This was a super busy but fun week! My room is almost done and I just love it!
He said
It was another week of trying to squeeze in as much finishing touches to Emelia’s basement suite as possible. We’re getting so close, so with every time we buckle down and do bit more, we get that much closer to saying two very important words: all done. This past week we squeezed in getting the final coats of ceiling paint in her room done and some patches that needed touching up. We then moved out in the hallway and painted that and the stairway leading to the main floor. The last vestige of the daycare – the lime green paint – is now gone. It looks fully like a basement apartment, which is exactly what Emelia had hoped for. The other thing we got done this week that Emelia has been patiently waiting for is getting her hanging basket chair that she got from her bestie Belle. Aside from finish trim and and few odds n’ sods she wants, we are so almost done we can feel it!
With that out of the way we can finally make sense of her old bed room. For now that room has been a landing zone having not officially being cleared out of all Emelia’s stuff that has been waiting for her suite to be complete. But also the room has been a dumping ground for Danielle & I though all this renovation. The plan is to make that a spare bedroom so, once we can focus on that Danielle & I will focus on ruthlessly getting rid of any and all things not needed, and then setting that room up so we can actually leave the door open if we so choose. With the daycare and Emelia we’ve never really had a good option if someone needed to spend the night, so we’re happy that will soon be an outcome!
This weekend in my ongoing cycling calendar scheduling prowess, was the second of my back-to-back-weekend events, the Bluewater International Granfondo (BIG). I was racing the 50km distance again this year and looking to see what my result might be given that every event I have done this year, I have bettered my result from the year prior. My only hesitation is that I have been riding on a spent headset bearing set for about the last 4 weeks and as it is a repair that will take the GT offline for a few days, I have been holding off on the replacement until my new Cannondale comes in. So I have been riding a lit more cautiously as the sticky steerer at times can make really giving it, a lot more dodgy.
The race was Sunday morning at 8:00m and my alarm was entirely too early at 4:30am as the night before I drove Danielle up to the trailer so I could meet her up there after the race. After I got past the wakeup shock it was off to Sarnia with my game face on. The route this year was changed from last year because of some ongoing construction, but I was excited to see how I would fair. Off the start I held a bit back compared to last year knowing that the timed section (the part that counts) was about good 15km in, I decided to leave some logs for that fire. I found a group up towards the front and managed to work with them into the timed segment. Everything was going great until about ⅔ of the way through the 8km timed section there was a crash and then a second in front of me. I managed to avoid both of them and the pileups that ensued and carry on. about another ½km down the road another accident, thankfully that was already over by the time I arrived.
After that, I found a few people to trade turns with and rode back at the back half of the out-and-back route at a pretty good clip. Because the return route was a little different I don’t have a comparison to see if I was faster than last year, but I sure felt fast. I managed to catch on the last 10km with a girl who was hell bent on keeping a good pace and I was happy to find her as she brought me in. In the end it felt like it was a lot faster and more efficient than last year. But, most importantly, there was zero issues with the headset! But all of mine feeling were confirmed today when I looked up the results. I ended up 24th out of 345 riders Overall, 16th out of 220 riders in Male, and 4th out of 26 riders in Male 45-54. I am really quite chuffed with those results. And surprisingly it has kept my trend of doing better in every single race this season.
As soon as the race was done yesterday, and I had some food I made a beeline up to the trailer to spend the bight and today with Danielle. She was dealing with the came cold I had been all week and the both of us after renovations, colds and bike races for me could use nothing more than some time spend together doing absolutely nothing around the fire pit. So that is what we did! We enjoyed a slow evening sitting around the campfire enjoying the quiet and each other’s company before (me) hitting a long and restful sleep until 10am this morning! (Danielle on the other hand was still working through the cold). We took a lazy start to the morning, went for an easier paced bike ride before having a big breakfast and heading back home. And here were are, back home with a renovation so close to done!
She said
This week for Emelia has been another busy one, she worked all weekend but between work she and her besties have been attached at the hip most days. This week they managed a beach trip, lots of nights together and today they went to St. Mary’s for the afternoon to the waterpark. The summer is going by so fast and the girls are trying to spend as much time together before school starts in the fall. For Emelia and Bri they are off to Western (King’s in the fall) while Belle and Ashley are back for another semester in high school. They know that things will look vert different for them in a month so they are making the most of all the time they can before things get so busy for everyone.
Work and friends were not the only big things this week, Emelia also had cheer training and softball. Softball for once is the bigger story. Emelia is in her 4th season in softball and is finally coming into her own and this season has gained so much confidence and is really as strong asset for her team. She is making big plays and making hits when it really matters. Emelia has really loved this team and the season even though she wasn’t sure in the beginning. This season has been a huge success so much that Emelia’s team is the regular season champs going into the end of the season tournament next weekend. On Thursday Emelia and her team FINALLY for the first time in all the years she has played beat the Southwest team the team that dominates the league every year. It was the perfect way to wrap up the season!
This week was packed from start to finish, not only keeping on top of everything for Emelia but as John mentioned we are still deep in the renovation of her basement apartment. I can happily say we are about 95% done, even with all of us fighting a brutal summer cold we pushed through each night and got more done. On Saturday I was able to put up the last coat of paint in the hallway and stairwell so that we can start putting things back on the wall and coat hooks this week. The last steps are really only repainting the basement steps, putting up trim/baseboards in the hallway and some minor decorations. Emelia has to still pick an area rug and some small decorations and we can finally put this renovation to bed. It has taken forever with everything that has gone on in our lives this last year but we are almost there and it is turning out even better than we could have imagined. Emelia loves it and honestly that is all that matters. The next big hurdle for John and I is do some serious purging on the main floor and Emelia’s old bedroom so we can start the process of transforming it into a guest room space. The room has become a dumping group for the last few months and we have a lot of purging to take care of. But that can wait a bit while we enjoy being done one big project.
With the basement all done and the long weekend upon us I decided that I would do a solo trip up to the trailer for one night and then John could meet me once he was done his bike race the next day. We had a quiet and lazy day at the trailer before coming back home to spend some time with Emelia before she was once again off with her friends for the night. The last month before Emelia starts university is going to fly by, we are so excited for her and all that the next few months will bring her! We are so proud of her and happy she has chosen to stay home so we can squeeze a few more years with her before she is truly off on her own!