First cottage weekend

We're nearing the end of our first weekend at the cottage this year. Friday was beautiful here. We played on the beach and in the lake. The girls rediscovered all the cottage toys and its nooks and crannies.

Yesterday was rainy so we did some restocking in town and then were back outside in the afternoon.

Henry, being only three weeks old, is the youngest baby I've brought to the cottage. I had expectations of no sleep but he did fairly well with only one night of being awake A LOT. Last night he slept with me for a bigger portion and did much better. Although this morning he's refusing to get off me, The Dairy Queen, and take a nap.

The sun is shining again; the girls are playing at the beach; time to get out there.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:N Mary Lake Rd,Huntsville,Canada

The next three weeks

We are all over the place the next three weeks. Here is a general itinerary:

Tomorrow: drive to the cottage (Huntsville, ON)

Weekend: enjoy time at the cottage with our good friends, Pam and Jim and their kids

Next week: at the cottage... John working here and there, me and the kids making a visit to Santa's Village (Bracebridge) and probably having a sleep over at my dad's in Gravenhurst

Next Friday: drive to Toronto

For the week following that: stay in Toronto at my friends Deb and Andrew's house in the Beach (sweet!) while they are gallivanting around Paris. During that week we plan to visit the zoo, Black Creek Pioneer Village, Ontario Science Centre, go to the beach every day, walk up and down Queen St and soak it all in, walk amongst Canada's tallest skyscrapers so the kids can see what a real big city is like (no insult attended, Ottawa), have tea (Emily and I) at the Royal York or Kind Edward as Emily's birthday present. Perhaps during that week we'll pop into our house in Waterloo to make sure everything is okily-dokily.

End of our week in Toronto: drive back to the cottage for another week wherein we will have a number of members of John's family visiting.

Phew. I'm kind of worn out just writing it down. On the other hand I am so looking forward to the adventures of the next three weeks!

I'll blog when I can but I might just be having too much fun!

Seems I'm still on vacation

Friends, it's been a while.

I know it's been a while when Blogger doesn't even remember my sign-in anymore.

And I don't have much of an excuse. I have an iPhone. So although the kids tend to use the computer as a t.v. during times when I could actually sit down and post, I could still be crafting a post. And it isn't like I don't have things to say. We've been doing a lot; having lots of fun; I've been observing, noticing things, things I would normally post about.

And yet here I am. Silent.

I think that I just want a little break. No obligation to say anything at all. So perhaps I'll keep that up for a while, or maybe not. We'll have to see how it all unfolds.

In the meantime, here is a quick synopsis of our week at the cottage: The weather was crappy at the beginning (where is summer this year?) and then nice at the end. The girls have really figured out what it means to play on the beach this year, the result of which is that I can sit in a chair by the water, knit, drink tea or something with a bit more kick (my new drink of the summer is the Palm Bay Vodka Pineapple Orange.... mmm), and relax. Or I can get down and dirty and show them how to build a fish pond with streams connecting to other ponds.



The week with Beth, Kate and Graeme was fun. And of course Sara Martin was there too - a friend of Beth's (and now mine) who joins us every summer. That was great fun.

We roasted marshmallows twice, cooked hot dogs over a fire for lunch one day and stayed up really late in front of the fire one night hanging out with our neighbour, Guy.


We hiked up the back hill/cliff area searching for wild blueberries. Last year we hit the payload. This year, not so much. I think they deer got to them before we did.


I built Emily another obstacle course. She was keen on the idea but less on the execution. She loved it last year; this year she had other interests. But she played long enough for me to capture it on camera.


On our last night before leaving for home the girls and I (and Sara and Beth) did face masks. It was a girly-bonding moment. Until Hope freaked out and cried for 15 minutes before insisting that I take it off. Hope's was chocolate flavoured which I thought would be a big selling point for her. She smelt like a sundae for a day afterwards.


We finished our week with supper at my dad's place in Gravenhurst. His house is now almost completely finished and it's beautiful. I plan to have a sleepover there in the next few weeks with the girls. And spend my evening in the hot tub on the deck sipping something or other.

We go back to the cottage next Wednesday for a weekend with our friends Pam and Jim and their kids. That will be great. Since leaving Ottawa I haven't seen them of course so it will be a great chance to reconnect and show them a place that is as much home to me as any place else.

We also still have a visit to Santa's Village in the future on an overcast cottage day.

And that's my synopsis. Perhaps I'll get something more coherent up over the next few days. Here's hoping!

Best March Break ever: Day 3 (a little late)

On Day 3 at my dad's, he had the internet connection switched to the new house so my blogging ground to a halt. No matter because I was so beat. My muscles were extremely unhappy and during my "free time" I had to just lie on the couch while the girls watched t.v.

We played outside on Thursday morning for quite a while with Sue. Sue and Art Bast are friends of my parents from Sudbury. Art has a company that makes and installs really nice kitchen cabinets and he was there putting in the countertop at the house. Sue played restaurant with us and then we all went for a walk across the ice and over to the house. I brought the kids back for a snack and then we got ready to go to the Wildlife Centre with Sue and Donna.

The Centre is out on Highway 11 so a bit of a drive. Unfortunately, we were there 30 minutes before it opened so we killed some time up the highway at the Muskoka Store, a truly overpriced tourist trap. However, I did get a new pair of sunglasses at 50% off.

We finally got into the Wildlife Centre at 12:30. Luckily I had a lot of snacks packed. The Centre was amazing. There were big walking trails through the acres and acres of property. The animals were all active and the girls were able to see almost everything. The best moment was when we arrived at the cougar/bear enclosure right at feeding time. The cougar was pacing. The animal handler dude had to coax the bear out of his den for lunch. He's still sleeping a lot during the day. My highlight was how focussed Emily was on the map of the Centre rather than the animals we were seeing. She was much more concerned on making sure we were headed in the right direction than on seeing animals. It was so funny.

Back at the cottage, I lay on the couch after lunch while the girls watched some t.v. We then headed back over to the house to build the first fire in the new masonry stove (which is a really big stone enclosed woodstove sort of. I'll post photos later). And then the day ended with supper and bed.

The drive home yesterday was fine. My legs and hips were screaming but I made it without too much trouble. It is a really beautiful drive between here and there and we were treated to three fawns crossing the highway in front of the car.

We had a great week. It was really relaxing. The kids spent a huge amount of time outside and it was so nice to be in Muskoka during the winter. But, now I'm glad to be home and back to a routine as well.

I'll post some pictures.... sometime. My computer is dead again and we don't know why. Ugh.

Best March Break ever: Day 2

Today I woke up and knew that today would be different.  My body protested loudly that I didn't nap yesterday and went to bed at a normal time: 10:00 pm.  As soon as I got up I knew that today was a bad-body day.  So, after breakfast, we headed into Gravenhurst for some groceries and a stop at a new fibre arts store.  I got a new toque and Donna bought me some beautiful yarn that I plan to turn into a scarf at some point.  The store is owned by a woman who raises Alpacas and will be milling the yarn next door and selling it in the shop.  It was really cool with beautiful colour choices.

By the time we got home I felt worse so I ate lunch and then pawned the kids off on my dad and Donna and I headed to bed for an hour.  After my nap, I went on a hunt for everyone.  They were on a hike around the trails on the property.  The property is about 105 acres.  So, I walked up to the new house and the mason's told me they were walking the long way around back to the cottage so I "mantracked" them back towards the cottage and found them not too far away.  We hiked the rest of the way home, some of it with Hope in my arms.  

Back at the cottage, we had tea, read a bit and then heard Papa firing up the chainsaw so we headed back outside to watch and help load wood.  After that was all done, the girls and I played restaurant outside for about another 30 minutes before we were called back to the new house to help unload the quartz countertops.  Let's just say that clearly my muscles aren't too badly affected by my mystery illness because they stood up to the test this afternoon.  Man, is quartz freakin' heavy!

Back through the mud once again to the cottage for supper and now I'm chillin' with some wine and soon I'll sit down with a hot back for my back and then put the kids to bed.  I'll follow soon after.

Tomorrow: the Muskoka Wildlife Centre (a.k.a animal rescue centre).

Best March Break ever: Day 1

The drive to Gravenhurst (which, for those of you who don't know the hinterland of Ontario well, is in Muskoka - close to Algonquin Park - about 2 hours north of Toronto and 4.5 hours west of Ottawa) went remarkably well.  The girls watched a couple of videos, Emily took a nap, Hope talked.  And talked.  And talked.  We had to stop three times.  Twice was for me to pee.

Went we got up here we had a tour of my Dad and Donna's new house.  They're building a timber frame house on a piece of severed property that Donna and her brother inherited from her parents.  Her family cottage is on the remaining piece of property.  That's where we're staying.  

The cottage always smells like woodfire, which is awesome.  

After our house tour yesterday, we walked across the bay on the ice to the cottage and settled in.  After supper we took another walk on the lake.

This morning the kids were outside playing by 8:30.  We made a fire outside and walked over the ice to visit the men ice-fishing a ways away.  We pulled the kids across on toboggans.  Bentley, my dad's dog, rolled in dead Pike.  So nasty.  When we got back we pulled out the roaster sticks, hot dogs and toppings and roasted our lunch by the fire.  Marshmallows followed.  Emily wanted to check out a small hole in the ice where Donna was checking the ice thickness but never actually made it to the main water level.  There was in fact water in the hole though (see where this is going).  She ended up knee deep in the hole when she decided to touch her toe to the water and lost her balance.  No joke, that's the third pair of pants today.

I'm loving it up here.  We're outside a lot so far.  I hope to catch a nap this afternoon and put a hot water bottle on my belly which is not happy at the moment.  Aside from that, this is a great first March Break for Emily.

Free showers, fires and blackberries

Finally, I have a few minutes to sit down and document last weekend: our last weekend of the season at the cottage.

The weather was gorgeous: lots of sun, warmer than expected temperatures, no bugs (although a small population of blackflies infiltrated the cottage which was totally weird), nice fires, lots of outdoor time. Just all around great.

It always is nice to be closing the cottage on a nice weekend. It sucks to carry canoes through a window in the pouring rain, which is always a possibility in September in Ontario. On the other hand, it makes it lamentable to close when the weather is nice because you just want to be able to come back for another weekend as soon as possible.

Having said all that, the nights were getting pretty chilly by the middle of the weekend and I couldn't keep the fire in the wood stove going all night long so there were some extra wake-ups by Hope and some damn cold floors in the mornings. I'm not sorry to say goodbye to that. I'm not sure if this was the girls trying to stay warm or just being dorks:


On Saturday we puttered around the cottage. John pulled apart what remains of our dock. The dock is old now - probably 20 years old, I'd say and time for a replacement. That will possibly be next summer's project depending on cash flow. Now that only the cribs are left, it looks (a little) less ghetto. That pretty much took up most of the day. Emily attempted a swim in the lake but got no further than mid-shin before she declared it too cold. She's getting soft. Last year she was in on the same weekend and was adamant that it was beautiful.


The cleanup of the dock ended with me accidentally piercing the water line behind the shed when I casually threw down a board that had nails poking out of it. We'd decided not to remove those ones because there were so GD many of them. Crap. However, out of great misfortune comes empowerment. I shut off the water, traced the water line to ensure it was ours (not guaranteed in a group of cottages the age of ours) and then started going through our plumbing supplies to find out what I could do to fix this problem. While tracing the line, I found a splice that had been done years ago. Eureka! I just copied how that was done after finding the right stuff in the plumbing stuff and voila! Problem solved. I felt so handy and awesome and like I could just build a house right then and there. Granted I caused the problem, but still. I felt like I could probably take care of this place okay from here on in.

Saturday night my dad and Donna came over for a great visit and meal. We had lots of fun chatting, looking at photos of their new house and recent trip to Malaysia. They loved hearing about Emily's school and what she does. Not that we could get much out of her on that front. Like most school-age kids her brain cramps when you ask her what she did at school each day: "the regular stuff."

On Sunday, John went for a run while I pruned blackberries at the back of the properties. They haven't been pruned since they were planted several years ago so the berries are very small and not as plentiful as they should be. Next year should be great. Next year, I'm also buying neoprene gloves.


We met John at the end of his run at the Huntsville Pool for the $1 showers. Unfortunately we found out the pool was closed for annual maintenance. Luckily, a couple of the maintenance guys took pity on our sorry lot (they probably caught a whiff of John) and let us into the change rooms at no charge. We had the place to ourselves. There is nothing better than a hot shower when you haven't had access to one for a couple of days.

We poked around in town for a couple of hours after that and then after supper at the cottage had our last campfire of the summer. It was, in fact, Hope's very first campfire. She loved it. She particularly loved the marshmallows.

I just love how, this summer in particular, the cottage is moving beyond being a place where I have so many memories and becoming a place where the kids are building lots of memories. It's starting to quickly feel like our family place, not in an ownership sense but in a "our little family" sense and not just my family's place, meaning my family of my sister and parents, if that makes sense.

Probably not, but it makes sense to me.


The next day was close up which went way better and faster than I expected. A final stop at the perogie restaurant on the way home and Bob's your uncle.

Actually Bob's my dad, but same diff.

Last weekend at the cottage upon us

We're leaving tomorrow to close the cottage. This means two things: we're going to be cold and I'm going to have that forlorn feeling that always marks the very last weekend at the cottage.

There is no insulation in the cottage for the most part. This summer I developed a system though of lighting the wood stove before bed which then heats up the top floor and keeps it toasty most of the night. Of course, I will have the wood stove going the whole time. Maybe we'll just hang out upstairs most of the weekend.

Actually, I'm sure it will be beautiful. I love the cottage this time of year.

See you all next week!

Last hurrah

We're off to the cottage tomorrow morning for one last hurrah. We're meeting friends Tamara and Greg there and plan to have a great time. I always am sad during the last summer weekend at the cottage. Yes, there will be more weekends there in September but the sun isn't as warm and therefore the place isn't quite the same. The last weekend at the cottage to me means the last of summer.

Still, it will be great to be there for a few days. I plan to get swimming as much as possible, pick blackberries, hike, drink some coffee and then wine on the porch, have a campfire and roast marshmallows. It shall be good.

See you back here on Wednesday.

Three weeks of filth

We're home. I need a shower so bad. I haven't showered in three weeks. All right, so I have bathed in the lake several times but no real shower. No real deep clean. That is job one tonight.

After three weeks away, it is a minor culture shock to return home. My evening entertainment for the past three weeks has been watching the bugs congregate on the window, the moon rise over the lake and glimmer on the waves and recently trying to keep Hope from climbing out of her bed. That was more torture than entertainment though.

The first two weeks Hope did so well sleeping in a big bed. She took to it right away. And then Week 3. It was like she realized she could GET OUT. And strip too. I mean, why stop at getting out of bed when you can do it naked? Getting her to sleep has been really crappy the last week. Thoughts of buying her a single bed are now long gone. I was so thankful to plop her in her crib tonight knowing she couldn't get out. Of course, she's likely naked right now.

The week ahead is busy. Emily is starting Vacation Bible School tomorrow. I have to restock the fridge tomorrow morning. The gardens are looking great although there are crazy weeds everywhere and the tomatoes need to be totally re-staked. To top it all off, I'm speaking at church on Sunday. How insane is that? It feels insane anyway.

I'm glad to be home but I do miss the cottage already. I'll have to dream it over the next few weeks until we're back.

I am glad to talk to you all again though.

Damn Safari! Problem solved.

Turns out the browser was the problem. Firefox solved it. Anyway, here are the posts and photos I tried to post last time. All is well here. John leaves for Austin with Graeme tomorrow and then we'll be all girls all the time at the cottage for the next week. A lot of estrogen.

I just realized I haven't heard news, read a paper or scanned the internet in two weeks. I love it. Unplugging is one of the newest best things about the cottage for me. Ignorance really is bliss at times.

July 4

The final week of the Cleanse

I’m sitting here drinking what will be the last smoothie I will have, most likely, for a long time. I’m about to swallow the last supplements.

Tonight is the last night of the Cleanse.

The last few days have been a little more challenging. Being at the cottage means Loeb isn’t a 50minute car ride or 10-minute bike. We’re 20 minutes from a grocery store. I have had to shop carefully.

The cottage also means ice cream, cookies, a lot of fruit, treats brought by visitors, a steaming cup of coffee on the dock in the morning, a late afternoon glass of wine in the speckled sunlight.

The coffee and wine start tomorrow. I plan to keep my sweets-consumption very low and my vegetable intake very high because I really like how I feel after eating mainly vegetables for three weeks.

I also know that I will keep my portions much smaller. The reality is that I was consistently eating too much, or at least too much of the wrong things.

The other thing I know is this: tomorrow is Day 1-Post Cleanse and it will start with a cup of decaf, freshly ground and a warm piece of bakery-fresh multigrain toast covered in peanut butter and homemade strawberry jam. Tomorrow morning I’m celebrating me.

With just one piece though.

July 9, 2008

Grand plans gone sour on Mary Lake

Remember how I told you I’d keep writing posts and just upload a bunch every few days? Yah, that hasn’t happened. The post above is the only one I’ve written besides this one I’m writing on the fly right now.

I’ve been having fun. A lot of fun. No time or desire to sit at a computer or scribble things down by hand. It means I’m missing some good stuff for the blog but I’m living the good stuff without many worries or stresses or pressure on myself.

First, the morning after the post above I had grand plans to sip my coffee and eat my toast while watching the mist burn off the lake. Instead, Hope woke up at 6:00 and my day took off from there. I had my coffee and toast in a hurry between demands/requests and really only thought much about it after the last bite was gone. It was anti-climactic.

During our first week (last week), John’s mum joined us for a couple of days. The girls loved playg with her and I loved the short break it gave me. The evenings were spent playing a long forgotten game – Probe. It isn’t as intrusive as it sounds.

The day Omi left kicked off a few days of visits to other cottages nearby: Dad and Donna’s, Steve and Sue’s (John’s sister and BIL), and the Henkelman’s (Beth’s husband’s family’s cottage). Emily loves visiting other people at their cottages. It was all fun but I was really happy to be done driving all over God’s Green Earth and just stay put right here.

The day Omi left was also the day John went back to Ottawa for a few days. By the time he got back, I was spent. I’ve been a single parent on and off again enough during the last month. I’ll be glad to put an end to it soon. I still have one more week though starting Saturday when John flies to Austin for a week of exploration about his sabbatical.

Beth, Graeme and Kate joined us here on Sunday. The girls are having so much fun with Kate and she seems to tolerate them well.


I’m so happy to be with Beth. We’re having a great time. Yesterday we hiked up The Rock, as we’ve always called it and found a huge amount of wild blueberries. Lots had already been found by deer and bears but we still came home with a good amount. I was picking the last section of bushes when I heard a buzzing sound. I kept looking around for a hive but didn’t see one. I pulled up the bush to get at another clump o berries and found the hive. The bees swarmed up at me. Beth yelled: run! Not that I needed any instructions at that point. I started to run but slipped on the wet rocks. I managed to hold onto the bag of blueberries and I got away with only one small sting. I said to Beth that it felt like I had just lived a Franklin episode. She told me I was lame. She was right.


Today was a perfect cottage day. Emily, Hope and I did a short nature hike this morning collecting things that were the “colours of the rainbow” as per the instruction sheet from Emily’s JK teacher that we just received. Emily is really excited about starting school in the fall and is very keen to do the summer activities suggested by her teacher. They are all lots of fun and keep the excitement of school in her mind.

The girls played inside, swam, I put together the new barbecue, Beth vacuumed all the corners of the cottage, I knit, the girls played restaurant outside, we watched the ducks and ducklings, swam again, baked and laughed, laughed, laughed. It reminded me, or re-emphasized that we’re doing the cottage right, the way we existed here when Beth and I were kids: no fancy toys, no big store-bought water toys or playground equipment; just old pots and pans, hand-me down sand toys, a couple of water toys, old puzzles and books that have been here for ages, the old Sindy dolls that Beth and I had in the early 1980s, looking at everything outside, collecting it and talking about it, playing games, making up our own games, simple crafts on rainy days, occasional outings into town, just playing the way kids want to play. With imagination and with their parents.

Tomorrow we’re heading into town so I can finally post this, check my email, go to the Farmer’s Market and then come back and do it all over again.

I do have one teensy complaint about the cottage this year: the bugs! They are so bad this year! It’s almost mid-July there are still black flies. Hope’s head is a minefield of scabs. It’s truly unbelievable for this time of year. I could really do with a heat wave.

Finally a new post

I'm sooooo frustrated!  I have (finally) two blog posts to put up here, my first time with internet access and a computer in almost two weeks and Blogger won't let me paste it in from Word.  Sucky!  I don't have time to retype everything so I'll have to leave you with only this:

- Cleanse done.  Went well.

- Having great time.  

- Picked wild blueberries.  Chased by swarm of angry bees.

Holidays will equal infrequent blogging

Tomorrow morning we leave for the cottage. I'll be gone for three weeks. With no internet connection at the cottage this means infrequent blog posts. However, given that there are options within the Town of Huntsville, I have a plan. I have a jump drive and there will be people staying with me now and again who have laptops so I plan to write posts and then upload a few at once so do please check back now and again to see what we're up to in cottage country. At the very least, you'll want to find out how the Cleanse ended. My last day will be next Friday. I'm very excited to be near the end.

Today went much better than the last two. I felt very satisfied after each meal which led to a better mood although I'm still confused as to why I'm so tired. Two kids perhaps?

Emily is VERY excited about going to the cottage. She's been anxious to get there since we closed up last September. I'm excited too. It's one of my very favourite places in the world. John, sadly, will only be with us for short bits of our time there due to several work obligations. And then he takes off for some reconnaissance in Austin during our last week. But we plan to go back for a week in August for more concentrated family time.

On the up side, Beth and Graeme and Kate will be meeting us there for the second and third week. Although Graeme too will be in Austin for Week 3. Probably not a bad thing since the cottage will be pretty crowded that week with my dad and Donna and their two dogs and Beth and Kate and her dog and Beth's friend, Sara (sorry, Sara, you do normally get billing before the dogs, not after).

There is a lot of packing and running around waiting for me upstairs so I'll have to end there, my friends. I will miss you. But I won't miss the city during the next three weeks. Yahoo!

Big news in Bytown

The weekend just before I went to Texas, we went to the cottage. We hosted John's whole family there. We've done this a couple of times before at the end of the summer to celebrate John's mum's birthday. She turned 65 this year. We haven't done it in a few years due to schedules and due dates of babies (mine) but this year it worked out and we added Emily and Hope's birthdays to the celebrations.

The weekend had a few big moments. The two biggest came from John's brother, Mike, and sister-in-law, Cibele. We all new they were being transferred from Regina to somewhere. Mike works for GM and is transferred every year as part of a management trainee program he is in. They got, from our perspective, the best transfer location they'll ever receive: Ottawa. I literally jumped and screamed when they told us. It has been a long time since we've lived closer than 4 hours away from family. This is huge for us from a completely selfish perspective. Just to have someone to call when you need a little help is giant, the fact that it is Mike and Cibele, is even better. Their second big moment came when they told us all they are expecting their first baby in May. They'll be having the baby while they're in Ottawa. We hope that we'll be able to help as much as we can.

This year is going to be so different in so many great ways.

Third big moment, perhaps not as deeply meaningful but certainly as surprising: I woke up to feed Hope at about 6:30 on Sunday morning that weekend. The windows were all open. I heard what I knew to be an animal dragging a bag of garbage behind our cottage. I figured it was raccoons again and someone must have left our shed open. Before going outside to scare them off with a broom I looked out the back window in our bedroom that directly overlooks where the noise was coming from. I'm so glad I did. About three metres away from where I stood was a big, brown bear having his way with that bag of garbage. He was close enough that I could hear his lips smacking as he finished off a chip dip container. The garbage wasn't ours - it was our neighbour's (which meant we were off the hook for cleaning it up). I watched the bear for about 20 minutes (after waking John up so he could take a look). In my life, I'd never heard that a bear has come so close to the cottage (and been seen, that is). This was monumental.

I stopped our neighbour (owner of the garbage) from going back there with a shovel (he assumed it was porcupines). John tried to snap a photo but just got a big black photo. My real concern was that John sister and her family were staying outside in a tent trailer. Luckily the bear meandered over to the barbecue, took a sniff and then left.

I'm sure he's been back since we've been gone, looking for more bounty. Being that were going up this weekend for our last visit of the year, we may see him again.

Finally, a recap

We're going to be leaving for the cottage again at the end of this week, and I still haven't blogged about our weekend there last week. Or was it the week before?

Sad, I know.

Before I get into the crux of the weekend, I should give you a quick low-down on our family cottage. The cottage is not a typical Muskoka cottage (ie. summer home bigger than our current house). Nope. Ours is a cabin really. It was once a rental cabin, which was purchased by my mum's dad (known to Beth and I as Pappa). My mum spent a lot of her summers there. My mum and her sister inherited it after my Pappa died in 1979 and a few years ago my mum bought out her sister's share. Being that my mum died in 2005, my dad now owns it. For Beth and I especially, it is a childhood home of sorts and because several years ago now my parents moved away from the house we grew up in, it is certainly a place where we have deep sentimental attachment and memories. In a word, it is magic. The eye of the beholder is not objective, however. Here it is in all its glory (just look beyond Emily's giant orb):


The weekend was really an "opening up" weekend, which generally entails a lot of cleaning, specifically, cleaning up mouse poop. A lot of mouse poop. I washed most of the pots, pans, dishes and bakeware, all the countertops, we swept and mopped, got rid of a wasps' nest inside the cottage, cut the grass, got all the beds made, got rid of some clutter, you know.... the usual kind of stuff.

We arrived on Thursday and that night Emily and John witnessed a mouse run across the kitchen floor. Seems the little critters decided not to vacate this year. I guess they didn't get the memo about vacating the premises when the trees got their leaves. Like all the other animals. I guess we got the dumb mice this year. As there was no food left in the cottage, they spent their winter eating soap. I should have taken a photo of the soap sculpture that is sitting by the kitchen sink now.

Anywho.

I set a trap. One mouse caught. Unfortunately not the mouse spotted the previous night. Reset the trip. Caught another mouse. Still not the mouse we saw. Seems that there is a leader who is the brains of the operation and I caught his two blundering sidekicks. There could be a movie about all of this. It wouldn't be very good though.

Apart from the cleaning and killing, we swam a lot. The water was very warm for June as a result of all the hot weather we've been having. I showed Emily how to play bakery on the beach. Beth and I spent hours playing sand bakery when we were kids. Passing these things onto Emily lets me relive it all over again. Watching her there, seeing her learn how to play there, discovering all the magic herself, well, although I didn't know it at the time, this why I wanted these kids.

We explored the nooks and crannies around the cottage. There were lots of wildflowers to look at, lots of critters, the sun and wind on our faces. We made some great discoveries, like these wild irises growing on the beach:


We saw lots of wildlife. The first morning there was a snapping turtle trying to lay her eggs on our road. We're unsure if she was successful but being that she chose smack in the middle of the road, we're thinking chances of hatching are not so good this year. We saw lots of deer and a porcupine. And of course the resident groundhogs. Through all of this I only caught one critter on film:


I'm expecting a call from National Geographic any day now.

We also went into Port Sydney for ice cream. Emily chose to wear it instead of eat it.







John and I were unsure of how Hope would do at the cottage. The first summer of Emily's life we spent almost two full weeks there. Two full weeks of hell. It was brutally hot. We had only one fan (obviously there is no air conditioning at the cottage). The lake water wasn't even refreshing. Emily had terrible prickly heat and sleeping was a no-show. She wasn't crawling much so didn't really enjoy exploring. In a word or two, it sucked. We were afraid of a repeat but, aside from some super-sized bug bites, Hope seemed to love it all. She even slept better than she does at home. Maybe I just need to move up there permanently. I mean, wouldn't you like to stare at this all day?



We leave again at the end of this week for a full week there. Beth and Graeme and Fetal Texan will be there too which means FUN TIMES! And some serious bocce ball me hopes. I'll be better with the camera, I promise, and will have some (better) blog posts when I return.

Keep tuned in this week though for such gems as "We go to the park" and "We go to the library" and maybe even "We go shopping for baby shower items." I know, I'm all a-quiver, too.