Never a huge fan of the defacto standard microblog Twitter because the community was so centralized, when it really didn't have to be. It felt like the early days of AOL and Compuserve. The internet is distributed and decentralized and this application is clearly not. With the reliability issues that Twitter was was having, something was bound to happen. Enter Laconica - distributed open microblogging. Still in development but it gives you the opportunity to run your own community and subscribe to others on other servers.

The Virtual Drive has registered the domain name vdrive.ca and has started a new Laconica server . Also check out the new site which is our new tech blog location.

To learn more about microblogging check out Wikipedia.

A few photos shot in front of a church in Kurtzville ON. We just attended a parade and were taking a few picture before we left. Lauren was really serious for some of these pictures and seemed to play to the camera a little.

Yesterday Lauren's citizenship paperwork arrived in the mail granting her full Canadian citizenship. We had applied for it a few months after we arrived home. It was much less involved than he immigration paperwork that we filled out before we left for China.

Bill C-14, which received Royal Accent on June 22, 2007, amended the Citizenship Act so that children adopted abroad by Canadians could get Canadian citizenship without first having to become permanent residents and thus avoiding the usual immigration process. The amendment represents an important move to end the differential treatment of adopted children vs. children born to Canadians.

A foreign-born adopted child would acquire Canadian citizenship as soon as the adoption is finalized, as long as the parents have applied for citizenship in the child's name before they leave Canada. More information can be found here on the C-14 citizenship billl.

Our American neighbo(u)rs have a similar system already in place under their Child Citizenship Act of 2000.

It is hard to believe where the summer has gone. We have had so much fun with Lauren, exploring lots of new things with her. Having Paul home with us has been wonderful and a help to me and has allowed us to do more things together as a family this summer.

Fall brings changes for us as Paul returns to work. He has accepted a position with the University of Waterloo as Manager, Science Computing and starts on Sept 5th. He is very excited about this new opportunity and especially happy he is only 5 mins from home - no more commuting to Toronto each day. This will be an adjustment for both Lauren and I not having him around during the day but will be good so we both get into a better routine before I go back to work in January.


During the past two weeks we spent a day at the African Lion Safari and the Toronto Zoo with friends. Lauren just loves animals so she had lots of fun. Daddy taught her to roar like a lion!


We also spent a day at the farm with my Grandma and Papa. Papa was combining but Lauren would not go for a ride but did sit on the combine. She also spent time with the kittens.

We are getting close to our six month post placement report that we must submit to the China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA).

Life at home has changed a little (so, it's changed a lot) and there is not as much free time (we are on a schedule now) and things are a little messier (until we clean them up). Grocery bill is a lot higher (a lot of fresh fruit) and we are not as mobile as we use to be. Aside from that, everything has been wonderful. Lauren has been a unbelievable joy for both Sandra and I. She is happy and healthy and full of wonder.

We had a busy summer with many events including a 5 day camping trip and a week at a cottage. We have taken her everywhere with us and she travels well and we schedule around her sleeping patterns.

Here are some pictures for you to enjoy.