May 24 Cottage Adventures

Last weekend we went up to the cottage for May 24 and let me tell you, the little man had a ball!  This summer will be so much different than last summer.  It will be more difficult in that Parker is very mobile and so will need constant supervision.  But it will also be so much fun, because Parker just loves it outside!  

Elf on a shelf?

Maybe he's musically inclined like his uncle

 Every May 24 there is an annual canoe trip down the river.  Parker is way too young to go, but we decided that he could canoe across the lake and I would pick him up at the bridge.  Just a short 10 minute canoe ride!  I wasn't really prepared for it, so I didn't bring his blue lifejacket.  He wasn't impressed with the pink one.

 But once he was in the canoe he was very content!

 It was definitely a smaller crew this year than usual, a lot of people had other plans, but I think they all had a good time anyways!

 The whole family isn't up every weekend, just long weekends, but I loved having the other kids there to play with Parker!  Parker thought that he was one of the big kids and he didn't even notice that they gave him a smaller noodle for the noodle fight!  He had a great time running around the lawn playing with the kids.

We are so lucky to have a close family and I feel even luckier that the other kids love Parker.  They don't see him as the annoying little cousin, they really love to take care of him and play with him.  I even had my 7 year old cousin make him breakfast one morning!  Bonus!

 It was a great weekend and I'm looking really forward to the rest of the summer!  

Thankful

Of course Thanksgiving always makes you think about what you are really thankful for.  First of all, I am thankful for Thanksgiving weekends.  What's not to love about October, Family, Turkey and winning baseball games.

On Saturday we went up to the cottage and then Ryan, Parker and I went to Ravenna for delicious sandwiches and The Farmer's Pantry to visit the donkeys.  I'm forcing my love of donkeys on Parker.

The rest of the weekend was spent at the cottage.  We had 27 people at our Thanksgiving dinner.  It's a mad house, but I wouldn't want it any other way.  Oh and Parker gets absolutely no attention when he's at the cottage, so he hates it....or not.

So today I'm feeling thankful for my cottage, for extended family, for good food and good health, for pumpkin cheesecake and coffee.  I'm thankful for the great weather that we had this weekend.  I'm thankful that the Jays won on Sunday and Monday and are finally playing like the great team that they are.  I'm thankful that last night Parker made it through the night without eating for the first time in over two weeks.  Mostly I'm thankful for these two because they make my heart happy.  Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving with your loved ones!

And Then The Worst Happened

About 3 weeks ago we started Parker on solids.  He did ok his first few rounds with rice cereal and then he just wasn't really interested in it.  Of course he spit out a lot of it, but I thought we were making progress until we weren't. 

So then I thought, maybe he just doesn't like the rice cereal.  So I whipped him up some peas in the baby bullet.  (I'm so domestic, I know.  But seriously making your own baby food is super easy.)  The first few days he wasn't real interested and then all of a sudden he was.  The past 2 days he ate those peas right up!  It was a slow process, he definitely doesn't eat fast, but he was opening his mouth and actually eating the peas!  

It's a messy ordeal.  Yes, those are peas on his forehead.

And then this morning he pooped.

For those of you who don't know, breast milk poop is lovely as far as poop goes.  It looks weird, is a yellow mustard colour and super runny, but it doesn't smell bad and when cloth diapering you can throw those diapers straight into the wash without even rinsing!  And this mornings poop was not that lovely poop that I'm so used to.  I knew it was coming, but I wasn't looking forward to it!  I will spare you any more details about poop....

So anyways, that's what's new with us these days!

In other news, we spent the weekend at the cottage.  It was a really quiet cottage weekend for us and we only had a few people up.  We had some friends come for a day with their 2 month old who is bigger than Parker!  Don't let the pink life jacket deceive you, it's a boy.  Poor little guy was stuck with a pink life jacket because it's all we had.  It was nice to spend some time with good friends and to get these 2 little guys together!

Just a couple babies chewing on their life jackets.

 

Thanksgiving Weekend

For Thanksgiving, we always head up to the cottage with the whole extended family.  30 people in a cottage = madness.  But I wouldn't miss it!

There was music, games and of course food.

Grandma enjoyed some dancing.

And we all enjoyed some apple desserts.  It was apple overload!

On Sunday, everyone who was left went out for a fall walk at Inglis Falls.  20 people walking the trails!  Someone asked my mom if we came on a bus.  No, but that would have been more convenient.

 It was a beautiful day and it actually really warmed up, not like the cold fall weather that we have had lately!

 Now that my favourite holiday is over, it's definitely time to get down to this baby prepping business.  So today I'm busy trying to organize the office so that we can move everything and turn it into a nursery.  It's pretty tough to find a new home for all of your stuff in the catch all room!

I hope everyone enjoyed their thanksgiving, turkey dinners and time with family this weekend!

Bare Bum Bay

This pontoon boat got a lot of use this weekend.  What did we do before we had a pontoon boat?  I guess we were young and into things like tubing.  But now we just want to lounge around all weekend.  And this past weekend that's pretty much what we did.

Bare Bum Bay has become a cottage tradition.  A small bay off the end of our lake, it has a narrow entrance and a no wake rule.  I think it got it's name because it's secluded and you can skinny dip there.  We're all family, so that would be weird, but we still call it Bare Bum Bay.  We drive the pontoon boat over there, anchor it and just sit.  For hours.  On Saturday for example we went out in the morning, went back for lunch for about an hour and then headed back out until dinner time.  Some people drink out there.  This girl isn't much of a drinker, so I sipped on lemonade and read my book.

 Oliver is quite the boating dog these days.  However, he's not a fan when we all go out onto the party dock and he's left alone on the boat.

 The other highlight of this past weekend was watching my three year old cousin water ski.  Have you ever seen such a thing?  I haven't!  

And next weekend?  We're going to do it all over again.

Winter - I'm Really Not a Fan

Sometimes I have to remind myself that I really love my country, because this whole winter thing, it's kind of ridiculous.  If I didn't love Canada so much I would probably move to Florida in a second.

This weekend we went up to the cottage.  It was actually really nice and relaxing.  It's so nice to just get away from home sometimes where you can sit around and do nothing and not feel guilty about it.  Unfortunately, while we were gone my house didn't clean itself.

And then I made myself go outside.  Because why go to the cottage in the winter if you aren't even going to enjoy the great outdoors.  I realized when we were outside for a rather short walk, that this was the first time this winter that I had been outside beyond just walking to and from my car.  Sad?  Maybe.  But I would probably be sadder if I had to be out in the snow all the time.

Our outdoor time was short lived.  About 15 minutes in the snow is enough for me.  You would think after almost 27 years I would be used to Canadian winters.  I'm not sure it's ever something that I will get used to.  

Luckily we had wine to come back to after our walk.  I should have known that blog pictures would be taken and that I maybe should have actually put some make-up on.  But I was at the cottage, who does that?

I'm Wearing Yoga Pants This Weekend

This weekend is Canadian Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving is probably my favourite holiday because it is all about the food.  No distractions like gifts or anything, just delicious food.

I have been trying so hard to eat healthy and cut down on desserts and this week has not been good for my waistline.  But there is no point in trying to care now because I'm heading into a weekend of turkey, stuffing and pie, oh my!  Hence the yoga pants.  Jeans will just make me feel bad about myself.

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Every thanksgiving, my family heads up to the cottage for a family dinner.  Every year the family seems to grow whether it's by the addition of significant others or children.  This year there will be approximately 28 of us I think.  It's insanity.





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But despite the nut house that our cottage becomes when we all get there at the same time, I wouldn't miss it for the world.  


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Summertime

The biggest part of summers for us is time at the cottage.  My grandpa and aunts and uncles built this cottage back in 1988 when I was just about a year and a half old.  So it's been part of my life for as long as I can remember.  Each family had their own room and we would spend weekends up there playing with our cousins.

Oliver loves the cottage!

Thursday there was a 3 week old baby that came to visit

Things have changed a bit recently.  Most of us are grown up, some married with kids of their own.  As the family has increased, the room in the cottage seems to decrease.  So, we now do individual weekends.  Each family has two weekends in the summer where they can go to the cottage and invite anybody they want.  Long weekends are for everyone, but no extra guests.  This past weekend was one of our weekends.


My dad found a turtle, Oliver didn't know what to think

Luckily, it was a beautiful weekend.  I went up to the cottage on Wednesday and we were still in the middle of the heat wave.  So Thursday and Friday were quite hot!  (And Friday was quite stormy in case you missed that post!)  The heat wave broke overnight on Friday, but it was still a nice warm weekend.

The PAL Lounge

  

On the Pontoon

I read on the deck, I sat in the lounge, and I read in the pontoon.  Basically a lot of reading.  I'm reading Amanda Knox's Waiting to be Heard and it's fantastic, I couldn't put it down!


The box got wet, so we are down to a classy bag of wine now

That's basically it.  What else do you do at the cottage than read, suntan and eat?  I guess sometimes we hide out in crawlspaces, but that's pretty rare.

Through the Storm

This past weekend, I took Thursday and Friday off and went up to the cottage with my mom and sister.  My dad, Ryan and my brother were going to join us after work on Friday.  This weekend post is actually going to be a two-parter because Friday was pretty eventful.

Everything started out well.  They were calling for thunderstorms, but it was a nice morning.  The heat wave hadn't broken yet, so it was about 40 degrees and the wind was actually kind of nice.  I had invite my friends Adam and Meaghan up for the day with their baby.  My cousin Ryley and his girlfriend had also come for the day.

We did know that there was a tornado watch, so it was something that we were aware of, but so far the sky was blue.

Then everything changed.  The sky started to get dark so we cleaned everything up and moved up to the deck, underneath the awning.  It wasn't raining yet, but we were sure that the rain was imminent.

Then it just started pouring.  The wind was blowing, so Tali and I ran out to try to deflate our eight person lounge before we went inside.  We were all sitting around inside, enjoying some wine, talking about what game we should play if we were stuck inside for the rest of the afternoon.

I'm not sure what changed and what made us think that we needed to be a bit safer than we were while we were sitting in a living room with a full glass wall.  My mom was napping so we went in and told her that we were going to the crawlspace.  She took us seriously because that's not something that we usually do.  I closed a bedroom window and noticed that a tree was already down in the driveway. 

The cottage doesn't have a basement, just a crawlspace.  I have never actually been in the crawlspace before.  Until now that is.  We thought that it's better to be safe than sorry, so up the floor came and in a few of us went.  It ended up that only Meaghan, Tali, myself and the baby were down there.  I'm not too sure what everyone else was doing, watching the show I guess.  They saw the floating dock fly up and barrels come flying towards the cottage.  They saw a tree fall in the front yard.  We were just down in the crawlspace making sure that we had room for everyone.

 

Crawling out of the crawlspace

Eventually the storm stopped and we went outside to this.

 

Trying to collect the missing barrels

The broken dock

The neighbour's Willow tree, which took out about 5 of our trees

The driveway - It's going to be tricky for our guests to leave!

 

Luckily, we have a friend who's parents live on the lake.  Her dad came over with his tractor and chainsaw to help remove the tree from the driveway so that people could leave.  We were also so lucky that we had invited people up for the day.  It would have been a pretty scary situation (well scarier than it actually was) if it had of just been us three girls.

 

 

The girls even helped

 

I made it through the Tornado Mom!

So yes, Friday was eventful.  Luckily nobody was hurt.  Our cottage and the one next to us seemed to have the worst of it.  As far as we know, there wasn't an actual tornado, just a lot of wind.  But it sure did create a pretty big mess to be cleaned up.  Our poor cottage guests will probably never come back....But I'm still pretty glad that they were there and that we weren't alone.