Happy Hallowe'en!

We arrived in Chicago late last night. We're going to spend a day sightseeing before we continue on. We'll fill you in on the details of the drive/trip when we have settled in Toronto. In the meantime, since it's Hallowe'en, here are more old pictures of us, carving pumpkins and handing out candy (something we can't do now that's we're homeless):

step on the gas and wipe that tear away

Once we left our house, we drove around the city to tie up loose ends. We signed our wills, added items to the safety deposit box (bye wedding rings), and picked up some international driver's licenses. We're on our way to Toronto (via Chicago) right now! We can't believe this is actually happening!



We left Winnipeg in the early evening and battled rain and construction on the highway to stop for the night in Fargo, ND (yeah!)



It's so exciting here:




We're going to go hop in the hotel pool tonight and take off early tomorrow morning to get out of here. 10 hours on the road tomorrow 'til Chicago!

homeless!

The buyer's possession date for our home was this morning at 9am. We pulled an all-nighter to get all the items into storage, off to charity, or packed for the trip. It was rough - but we got everything out by 8am (cutting it close!) and slept until 2pm.

This is how the storage locker looked after the first trip:


It was completely full at the end.

One of our good friends hung out all night with us while we moved. He was so amazing and we can't thank him enough.

So - we did it! Everything, except the car, was either given away, stored or sold. The snow was gone when we came back from LA. We took a look at our multi-colored yard one last time:

Because we still have a vehicle, our plans have changed (again):

ROAD TRIP!

We'll still fly down to Mexico after we ditch the car, but we're going to see a little more of the U.S. and Canada first. We are so tired but so incredibly excited about what's to come.

urban light

I love this photo that Alex took. This installation is entitled Urban Light. Chris Burden's sculpture is a display of 202 restored, cast-iron, antique street lamps and it is located outside of the LACMA. Can you find me?

-Mina

robot packing boxes

this is my husband.
-Mina

a quick los angeles recap

We saw the most magnificent sunset as we were landing in L.A. last week.
It made me so excited to be there {amongst other reasons}

The weather was perfect, the people were friendly and we had a lovely few days.

We didn't have a chance to take too many photos in L.A. There wasn't enough time as we had to do more planning and preparation than expected. In addition, travel related matters arose that we had to attend to, while we were in the states, as our new mailing address will be a U.S one. (More on this later...)

Most of the L.A tourist attractions were visited during the last trip, so we aren't too disappointed. We do feel bad that we didn't have time to check out some of your suggestions! We were really looking forward to them! We went to some pretty parks and did a mini hike near Cold Water Canyon in the TreePeople area.

It was beautiful.

Although we didn't take many photos, there were several photos taken of us! Alex and I chose Max Wanger to be our wedding photographer. He and his fiancée are the sweetest people and we are so glad to have met them. They helped make our wedding day amazing and went above and beyond as photographers. Not to mention that they are an insanely adorable couple.

We love his work and are so excited to see the results!
He's a pretty busy guy, so I think it might be a while until we get the photos
...but I can't wait to share them!

home!

...but not for long!
We leave so soon and still have so much to do!
We're moving everything into storage this week and selling the last few items.

{P.S. We had a lovely time in Los Angeles and everything turned out great  - we'll tell you all about it soon... but right now, we're just too tired.}

en route

As you read this, we are in an airplane, on our way to Los Angeles. With all the planning for other events, we didn't really have a chance to plan activities for the days leading up to the wedding. We will definitely be visiting KOI, one of our fave restaurants, and we're excited about some suggestions from this previous comment section. Do you guys have any other recommendations that won't take too much time? We'll be staying in the Beverly Hills area and don't want to venture too far away. Thanks in advance!

photo taken from our last trip to LA - January 2008 - Griffith Park Observatory

things we'll miss - sugar mountain

Right now, the two of us are going a little crazy. Selling a house, getting married, moving and planning an around the world trip are not things that should be done in the same week. Oops. No time for blogging - here's a 'things we'll miss' post we forgot to post during the summer:

There's this ridiculously amazing candy store here that sells all kinds of candy at 2 cents per gram. We can't resist such a deal!


It's down the street from this Indian place we eat at and so we stroll on over to pick up some 'dessert'. Saying that Mina has a sweet tooth is an understatement. She would replace breakfast, lunch, and dinner with sweets if it was more nutritious.

We still have these really weird candies that we picked up in Tokyo. We would just buy things because the packaging looked cool - so it was always a gamble. Some of it was incredibly strange in taste and texture. You just get used to the old North American staples - remember Fun Dip? Hopefully, we can continue to buy bulk candy on our travels - we need our sugar fix!

{Remind me to use the flash setting indoors.}

The 'decor' is awesome:



We bought a big bag of gummy worms, jelly bellies, those little cola candies and all kinds of other fun stuff. Needless to say, we were feeling pretty sick by the end of the evening.

thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all you Canadians! We have a lot to be thankful for this year. The other night some friends gave us a lovely send off party with a quasi around-the-world theme.

Alex's last day of work was on Friday and his coworkers were unbelievably generous and supportive of our trip. What a nice bunch of people!

We have been trying to find time to see old friends and family before we leave and are so thankful for the people in our lives that are supporting what we are doing and the ones who have been so encouraging. We still need to make some time to squeeze in a few more people... it's getting so difficult considering all that needs to be done before we leave.

3 days 'til LA - 8 days 'til the wedding!

the first snowfall

We had hoped that we would have already left the city by the time the snow started falling, but alas, we got the first snow of the season the other day (in our yard, above). We can't believe that just a few weeks ago we were on this same lawn in our summer clothes.

The first snowfall always evokes feelings of Christmas for us. Despite that, we're hoping that this is the last snow we see for at least a year (unless we're hiking a mountain). Speaking of hiking, we made a trip to Mountain Equipment Co-op last week and bought a lot of our travel gear. We'll do a full post about everything we're taking before we leave. We're also going to be updating our wanderlist with some of your wonderful suggestions. Thanks!

things we'll miss - stella's

This past week we've been busy selling all of our furniture, electronics, and home decor. A lot of the rooms are beginning to look bare. We've also started packing away clothes, picture frames, books, and things we can't part with into boxes.

Our next step is, of course, to get married in Los Angeles on the 20th. We're obviously going to be a little busy leading up to our nuptials, but we promise to post updates on our trip preparations (and hopefully a few new photos from L.A.).

Although the cold weather is swiftly approaching, we have a few more things that we'll miss about Winnipeg. One of these is Stella's cafe. Here are some photos we took over the summer:

Stella's - we will miss your sandwiches, your 'homemade' strawberry jam, your eclectic mix of patrons...


...and we will especially miss your all day breakfast.