The Long Goodbye...or, yendo de la cama al living...

Today was the day we were supposed to be heading out, totally excited about spending New Year's Eve in some funky cheap hotel off the Interstate in Ohio somewhere, but it looks like fate has slated us to spend the start of 2009 in Hamilton. The weather in New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio looked really bad for today - snow and high winds - so we decided to stay for one more night and head out early tomorrow morning. Still a good way to start the new year.

The past couple of days have been pretty chaotic and a bit heart-wrenching, but also really nice. On Monday Ariel spent the day, along with River, at Austin's house. As usual, they had a great time, concluding their time together with a ginger beer "toast" to Ari's trip. We parents also said a sad goodbye, as Mark and Cornelia have become our good friends as well! Meanwhile, Mateo went over to Ben and Ollie's place to play with their brand new Wii. Then we drove in to Toronto for a quick visit (and a couple of glasses of champagne) with Daniel, Yamila and Dario, before heading over to Suzanne and Quique's place for a rousing game of ping pong on the "beach." They thoughtfully got us a great pair of binoculars (to be better able to see the monkeys in the trees in Costa Rica, and the whales in Punta!) an an external hard drive for the laptop, so we can back up all of our files, photos, music, etc. Amazing! I've already backed everything up...

Yesterday we stayed close to home, packing up and getting organized. Eva and Mary drove all the way to say goodbye to us from Ottawa, and we also had visits from Suzanne, Quique, Sofia and little Gabriel. Noah and baby Simon came over with their parents Lucy and Dale, and brought an absolutely scrumptious Sicilian Cassata cake that Lucy made - to die for! We have been nibbling on it ever since.

Last night Eva and Mary took us out to eat at this great Thai restaurant in Hamilton, and Mateo spent the entire time (when he wasn't stuffing his face with noodles and shrimp) filming underwater fish! If you look closely at the video you can see that he almost took one of the little fish with him when he lifted the camera out of the water!

This morning we were invited over to Yvonne and Neil's for a fancy farewell breakfast, but we were running so late that it turned into a brunch, and it was absolutely delicious! Thanks guys, and thanks for the lightweight travel towels too - those will come in handy!

One thing we have realized is that we feel really torn about leaving so many great people behind, but I have the feeling that we will be seeing many of them in warmer climes. We have been so successful in our temptation campaign that we might be single-handedly responsible for a alot of ecological footprints on the planet at this rate.....