Well, what a tremendous last few days it's been for seeing family.
First came Kailey and Dan's wedding, out in Brantford Ont. I knew it was a bit of a distance, but I figured leaving 3 hours before on a two hour drive would leave us plenty of time to get there. Just in case, I bailed on my morning squash game (again), took the dog to the vet (where she'd be spending the wedding in her first time being boarded - ever) and we headed out just a little after 10.
My phone had calculated 2 hours and 10 minutes, so I figured we were fine.
Then we hit major traffic on the 401, crawling from just past the 404 all the way to the 400. We did pretty good from there until the base of the 403, where we started crawling again along the QEW. At this point, we were 20 minutes before the start of the ceremony, both girls were melting down in the back seat, and a stop seemed inevitable. So, we hit the Burloak Drive Timmies, got the girls some soup, and then I took a shortcut along Mainway that I found hunting on my maps whilst waiting for the soup to cool. It worked pretty good, got us quite quickly out to Guelph Line, and from there we moved very well, although it was a lot farther than expected - once we were in Brantford I thought we were good, but it was at least a half hour south of town. We got into our seats in the church just in time to hear the new couple get introduced - with Kailey's last name rather than Dan's, good for a laugh.
We then went and tried to go to the hotel, using a google maps printout in reverse, then our iPhone maps, then tried following Terry, and finally we tried using our eyes, because at some point we'd actually seen the hotel. About 30 minutes later than we should have, we checked in, and were thrilled. The hotel was lovely, new, very clean and comfortable - exactly the way you want a hotel - not at all like the Ottawa Travelodge East.
So after a brief respite at the hotel in which Tanya, Cam, Melissa, Owen and MacKenna hung out with us, and Bob and Olivia opened up their hospitality suite, it was off to the wedding. I have to say, this one was unique to my experience. We wound up at the Keresturi farm, which was a beautiful place, and the reception took place in a beautiful barn, which according to my normal perceptions of barns, as well as the fact that many jokes were made about it, looked much nicer than normal. It was a beautiful setup indeed, except for one little thing (because as you know, I always have to nitpick one thing about a wedding if you're a regular blog reader). The bar was to the left, and to the right was the bar. Except the bar to the right was the candy bar. I don't think I can count how many trips I had to make to that candy bar, and hey, it's a wedding, so why not? Why not? Because all that sugar turned Chloe from her regular monstrous self into full fledged Chloe monster.
The wedding had some unusual touches, including the wedding party pulling up on a hay wagon, and Dan driving himself and Kailey up to the reception in a very large tractor. I thought the entry song "She thinks my tractor's sexy" was hilarious too - a little outside my normal musical range, but very entertaining.
My key mistake was, after eating my salad, I took Chloe out of the barn for a little walk, and she headed right for the pumpkin patch and took off her shoes. Oh my goodness, that little girl is getting fast. My normal technique of pretending to leave didn't work - it actually left me far away from her. She was moving.... When I get to the downstairs desktop, I'll post the picture of my shoes after my pumpkin patch adventure. Just a bit dirty...
We partied til the wee hours, or at least almost, until the urging from Chloe, Gabi and Bob prompted us to leave, which was kind of key, since Gabi was driving and Bob was the only one who knew how to get back to the hotel. We got up the next morning, and had breakfast and a quick dip in the hotel pool as we were hoping to possibly pick up Cora before 2 (didn't come close - had to pay for 2 days boarding). We gave up on that goal in exchange for a visit to a farmer's market and lunch in Cambridge, as we decided to avoid traffic by skipping the QEW and taking the 407 from Milton. It worked well, and we had a surprisingly good sushi lunch in Cambridge.
So Sunday night, Adam Johns came over for dinner. It's always good to see Adam, and I decided to cook for him rather than go out as we normally would. We had steak, baby potatoes from the veggie stand, and a fairly simple caesar salad. We then watched the girls play out in the back until he mentioned he hadn't seen HD before, so off to the mancave (and the air conditioning) we went. For some reason, my bluray wouldn't handle Avatar, which Adam hasn't seen, but it would play my Harry Potter discs, which Adam also hadn't seen. We didn't make it all the way thru the movie, but we did go a fair distance into it.
So today, the plan was to take my mom out for her birthday lunch, then go visit Uncle Jerry in the Grace, or whatever they call it now. It will always be Scarborough Grace to me....however, early in the morning, Linda called to say that Jerry had had a setback, and today wasn't a good day.
For those who aren't aware, my Uncle Jerry had a bit of a ladder incident a few weeks back - I got the story firsthand today - he was 20 feet up, trimming a tree branch, he reached out to tug on a branch and managed to pull himself off the ladder, a rather unfortunate situation at that height. So he fractured his pelvis in 3 places, along with his arm. He looked good - better than I was expecting, actually, and I'm not just saying that because I know he's gonna be reading it on his iPad. Better than I would be doing, actually, although my impression is that he's being kind of hard on himself. The girls were all with me, and did well until Chloe got a little freaked out. We were hoping she'd nap, but she was having none of that...We left when a nurse came in with some kind of shot or pill, I wasn't sure which, but I know I'd want the privacy for it.
Ok, after nearly a month off with my hamstring issues, I've gotta go play some squash now. Here's hoping I don't get hurt!
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