Alexandria rd. cottage

We managed to find a last minute rental cottage in Crystal Beach to allow Dustin and Chris to enjoy a visit together before Chris heads off to Camp Borden for his summer training. It turned out the cottage was a house once owned by my dad and Laurel. Mom says Laurel got this house as part of their divorce settlement. Very small world!!!

The place has been very nicely renovated. 1st pic is view from boys room into the "closet like" room which contained a foam bed Chris loved. Next is master bedroom onto balcony and then inside room view facing closet. I managed to catch Deb smiling despite having been caught almost napping on the couch and last shot is taken from master bedroom balcony down onto driveway/walkway side yard. The paving stone walkway went around two sides of the house and was beautiful. the yard was edged with gardens and had many shade trees which combined with lots of windows and lake breezes, cooled off the main floor very well. Mom joined us for a chicken BBQ dinner and was pleasantly surprised to find how cool the house was. We spent four days there and had a great rest as well as some visiting time with some of the family. Actually we ran into my sister Ruby at Shopper's Drug Mart. More pictures of the cottage in next post. CLICK ON ANY PICTURE TO ENLARGE

Crystal Beach cottage

Views here include the living room with gas fireplace and the backyard fire pit with Chris and Dustin enjoying a fire.

Beany has been busy!!!

These pictures were sent by Cheryl. Beany has been keeping busy at his place and it is looking GREAT!!!! I'm sure it was alot of work but well worth the effort. Click on any picture to enlarge for a better look at Beany's work.

Visit with Grandbabies

This past week Deb and I headed out to Kanata to visit with her Grand babies, Zoe and little brother Sam. It is amazing just how quickly kids grow! Zoe is speaking very well, clearly pronouncing every word, although her language is a combination of French and English. What a lucky girl to have command of both at such a young age. Sammy is quiet, with very soft spoken babbling but also appears quite intelligent. He is able to crawl around quickly when he wants to and is quite good at climbing as well. Zoe enjoyed playing with Nana on the floor and also entertained Nana by reading books, complete with special effects which you can see in the third picture posted here. Click on any picture to enlarge for a better look.

While we were travelling, Chris(who is finished school for this year) also had a special treat. He got to stay with his church youth leaders, Linda and Cory, along with their family of four daughters at a farm just outside of town. Many thanks to them and to Pastor Rick who also helped keep Chris busy at the pond when Linda and Cory had prior commitments.

Cadet Annual Review Ceremony

Today was a very hot and humid day AND of course it was also the day for the scheduled annual review for Chris' cadet corp. Also it is the weekend of Rosy Rhubarb Days in Shedden (which also means town wide yard sales) so since Chris didn't have to be at the arena to prepare for ceremony until 9:15 and we wanted to be in Shedden early enough to catch bargains, we came up with great idea on how to accomplish both. We gave Chris money to take himself out for breakfast at his choice of downtown restaurant or the nearby donut shop(both on the way to the arena) and planned to kick him out of the house so that we could leave around 8:15. He surprised us by being ready and out the door at 8am. I guess he was excited to get his day started! That worked fine for us as we headed out within 5 minutes of him although we didn't find any major bargains and Deb didn't find ANY books. At the review this afternoon I took one picture(we had very poor view) but for some reason I messed up and it isn't on my memory card. Ooops..guess it wasn't meant to be. He really wasn't looking very happy anyway. Chris' appearance was as though he was bored but in fact he was likely anxious to be finished and on to the rest of his day.

Following the ceremony, Chris did a very quick clothing change and we were off to Rodney to attempt to catch the end of the Fire Muster games. Chris has been selected to participate in West Lorne Junior Firefighters program. Yeah Chris!!! Despite having just been chosen this week and thus having no training with them yet, he was told to come out to the games and join in after his ceremony. Thankfully they recognize that his commitment to cadets takes precedence over volunteer firefighter training. We did drop him off as requested(he didn't want us to hang around to watch) although there didn't appear to be alot of people around the fairgrounds. We assume they were basically finished the games and were cooling off in the building enjoying refreshments. He must have found some friendly faces because we have not yet heard from him. Original plan was for him to come home on firetruck with the guys at some time 4-6pm. That plan could be another reason that he didn't want us hanging around.

Forks of the Thames

Today we had a mission...to locate the "forks of the Thames" in London. As strange as it may seem, after having lived in London for over 20 years, I had never seen the actual fork in the river Thames. I had appointment in London this morning so afterward we went searching. We parked on the west side of the river in Blackfriars area and strolled along the pathways atop the break wall until we came to Queen St. where we discovered the pathway blocked due to construction(you can see the construction in background of picture without the bridge). We headed back to pick up the car so that we could try from another angle. After picking up subs for lunch, we drove along the East bank to part of Harris park where we again parked and after enjoying lunch in the park we strolled down to the King St. pedestrian bridge(seen above) where there is a very clear view of the forks. The branch at the bottom of the picture comes from the East of London, the branch at the top right of picture comes from North side of London and here they meet and join together to travel Westward. London has beautiful bike/walking paths all along the riverside. This is an awesome find in the middle of the city.