last 5 months in photos!

I'm trying to get caught up on posting photos of our latest adventures.... I'm just a couple months behind!!


I don't want to do it all in one post as that would be a very long and photo heavy post so starting Monday, there will be new posts daily with photos of our adventures since May.

I hope you will enjoy them!

new journeys.....

Ronel has now been in daytime English classes for 3 days and he seems to be enjoying it. We were unable to register him for the school location closest to us as their day classes were full. We signed up Ronel for night classes but after we got home, we didn't feel good about it as it was 4 nights a week and we'd have only had 30 mins together between me getting off work & Ronel going to school. I called Monday to cancel him for the night classes and to find out if there were spaces in another school not that far away. There was and Ronel started Tuesday morning. Because of the hours, he has to bus to and from school and he did very well navigating the bus system -- in the afternoon, he has to take the skytrain and 2 buses! I was definitely more nervous about it than he was!

This new English class is quite different than his old one and there are only 4 students which is nice as they will get lots of individual attention from the teacher. The students are all from varied backgrounds which doesn't allow for speaking in their native tongue (which was a huge pet peeve for Ronel at his last English class - most were Spanish speaking and would speak Spanish with each other on the break as well as during class time)
So for like 5 + hours Ronel is only speaking English, which is helping with his confidence level.

Life with both of us out of the house for a large part of the day makes our evenings seem that much crazier but it is nice for both of us to have time out of the house on our own and we also both have an hour or so alone at home which is nice to get things done on our own, and then we have our evenings together.

Enjoy your Thursday!

one year

One year ago I was in Haiti with Ronel preparing to fly home together .... It seems unreal that it was only a year ago that Ronel came to Canada. Some days it feels like forever and other days it feels like it has only been a few months!! In 2 months and 4 days we will be celebrating our FOURTH wedding anniversary. Even my mom had a hard time believing me that it has been that long already!

We had a great summer - spent lots of time with family & friends. And Ronel got to have lots of firsts..... drove a go-cart, went to Kids' Camp, went camping, got his Care Card! (this one is a BIGGIE!!), went to a Canadian emergency room (he wasn't the patient, I was), played mini-golf (and beat me!) and more that I can think of right now!

I know I promised pictures of many of these things and I have them, just haven't had the time to get them online!!! I'm hoping that once Ronel goes to English classes during the day, I'll be able to get better at keeping up with the blog when I'm on my break (since I won't feel bad about ignoring him while I'm on the computer!)

Yes, we are hoping that soon Ronel will be in full time ESL classes with ELSA.
ELSA stands for English Language Services for Adults. The ELSA program provides basic and intermediate level English training for adult newcomers to Canada.  He had his assessment test last Wednesday and they put him at a level 3 (there are levels 1-5) and then tomorrow we go to register him at the school closest to us that offers the classes when we want them and find out when he can start classes.
Ronel will be in class Mon - Fri  from 9am - 2:15pm. It will be nice for him to be out of the house each day and also learning more English. He's very good at studying on his own but the social interaction will be good for him. And because of the hours... he'll be taking the bus to and from class which will be a big step for him.


I hope you all had a great summer! and that you have a great September!