wouldn't get too hot on our walk to the caves. That was good advice...it was HOT!!! I think it was 40 celsius or higher with humidity!

A bit of advice...don't book any of your shore activities with the ship. There are much better experiences for a LOT less money!! We must have passed at least 300 people with these yellow tubes...they were part of Carnival's cave tubing group. They paid double what we paid, there was 300 of them and only 12 of us per group (they had a much shorter cave tubing as everyone gets into the river one at a time), they had huge stupid yellow tubes which were big and cumbersome, they only got to go through 1-2 caves while we got to go through 2-3!! AND...after their last tube, they walked back whereas WE got to lay in our tubes for that "walk back" and float back to our starting point via the river!! That was actually my favourite part, not the caves because it was absolutely GORGEOUS on the river. Such lush rainforest surroundings, crystal clear water, birds chirping, monkeys howling, and the sun was so warm and just beaming down on us. It was serene and soooo relaxing!!

Here's the Carnival group:

We've reached the caves!! Doesn't the river look kind of eerie?? It seems like it belongs in a movie lol

Jeremy stole the show as he entertained the kids we were with for the whole hour drive back to the port.

Belize port pictures:

Back to the ship! If you miss the last boat back to the ship they will leave you behind!!

All ready for dinner.

We got an elephant today!!

Our Western Caribbean Cruise - Cozumel, Mexico

2010-11-06T22:59:00.003-04:00

I woke up Tuesday morning to see this out of our porthole:

Land!! Our first view of land since Sunday :)

I had to include a pic of our buddies just chillin' on the window sill

Where we got off the ship:

Here we are in front of our ship:

We didn't have anything exciting planned for Cozumel since we had activities already lined up for the other stops, so we just browsed the shops in the port area and had some fun with the picture opportunities :P

Here was the ship parked beside us for the day, the Carnival Ecstasy. It definitely had better slides than us lol

Our updated location and itinerary. Next stop: Belize city, Belize!!!

Towel buddy # 3:

We went to a trivia game in the morning since we didn't have enough to do in Cozumel to occupy ourselves all day and we won prizes!!! Trophies AND medals haha

Our Western Caribbean Cruise - "Fun day at Sea"

2010-11-06T21:04:00.000-04:00

After setting sail Sunday around dinner time, we were heading for our first destination: Cozumel, Mexico. It takes awhile to get there from Miami though, so we wouldn't arrive until Tuesday morning...which makes Monday a "fun day at sea"!! That's code for suntan and eat...mostly eat HAHA! There really isn't a lot else to do, which is part of the reason you take a vacation anyways, but we definitely ate. There's so much variety!! Breakfast in the dining room or cafeteria, lunch at the cafeteria (which features the changing theme food each day as well as the burrito bar, sandwich bar, burger place, pizza place, sushi, chinese food, and some others I'm probably forgetting lol).

I looked out the porthole in the morning to see...sea!! :P

After all those hours of sailing and we're still not past Cuba?!?!

Ocean for as far as the eye could see...

Lido deck at sea. The one drawback to these days was that EVERYONE was stuck on the ship, which made for more crowds but it really wasn't too bad.

The tanning begins!!

I got too warm so I had to change into my bathing suit :P

It was formal night tonight for dinner, so we all got dressed up and got pictures taken (although they were robbery so we didn't buy them haha). Here's us, but unfortunately it was mega windy

At dinner:

This, the chocolate melting cake, was the dessert that was the death of me. I had 3 or so of these during the cruise and I think I gained 50 lbs. due to it LOL

Us in the lobby:

Our second towel buddy!

Our Western Caribbean Cruise - May 2-9 2010

2010-09-25T11:20:00.003-04:00

We went on our vacation in May after Jeremy had graduated and I had finished exams. I had one week off before I started working in my school's teaching clinic and I was going to make the most of it!!

Here we are leaving for the airport in the middle of the night. You can see Jeremy is thrilled about that haha...

And on the plane:

We flew down to Florida as our ship, the Carnival Glory was leaving out of the Port of Miami

There's our ship!

And here's us getting on. We got there super early so we were able to explore the ship (and begin eating at the lunch buffet hehe) for 5 hours before we set sail.

Inside the ship:

Lobby

Elevators

Lido Deck

Cafeteria

One of the pools on the ship

Glory's sister ship parked behind us

View from the top deck in Miami

Waterslide!

In the casino area

Jogging track

Our room was on the lowest floor you could be on - floor 1! Just like the steerage/3rd class on the Titanic haha

Inside our room

We're setting sail! Leaving Miami and beginning our trip around the Caribbean :)

Bye bye Miami!!

Our first dinner of the trip. Everyone was scheduled in the dining room, but you could eat at the cafeteria if you wanted to. We ate in the dining room each night! I hoped and wished we would get a window seat (there were about 7-8 rows of seats not by the window), and lo and behold, look what we got ;)

We returned to our room to find out first towel animal!

Our itinerary for the trip and our progress so far (that little line at the top :P)

I Have a Website!!!!

2010-04-11T19:41:00.000-04:00

It's been in the works for awhile, and now it's finally completed and up and running! This is not only to promote myself as I am interning at the Robert Schad Naturopathic Clinic starting this May, but also for the future as well...after I graduate :)

It has a bunch of sections: a welcome, about me, how can I help you, what to expect, how to make an appointment, location, FAQ's, and a contact me page. It also links to my twitter and facebook page, which I will be updating regularly. As well, it has a spot on the welcome page where you can enter your email to receive a monthly newsletter. I am so happy with it, Jeremy and his friend, Paul, did such a great job on it!

Check it out here: http://www.treatyourhealth.com

Upcoming Vacation!!!

2010-04-11T19:33:00.001-04:00

We are soooo incredibly excited for our vacation!! It was actually booked last October, and we have been keeping it a secret all this time! We were originally wanting to do something during reading week, but we realized that everything was much more expensive and much more crowded during reading week. So, because Jeremy was graduating at the end of April and I had a week off the first week of May before starting clinic, we decided to do a vacation then! We are doing a Western Caribbean Cruise on the Carnival Glory from May 2nd to May 9th. This is my first cruise and Jeremy's second! Ironically, even though my dad is from the Caribbean (Jamaica) I have NEVER been there!!

We are hitting 4 ports: Cozumel, Mexico, Belize City, Belize, Roatan, Honduras, and Georgetown, Grand Cayman Islands. In Belize we are doing some cave tubing, in Roatan we are touring the island, and in Grand Cayman we are visiting some Stingrays!!

We're staying on the bottom (Riviera) floor of the ship. I joke that we're steerage like in the Titanic, but our room actually seems really nice. We got an outside room with a porthole that is classified as an interior room. I'm so happy that we'll be able to see outside so it won't seem like we're inside of a windowless cardboard box lol. I'm hoping we won't run into any seasickness, but I'm bringing lots of naturopathic tools just in case (ginger, acupuncture/pressure, maybe some homeopathics, etc.) We can't wait!!!!!!

Easter

2010-04-11T19:31:00.000-04:00

Jeremy and I visited our families for the Easter weekend. On Good Friday, we went to my Nana's house for dinner. We had a nice time visiting with family and had a great dinner. Nana even hid envelopes with little presents (ie. blockbuster gift cards) around her house and we had to go find them haha. It was pretty funny seeing 20-something year olds going on an Easter hunt :P It was so much fun to see Venessa again too. Believe it or not, we hadn't seen her since Christmas!! Boy, has she grown! She's almost 6 months now :)

On Saturday we had a dinner at my parents' house. It was pretty low-key, but it was nice to hang out at home again. We hadn't been back since Christmas. On Saturday night we drove back to Jeremy's house and had a nice Easter brunch/lunch with his mom, Nanny, uncle and aunt. It was great - I ate too much french toast though haha, it was just too good!

Venessa got to have a ride on the Charlie-horse haha

Jeffrey, Jessica, and Venessa are also semi-famous! They were interviewed by their house's builder and it was included in one of the newsletters :)

Trampoline Fun!

2010-04-11T18:55:00.000-04:00

I got to go on the trampoline for the first time this year last weekend!! It was so fun, I just love it! I can't wait until I have a house of my own...I'm going to get my very own trampoline for its backyard :) Here's some pictures of me that Jeremy took while I was jumping :P

New Apartment

2010-04-11T18:00:00.000-04:00

That's right, we've moved!! I finally had enough of living in a basement and just had to get out. We inquired at the place that we had liked the year before, and lucky for us they had the perfect room available!! A two-bedroom apartment on not too high of a floor facing south!! We snatched it up right away :) We were planning on moving once Jeremy finished school and had his job set up, but everything just kind of fell into place at that time, so we decided to jump on it. The only problem was that it totally ate up our entire reading week. With all the packing, cleaning, moving, unpacking, buying new stuff, getting paperwork done, etc. there was little time for anything else! I'm glad we moved when we did though because that was probably the most free time we'll have at once for awhile now.

We love our new place!

Here's some pics:

OSCEs

2010-04-11T15:59:00.000-04:00

I PASSED!!!!!!!!!!!

We didn't have to wait too long to get the results as they were ready the following Monday. Overall, it was a good experience. Sure, it was super nerve-wracking and anxiety-provoking, but once it was all over and done, it actually made me feel good!! More...doctor like haha. I'm not sure if I can discuss the exact cases we had, but it was set up in 3 different cases. You would walk up to a door with a scenario on it and then have 1 minute, 30 seconds to read it and jot down some notes. After that, you would have 18 minutes to take a history, do a physical exam, recommend lab testing or diagnostic imaging, discuss diagnoses, talk about red flags and risks the patient has, and recommend a treatment or management plan. That's a lot to do in 18 minutes!!! It was do-able though, and a lot of us even finished early in some instances! After that we had to fill out a 5-minute post-encounter probe to demonstrate more of our knowledge and then move on to the next door and start again!!

Spring has Sprung!

2010-04-11T15:50:00.001-04:00

It's official, spring is finally here!! Too bad the weather thought it would be funny to be warm and sunny all week and then snow and be gloomy and lousy on the first day of spring. Oh well. I can only hope for more good weather soon!

So...quite a bit has happened since I last blogged. I'm almost done my last semester of classes!! There's just over one month left, and I couldn't be happier! I have OSCEs to get through next week, so the stress isn't quite over yet. Many things are coming together, however, that signal that clinic is near!! Business cards have been ordered and my clinic clothes wardrobe has been updated :) I also now know when I will be working in the clinic next year!! My hours are Monday, Thursday, Friday from 2-8 and Tuesday from 10-4. Unfortunately I didn't get my 3-day weekend, but I did get Saturday off and have a break in the middle of the week, so it's not too bad ;) Jeremy's also been working on my website, so it should be completed soon! I can't wait until it's up and running!

There's not too much to update for Jeremy. He's still trucking away at his last semester of school. He's excited to be done too. The horror movie screenplay that he wrote got made into a production trailer. It's still in the final stages of editing, so I won't post it yet until the final version is complete. There may be more in the works with regards to this movie, but my lips are sealed until all is finalized :)

That's the quick update of our school lives, now onto the rest!!

Like the rest of the world, we went to see Avatar!! I made sure to take pictures so we'd have photographic evidence haha

We had a great 2-year anniversary/Valentine's Day this year!

I got Jeremy lots of yummy popcorn for his popcorn maker, and biodynamic, organic loose-leaf teas! My friend, Priya and her husband started their own tea company, and they have really great teas! Check them out at http://www.shantitea.ca/ Lastly, I got him something that he's been longing for for a long time. A tauntaun sleeping bag!! If you're not a Star Wars fan, you have no idea what that is. Basically, a tauntaun is a creature in Star Wars that they rode like a horse. It was in episode 5, and Luke was going to freeze to death so the tauntaun was killed and cut open, and Luke was put inside it (thus the sleeping bag).

For my gift, Jeremy got us a day at the spa!! It was fun, especially since neither of us had ever been before. It started out with an infrared sauna, then we had side-by-side relaxing back massages. Next we had a pedicure and a manicure done, which was so funny as I watched Jeremy haha. We also got our eyebrows waxed! Lastly, we had a nice lunch before our spa day was over. That wasn't my favourite present though. The best one was the absolutely beautiful promise ring that he gave me!!! He had hinted of giving me this, and we had actually went out together to check a couple out, but none really jumped out at me. I was upset that it wasn't going to be a surprise. As we were exchanging presents, I find a white weird looking box in the tauntaun sleeping bag. I had no clue what it was. I asked Jeremy if I should open it, and he said yes. So I did, and there was my ring LOL. I was so shocked, it was like the force of seeing it blew me right over and I threw it up into the air haha. Then I cried lol, it was all quite funny :P So, he still managed to find a way to surprise me, despite the fact that I knew about the ring!

Isn't it beautiful!?!? :D

This blog entry was a draft that has been hanging around for awhile, so everything might not be 100% relevant at this time lol, but I figured I'd post it anyways :P

Christmas + New Year's 2010

2010-01-16T22:16:00.001-05:00

Like I said, I probably wouldn't be posting on here until after the new year! The holidays went by soooo fast for us, as they always do! Jeremy picked me up after my physical medicine exam on the Friday before Christmas and I studied for my final exam (Monday), botanical medicine, at his house. He was kind enough to drop me off to my exam and pick me up. Then...the holidays really began! Not that we had much time to enjoy them at first. Since there was only a couple days until Christmas, it was a bit of a scramble to get presents wrapped and delivered!

We went to my parents' house for Christmas Eve and had dinner there. We opened presents afterwards, which was fun!

Here is a montage I made awhile ago as a gift to my parents which includes a lot of pictures from past Christmas holidays as we were growing up.

Here's the view out our kitchen window that day:

We had lots of fun seeing little Venessa again!

Alexa got to join in on the fun too when she received her very own presents! Here she is with her new toy from my mom:

She also received a toy, a sweater, and adorable little boots from Jeremy's mom! What a spoiled little puppy lol :P

We drove home that night back to Jeremy's house and had Christmas morning there with his mom! I got Jeremy some Christmas tree ornaments and decorations, fitness games for the wii, and a popcorn maker while he got me Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer movie, a heating pad, and a massage table! We went to Jeremy's Uncle Ed's for Christmas dinner that night and had a wonderful meal.

For the rest of the holidays we pretty much did nothing LOL. There was no excitement or even going out that much. We needed some serious recovery time from school and we definitely took it over the next week, sleeping in far too long and just hanging out watching movies and playing games :) It was great!

We had some of Jeremy's friends over for New Year's (Chris & Marni, Senthil & Serina). Jeremy cooked loads of food and a couple of us played Risk before gathering in front of the tv and waiting for the ball to drop. We're not really into the whole party scene, so celebrating at home with a couple of friends was perfect for us!

After New Year's, the depression of having to head back to school soon set in. There was no avoiding it, it was inevitable and coming quickly. Luckily for Jeremy, he still had another week off! I had to head back on January 4th, early at 9:00 am. This semester has been absolutely brutal so far! It's not that we have a ton of work yet so early on in the semester, but we just have soooo much class! Because this is our final semester of classes before we enter clinic, almost everything is either mandatory or important, so that makes for very long days. By the time I finally get home at night, I'm exhausted!! Oh well, hopefully I'll be able to survive until May!

We Survived!!

2009-12-22T12:09:00.001-05:00

Yes, we're alive! We actually made it through final exams and projects in one piece! The last week and a bit has been insanely crazy and we're exhausted, but happy to finally be off for the Christmas holidays. I had 9 exams in 6 days and Jeremy had 3 projects in one week. We both actually pulled all-nighters on Thursday night, me at my house and Jeremy at school! It was funny, we were able to talk to each other throughout the night and commiserate lol! Anyways, we both feel that our respective finals went well.

It kind of sucks having to do so much work so close to Christmas. We feel like we really miss out on the holiday season, not having time for Christmas decorating, shopping, or parties. By the time we're done, it's less than a week until Christmas and then it's all over. Not to worry though, because this was our last year that we have to suffer through this! Jeremy graduates this June and I start clinic this May, so there will never be any Christmas final projects or exams ever again! We're so happy about that fact, you have no idea!

We hope everyone has a great Christmas holiday and happy new year!

Best wishes,

Jenna & Jeremy

Jeffrey & Jessica Move into Their New House!!

2009-12-08T19:53:00.001-05:00

It's finally time! They've been eagerly anticipating the day when they could move in, and it arrived!

Here is Venessa on moving day :)

Here is Jeffrey, Jessica, & Venessa in front of their new house! It's soo nice! What lucky ducks!

Happy 25th Birthday Jeremy!!!

2009-12-08T17:59:00.001-05:00

The title says it all! I know I'm late posting it on here, but Jeremy celebrated his 25th birthday on November 27th!! A quarter century...he hates when I say that :P We were fortunate to have three separate dinners to celebrate with all his friends and family.

Here is Jeremy at his family birthday dinner at Montana's. The staff sung him a special birthday song while he wore the customary moose horns :P

I hope your birthday was a great one, baby! I love you!! xoxoxo

Where did November go???

2009-12-08T17:56:00.004-05:00

Where did it go? It managed to pass us by without me getting a chance to write on this thing once!

In the first week, Jeremy and I were fortunate to score some greatly reduced group tickets (courtesy of my class' social rep) and go see Cirque du Soleil: Ovo!!! It was absolutely amazing!! We loved it so much, the stunts are just superb! Sometimes you have to keep reminding yourself that this is real and it's happening right in front of you...not something that's been digitally enhanced on tv! We highly recommend it :D

http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/en/shows/ovo/default.aspx

Later on in the month we got to go see another show with my school...the Toxic Avengers musical! We weren't sure what to expect...Jeremy kept trying to scare me, saying it would be too gory, but it was really good! We laughed so much, it was definitely a comedy! Jeremy said it's the best musical he's ever seen, so that's got to count for something ;)

http://www.toxicavengertoronto.com/

Our last big "show" in November was...you guessed it, New Moon!!! Of course, I was completely head over heels in love with the movie. Jeremy...not so much lol This article sums up Jeremy's feelings about the Twilight Saga quite nicely: http://theoatmeal.com/story/twilight

Nevertheless, Jeremy, being the awesome boyfriend that he is, endured New Moon for me and went to see it with me opening weekend! What a great guy :)

http://www.twilightthemovie.com/

Other than that, we've just been working away. School keeps us very busy. Jeremy's into his final projects now, and my final exams start next week. The next time you'll probably hear from us is around Christmas!!

Alexa Enjoying the Autumn Leaves

2009-12-08T17:38:00.001-05:00

Halloween + More Venessa!

2009-12-08T17:35:00.001-05:00

I've really been slacking off on updating this blog lately. Sorry! I'm a student...that's my excuse :P

Halloween was great! We ate way too much candy as was expected. We also got to go to my parents' house for the day and spend some time with them and Venessa!

Alexa was Minnie Mouse this year for Halloween:

And Dawson was a witch again, just like every year :P

Venessa is so cute! When we went to see her, only a couple of weeks after she was born, she already looked different!

It was Jeremy's first time meeting her :)

She's just a doll :) In this picture she was looking right at the camera :P

We have a new baby in the family!!!

2009-10-23T16:57:00.001-04:00

Jeffrey and Jessica's baby was born on October 16th at 1:55 am, weighing 8 lbs 13oz. and 21" long! Meet Venessa Anne McNamee!

Waving hello moments after birth!

I got to go visit her later that day. She's so cute! She looks a lot like Jeffrey right now :P

And here she is all bundled up, ready to go home from the hospital!

Congratulations Jessica & Jeffrey!! Venessa is beautiful!

Update!!!

2009-10-23T13:59:00.002-04:00

We haven't updated the blog in so long (besides NZ photos, of course). Oops!! Since our last update, we have gone back to school. It's Jeremy's last year and my last year of classes (I intern in the clinic starting next May). We do enjoy what we're learning but the constant assault of assignments, papers, tests, and exams is exhausting and quite frankly we are just ready to be done and out in the working world. I know many people who are working always say to enjoy being in school while you can, but I'm not sure if they would say that if they were in one of our programs :P They're very intense and leave little room outside of class hours and homework for anything else. Thus, why we haven't updated the blog in so long and why we have nothing to report other than school! haha

I don't think I mentioned this before, but waaay back in February my brother, Jeffrey, and his girlfriend, Jessica found out they were having a baby! Jessica had a baby shower this August where she received lots of goody for the upcoming baby! They opted not to find out the sex until birth (which has already happened, more on that later :P), so everything was gender neutral (well except a few things from those who were soooo sure the baby was a boy).

An unfortunate event happened to Alexa just before she came back to school with me...she was wrongly shaved by the groomer! I was furious at the time, as I had specifically asked that she NOT be shaved. It was so close you could see her skin!

Here she is before:

And here she is after :(

She wore a t-shirt until it started to grow in a little more haha:

Jeremy and I went to see a movie at the Toronto International Film Festival this year. He was already going to it (he actually went to a bunch during the two weeks!) so I just tagged along. It was called Les Herbes Folles...it wasn't very good lol

We also went to a comedy show by a group called Geronimo Deadly. A friend of Jeremy's is part of it so we decided to check it out. It was pretty good, and Jeremy got to help create a skip for their next month's show!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Geronimo-Deadly/190696415251?v=info
http://www.youtube.com/user/GeronimoDeadly

We also have news about Jeffrey and Jessica's baby! That deserves its own separate entry though, so stay tuned :)

New Zealand Photos # 10, 11, & 12

2009-10-23T13:13:00.001-04:00

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2299088&id=72615483&l=2584ecb38e

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2300653&id=72615483&l=7f1b4128ba

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2300963&id=72615483&l=109b65935b

That's all of them! I know, I know...waaay too many pictures! I couldn't help it, they were so beautiful (all of them!) and I'm too indecisive lol I may post some of our videos at some point too, but we haven't even gotten around to rendering them all yet! In any case, we hope you enjoyed our photos :)

New Zealand Photos #8 & #9

2009-10-04T15:01:00.001-04:00

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2293628&id=72615483&l=442e6d8eba

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2296349&id=72615483&l=eac03a1315

New Zealand Photos #5, 6, and 7

2009-09-03T20:16:00.002-04:00

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2290793&id=72615483&l=d22a140554

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2291784&id=72615483&l=91f7defb38

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2292734&id=72615483&l=e41a051ae0

New Zealand Photos #3 and #4

2009-08-22T18:09:00.001-04:00

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2281966&id=72615483&l=a

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2290434&id=72615483&l=c2e2

NPLEx Done!

2009-08-06T21:58:00.002-04:00

That's right! I'm done! Let summer officially begin (I think the weather was waiting for it to be done too as it seems to finally be warming up a bit!). After six weeks of studying and almost $1000 later, it's all over. Let's just hope I passed and don't have to write it again! NPLEx changed it's format this year to be system-based instead of subject-based (ie. cardiovascular system, digestive system instead of anatomy, microbiology, etc.). Although the review courses and books tried their best to prepare us for this new format, I'm not sure that it was all that successful. A lot of the things we prepared for didn't seem to show up on the tests and a lot of things that did show up were those that were not stressed, so I think a lot of us felt a bit unprepared. It's hard to think you can feel unprepared after months of studying but hey, I guess there's a first time for everything! I hope NPLEx gives us a bit of a break if we do end up doing worse than usual. We'll just have to wait and see! Results back in six weeks!

Now I finally get to enjoy my summer. As I was studying, I was thinking so much about all the possibilities that lay ahead of me and sometimes it was hard to focus lol! Aside from doing some preceptoring with some naturopathic doctors next week, I have some free time ahead of me that I plan to fill with lots of fun :) My new laptop arrived today! I got it from xotic pc. So far, it seems amazing!

Jeremy's been very busy doing lots of work for his movies. He's working on three different ones right now and is currently meeting with a bunch of different people ranging from producers to storyboard artists to visual effects. He'd like to get a lot of it sorted out before he goes back to school in September and becomes busier with homework.

Anyways, that's our lives in a nutshell right now! Now that I'm done NPLEx, I have time to go through pictures again so expect some more New Zealand pictures soon :)

New Zealand Photos #2

2009-07-11T14:08:00.000-04:00

Here is our second album of NZ pictures. Enjoy!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2280196&id=72615483&l=ffe629fe7b

Air Conditioners...Good or Bad???

2009-07-01T19:26:00.004-04:00

This topic isn't really related to Jeremy and I, however it's something that I feel very strongly about and would like to address.

Air conditioners are a serious health hazard. They not only aggravate arthritis and other degenerative diseases, but they also cause sinus problems, leading to headaches and facial pain. In addition, it has been scientifically proven that those working or living in air conditioned environments compared to those who work or live in spaces that are not air conditioned are more susceptible to colds, flus, and other infections. It is a serious stress on the body, going from a cold indoor environment to a warm outdoor environment that we were not designed to handle. With the current bird and swine flu scares, would you not want your immune system to be working at maximum efficiency?

Air conditioners are also notorious for contributing to an unhealthy indoor environment. Breathing difficulties can be caused or exacerbated by them. One study demonstrated 8 different kinds of micro-organisms in 22 of 25 cars tested. They circulate any mold spores that may be lying around as well as all of the household chemicals that are used (and in many households, that's a lot). Why would you want health hazards to be continually recirculated throughout your house or workspace?

Also, over time, those who live/work in an air conditioned environment become dependent. They can no longer adapt to the warmer summer temperatures and increasingly suffer from heat exhaustion and heat stroke. These ailments have been steadily increasing since air conditioners have become commonplace. You may argue that it's due to increases in the earth's temperatures due to global warming, and you're right in that global warming most definitely plays a part in the increased deaths and hospitalizations during heat waves, but air conditioners are also key contributors. We are losing our ability to adapt to change, instead we are just "refrigerating ourselves in the relentless mono-temperatures now anesthetizing the continent" (Barbara Flanagan, ID Magazine). Just as one can become dependent on drugs that aid sleep or blunt pain, one can become dependent on air conditioning to cool the body temperature. Our bodies were designed to deal with all four seasons, not just one. Let's allow our bodies to do what they were designed to do!

What's more, air conditioners are actually contributing to global warming, thus fueling a ballooning cycle spiraling out of control...the warmer it gets outside, the more the air conditioners are used, which makes it get even warmer outside. Do you see the problem here? Many air conditioners still contain hydrofluorocarbons which destroy the ozone layer when released into the air. Even once these nasty chemicals are fazed out from the A/C units, it still doesn't prevent the release of carbon emissions into the air, which further fuel our problem with global warming.

Air conditioning also has a negative effect on our culture and the way we live our lives. Do you remember a time when the kids would play outside ALL day during the summer, just coming inside to eat meals? A time when the streets were full of laughter, when neighbours would socialize out on the porch and people would actually go on walks? I do, and I miss those times. Now, I often see empty, quiet streets. Where is everyone? Of course, they're cooped up inside their air conditioned prisons, I mean houses. The kids are inside playing video games. And what's more is that this inside environment really is shut off from the outside world! All windows and doors must be shut. The breeze blowing through the trees and the song of the birds, the hum of the cicadas is shut out. Even if you tried to hear it, it's hard to make out over the everlasting hum of each air conditioning unit on the street.

What are we doing?!?! Why do we keep moving further and further away from nature? What we need is to go back to our roots and re-embrace our planet, rediscover the simple joys that nature provides to us. When you really think about it, how silly is it to be cold for 8 months of the year only to recreate that cold the moment the temperatures begin to rise so that we can hide out in our human-sized fridges wearing sweaters and turtlenecks? It's quite silly!

Not using air conditioning isn't cheap, it's smart and is a no-brainer for anyone concerned about their own health or for that of the earth (not to mention their pocketbook). Let's embrace the summer season and enjoy the warm weather, it's short enough as it is without making it even shorter! Fall will be here soon enough! And if you must use an air conditioner, please use it sparingly and only when required, and please turn it up a couple of degrees...it takes 60% more energy to cool a space to 72 degrees instead of 78 degrees!

New Zealand Photos

2009-06-30T21:45:00.003-04:00

It's been awhile since I've posted anything on here...I guess life isn't as exciting now that we're just back home. I've been studying for NPLEX part one, the first of a two-part naturopathic physician's licensing exam. It sucks that I have to study during the summer, but what can you do! Jeremy's been working on some screenplays and has even sent one in to a production company. It may be made into a movie! He also has another very exciting prospect, so hopefully one (or both) of them will work out!

I'd like to mention an amazing doctor that I've had the privilege of being both his patient and semi-colleague. Dr. Danny Wu is a Chinese acupuncturist and herbalist coming from a long-line of traditional Chinese medical doctors. He has over 25 years of experience and currently practices in Oshawa. I was his assistant for two weeks last year, and during those weeks, I learned so much! Some of the progress that I saw and the stories that I heard from patients were just amazing! I've been a seasonal allergy sufferer for almost 12 years now, trying many different conventional medical remedies such as the anti-histamines as well as some naturopathic remedies such as quercetin and nothing worked. Last year, Dr. Wu did acupuncture for me once (which cleared up my symptoms immediately) and then made me a personalized herbal tea that I drank for about two weeks and my allergies were gone! I only drank the tea for a couple of weeks but the effects lasted the rest of the allergy season! I felt as though I had never breathed as clear in all my life. If anyone suffers from allergies, I highly highly recommend getting some sort of traditional chinese medical treatment, you'll honestly be blown away by the drastic results!

http://www.oshawaacupuncture.ca/

Anyways, back to New Zealand pictures...lol Here is the first album that we've put together. I'll post more as they're created!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2278965&id=72615483&l=a311ddfd45

We're Home!

2009-06-14T14:26:00.003-04:00

Yep, sadly we're back home - our trip is over! We'll update you on our last couple of days before we left.

We woke up in Tauranga to more rain and cloudy skies. That was quite upsetting because we had to leave to Coromandel that day, so never got to see Tauranga in nice weather - the rain made everything so dark and misty that you couldn't really see much at all! We didn't get to climb Mount Maunganui like we wanted to, but oh well - that was really the only plan that was thwarted by the weather. We really lucked out with everything else!

We drove to Whitianga in pouring rain and checked in at Coroglen Lodge, which also happened to be an Alpaca farm! Miraculously, the weather cleared up and we were greeted by warm temperatures and bright sunny skies in the afternoon! We took this opportunity to go visit Hahei (a little coastal cottagey town which was so beautiful!). It was home to Cathedral Cove, which we just loved! From the lookout point and along the walk to the cove, it was probably our favourite place in terms of natural beauty. Everything was just breathtaking! We actually got so warm that we took off our sweaters and coat - Jeremy was in a t-shirt...in the winter!!! We could get used to it there for sure ;) We hadn't been in the water on any of the beaches we had visited thus far, but for some reason this one just seemed to be calling out to us, so we took our shoes off and strolled along the sandy coast wading in the water - it was cold but fun. After that we headed into town in Whitianga to have some dinner. We found this sports bar called Smitty's, which seemed to be fairly full and had some burgers there. One thing we've noticed on this trip is that New Zealand has a serious shortage of sauces! Ketchup, tartar sauce, bbq, anything! You have to pay for it almost everywhere and it's expensive! $1.50 for tiny little packages! We saw people eating fries without any ketchup at all, and fish and chips with no tartar sauce - it was just bizarre! We missed sauces very much while we were there.

The next day we got to go out and play with the alpacas! They were so funny and cute, we loved spending time with them!

We headed out that morning to Coromandel town, it was small but nice, we loved the views driving into it and then out by the ocean. We went on the Driving Creek Railway and it was lots of fun! It was made all by one guy, originally just for himself but then eventually it was opened up to the public. It makes its way up a big hill through lots of native bush and trees using spirals and switchback areas to get to the top. It apparently is the only train with a double train bridge (one track on top and one underneath it) in the world, which is pretty cool! It took us to a lookout at the top where you could see for miles all around - very pretty!

After our train ride, we continued the drive back to Auckland - our starting point (and ending point :( We absolutely loved the drive along the coast from Coromandel to Thames. By the time it started to get dark, we were back on the lighted highway getting close to Auckland - perfect timing! We drove to the airport for our just recently planned trip to the south island! We weren't originally going to go, as we're more interested in the north island, but after talking to one of my old high school teachers, we really wanted to go. Sadly, the cost to take our car over on the ferry was too much and it wasn't going to be possible for us to go. One of the girls we met at our first hostel in Auckland, however, told us that there are often cheap flights going from Auckland and Wellington to Christchurch. A couple we met in Raglan told us about a website where you could find these deals and we lucked out, finding one going from Auckland to Christchurch on our second last day of the trip!

So, we flew down to the south island and stayed in a very interesting hostel for the night - an old jail! It was called the Jailhouse and was so neat! The windows still had bars on them and the doors were all so heavy and locked really well. Everything was concrete and it seemed really big and quiet. It was a neat experience! We were up early to walk to the train station for our only south island activity, the Tranzalpine! We saw an Amsoil sign on the way, which was cool as that's what my parents do for a living! We were assigned not so good seats on the train, but luckily no one showed up for ones just across from us so we grabbed those and had a much better ride than we would have. The beginning of the train ride wasn't that special, just crossing farmland, but as we headed into the mountains, everything became a lot more interesting! We crossed bridges going over tall gorges with lakes in the bottom, went through many tunnels (including one really long one which went all the way through a huge mountain) and got to be right in the midst of the southern alps with all the snow-covered peaks! We took the train from Christchurch to Greymouth and got to explore the west coast of the south island for about an hour and have lunch. Then it was back on the train as it headed back to the east coast! We went to the outdoor observation car for most of the ride back and loved it even more! It was nice not having the windows to obstruct your view - it gave us the opportunity to get better pictures as they didn't have any glare in them.

About an hour after we were back from the train ride our airport shuttle arrived and soon, we were back on our flight to Auckland! We were only in the south island for a day and although it wasn't long enough, at least we got a little taste of what it's like! We'd like to come back someday and maybe do a road trip around it like we did in the north!

Our flight was delayed, with set off a chain of not so good events. Our last night of the trip was undoubtedly the worst. We were exhausted from the late night flights and early morning waking for the train, and then a full day of train rides, so we weren't in the best mood. Getting in late, we had to pay more for parking our car and then we missed the check-in desk being open - we wanted to change our seats so that Jeremy could have some more leg room. If our flight wasn't delayed we could've done that! We didn't get in until around midnight. Then it was off to our hostel, Bamber House. We had arranged for a late-night arrival, where they provide the door code and leave your key waiting for you inside. This worked for us the night before at the jailhouse. First off, when we arrived we found out there was no parking. I had been assured that there would be parking at this time of year so we were not happy about that. After parking quite far down the street and lugging our bags to the hostel, we found that there were no keys waiting for us - they had forgot to put them out. We tried calling the after hours manager but never received an answer. So, at around 1:00 am, we were now homeless for the night with nowhere to go. We lugged our bags back to the car to go look for somewhere to stay. We made our way back to the airport, where we found a nice little motel to get a couple hours of rest before our 24 hours of flights and travelling home.

We were tired the next day, but didn't let it ruin our plans. We managed to get our seats changed and got new ones at the bulkhead where Jeremy would have more leg room. Then we headed back into the city one last time to climb One Tree Hill and Mt. Eden. We liked them both. One Tree Hill had sheep all over it, which we found funny and had some good views of the city. Mt. Eden was really neat in that it has a crater in the middle. It was closer to the harbour and we got some nice pictures of the skyline and the water. We went to the lookout just past Mission Bay again, this time in the sun! We had been there before, but it had been raining so this gave us the opportunity to see it in nice weather! After that, we reluctantly drove back to the airport where we dropped off our rental car and checked-in for our flight! We left at around 7:00 pm on Sat. June 13th.

We lucked out as usually the bulkhead is full of babies, but not this time! I had a decent sleep while Jeremy did a movie marathon! We arrived in San Francisco at 1:00 pm on Sat. June 13th - that's right, we went back in time! We saw the golden gate bridge and the harbour from our plane as we took off, which was neat! Our next flight wasn't as good, but at least it wasn't as long - just 4 1/2 hours instead of 12! We had this guy in front of us who ripped some rancid farts and then a baby in front of us who pooped itself, with parents who then proceeded to change it right there in the seats. It did not smell very nice, as I'm sure you can imagine. There was also a baby two rows behind us, and between the two of them, there was hardly a time that we didn't hear crying. We may have ear damage from how loud we had to crank the movies/music to drown out the crying. We were so happy to be home at around 10:30 pm, just because that meant no more flying!

So, that's our trip! We hope you've enjoyed reading about our adventures in New Zealand! We will post more pictures soon - we have around 30 gigs of pictures and videos so they need to be sorted before they're ready to be shared :)

Rotorua + New Pictures!

2009-06-09T04:20:00.038-04:00

The place where you can fart and as long as it's silent, no one will ever know... :P Yeah, it kinda stinks in Rotorua. All of the sulphur geothermal vents give the city a distinct smell. It really wasn't that bad downtown, just closer to the geothermal parks.

We visited Wai-o-tapu Thermal Wonderland and got to get up close and personal to the stink. It was really neat, there were a bunch of craters with boiling mud in them. You could hear the mud gurgling and it would spit goo up above. The water coming from these areas was so hot it was always bubbling and boiling – just like you see in your pot on the stove! One area was even called frying pan lake! The rocks were often different colours due to the deposition of different oxides in them, we saw some green, yellow, and orange rocks alongside the craters. There were many sulfur vents, spewing stinky smoke into the air. In some parts of the park, there was no way to avoid walking directly through the smoke, getting a wonderful wiff of stench lol. Jeremy thoroughly enjoyed this part. Even with a bit of a stuffy nose, he was still able to fully experience this unique part of the park – much to his dismay.

I also got to go zorbing that day – best thing ever! It was so much fun! For those who don’t know, a zorb is a big plastic ball in which you roll down a hill. They have a wet ride in which a bucket of water is added so you slide in ball instead of spinning around and around or a dry ride where you spin. I did the wet ride. It was so neat – at the beginning you have to dive into this little hole in the zorb. The guy told me to take a little run at it, so I did! Jeremy said it was hilarious. Then he sealed it up and I was ready to go! I took the zigzag course and it was a blast! Jeremy took a video of it which we’ll show everyone when we’re back home.

On our second day in Rotorua we went up the gondola and got some great views of the city and lake! We next went luging! It was also a blast, so much fun! It’s not like the luging you see where the people lay down and fly down hills at crazy speeds. It’s kinda like riding a GT with wheels, it has brakes and you steer your way down a track (kinda like gokarts). They had three tracks – scenic, intermediate, and advanced. They were all fun, but you definitely got the most speed on advanced. There were banked turns and bigger hills. You had to be careful though because if you didn’t slow down enough for the turns, you would totally tip over. The inside wheels of the luge lifted on both Jeremy and I on a couple occasions but luckily neither of us fell off. I did veer off the track on one of the corners, but that’s about all the excitement we had that day. You took a chairlift up the hill back to the top, which was really neat – I’d never been on a chairlift with green grass underneath me instead of snow! After luging we had a buffet lunch at the top of the mountain. The highlight of my lunch was probably the white chocolate mousse haha

We drove to Tauranga today. Sadly, it has been pouring all day. Not too bad, only 3 days out of our trip raining, but it still sucks. We haven’t been able to do any of our planned outdoor activities today. We hope to do a bit tomorrow before we have to check out and head to the Coromandel region! We only have a couple of days left here :( So sad! I can’t believe it’s almost over!

Sheeple!!!

2009-06-06T04:39:00.003-04:00

We went to visit the Wellington Zoo on our last day in the city. We toured around it, seeing the tigers and monkeys. It was a very compact zoo, not at all as much walking as Toronto but they still had a fair number of animals. The highlight of the day was our red panda close encounter! When we found out about the opportunity to do this, we couldn't believe it! We had both previously visited the Toronto Zoo and loved the red panda - it was our favourite animal! When we saw the opportunity to get close to one and feed it, we jumped at the opportunity! We were not disappointed. We were told 2 out of 5 were always willing to come out for treats. For us, all five came out! They were so eager - they climbed down the trees they were in when they saw us with their bowl of goodies. They jumped right up onto our laps to get the food and then usually sat with us while they ate. Some were a bit more bold than others, sitting with us and letting us pet them the entire time while others would take their food somewhere else. We got to feed Ishii, Amy, Reta, another male whose name escapes me, and Sir Ed! Sir Ed was the friendliest of them all, and got quite comfortable in my lap as he ate! We got so many pictures and videos of our encounter and are so excited to share them with everyone!

After the pandas, we were off to Napier. Originally, I had wanted to get an early start on this drive since it was the longest of our trip. Not much could sway my plans - but apparently red pandas could! We didn't leave until around 1:30 pm and had to drive in darkness for the last hour or so, which we were trying to avoid as much as possible. The roads are very twisty and hilly, and there are hardly any street lights - it's like driving on country roads all the time. We arrived in Napier late to find the streets fairly deserted and not to lively. It kind of felt a bit like a ghost town. There were more people out and about the next morning, but this first impression wasn't the greatest. Our hostel was just alright, like the last one. The night manager kind of creeped us out and we didn't particularly like the area of town we were in. We went to the bar/grill downstairs and got a backpacker special for dinner - good for the price. We enjoyed spending time with Mannary, the hostel cat. She meowed outside our door the next morning as we were waking up and we brought her inside our room! I miss having pets around me during the trip - it's so weird not having a little furry friend! I saw a guy playing fetch with a red pom on a beach outside of Wellington and thought of Alexa :P

The next morning we drove up Bluff Hill in Napier to the lookout and had some really great views of the ocean and town. It was very pretty during the day, but not really the town for us. We started our second longest drive of the trip after the lookout heading to our farmstay! The scenery was great on this drive. We went around lots of mountainous hills and along the coast. We made a quick stop in Gisborne - the first town in the world to see the sun rise. It was nice, but a bit far from much else. After our stop, we continued to head North, driving towards Wairata Station. We drove through the Waioke Gorge, which was breathtaking! We came into it at the top and could see for miles as we looked ahead and downwards at the river that ran through the middle. It was kinda like a grand canyon! We finally reached Wairata Rd. and were surprised to find that it was a dirt road!

We reached the farm and were greeted by Bob Redpath, the owner. His family has been on that land for generations - he was telling us that his farm is 5000 acres! He showed us to our cozy chalet and then we were on our own for the night! It was a very nice place to spend the night but at the same time it was a bit freaky to be so far away from everything. We did just fine that night, however, and went on an amazing farm tour the next morning! Bob took us out with him to do some farm chores. It was so neat to see the sheep dogs herding bunches of sheep and cows and shifting them into other areas of the farm. They are so smart! They followed commands precisely and immediately! There was no messing around for these dogs - they were all business! The sheep were really funny to watch! We got a bunch of videos of them running all over the place and the dogs controlling them. Once, the dogs were herding and one stupid sheep started to go in the wrong direction and all the rest followed that one and they went down the road the wrong way! One sheep totally ran into the fence head first and then just kept running. They were hilarious! Jeremy helped feed hay to a bunch of cows, who were waiting hungrily for their breakfast. Doing the farm tour is definitely one of the highlights of our trip.

Upon returning from our tour, Bob's wife, Mary greeted us with freshly baked, warm breads and buns for lunch. There were also cookies waiting for us in the kitchen upon our arrival! They were great hosts and were very accomodating and good to us. We wish we could've stayed longer!

We just had a short drive to our next destination, Whakatane, pronounced Fa-ka-ta-nee today. We didn't think there would be anything really special about this town, but surprisingly we both really like it here! It's the perfect size, not too big or small and has a beautiful harbour, a nice little downtown area, and we saw families going for walks, kids riding their bikes, and people fishing. We got really good vibes here and like it a lot - we could see ourselves possibly living here one day...we'll see!

Tomorrow we are off to Rotorua - it's a town that is blanketed with sulphur, which means we get to smell fart for the next two days. Yay!!! The city makes up for the bad smell with zorbing, luging, and other fun activities.

We have less than one week of our trip left :( We're very upset about that and don't want to come home yet. Hopefully we can stretch out the rest to make it last as long as possible!

Do chicken wings have bones?

2009-06-03T05:43:00.001-04:00

The title of this blog is just to showcase some of the hilarious sayings Jenna and I continue to hear in hostel kitchens. It’s funny, these days kids have absolutely no independence. They can’t clean, cook or…. wipe their own ass. And that quote did not come from a teenage girl, it actually came from a woman who looked over 30. I almost spit out my spaghetti when I heard her say it, I think it made it all the more funny in an English accent to boot.

Hanging around hostels really allows you to meet many people and distinguish differences from your culture to the next. There are a lot of different things here in NZ than in Canada. Parking lot = Car Park. Take Out = Take Away. Ketchup = Tomato Sauce. Your Welcome = No Worries. Theatre = Cinema. Elevator = A Lift. To Rent = To Let. No left turns on red lights. Tons of differences. I think the major one Jenna and I notice is that none of the houses having heating. Everything is heated through electric blankets, heaters and wood boards/fire places.

Another funny thing we noticed here is that they have no coffee shops. Seriously, none. So serious in fact, that McDonalds has capitalized on this by making the McCafe. An addition we continue to see on the McDonalds all over NZ. It is like a Starbucks within a McDonalds. Still the same customers as Canada though, usually the stout and thick ones.

So, where Jenna left off on telling our amazing adventure was at the Caves and us just arriving at New Plymouth. Well, after we stayed in the abandoned insane asylum, literally it was turned into a bed and breakfast, we headed to Wanganui. But first, Jenna the Explorer, decided to climb a mountain. I guess the Caves and her near death experience has turned her into a little adventurer because we were rock climbing the next day. The wall was huge, this time with no guide or ropes. We had to climb ourselves to the top of a huge rocky ridge. It was scary, but fun. I made sure she always stayed ahead of me so that if she happened to slip, it would be into my arms to safety. Once we got to the top, we had some amazing views all over the entire city. There was even a massive mountain with snow on the peak. After the climb down, which was a bit tricky compared to the way up, we headed off.

On the way there, we decided to drive to the top of that mountain peak. As we headed up it began to snow. You wouldn’t believe how nervous snow made Kiwi’s when driving. I found it hilarious that around huge sharp bends and corners over hills they do 100km or more, and a cm or two of snow on the ground made them do 2km or less. I was dying of laughter in the driver’s seat, seeing how I am almost a pro at these conditions, I had to school some kiwi’s a bit. It was funny to see them all run out in the snow and make snowballs and snowmen. I guess it is like a life changing experience for them, mainly because this is the only place they can see snow.

After that little adventure we were off to Wanganui. I think this is my second choice on places to live if I ever move here. They are right beside the ocean and have a huge beach, but that’s not all, they have a huge river splitting the town in two with beautiful bridges and coastal walks along them. This place was beautiful. I think someone upstairs is helping us with weather on this trip too because we have had amazing weather. Even when it is supposed to be thunderstorms, we manage to find the sun. At this town we stayed in a luxury hostel. The best one yet. Pool, hot tub, sauna, amazing beds and rooms with private T.V.’s and yep, even complementary cookies and candy. Jenna had some fun getting her money’s worth, even if it was in cookies and candy. In the day we took a 200m elevator ride to the top of the town and climbed a tower with over 150 steps to an observation deck. It was windy like crazy. I was glad it was enclosed because I could have been watching Jenna float away with her umbrella like Poppins. After that we drove around a bit, then headed back to the hostel for a hot tub trip. We stayed in and relaxed after our previous caving adventure and rock climbing in the morning.

The next day it was off to Wellington. The drive was fantastic, lots of great coastal towns and beautiful rivers. We arrived safely to realize that Wellington, well kinda sucked. It was windy and pretty dreary looking. Lots of tall buildings, more so than Auckland, but it has 1/5th the people. I think this first impression was also because we had just driven four hours to get here and realized we couldn’t park at our hostel, and that the hostel wasn’t too great. We drove up Mount Victoria and had some spectacular views of the ocean and bays of Wellington, but we were a bit worn out from everything so we just did a bit of grocery shopping and went back to the hostel.

The next day nothing was really planned, so I decided to take Jenna on a Lord of the Rings movie tour. This tour was pretty fun and hilarious, me wearing a blonde wig like Legolas and posing with a Bow and Arrow. Jenna holding a half broken carrot while my face was in poop, all for pictures of us in the actual spot where they filmed each scene. It was a lot of fun, not only was it focused on Lord of the Rings but the movie industry in general here. I got some great knowledge and facts about Weta the production company/VFX company. I got some inside scoop on Peter Jackson, who basically put movies from NZ on the map. It was a great tour and it ended in the Weta Cave where we could see some great artwork and designs for the movies.

That pretty much took up our entire day. We came back and checked out some more sights to see, and decided that the next day we would contact the Zoo, why? Do you ask. Well let me retort. HAND FEEDING RED PANDAS. YES! YOU HEARD RIGHT! Crazy huh? There is only 2500 of these animals left in the world, 500 in captivity and we get to hand feed them. Pretty amazing stuff. We do that tomorrow though. Today we had a nice ride on a cable car up to the top of the city for more lookout photo’s. Then we met with a Naturopathic Practitioner in Wellington to discuss the career and possible income/patients here in NZ. We had a long talk with her for about an hour and it gave us some great info and insight about the NZ Naturopath scene.

The big event of the day was when we did a nature walk along the shore of Owhiro Bay. We walked about 4km one way to catch a glimpse of seals on the rocks. Not only did we see them, but they were apparently happy to see us. They greeted us with burps, farts and barf. Seriously, a seal barfed at us. One got mad we were taking pictures, actually stood up, turned around, farted, and flapped its tail to waft it in our direction. I tell you, the fart smelt like dog breath and fart combined with death and battery acid. We ran, literally, ran away from it. I am sure it was chuckling itself into the water after we left. Not only did we get to see seals, but a small family of mountain goats were there to greet us as well. They nahed and bahed at us a bit and ran up the mountain. The scenery on the walk was phenomenal, along the coast with huge waves, beautiful rock splashes and amazing views of the islands, both north and south. We couldn’t have asked for a better adventure.

Once we finished there we headed to the Te Papa museum. It is free and huge. So much to explore. Their main exhibit was a giant squid. It was massive, they had cool 3d movies and pretty sweet displays. We stayed in the Museum for about an hour and a half, and had to leave because it was closing shortly after.

That was about it for today, other than the fact that Jenna now has me on TimTam’s, these native cookies to NZ and Australia. They make my pants happy… not really though because they are getting tighter…. ….

We will check back with you all soon.

P.S. sorry for the long post, just so much to say.

Die Another Day

2009-05-30T09:18:00.001-04:00

We can’t believe we’ve already been here a week! It’s horrible that we’re already 1/3rd through our vacation! We wish it would last longer. We already have 2500 pictures haha! Have fun looking at those when we get back :P

We had a nice quieter day in Cambridge. We stayed at the Chatfield Bed and Breakfast and had a great time there – one of the nicest places we’ve stayed at thus far! Our hosts, Kay and Kerry served us a delicious breakfast the next morning and we learned a lot about New Zealand from them. They gave us some great tips for the rest of our trip! We visited Lake Karapiro which was just a short drive away from the town. It was very beautiful and calm – I could see perfect reflections of the trees and clouds in it! We also drove over a dam that was built in 1949 – that was fun!

We headed to Waitomo Caves after our stay in Cambridge. It was just a short drive there. We stayed in one of the world’s top 10 unique hotels that night – the hobbit hotel at Woodlyn Park! It was so cool! There was grass on top of the roof and trees growing there…even sheep were walking above us! The hotel room was themed so perfectly! All the windows and doorway frame were circular. There were wooden picture decorations hanging on the walls and a large wooden bed. The roof was dome-shaped, not flat. It was a really fun place to stay in for a night. When we were checking in, the owner of Woodlyn Park, Billy Black was walking a baby pig into the building and it was squealing so much and he kept saying this way this way follow me and it just waddled right behind him the entire time lol!

The real highlight of that day was our caving adventure. We did the Lost World tour of the Waitomo Caves. Just our luck, we were the only two people to book the tour at that time, so we basically got a private tour. It was great! Our guide, Gavin, was the best! We talked to him about NZ and he told us a lot of stuff about the country and Waitomo Caves. He even entertained our desire to interact with sheep and cows. He had to drive us up to the caves, and to access them you have to go through some farmland. He called the cows over to the gate and they were hilarious! I think they thought we had food. He also drove quickly at some sheep and made them run all over the place. One of our biggest desires is to have sheep on the road – so this was tons of fun for us! One sheep got so scared that it pooped after it ran away – we scared the shit out of it haha!!!

Our caving adventure was pretty much the most spectacular thing we have ever done in our lives! We got suited up in all of the abseiling and caving equipment and headed out to the caves. We had to use hooks to attach ourselves to the safety ropes that traversed all the dangerous parts of the trek. Once we got to the 100 m rappel it was just insane. When I looked down it seemed soooo far down! It was so crazy! To get ready we had to sit out on this bar hanging over the drop – that was one of the scariest parts of the entire thing! Our guide showed us how to abseil and how to work the equipment and then we were off! All three of us went down side by side and we were attached to Gavin just in case we messed up. It took almost a half an hour to get down – it was far but the views were amazing! There was a river running through the cave that you could see from above. It was nice to get to the bottom when we did as the abseiling gear began to get a bit uncomfortable.

Once we were back on solid ground again the real caving began! We had to traverse all the rocky terrain alongside the rushing river. We stopped to have some juice and chocolate fish (apparently an NZ tradition) and then continued on our way. We went to the back of the cave and turned off our headlamps to see a bunch of glowworms on the roof of the cave! The glowing part is actually their poop – shiny poop lol! After seeing them, we had to get back to the point where we would exit the cave. Jeremy walked along the path and I walked behind our guide. I saw the rope where we attach ourselves to ahead of me so I decided to slide myself over to it (I was getting lazy and didn’t feel like walking so I slid on my butt instead lol). All of the sudden both Jeremy and our guide moved lightning fast and grabbed my arm. I was dumbfounded by their actions, but it turns out that there was a big cliff right off of the slab of rock that I was sliding down, with a drop off that led down to some rocks and the rushing river. Although I was just sliding over to the rope, they didn’t know that. To them it looked like I was sliding to my death haha! Jeremy looked so scared lol, he said I gave him a heart attack :P

After that adventure, we had to begin our exit of the caves…with a 30 m ladder climb! This was probably the hardest part of the whole thing. Although we were attached to safety ropes, it was still a bit scary as the ladder was really cold and muddy and slippery, and it started to quiver in the middle! My hands got so cold going up it! It was just a short trek after the ladder and then we were out into sunlight again! We had an awesome time – definitely one of the highlights of our trip so far!

We relaxed in our hobbit hotel for the rest of the night, going out to dinner at a local café called Huhu that was highly recommended. We got a bunch of appetizers and tried ostrich…didn’t really like it that much. It didn’t taste like chicken lol. Jeremy said it had more of a liver taste (kind of irony).

The next day we headed out west past Waitomo Caves to visit Marokopa Falls. We weren’t originally going to see them, but we heard good things about them so figured we’d check them out. They didn’t disappoint! They were so beautiful, much bigger than the last ones we’d seen! We also visited the Natural Bridge, which is this spot where two caves actually come together to create a bridge of sorts. It was neat!

After seeing those two landmarks, we started our drive down to New Plymouth. It was very beautiful, just like the rest of New Zealand, but uneventful. It was a longer drive, which will become the norm for the next little while as we travel down to Wellington and then back up on the east coast. It’s been rainy all day today (not too bad, we’ve only had 2 rainy days so far, the rest have all been good!). New Plymouth is nice but a bit too industrial for our tastes. We had fish and chips tonight from this café called Seafood on the Beach. All of their fish are freshly caught that day. Today’s fish were Worehau, Snapper, and some Lemon fish. It was very yummy!

Tomorrow we head to Wanganui! We’re staying at another hostel with a hot tub so hopefully we will have a nice relaxing evening tomorrow night like we did at the last one that had a hot tub!

P.S. Forgot to mention earlier – when driving up in Northland we passed this place called Sheep World. Well out in the yard, and I kid you not, they had pink sheep – bright fluorescent pink sheep! I wish I had a picture but we passed it too quickly. We got quite a laugh out of that haha

P.P.S. Be sure to check out our new pictures in the entry below!!! It takes forever to upload them here, so we’ve posted as many as we had time for!

More Pictures!

2009-05-30T06:47:00.020-04:00

Some Pictures From Our Trip!

2009-05-27T19:54:00.013-04:00

Can we stay here forever?

2009-05-27T19:47:00.004-04:00

Yep, we're loving it that much! The last day and a bit we've been out of Auckland and starting to see the rest of New Zealand. We left yesterday morning to Raglan and had a really nice scenic drive on the way there. More roads winding their way between and around hills covered with sheep and cows!

Raglan is such a pretty little town. It reminds me of a smaller town up north in cottage country. Our hostel was really cool. It's more of a surfer hostel as Raglan is known for its great surfing conditions. The hostel was a little complex of rooms (kind of cabin-like) around a main courtyard with hammocks, picnic tables and a hot tub. It had a really nice cozy feeling. They also had free bikes and kayaks to use, so we went for a little bike ride yesterday afternoon.

Later on in the day, we drove over to Bridal Veil Falls. It wasn't too far from Raglan. We had to walk along a little path in the forest to get to them. They were really beautiful! We approached them from the top and then went down some stairs to see them from a bit further down. We were the only ones there! It's been really neat - at almost everything we've done we seem to be alone. Nothing has really been overcrowded with tourists. It gives everything a whole different kind of feel when you get to enjoy it in peace!

We spent a good portion of the evening in the hot tub chatting to a NZ couple that we met at the hostel. They had travelled to Canada not long ago so we were trading stories and comparing our trips.

Today, we drove over to Hamilton and Cambridge. We've just arrived at our B&B now (yep, taking a break from the hostels for a little bit!), and have to decide how we want to spend the rest of our day! We go caving tomorrow in Waitomo Caves and are very excited for that!

Lost - Jenna & Jeremy Episode One

2009-05-26T05:22:00.001-04:00

We have had quite the adventures in the past two days. Yesterday, we went to Kelly Tarlton's aquarium and antarctic experience. It was a bit touristy, but neat as they had a bunch of penguins and fish to see as well as info about Antarctica. A lot of people fly from NZ to Antarctica as its one of the closer locations to it.

Because it was a rainy day, we decided to continue our "indoor" activities and go for our first drive outside of Auckland. We went north to Orewa and had a picnic lunch of sorts at Orewa beach. This was our first opportunity to walk along a beach on the east coast of New Zealand on the Pacific Ocean. Today, we got to walk along a beach of the west coast of New Zealand on the Tasman Sea. It's so cool to have access to two different oceans in one day when back home we don't have access to any!

After lunch, we continued north up to Wellsford. Little did we know, we were in for an amazing scenic tour of Northland. We came upon massive hills and rolling mountains covered in lush vegetation and blanketed with mist. It was like a fantasy land. When we drove over the first peak, our jaws just dropped in awe of it all. The scenery here is so beautiful! We're so glad we took this road trip north of Auckland because it gave us a taste of what the real NZ is really like outside of the city. We continued down to Helensville and then headed back to Auckland after our afternoon on the road.

We went out for dinner that evening to an international food court. Jeremy had the best curry he says he's ever had in his life!

Today we planned to go to Piha Beach - key word planned. Apparently, the roundabout outside of Titirangi had other plans for us, as it fooled us and got us headed onto another road heading to Huia and Whatipu Beach. There were no other roads connecting this area to the one we wanted to go to, so it was either keep going or go back the way we came. We decided to carry on, feeling adventurous today. Like the rest of our trip, the greatest things were those that weren't planned. We came upon a stunning lookout just outside of a little town called Huia. The views of the beach, town, and mountain ranges all around us were unbelievable. We were on a little peak with the land dropping off all around us. We decided to continue on for a little while, but after finding ourselves on a winding dirt road with a little less gas than we would've liked, we decided to play it safe and go back the way we came.

We were successful after round two with the roundabout, heading the right way to Piha Beach this time. There were also some great views on Scenic Drive (no wonder they call it that!), and then Piha Road. The views of Piha as we came around the bend at the top of the mountain were just amazing. Once again, words cannot do it justice. We wound our way down to the little coastal town and then walked on the black sand beach (black due to the iron in it). There was Lion's Rock on the coast, a big craggy rock which was taunting us to climb it. We couldn't resist and made our way to the summit. There was so much to take in at the top, it was very beautiful.

We noticed on our two drives that the brakes on our car seemed to squeak quite a bit. This concerned us as it's so hilly everywhere we've driven and if anything happened to the brakes we'd probably be dead. We spoke to our rental company and they said we could trade in our car for another, which we learned also had squeaky brakes. The mechanic took a look at them and seemed to make them quieter, so we were glad we went, but soon realized once we listened to the traffic a bit closer that the brakes of many of the vehicles around us squeaked - probably due to NZ being so mountainous and people having to break all the time when they're coming down the steep hilly terrain.

Just before the sun set, we headed over to Devonport on the ferry to climb Mt. Victoria, a big grassy hill in the middle of this part of Auckland. We trekked on up, finding a cannon and an old abandoned bunker on the way and reached the summit of our second climb of the day. The views from here were also spectacular - we were looking over to the Auckland harbour and were dazzled by the twinkling lights of the city skyline. We found a bench and had dinner while we admired the city at night.

Oh, and I forgot to mention in our last entry one of the funniest things that happened to us on our trip so far. Our harbour cruise ferry ride came with complimentary hot drink and muffin, so after our stop at Rangitoto Island, we went downstairs into the indoor area of the boat to get our snack. Not wanting to miss any of the sights, we took our hot chocolate outside and up the stairs. We soon realized that they served the treats indoors for a reason, as our drink began to fly out of the cup due to it being so windy! Lucky there wasn't anyone else outside or else it would've gotten all over them!

We wish we could post some pictures because the words just don't seem to do what we've seen justice. Hopefully we'll have the opportunity to share some soon.

Tomorrow we leave Auckland and really begin our tour of the north island. Stay tuned for more updates!

Jeremy's Point of View

2009-05-24T03:22:00.002-04:00

So I guess I get to post while Jenna does the dishes.

The plane ride over, let me just say, watermelon in a baby sock. That was me.

The food, makebelieve microwave dinners. That means worse than hungry man's people.

And the window seat that was a wall.... over the wing.... awesome.

But, as long as I was beside my darling boo boo, it was worth it.

So, we got there. Safe and sound. I am in heaven. I can't believe how amazing it is here. The air is clean, the land is rugged and fun. 2 seconds from the airport, cows were grazing.

This is the kind of place I would love to spend the rest of my life. Auckland is a bit too over populated for my liking. There are a ton of trendy "Paris Hilton" stores and bistros downtown. This turns me off a bit from Auckland. Mainly because they have HOCKEY arena heaters for their patios when it doesn't get colder than 10. I found that hilarious, I guess NZ doesn't like hard nips.

I found it hilarious when I talked to an Asian person with a NZ accent. Honestly, I could barely hold in laughing. It is just so different, usually they are like "Flied Lice" and to hear them talking from down under caught me by surprise.

Not only that, but the car rental guy was Indian, like from India with an Indian accent. First convenience store we walk by, a muslim is behind the counter. I felt like I was back in Malton... only for a brief moment.

The nature here is amazing, the parks are beautiful. I even saw someone training their dog, this was a first. Not to mention all the leashless parks for play and exersize.

This place is also accustom to exersize. Everyone, from 5 year olds to 100 year olds are walking, biking, running, doing something to stay active. I mean when you can walk for hundreds of miles along an ocean, I would be out there too. I have hardly seen one fat person, other than myself of course muahaha. I think it's also because the roads here are hilly, up and down, up and down. This keeps people in shape too I am sure.

We haven't really experienced any night life yet, but me and Jenna, as you all should know, are not the club and bar type. It seems people in the hostel sit around and wait for night time, when we are up and out the door bright and early enjoying the day. It works out good for us though, most of them come back when we are in a dead sleep, but we wake everyone up in the morning.

I am glad that we have had already, two days of sunshine in their rainiest season. In fact, the day we arrived it was the first sunny day in two weeks. That is pretty good odds. I think someone upstairs is helping out with the weather situation.

Just the humble friendliness of everyone here, the great scenery, the amazing things to do and see. Everything is just better than I had expected. Most times when you travel to a big city, it is just like the big city you came from. This is an entirely new experience for me. I am loving it, and I am glad I am here to experience it with my baby.

I am very appreciative of her and her family for allowing me to accompany her on this voyage of adventure and wonder. I hope I can repay them all at some point in time. Thanks to everyone who helped make this trip possible.

P.S. if someone can tell John, tons of natives are along the harbor fishing haha.

We're Here and Loving It!!!

2009-05-24T01:53:00.003-04:00

Wow, it's been a whirlwind since we last updated the blog! We have so much to share!

We made it safely to Auckland. Our first flight was uneventful. LAX didn't disappoint - it stood up to its horrible reputation. First, no one would tell us if our bags were automatically put onto the next flight, or if we had to pick them up and bring them to a place to drop off baggage for connecting flights. So we went to check, and then learned that they were automatically put onto the next plane. However, at this point we had exited the secure area so had to go through the security check again and get all of our carry-on bags x-rayed. Fun times. Then, once we got to our gate, we realized it wasn't even opened yet. People were just waiting sitting on the floor! Finally, once they opened it we were allowed to sit in the waiting area. But then they informed us that we wouldn't be leaving from gate 21a but 21b, and that our tickets were invalid and they had to print new ones, but the printer was broken. Great. That was eventually sorted out, but then they announced over the intercom that we would all be boarding busses and would be taken to our plane which was parked in a remote location. They weren't kidding! It took almost 10 minutes to get to it, it really seemed like we were in the middle of nowhere! In fact, our plane had to drive on a bridge which crossed over a road just to get to the runway.

This flight wasn't as pleasant as the last one. We had window and middle seats, which couldn't be changed because the flight was so full. Hard to believe since it was a boeing 777! So Jeremy was crushed into a tiny seat with no leg room. Even I felt claustrophobic in the tiny area in which I was stuck, so I can't imagine how he felt! This flight was 12 1/2 hours, but we managed to sleep for a good portion of it, so at least we were able to escape the misery for a little while.

Our plane landed at 6:40 am. We landed on a runway right next to the ocean. It seemed so close that if there was a flood the runway would be covered with water! It was actually still dark out when we landed but once we made our way out of the airport, the sun was out! It was actually a beautiful day for our first day in New Zealand! Very sunny and not too cold at all!

We picked up our rental car coming from the airport. It's a white Toyota Corolla. It was quite an adventure as Jeremy accustomed himself to driving on the other side of the road. It was so bizarre at first, with turning feeling very awkward. We had a few incidences where the windshield wipers were turned on instead of the turn signal, but I think we're past that now.

One of the first things we noticed was how clear the air was. There was no smog and it felt so fresh to breathe...it seemed like you could see forever!

We had a bit of an adventure getting to our hostel due to my lack of map-reading skills. It was okay though, as we accidentally got to cross the Harbour Bridge, which gave us some great sights across the harbour looking back at the Auckland city skyline.

Once we arrived at our hostel, we had to wait for a bit while our room was being prepared. We were just waiting outside by our car when a girl approached us asking us if we would be willing to do her and her friend a favour - drive them to Mission Bay. We were unsure if we should do it or not as we had just arrived and were still in our airplane clothes and quite tired. We decided to go, however, as Mission Bay was recommended to us and it was somewhere that we were planning to go anyways at some point. We're so glad that we went! We made our first friends of the trip and had a really great scenic drive over to that area of Auckland.

After dropping them off, we headed back to our hostel to finally clean ourselves up a bit. It was nice to finally have a shower after such a long journey! It was at this point that we really got to admire our hostel - it's such a beautiful old building! We got a great room at the back facing Western Park. The sun brightens the room in the morning and we back onto the balcony, which has amazing views of the city and harbour. We have quite a few pictures from this site!

Our next mission was to get groceries. It was recommended that we go to a place semi-close by called New World. We walked there (realizing on the way back that we probably should've just drove) and picked up some food. A lady asked Jeremy if he could help her lift a heavy bag into her car. People seem to be so much more social here - everyone's been really friendly! We're really enjoying being here so far!

Last night we went for a walk through Western Park and along Ponsonby Road. The park was really beautiful - there are so many large and unusual trees here! We thought it was hysterically funny that many of the restaurants and bars along Ponsonby Rd. that had outdoor seating had heat lamps all along the outside so that people wouldn't get cold!

Today we did a really neat walking tour from our guidebook through downtown Auckland. We got to go through two parks and along some of the main streets. We visited Auckland University and then had lunch at the waterfront in the harbour. This afternoon we went on a Harbour Ferry Cruise. It was very windy and a bit cold, but such a great experience! We went past a lot of the piers and drove by Devonport, a suburb of Auckland across the harbour from downtown. We visited Rangitoto island - a dormant volcano (the last time it erupted was 600 years ago). It was neat seeing all the black volcanic rocks alongside the shore. We only stayed there for a little while so we may return to stay for a bit longer if we have time. We had some spectacular views of Auckland from the sea, and drove in closer to see a lot of the sailboats parked in the harbour. We really enjoyed our ferry ride! Luckily, the nice weather held out for us right until our ferry ride ended! It started to rain lightly on our walk back to the hostel. Jeremy just made spaghetti for us (he was cooking while I was updating the blog :P), so now it's time to eat!

We have two more days in Auckland before we head off to explore the North Island. Hopefully we'll get to update again before we leave the city. Internet is a bit harder to access here than we expected, but we'll try our best!

Auckland Bound Today!

2009-05-21T01:55:00.004-04:00

After months of anticipation, we are finally leaving for New Zealand today! We head to the airport this afternoon, boarding our first plane at 5:45 pm, going from Toronto to Los Angeles. It lands at 8:04 pm LA time. Then we have to wait until 10:30 pm (which I'm sure won't be hard considering we'll be in LAX - airport from hell) to board our next flight. We leave Thurs. May 21st at 10:30 pm and don't arrive until Sat. May 23rd at 6:40 am. Fri. May 22nd doesn't exist for us due to crossing the international date line!

We hope to update our blog quite frequently throughout our trip to let you guys know what we've been up to while travelling. Be sure to check back often! :D

Our next entry will be from Auckland! Wish us luck on our plane rides and we'll update once we're back on solid ground again :)

Happy Birthday Jenna!!!

2009-05-18T21:08:00.006-04:00

Not today, but it was my birthday on Saturday May 16th! I'm now 24...eek! My mom and sister were in the Bahamas for my aunt's wedding, so I went to Jeremy's for the weekend. He more than made up for my family not being around for my bday. The morning started out with a scavenger hunt to find my gift! It turned out to be a beautifully hand-carved wooden African elephant and new earrings. Yay! What great gifts!

I also received wonderful gifts from Jeremy's mom as well as the rest of my family!

We went to Sushi Ya for lunch! It was soooo good! We just love that place! Speedy even generously provided me with a complimentary birthday cake slice!
The evening remained a surprise, right until we arrived at the top secret location! Jeremy kept trying to convince me that we were headed to Medieval Times (he took me there last year for my birthday), but I suspected he actually planned to take me somewhere else. When we arrived in the Yonge and Eglinton area, I knew for sure that something was up! Well, it turned out that he had made reservations at a dinner theatre called Mysteriously Yours. It's like an interactive Clue murder mystery where the audience is included in the plot and you have to pay attention to the play and ask the actors questions to figure out the killer. It was great fun except for that part when I was singled out and made to stand up and was included in the plot, an inclusion that was quite embarassing, because it was my birthday. I could've done without that, but the rest of the night was great. I got the answer right! I won't give it away in case anyone would like to go and they don't change it up often.

The next day, we headed up to Jeremy's trailer to help with packing stuff up and to chat with a couple of neighbours and family friends. Jeremy's uncle Ed and aunt Di kindly took us all out for dinner afterwards. We headed back to my house, and the following day we finally had my "real" birthday cake! It was Lord of the Rings themed, which fit right in with the fact that we are headed to New Zealand in three days! It even had a little hobbit hole, which you may see make a repeat appearance on our trip ;)

One week!!!!!

2009-05-14T00:02:00.003-04:00

That's right! One week until we leave for New Zealand...WOW!!!!! We're making the final preparations and getting all the last things sorted out before we leave - NZ money...check, travel adapter plugs...check, flip flops for showers...check, rest up before trip...getting there! LOL I'm so glad we booked the trip for the third week after school finished and not the first, we would've been exhausted! And it's given Jeremy time to complete all his projects for school. It definitely worked out to our advantage.

I moved out of my apartment for the summer...glad that's over with. It's a lot of work preparing the place for four months without me in it, not to mention all the packing...and then unpacking!!!

On more of a sad note, my 3 year old rat, Mickey, passed away today :( Him and his brother, Skaye, have been my longest living rats! They were born right in our home and were hand-raised. Mickey's lived in four different places with me, our two houses, and then with me in my apartment at McMaster in Hamilton and at CCNM in Toronto. I'm sad that he's gone, but he had a good, long rat life.

The Countdown Continues...

2009-05-07T18:14:00.004-04:00

It's now two weeks until we leave for New Zealand!!! Wow, it's really getting close! It almost seems surreal, like we're not actually going on this incredible trip!

On the weekend we attended my Nana's surprise 65th birthday party. We enjoyed our time there, socializing with the rest of my family. Jeremy picked out lovely gifts for her, which, from what I could tell, she really liked! Many of the other ladies at the table were admiring them as well. What good taste he has! :P

Although I was finished school, I still had one more exam to go - my G2 exit driving exam :S I hadn't driven since August of the prior year, so I was a bit rusty and thus had to practice like crazy! Jeremy, as well as my parents were kind enough to help me out over the weekend. My test was in Lindsay, as it's usually less busy so I got in there earlier, and to go for your G, it's an easier test lol. I went and did my test on Tuesday, May 5th, exactly a year after I had gotten my G2. I got a nice older man, who really helped me to feel a bit more calm as I did my test. It was much longer than the first driving test, as we had to span a whole highway exit on the back roads and then take the highway back to the testing centre one stop away. Luckily, everything went smoothly and I passed!!! YAY!!!!!!!!! No one will be able to understand just how relieved I was at that moment. No more driving tests!!! They had been on my mind for years, and it was so nice to finally be done with them for good!

Now I'm back at school for four days, doing an NPLEX (Naturopathic Practitioner's Licensing Exam) preparation course. That was a short break, eh? lol Although the days are long, it won't be for long and then I'll be all free until we leave for NZ!

Jeremy's still working hard on completing all his final projects and assignments before we leave, that pretty much sums up his life right now lol

As the title says, we're counting down the days!!!

http://www.newzealand.com/travel/Canada/

A Lot To Celebrate!

2009-05-02T00:25:00.005-04:00

Although it's been a rough month for both of us, things are starting to look up. First of all, it's our 15 month anniversary today lol Second, school is finished and summer vacation has finally arrived!!! It's been much anticipated, and I'm looking forward to getting back to life without studying...if I can even remember what that is! I'm officially half doctor now, and done second year at CCNM! Although Jeremy's technically finished too, he still has some projects to wrap up in the next week or so. He's almost there! Third, it's now less than three weeks until our trip to New Zealand! Boy, is time sure flying fast! I'm certain we'll be on our plane in no time! Fourth, we were invited to the Toronto premiere of X-Men Origins: Wolverine by Al Magled, the owner of soho vfx, the visual effects company that Jeremy interned for last year. It was a great privilege to attend the private screening of the movie with all who worked on it. We enjoyed it very much!

http://www.sohovfx.com/

Four Weeks!!!

2009-04-23T18:58:00.007-04:00

It's officially four weeks today until we leave on our trip to New Zealand! Time has sure flown by, it seems like just yesterday that I was counting down by months! Here's a little tidbit to celebrate the four week mark...our itinerary (click to see clearer picture) :D

Goodbye Andy Thornhill

2009-04-20T17:38:00.003-04:00

Today was a very sad day...we said goodbye to Jeremy's father at his memorial service this afternoon. He passed away on Wednesday, April 15th in his sleep. It has been a very difficult couple of days for the family. After the initial shock, preparations had to be made for the service and that kept everyone very busy. The outpouring of support was so great and overwhelming. I was over at the house for the weekend and flowers, fruit baskets, and gifts were continually being delivered. It is clear that he was and still is loved very much.

The service today was beautiful. The photo that Jeremy digitally remastered was great, it really seemed to represent the kind of man that his dad was. What was best about the service were the speeches, however. Jeremy wrote up a wonderfully detailed biography of his dad. The minister read that, however the rest of the talks were done by family and friends. The speeches delivered by all were very informative and heartfelt. I give kudos to them all for having the courage and strength to get up there and speak - I don't think I would be able to do it! Hearing from family and friends gave the service a very personalized touch.

Now that it's over, life will start to get back to normal, whatever normal is... it was a huge life-changing event and it's going to be hard to adjust to. My thoughts are with Jeremy, his brother, Charlie, and his mom, Kathi during this difficult time.

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/thestar/obituary.aspx?n=Andrew-William-Thornhill&pid=126318848

Easter

2009-04-14T23:25:00.004-04:00

Another Easter holiday weekend has come and gone. Jeremy and I both went to my parents house Thursday night. My parents headed up to Cochrane with my sister, Rachael to go snowmobiling, so we had the house to ourselves along with my brother, Jeffrey, and his girlfriend, Jessica. To the ladies dismay, Jeffrey brought his xbox up to the living room and Jeffrey and Jeremy spent the entire afternoon blasting Nazi Zombies away. The ENTIRE afternoon. It was alright though, as I was madly studying for my physical and clinical diagnosis practical exam that I had Monday morning (which went alright bwt :P). My parents had left us with money for dinner, so the four of us decided to go out to.......SUSHI!!! We went to Sushi Mountain Buffet that we had visited a couple of times before. It was really good, but for some reason not as good as we remembered.

On Saturday, my Papa came over for the day. We went out for lunch with to...you guessed it...SUSHI!!! I swear we didn't plan it like this. The Friday sushi was a complete surprise lol We tried a new buffet out in Whitby, it's in the old Golden Griddle restaurant and it was so much better. Definitely our #1 place in the area now :)

On Sunday we visited some model homes. My Nana works for Great Gulf Homes, so we visited her site. Jeffrey and Jessica are interested in possibly getting a townhouse, so we went to check them out. It was a lot of fun! That afternoon, Jeremy and I headed back to his place for Easter dinner with his family. There was much cramming done that evening in preparation for my exam the next day. After driving me home, Jeremy actually stayed at my apartment until 1:00 am so that I could practice my physical exams on him and run through my running monologues that I needed to say while performing them. What a great guy :P

So, that sums up our Easter weekend. We have three weeks left of school, and we are counting down the days!!! :D

Is It Summer Holidays Yet?

2009-04-01T12:29:00.003-04:00

That's what we've both been thinking lately. Today, April 1st, marks exactly one month left of the winter semester. Although it's just one month, it seems much longer as we both have sooo much to do in that time! Jeremy has about 18 final projects due in the next couple of weeks, and I'm coming into the final exam period for my school soon, with 11 finals to write! April's definitely not a fun month for either of us, and we're both looking forward to just getting through it so that we can start our summer!

We have a very exciting trip planned in the first few weeks of our holidays...we're going to New Zealand from May 21st to June 13th!!! We can't wait! I've been planning for a lot of the trip, setting up our car rental, accomodation, and things for us to do :) We hope to update this blog throughout the duration of our trip so we can stay in touch with everyone back home and let you all know what we've been up to! So, stay tuned! We hope to have lots of fun and interesting stories, pictures, and videos to share with everyone.

Catch Up: Part Seven

2009-03-31T12:09:00.007-04:00

We celebrated our one-year anniversary together on February 2nd, 2009. We weren't supposed to see each other until the weekend, however, Jeremy came over to Jenna's apartment, surprising her with the flowers seen above and a movie :)

Jenna got Jeremy a couple of little personalized gifts. One of our favourites is a picture of us put on a stone marble with our names and the year. Jenna's gift from Jeremy was supposed to be a surprise, but Jeremy leaked it - it was a trip to Niagara Falls, combining our anniversary and Valentine's Day!

We left fairly early in the morning on Valentine's day so we could make the most of our time in Niagara Falls. We had an Austin Powers GPS telling us where to go, which was quite funny lol. We were greeted into the city by about five firetrucks whooshing past us. That was interesting :P We stayed at the Sheraton Fallsview Hotel, which was gorgeous. We got a room on the 29th floor, which was just about at the top, and gave us an amazing view of the falls! It was so beautiful, we could've just stared out of the window for hours!

Shortly after we had arrived, room service knocked on the door and delivered this:

The flowers were beautiful and the strawberries delicious :D (We didn't drink the champagne, we don't drink, so we took it home and the package with the glasses and chocolate kisses is a decoration for us now!)

After hanging around the room for a little bit, we headed out to have an appetizer out at a restaurant on the strip. We had gift certificates for the restaurant in the hotel, however, we didn't want to spend too much there, so figured we'd have something somewhere else (oh, the life of a student haha).

Afterwards, funny story, we went looking for the falls but couldn't find them!!! It turns out we went the wrong way. We still got a nice picture up above the falls, however, and had a nice evening walk before heading back to the hotel for our other dinner.

From night to day at Niagara Falls:

The next morning we had a breakfast buffet in the restaurant. The food was pretty good, however, we both found that we were still quite full from the night before lol! I guess we ate a bit too much...oops!

And then we enjoyed our last couple of hours in our hotel room before we had to checkout!

After checking out, we took a shuttle bus to the road from which you can access the falls. It was a chilly and steep walk down there, but we made it! We were fortunate to have gone down there on a bright, sunny, beautiful day! The day before was a bit more gray and dreary...maybe that's why we weren't able to find the falls. Fate? lol

First we viewed the American falls...

And then the Canadian ones! (they were better haha)

We finished our day in Niagara Falls by taking the shuttle to Casino Niagara. We're not big gamblers so we just played a little bit and then left for home. All in all, a truly wonderful weekend! Thank you Jeremy!!!

Catch Up: Part Six

2009-03-25T12:54:00.005-04:00

CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We got to experience our first Christmas together this past year. It was great! A couple weeks before, we helped out at Jeremy's mom's work's Christmas party. Jeremy was Santa, his mom was Mrs. Claus, and Jenna was an elf!

Once school was out for the Christmas holidays, the festivities began! We started off our time off by making a gingerbread house :)

We decided to open our gifts to each other a couple of days early, as we both agreed that they would be more "useful" if we did that.

Jeremy got Jenna a new digital camera! It's much better than the one she used to have and has lots of great features. He knew it would come in handy on the trips planned in the next couple of months. He also got Jenna a digital picture keychain, which was a neat little gadget.

Jenna got Jeremy a sweatshirt and t-shirt from her school, something he had wanted and then forgot about lol. However, the big main gift was a Disney movie collection, containing about 130 different Disney movies all on dvd! He was over the moon when he opened the present and couldn't believe all those movies were included!

One of the first pictures on the new camera lol :P

Here we are on Christmas Eve before we headed to Jenna's Nana's house for a Christmas Eve dinner.

And here we are on Christmas morning! (Jeremy was still a bit tired haha)

Our first joint present :)

Whose gift is this? lol

Overall, it was a great Christmas! The only thing we wish is that we could've spent more time together! In order to attend the dinners we needed to, Jeremy had to go home at lunch on Christmas day while Jenna stayed with her family. Not to worry though, as we were reunited before New Year's Eve and welcomed 2009 together :) Jeremy's brother, Charlie, also came to visit for the last week of Christmas holidays so we got to spend some time with him too.

A couple of days later, Christmas holidays were over and it was time to go back to school for the second semester :(

Catch Up: Part Five

2009-03-25T10:38:00.009-04:00

At about the halfway point of our summer holidays, we got ourselves a little gift...gameboys!!! lol We were both pokemon fans back in the day, and thought what better way to have some fun together than getting the new Pearl (Jenna) and Diamond (Jeremy) versions! We played a lot that summer (looking forward to doing so again once busy school is done for the year). We are nerds... haha

We also attended Jeremy's friends, Jason and Suzie's wedding that summer. It was held at a church in Peterborough.

The rest of the summer was relatively ueventful. On August 4th, Jenna and her sister, Rachael, went to an event held at Canada's Wonderland called Behemoth Bash. It allowed members of Theme Park Review to go into the park an hour early and have nonstop rides on Behemoth and two other coasters (Italian Stunt Job, Tomb Raider) as well as stay an hour later and do the same, but on Behemoth and two different coasters from the morning (Vortex, Minebuster). This may seem like an amazing prospect, however, Jenna and Rachael discovered that Behemoth can be quite nausea-inducing if you're anywhere but the front seat. They only got to ride it about four times before having to take a "break" which lasted the rest of the morning. They were able to eat the complimentary breakfast, however, and started to feel better after that. Lunch was neat, with all the members gathering together and participating in a question and answer period with the park head. Their favourite part of the day (besides riding Behemoth!) was the special backlot tour, allowing them to go into restricted areas surrounding Behemoth in order to see the coaster from different viewpoints and take pictures. All in all, it was a very fun day with the coaster geeks lol :)

Just a few days before school started back up, Jenna's family got two new kittens. Meet the little devils:

Riley

and Roxie

Once fall arrived, it was back to school, and that made us extremely busy! Everything was toned down, and we had little time for activities outside of school. One weekend, however, we managed to find some time to go on a picnic with Alexa in the gardens at Jeremy's school, Humber College. It was a nice afternoon out, even thogh we continued to study while we were there!

Before midterm exams and projects crept up, we got to enjoy Thanksgiving with our families. It was a whirlwind, as we attended 3 dinners in 3 days, if we remember correctly. This was the first time that Jeremy was meeting Jenna's extended family. Don't worry, everything went over great :)

Here's the gang (Jenna's family), from left to right: Jeremy, Jenna, Rachael, Mom, Dad, Jessica, Jeffrey.

On November 10th 2008, Jenna's Nonni (great grandmother) passed away. Although it had been a hard year for her, this came as a shock to the entire family and no one was prepared to see her go. We all miss her so much and think about her all the time.

Catch Up: Part Four

2009-03-20T16:28:00.006-04:00

On June 28th 2008, we were invited to Steph and Jeff's wedding! It was the first real wedding that Jenna was invited to, and our first wedding that we were attending together! It was held at 4 Seasons Country Club in Claremont, Ontario.

Here's a picture of Jenna's hair before we left for the wedding:

The reception tent and specifically the head table was very pretty:

Here was the cake!

And the beautiful setting where they got married. It was absolutely stunning!

Here's Jenna waiting for the ceremony to begin:

The bridesmaids made their way down the aisle. Here is Steph's sister, her maid of honour with the flower girl and ring bearer. They were so cute!

Here comes Steph and her dad in the horse and carriage!!!

It was such a beautiful ceremony!

We took some pictures in front of the beautiful backdrop while they wedding party left to get the professional photos taken.

First dance!

Cutting the cake :)

We had a great time!

Catch Up: Part Three

2009-03-15T14:39:00.005-04:00

Ah, the memories of summer vacation! We had the luxury of spending a lot of time together due to the nature of Jeremy's job. He would be working on a project for awhile and then was off for awhile.

We got to spend a wonderful day at Ontario Place at the end of June. Even though we had to share the park with millions of elementary school students having their end-of-year trip, it was still a lot of fun!

We got a paddle boat and had a nice little outing around the cinesphere. The views of the CN Tower from here were really good and it was neat looking back on the city from the water...even if we weren't that far off the beach :)

Jeremy loves Canada Dry... lol

Next was a game of mini golf! Well two, to be exact. What's funny is we got exactly the same scores both times, with Jeremy winning both times lol

Jeremy played a game. First he tried to cheat...

But he ended up playing fair in the end!

Here are our prizes :)

We had a picnic lunch on the grass outside the park (note CN Tower is in view again lol)

It was so nice to be by the ocean!

Lastly, we rode the best ride at Ontario Place... the log ride!

...And Jeremy tried on a funny blue hat :P

Catch Up: Part Two

2009-03-10T11:14:00.005-04:00

We got to go to Wonderland for Behemoth's opening day in April 2008. Unfortunately, Jeremy ended up being too tall for the restraints, however, Jenna had a great time riding in the front seat!

http://www.canadaswonderland.com/

Jeremy planned a great weekend for Jenna's 23rd birthday on May 16th. She got the first part of her gift right at the beginning of the weekend. Note what's around the cat's neck!

For the birthday dinner, we headed to...Magic Oven of course! They brought out a slice of cake on the house! It was really yummy.

The next day, Jeremy gave Jenna the rest of her present, which was a trip to Medieval Times! She had never been, so it was a very unique and fun experience. We got front row seats!

http://www.medievaltimes.com/

Overall, it was a great birthday! Much better than the last couple of birthdays for sure!

We were fooling around with the camera one day in June and ended up with these: we like them :)

During the months of May and June, Jenna was completing her second year massage and hydrotherapy shifts. She had to complete six of each in the 7 weeks of her rotation. Jeremy was kind enough to volunteer his time and money to come in and be her patient on many occasions, which was greatly appreciated as there aren't many patients for second years in the summer :)

http://www.ccnm.edu/

After the clinic shifts were over and we weren't confined to staying in Toronto for the weekend, we had the pleasure of spending some time in Oshawa at Jenna's parents house. They had just moved north of the city a year ago and acquired a great 2 acre lot and a pool! They also live across from the Purple Woods Conservation Area, where we would occasionally go for a walk. In the winter, it is home to the annual maple syrup festival.

http://www.cloca.com/msf/

Catch Up: Part One

2009-03-09T21:00:00.006-04:00

Just to bring you up to speed...

A lot of people don't know this, but we actually met through eHarmony - we were matched on Dec. 30th, 2007. The first time we chatted on msn, it lasted over 5 hours! We just couldn't say goodbye! We continued to talk online and over the phone until we met on February 2nd, 2008. We went to the Wintercity Festival - Nights of fire and a Thai restaurant on our first date.

Valentine's day wasn't even 2 weeks away from the first time we met, so it was very low key that year. Teddy bears seemed to be the gift of choice!

The rest of the semester seemed to fly by! Jeremy was doing his internship at Soho Vfx, which is a visual effects company located in downtown Toronto. He worked on the Hulk and the Love Guru, getting his name in the credits for the latter!

Because of his contributions to the film, he is now also on the Internet Movie Database: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3296506/

You can expect great things from him in the future, this is just the beginning :)

During Jeremy's internship, Jenna had to travel downtown to the University of Toronto's anatomy lab on Wednesdays. This was perfect, as we could meet up! We soon found our new favourite restaurant (well beside Sushi Ya) called Magic Oven. It's an organic pizza restaurant and they make the best pizzas ever! Whether you have wheat, dairy, or meat sensitivities, there is something for everyone! We are omnivores, however, our favourite pizza there is actually a vegetarian one. We highly recommend any of their pizzas!

http://www.magicoven.com/