"The Fall" and Halloween

'The Fall" is well and truly under way here and it is really quite beautiful - the trees are all shades from yellow to dark red and as there are a lots of trees around Kingston its looking great!

Halloween is quite the celebration here in Canada with the whole place dressing up, adults and kids alike. We couldn't get over how into it they are - in addition to the costumes they also decorate the houses so elaborately like haunted houses etc. with cobwebs covering the entire front of the houses and smoke machines, dangling full-size skeletons not to mention the carved pumpkins everywhere! The parents of the kids trick or treating also dress up (I was the only one not in costume!) and even the people at home opening the door to the kids are dressed up - it was great fun and eveyone is invited to house parties afterwards. Then of course all the college students dress up and head out to parties/gigs later on so basically it seemed like the whole town was on the move for the night. The kids really enjoyed it and so did we. We were all invited to a party on halloween night and met some more of the parents from Patrick's school who were nice people so that was a good night and we made some new friends. Laura had a couple fo halloween parties over the weekend too and again everyone without exception was dressed up in fantastic costumes! I think we'll have to be more prepared next halloween now that we are "in the know". We had also been invited to a 'pumpkin carving' evening at a work colleague of Paddy's, but the daughter of the house got the "swine '09" so it was called off. Then the daughter of the house we were in at the party on Saturday came down with it on Sunday so we are keeping our fingers and toes crossed that we escape this dose as its really rampant at the moment. From what we hear, it's the same back at home.

Paddy was in Ottawa on Monday/Tuesday this week and then headed off to the ISAF conference in Korea on Wednesday morning. I didn't envy him the journey - first a short flight to Toronto, followed by a long flight to Tokyo (12hours) and finally his connection onward to Korea. He'll be tired out by the time he arrives to his final destination. It was funny actually, cos it was the first time we had experienced the airport here in Kingston so naturally we left in good time to arrive a good hour before his flight. Well, we were the only people there!!! apparently 20mins is fine and there were only 5 people catching the flight anyway!!! also the journey to airport at 6.50am took about 8 minutes so we were laughing at the contrast!.

Ellie and Patrick are both continuing to enjoy their schools - although the swine flu is rampant and every day we hear of more people going down with it, particularly in Ellen's school where they are running at about 25% absenteeism currently and lots of teachers out too.

Laura is really enjoying work and the responsibility of opening/closing the shop and reporting back to the owners on the days business patterns etc. so its been good for her. She has been pursuing the winter semester with Queens but it now seems from her latest info that the course will be a correspondence one so that doesn't appeal to her so she may skip on that. Anyway, she has plenty to occupy her time at the moment so we'll see.

This weekend Sinead and her kids Robyn and Ben are coming for the weekend so we're looking forward to having our first visitors! the kids are thrilled and are planning swimming and skating and going out for pizza on Saturday night and I'm delighted to have Sinead needless to say! Chris has to stay in Toronto as he has his work farewell on Friday night and with Paddy away, I think he'll be enjoying a quiet weekend. Then we also have Aedeen's visit coming up at the end of the month so I can't wait for that!!!! it'll be fun showing Sinead and Aedeen around and seeing what they think of Kingston - I'll get Aedeen to take pics too so that she can show you all what it's like.