The sun is shining bright and warm through the window behind me... you'd never believe that there was frost on the ground this morning and a chilly -9'C (no idea what that is in Fahrenheit, but either way, it's cold.) Meanwhile, they're saying that it's supposed to go up to 17'C by the end of the week. Oh Mother Nature is blessed with such a sense of humour! She loves to always keep you guessing.

Anyhow, yesterday we booked all our hotels for our trip. Fun stuff. It's so exciting to see it all come together, as I obsessively look at the hotel websites and TripAdvisor reviews over and over again. Even with the so-so crappier reviews, I immediately want to jump to the defense of the hotel we're staying at. "So what if they didn't carry your bags up to the room for you -- you're too demanding!" and "Who cares if the breakfast spread didn't include bacon. Get over it!" One of the last times I went back home, we got stuck spending a week in a crappy hotel that reeked like lime and sausage. (Janetk - y'know the old one in front of the East End Mall?) But with a Glade plug-in and a bottle of Febreez we made due just fine. I'm sure the hotels we're staying at will be okay.

So with all our hotels booked, today's task was to book our plane tickets home. We had planned to fly out of Amsterdam on Tuesday the 23rd, but when I went online this morning, the company we intended to fly with only offers flights out of Amsterdam on certain days of the week. So we can catch our flight home either on the 22nd or the 24th. Hmm... oh well, what's another day in Amsterdam, right? As it is, we're only going to be there for about a day n' a half. I'd love to spend another day and maybe make time to check out whatever we missed the first day, such as the Anne Frank house or the Van Gogh museum... and of course no trip to Amsterdam would be complete without a little pop in to one of its infamous coffee houses. (Not quite J's bag, but I'm sure he'll humour me... )

The only snag is that we won't arrive home until sometime on Thursday now instead of Wednesday. No big deal... except I recently decided to bump up our reception from the first Saturday in October, to the last Saturday in September. So, arriving home on Thursday and hosting a reception on Saturday... oy... I'm exhausted already.

The reason for the bump up is because we need someone to look after our cats, which involves more than just filling their food dishes. Y'see, we're not supposed to have pets in our building, but we've lived there for about three years and have managed to do a great job hiding the fact that we have two little toonces. Our landlord has been into our apartment many times, and has even re-floored our entire balcony -- a three day project -- without once hearing a single mew.

J n' I have a system. Whenever we get a suite entry notice, a half hour before the approximate time our landlord expects to enter, we hide all the scratching posts, mousey toys and cat cushions in our bedroom closet. Then we put the cats, their food and litter box into our bedroom bathroom. We close the bathroom door and put a towel along the bottom. We turn on the bedroom TV or radio, and then close the bedroom door, with another towel or blanket along the bottom. Then we vacuum and Febreez the whole apartment for good measure. It has always worked like a charm!

So just in case our landlord needs to enter our suite while we're away, we need to pass the torch and enlighten someone else with our sacred system. We also need someone who would be willing to clean the kitty litter and vacuum a couple times a week so we don't return to cat shag carpeting. Both our kitties are long-hairs, and they shed like craaaazy. Not to mention, they always chase and wrestle with each other, so we'll often find big clumps of fur all over the place from their shenanigans.



While we have a few friends in town who'd be willing to pop in and feed our cats, we feel it's a lot to ask someone to do the litter cleaning, vacuuming and the potential kitty hiding. But I thought of a possible solution...

My folks are planning on coming out for our reception and want to stay at our place for a week. So... I was thinking... maybe they'd want to stay at our place while we were gone? They can't afford to take a "real" vacation, but this city is a real tourist destination in the summer... so really, they could have a little get-away in a nice apartment with a fully stocked fridge, and Tim Hortons right across the street (!) and all they have to do is pay for their airfare, which they were going to do anyway, and look after les chats.

Of course, my folks (or well, my dad) has a way of twisting things to make them seem like a burden. So when I proposed this to them, I said that we were only toying with the idea... we do have other options. I don't want to burden them with the responsibility. Much to my surprise, both my mom n' dad jumped at the offer... like seriously, my mom must've thanked me for the opportunity about 10 times already.

The only problem was that mom didn't think she could take a whole month off work... so I suggested we bump the reception back a week and hold it the Saturday right after we come back. This would mean she'd only need to take three weeks off, which would work swimmingly.

So yeah, back to what I was saying about arriving home on Thursday. That means I'll have to pull everything together for the reception by Friday so we can have it on Saturday. It's going to be a bit of an exhausting whirlwind... but hopefully it'll all work out...

Now we just have to book our flight and an extra night in Amsterdam! Whoo!