Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Back to Canada
Long suffering Mike was quite worried that I would probably turn around and fly back home again, so he arranged to go to the pub with our Canadian neighbour's!! Actually this turned out to be a stroke of genius as we had such a laugh and ended up on Gary & Tracey's boat which is jawdroppingly gorgeous!!!! I am not a fan of boats and cruise liners are definitely out, but this boat was tethered to a dock so that helps enormously I don't have to tell anyone about my fear as I do not leave the marina. We just stay there drinking cocktails and I marvel at my ability to conquer jet lag so quickly :)
Back to Blighty
One week after Sam&Rich visit I return to England, I got one of the best surprises every when Tasha met me from airport with Layla!! She sits on my luggage trolly with her arms outstretched like The King of the world from Titanic.
I essentially return home for my friends daughters wedding which was a fab old time, Samantha looked incredibly beautiful in a stunning dress and I got to be on the 'mates' table which is always the best one. Karen (mother) instructed the bar staff to just keep the wine coming to our table which it inevitably did Hurrah! My dear friend Matthew - affectionately know as Moth Man (as he looks like a college professor all worldly, anyway I digress,) he was approached by a young lad of about 25 to ask if he knew where he could get any Viagra to which Moth replied "do I look like someone who knows about the supply of Viagra??" best comment of the decade. This is the trouble when you give the Brits drinks they tend to get a bit naughty! It was a lovely way to catch up with old friends and probably on England's hottest day of the year :)
It was also the time of the Queens Jubilee so i attended street parties, watched the concert and the appalling river day which was a disaster, poor Queenie. Needless to say my neighbour got me tickets to my street party, therefore what follows her you will see is clearly her fault...
Saturday street Party, now as I am lucky enough to live in private housed road I don't have to see my neighbour's and in all honesty have no clear idea what they look like! I can tell you now that they are pretty old. Vonni and I go and look at where we are to set up and get told we are to go down the end, there are some very strange looking old ladies wrapped in bunting and the Vicar has a Burger King crown on with the imaginative addition of cotton wool balls all the way around.... no need to say any more on that attire. Anyhow the music is essentially Matt Monroe and other old crooners, this is not boding well as I turn to Von with a questioning look she yells at me "This is all your fault" How is this pray tell I've been living in Canada, you got me the tickets and you don't even live in the road is my questions!!! She's having none of it and blames me regardless, so dear friends there is only one solution when faced with a despot party just get pissed, which is what we all proceeded to do, some with more gusto than others mentioning no names....Vonni. Luckily I had Layla with me who was a complete nightmare with running off all over the graveyard that could go into the road and indeed Claire (my sister) and I stuck it out for 2 hours before we gave in. Now I had a bonafide excuse to leave as everyone wanted the noise gone, but Von had to stay as she has gone ahead and invited 18 further people - none of which live in the road Ha Ha! The party got worse if you can believe it, we were told Mavis would be our resident artist, I thought that meant she was a Cartoonist it turns out she is some old warbler who terrorises people with her singing!!! Oh god it was terrible, NEXT was the Vicars tea party with all the old biddies rushing to sit next to the Vicar - honestly what this man has to put up with! It was dreadful and Von & Co just waltzed in and straight back out again Ha Ha.
Now the next party at Tracey & Matthews was much better and a true reflection of just how a street party should be held. Later that evening Claire and I watched the Amazeballs concert until the small hours. It was just so brilliant and made you really proud to be British, we really do these things so well.
Anyway suffice to say that very surprisingly for me every day and evening was jam packed so much so that I had to let some people down which I feel terrible about. All too soon the trip is over and back to Canada...
I essentially return home for my friends daughters wedding which was a fab old time, Samantha looked incredibly beautiful in a stunning dress and I got to be on the 'mates' table which is always the best one. Karen (mother) instructed the bar staff to just keep the wine coming to our table which it inevitably did Hurrah! My dear friend Matthew - affectionately know as Moth Man (as he looks like a college professor all worldly, anyway I digress,) he was approached by a young lad of about 25 to ask if he knew where he could get any Viagra to which Moth replied "do I look like someone who knows about the supply of Viagra??" best comment of the decade. This is the trouble when you give the Brits drinks they tend to get a bit naughty! It was a lovely way to catch up with old friends and probably on England's hottest day of the year :)
It was also the time of the Queens Jubilee so i attended street parties, watched the concert and the appalling river day which was a disaster, poor Queenie. Needless to say my neighbour got me tickets to my street party, therefore what follows her you will see is clearly her fault...
Saturday street Party, now as I am lucky enough to live in private housed road I don't have to see my neighbour's and in all honesty have no clear idea what they look like! I can tell you now that they are pretty old. Vonni and I go and look at where we are to set up and get told we are to go down the end, there are some very strange looking old ladies wrapped in bunting and the Vicar has a Burger King crown on with the imaginative addition of cotton wool balls all the way around.... no need to say any more on that attire. Anyhow the music is essentially Matt Monroe and other old crooners, this is not boding well as I turn to Von with a questioning look she yells at me "This is all your fault" How is this pray tell I've been living in Canada, you got me the tickets and you don't even live in the road is my questions!!! She's having none of it and blames me regardless, so dear friends there is only one solution when faced with a despot party just get pissed, which is what we all proceeded to do, some with more gusto than others mentioning no names....Vonni. Luckily I had Layla with me who was a complete nightmare with running off all over the graveyard that could go into the road and indeed Claire (my sister) and I stuck it out for 2 hours before we gave in. Now I had a bonafide excuse to leave as everyone wanted the noise gone, but Von had to stay as she has gone ahead and invited 18 further people - none of which live in the road Ha Ha! The party got worse if you can believe it, we were told Mavis would be our resident artist, I thought that meant she was a Cartoonist it turns out she is some old warbler who terrorises people with her singing!!! Oh god it was terrible, NEXT was the Vicars tea party with all the old biddies rushing to sit next to the Vicar - honestly what this man has to put up with! It was dreadful and Von & Co just waltzed in and straight back out again Ha Ha.
Now the next party at Tracey & Matthews was much better and a true reflection of just how a street party should be held. Later that evening Claire and I watched the Amazeballs concert until the small hours. It was just so brilliant and made you really proud to be British, we really do these things so well.
Anyway suffice to say that very surprisingly for me every day and evening was jam packed so much so that I had to let some people down which I feel terrible about. All too soon the trip is over and back to Canada...
Family Visit April-May 2012
Firstly it is ages since i wrote an update on the my blog, the excuses are many I'm afraid and once you are out of the habit it would seem any excuse is a good one not to write.
Therefore my first excuse for May was that my beloved family visited!! Much joy from our camp as we had been waiting for this visit for a very long time. Rich,Sam,Layla& Harvey all made the flight across which for Sam&Rich must have been a terrible ordeal wit 2 under 2, can you imagine? No? well neither can I and it turned out to be much worse that I could even imagine. So on a rainy April the 30th Mike comes home from work and we wait and wait for Tasha so that we could get to the airport, she was late from work because there was one of the biggest crashes in the QEW403 history and her replacement could not get to work. I was in Defcon1 panic stage, which I frequently am, but this time it was real. In all honesty we should have just simply gone to get Sam and to this day I do not know why I didn't just do that. However we set off it takes forever and looks like the end of the world has happened but because its on the other side of the motorway we do move albeit slowly. The end result is we are 10 minutes late to meet Sam, we of course could have had no clue that she was rushed through customs due to severely screaming children :( We then drive the 2 cars home Mike takes Rich and I take everyone else. The roads were totally jammed never before or since this day have I ever seen anything like it. It took us 3 hours to get home and poor Sam had reached the end poor thing.
On the plus side Layla LOVES her little sleeping beauty bed and the fact that she's in with Auntie Tasha is a massive bonus. During their time here we mainly did child friendly things like a huge indoor adventure playground, but Sam&Rich also had babysitters on hand to be able to see the CN Tower, Stay in a lovely hotel at Niagara Falls, Meals out so it all worked out really well. I of course got to see Layla and Harvey each day which was a total joy, they are hilarious together and got up to all sorts of things, one memorable one was Sudo-gate.....
Sudo-Gate.. Rich knows that its now v-e-r-y quiet in Tasha's room never a good sign so he thought he would check to see if Layla was asleep. He was met with an all white Layla who had discovered a pot of Sudocream which she proceeded to plaster everywhere, honest to god it looked like Marshmallow land. Rich drops to his knees and cried Oh Layla what have you done? whereby Layla gives him a reassuring if somewhat sticky pat on the shoulder as he is frantically trying to clear up. Unfortunately she has been so studious it was everywhere even Tasha's glasses copped it, it took hours to clear it all up.
Too be honest there were so many things, that I now realise we have entered the world of videoing everything as we will all soon forget. Harvey is a total joy it doesn't matter what you do, you are met with an enormous gummy dribbly grin everyones a winner!!!
Work Burger was a big success and 2 jugs of beer later I pick up the drunkies, they got a wonderful hire car that looked a bit like a Bentley it was enormous and Rich was thrilled to bits with it, I think they should have had it all the time really. Mike and I took them to see a Blue Jays game and Tasha babysat, we looked like an All-American family with baseball hats and beers so good times peeps
Then the awful day came when they had to go home :( that's all I'm gonna say bout that
Therefore my first excuse for May was that my beloved family visited!! Much joy from our camp as we had been waiting for this visit for a very long time. Rich,Sam,Layla& Harvey all made the flight across which for Sam&Rich must have been a terrible ordeal wit 2 under 2, can you imagine? No? well neither can I and it turned out to be much worse that I could even imagine. So on a rainy April the 30th Mike comes home from work and we wait and wait for Tasha so that we could get to the airport, she was late from work because there was one of the biggest crashes in the QEW403 history and her replacement could not get to work. I was in Defcon1 panic stage, which I frequently am, but this time it was real. In all honesty we should have just simply gone to get Sam and to this day I do not know why I didn't just do that. However we set off it takes forever and looks like the end of the world has happened but because its on the other side of the motorway we do move albeit slowly. The end result is we are 10 minutes late to meet Sam, we of course could have had no clue that she was rushed through customs due to severely screaming children :( We then drive the 2 cars home Mike takes Rich and I take everyone else. The roads were totally jammed never before or since this day have I ever seen anything like it. It took us 3 hours to get home and poor Sam had reached the end poor thing.
On the plus side Layla LOVES her little sleeping beauty bed and the fact that she's in with Auntie Tasha is a massive bonus. During their time here we mainly did child friendly things like a huge indoor adventure playground, but Sam&Rich also had babysitters on hand to be able to see the CN Tower, Stay in a lovely hotel at Niagara Falls, Meals out so it all worked out really well. I of course got to see Layla and Harvey each day which was a total joy, they are hilarious together and got up to all sorts of things, one memorable one was Sudo-gate.....
Sudo-Gate.. Rich knows that its now v-e-r-y quiet in Tasha's room never a good sign so he thought he would check to see if Layla was asleep. He was met with an all white Layla who had discovered a pot of Sudocream which she proceeded to plaster everywhere, honest to god it looked like Marshmallow land. Rich drops to his knees and cried Oh Layla what have you done? whereby Layla gives him a reassuring if somewhat sticky pat on the shoulder as he is frantically trying to clear up. Unfortunately she has been so studious it was everywhere even Tasha's glasses copped it, it took hours to clear it all up.
Too be honest there were so many things, that I now realise we have entered the world of videoing everything as we will all soon forget. Harvey is a total joy it doesn't matter what you do, you are met with an enormous gummy dribbly grin everyones a winner!!!
Work Burger was a big success and 2 jugs of beer later I pick up the drunkies, they got a wonderful hire car that looked a bit like a Bentley it was enormous and Rich was thrilled to bits with it, I think they should have had it all the time really. Mike and I took them to see a Blue Jays game and Tasha babysat, we looked like an All-American family with baseball hats and beers so good times peeps
Then the awful day came when they had to go home :( that's all I'm gonna say bout that
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