Montreal-bound for the Fall

The summer of 2012 has turned out to be a pretty crazy time. Jon's company shut down just before the Canada-day long weekend and he, amongst many others, found himself suddenly unemployed. Following Radical's closure a bunch more Vancouver studios shut down and the job prospects in our beautiful city were beginning to disappear.

Jon received interest from several companies from Vancouver, California, Toronto, and Montreal; and after much discussion, we made the decision to move the family East to Montreal where the video game industry seems to be going strong. Just 1 month after being laid off, Jon had found a new job and we were given just over 30 days to up and move our lives. Needless to say, August has been chaos. We have decided to rent out our house here in Vancouver in the hopes that we can return to live here one day. We were fortunate to find renters very quickly, as well as a good property manager. The rest of this month has been spent taking care of the "little things" around the house that have been on our to-do list, as well as purging toys, clothes, furniture, and gearing up to say farewell to family and friends.

The good thing about Montreal is that Kira will be able to start pre-kindergarten when we arrive. She is very excited to go to a "big school" and learn French. That will be our first task after we move into our new rental out there, then I will have to find a new daycare for Kai, and after that I'll  be going to French classes so that I can learn the language. Finally, a LaBonte from our family will speak French!

Here are some pics that we've snapped of the kids, there are more to come, but probably not until we are settled in Montreal.

Father and Son nap time

Upside down on the monkey bars

Kira + my dental hygienist pose for a pic (on my phone!) while I suffer with the flouride rinse.

Priceless

This kid LOVES to paint