Toddler alert!

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Danny has started standing on his own this morning, and took his first, very tentative, step!

Danny's upright, but not walking... yet

Just a really quick post to reassure our legions of readers that we're still here...
Danny has been standing up for a couple of weeks now, but he's not quite ready to take those first tentative steps. To help him with those steps, we felt it was time to buy his first shoes while we were in Reading 10 days ago:

I'm currently working through hundreds of photos and videos that need sorting, but I'll see if I can't rustle up a post or two this side of Summer..

A First Pass at Some Holiday Photos

Here are some photos from the skiing holiday; if I ever find time to edit them together, I'll put some videos up here too..

Happy 1st Birthday, Danilka

Danny had a very nice day today. Lara made sure he opened some presents first thing this morning, then he went to nursery as usual. We brought him home a little early so he could have a little party at home with us and Grandma, and with Auntie Catherine, and Cousins Elizabeth and William on skype.

The Exodus flight is booked!

Last night we booked our one-way flight from Manchester to Calgary - the date will be Wednesday August 7th 2013.

This is earlier than we originally planned. We had the nice idea of cruising over to New York on the QM2 in the spring of 2014, then having a long roadtrip to Calgary from there. This would have meant the dogs didn't have to fly, they could cruise in style with us. But it just proved too expensive, and time consuming. Once we came back from our holiday at New Year, we asked ourselves why were we waiting so long to make the move, and we looked at flying over later this Summer. We asked our bosses if this was possible, they went into Conclave to discuss it (in case anyone's reading this in years to come, the Catholic Cardinals are choosing a new Pope at the moment) and came out with white smoke billowing, saying it was OK.

Of course it's not just as simple as booking a flight. We've had to secure some temporary accommodation for when we arrive (one month rental of a 2-bedroom basement apartment in Cochrane, just outside Calgary. That's Cochrane in the photo, above), find somewhere for the dogs to live during that time, as the owner of the apartment already has 3 dogs (our boys will go into Kennels just outside Cochrane for a month), and arrange to fly them over on the same flight as us (Jackson as excess baggage, Mishka as cargo!).
Once there we need to find a longer-term, dog-friendly rental place, buy a car, get Lara enrolled in school and find a nursery for Danny. It's just as well my Mum will be coming with us for that first month to lend a hand with looking after Lara and Danny while Olga and I sort out the boring stuff.

More good news on the Grandma front - Baba Luda will be back in Bury at the start of April, just in time to help us start packing. We've had quotes from three shipping companies to move our belongings, I've yet to pick one, but the jist is a 40-foot container will be outside our house around the 1st of August and a handful of burly men will pack anything not nailed down.