familie

A week has flown by in a flurry of doing both nothing and everything. It has been a perfect mixture of alone and crowds.

Last Thursday Bjorn and Ingeborg joined us for another night of tall tales and laughter. They are such a lovely couple to be with – I think if they lived closer we’d be very good friends. Their English is amazing, which is good as our Norwegian is non existent.Tusen tukk (many thanks), and a drinking song is about the limit of my vocabulary.

Friday it was raining (again) so instead of Upper Canada Village (which is a primarily outdoor activity), we drove down to the locks at Iroquois and waited for a big ‘Laker’ to come. We had to  be patient though… and I’m afraid we wasted too much time there. By the time the giant ship had made its way through we were starving for lunch and went to the Basket Case for our favorite club sandwich. We certainly didn’t show Ingeborg and Bjorn the beauty of our area which means they’ll have to come back for a better look ;-)

After lunch we raced home in time to get some meatballs into the crockpot and get changed to go to Mom & Dad’s for their party.

My aunt Kari had all her family visiting from Western Canada so it was a wonderful treat to meet up with them again. Some I’ve seen recently but it has been decades since I’ve seen Linda who was closest to my age. I used to trail after her when we visited my grandfather. I’m sure I was a big pest.

Canada Day was hot on the heels of those festivities, and I’m half ashamed to say that we didn’t venture down to Parliament Hill. Instead we waited for Olaf & Tammy to arrive from Montreal and we all went to the local village activities. It was much more kid friendly than the crush on the  hill and Freya had fun dancing to the band and splashing in puddles.

Olaf & family stayed with us for the night which was a special treat. We haven’t had a one on one visit with them since they arrived from NZ 1 1/2 years ago. Olaf is still my baby brother (I was 14 when he was born) and I’m always shocked to see him all grown up!

The dogs are not used to kids – I could probably count on one hand the number of times they’ve been around them, but they were wonderful with their human cousin. Bella was a sweetheart and followed Freya around the whole visit. She wore feathers in her hair and lay with Freya on a fort of pillows. The two of them were precious.

By now the calendar had rolled over to Sunday, July 2nd, the date for Kari & Trevor’s huge party. There was swimming, a band, a whole roasted pig, and lots of visiting with friends and family. We had such a good time. Mom & Dad and Bjorn & Ingeborg were there so we took our final opportunity to visit. It was with pang of sadness that I waved goodbye when they all left as the Norwegians are starting on the rest of their trip today and are on their way to Western Canada.

Today, well, Carm played golf early in the morning and I stayed snoring in bed for a few more hours. It is finally sunny, and I don’t even think rain is in the forecast. Someone told Carm that it has rained for 18 days in a row. We’ve given our out of country visitors the wrong impression about summer in eastern Canada. It is usually sunny and hot – Honestly!