Time Marches On

We had a Reece family gathering at our house this past weekend to celebrate a couple of milestone birthdays.  Tom's oldest sister, Pat turned 65 in August and her husband, Dick will turn 70 in December.  With Tom's 60th happening this past April we had decided that we would celebrate them all at the same time.  We timed it to have Stuart and Heajin home to get a chance to catch up with their relatives.

I spent many hours making  a pinata for Pat & Dick's birthdays.  We have been trying to talk them into travelling more in their retirement - hence the globe theme for this one.

 It is filled with items following the travel theme.  They had a hard job getting this to bust open.  I obviously made the pinata far to well!!

Pat and Dick working on the Pinata

  I had also built one filled with goodies for the little ones.  They had lots of fun getting this one to bust open.

Melissa and Shawn's  little guy Austin giving is a go

Melissa's other little one Caleb and Andrea and Scott's son, Owen  ready to  smash the pinata

Kristal and her little ones Ali and Ben

 A chance for brother and sister to catch up on the gossip.  Here they are with Heajin and Jennifer's boyfriend Adam parked around the kitchen table.  We have two Adams now.  Kristal's husband and Jennifer's boyfriend.  Just to keep things interesting.

Adam, Jen, Heajin and Stuart

The cousins have not seen each other for awhile.  Melissa and Andrea are Tom's sister Bev's daughters.  Kristal and Kevin are Pat's kids.  Kevin had to work and could not attend.  The other two cousins, Brian's girls, Rachel and Dawn also did not attend.  It was nice though for these five to have a chance to get back in touch.

Stuart, Andrea, Jennifer, Melissa and Kristal

It was an opportunity for Tom to visit with his siblings.

Brian, Tom, Pat and Bev

It was a nice surprise to have two of Tom's cousins, Roger and Darryl to arrive.  They brought Tom's aunt Joyce with them.  She is 84 years old and a real card.  It was really great to have them with us. 

Darryl, Roger and Auntie Joyce joined the group.

It was a cold and windy day but we did manage to spend the afternoon outdoors.  Tom handled the bbq and  got everyone fed. Thanks everyone for coming and helping us celebrate those special birthdays as well as to welcome Stuart and Heajin back to Canada.

Until next time - safe travels.

Welcome Home

My step-son, Stuart and his wife, Heajin have arrived from Korea.  Stu has been living there for about seven years and that is where he met Heajin.  He decided a few months ago that is time to re-patriot to Canada.  He is looking to settle down, start a career and raise his future family here.  I am sure it will be difficult for Heajin to leave behind her family and friends but we will all do our best to make her feel at home in her new country.

Preparations have been in the works for the past couple of months for their arrival.  Jennifer drove to Detroit to pick them up at the airport on Tues afternoon.  They brought with them two labs and two cats.  The cats are being taken care of by a friend in Mississauga - that was their first stop.  The dogs got dropped off in Shomberg.  By the time they arrived here it was early in the morning on Wed.  They are still working their way through the jet lag and the time difference of about 12 hours between here and Korea.  Our day is still their night and it will take a while for the internal time clock to readjust.

There is no moss growing under Stu's feet that is for sure.  He has already found a place to live where they can keep all their animals.  They can move in on November 1st.  Stu has been on a job interview already and starts training next week.  This sales job will keep him going until he is able to achieve his ultimate goal of becoming a police officer.

In the meantime he is busy doing the Canadian things that he didn't get to do while he lived abroad....like cut the grass.

It is great to have them home and look forward to spending quality time with them while they are living with us.  Lots of time to catch up on.

Welcome home Stu and Heajin.  So happy to have you with us.

Are we Jinxed?

I think that people will stop inviting us to outdoor weddings.   The last three outdoor weddings that we have attended have been plagued by rain.  This one was no different.  We have had a whole summer of fabulous weather but on Friday night the skies opened up.  Sleeping in the 5er was pretty noisy and it poured most of the night.

Saturday we headed to Young's Point for the wedding of the daughter of our friends John and Alice Taylor.  The wedding was held at the home of the grooms parent's which is along the shore of Katchewanooka Lake.

  

A beautiful setting if the sun would have shined. Luckily they had a very large wedding tent set up to accommodate the guests and to also hold the ceremony when the rain continued to fall.  Here are Chantelle and her Dad coming down the aisle.  John and Tom have been friends since they were wee boys in school.

Here is a picture of John, Alice and Alice's 85 year old Mom Tonny

The wind was blowing off the water, the tent was flapping and everyone was pretty chilly.  But the bride and groom didn't appear to notice anything other than each other.  Chantelle works with mentally and physically challenged  children and Joe is  police officer.  Both demanding careers.  

The wind did calm down and the rain eventually stopped.  Everyone headed to their cars to grab jackets and sweaters to keep warm as the day progressed.  After the wedding party returned from the photo ops a lovely dinner was served  and a dance followed.

  We sat with some other old friends, Claire and Sharon Fitzgerald as well as Barry and Shari Ray.  Claire and Barry are men that Tom worked with years ago at Victoria Grey Trust.  As well as being a childhood friend John Taylor also worked there.  Victoria Grey amalgamated with National Trust in 1984 and National Trust was later bought out by Scotiabank in 1997.  John and Barry are still there, working  for Scotiabank.  Claire is retired and living the good life.  

After we left the wedding party we headed to Bridgenorth to spend the night at Tom's sister Bev's.  She fed us a big breakfast this morning and we drove back to the park.  We only have one more weekend at the park before we take Tara to storage for the winter.   I guess the summer is pretty much over whether I like it or not.

Until next time - safe travels. 

Rodents!!

The squirrels continue to think that we want to share Tara with them.  We spent the entire day on Saturday closing up all the places that we think they can access the belly of the 5er.  Then we removed the underbelly panels and pulled down the insulation   OMG what a mess.



There must have been a thousand pine cones, along with a lot of squirrel poop.  We had to pull out the majority of the insulation that we could access and trash it.  Also some of the wiring was chewed.

All of this was done  on our backs, arms over head, under the 5er, on gravel. We are not sure if we found all the wiring issues or all the mess.  There were some places that we were not able to access.  We put it all back together and left some traps in the basement.  When we return next weekend hopefully we will find that  we have managed to close off all entrance ways.

It is almost time to have her put away for the winter.  We will have to see about getting her up on a hoist or over a pit when we take it in for storage and see what other damage has been done and get her re-insulated.

It has been an interesting first summer with the 5er.  I guess the fun never stops.  I hope everyone else had a betrer long weekend than we did.

Our friends Dave and Helen  left on Sunday in their 5er to spend about a month on the road.  They are heading to Memphis to visit Elvis and Graceland.  They plan to spend their time touring around Kentucky and Tennessee.   Should be a beautiful drive in the fall with all the colors appearing.  Take care and watch out for those signs Dave - they bite...lol.

We were in Memphis in 2008.  Graceland is certainly a place worth seeing.  The decor is over the top tacky but we were blown away by the number of awards that Elvis actually had. I am a huge Elvis fan.  He was pretty awesome - what a waste.   It was one more thing on my bucket list that has been taken care of.

Until next time - safe travels.