After a long and stressful week I got to do some retail therapy with my bestie, it was exactly what I needed.

He said

After week at the trailer book-ended with a lot of distance on my bike in races on both weekends, this week was a much easier one for Danielle and I. We were both back to work and what resembles our usual routine. The week flew by before we knew it and we were at the weekend again. With me working Saturday to 8pm, we decided on skipping going up to the trailer as we wouldn’t get there till well after 10pm and while we could enjoy a smidge of time at the fire pit, it just didn’t make sense as we’d be turning around and heading right back some time today. Also making the decision easier is that we have a week there again at the end of the month.

Being here on the weekend would mean I could get back out for the Sunday social ride with my club LCC as it has been over a month since I have rode with them. The route today was a remote start in Ilderton and headed up through Ailsa Craig and over to Lucan and back to Ilderton for a loop of 58km or so. It was great to see my bike friends, trade quips with them and trade turns taking the front wheel on the ride. The weather couldn’t have been any more perfect and the company was pretty alright as well. If you want to see video of what the ride looked like, you can see it here.

As for Emelia, she gave her notice a couple of weeks ago at Gymworld so she has been freed up to pick up a lot more shifts at her main job at SilverCity which she has. She has been working there more than she has not which is a change. Outside of that, she’s being hanging out with her besties and her friends she’s made at SilverCity. This week, that had her busy every single day. The big event this week was a shopping trip to Niagara with her bestie Bri and her family at the outlet malls there. She came back and gave us a haul overview and it looked like she did a great job getting some nice things–albeit she didn’t by me any bike stuff.

She said

This week was a short week but it was a busy and stressful one for sure. After a week off I was back at work on Tuesday digging myself out of the backlog of worth that piled up while I was gone. It made the days at work fly by. The nights this week were busy as well and we added in the mix at least one thing that was exciting that we had been looking forward to for months. On Thursday John took a half day off work and I flexed my day so we could head down to Toronto with Emelia and of her high school friends Payton to see Chris Stapleton! He has long been one of our favourite musicians and Emelia and Payton love him too. We got on the road around 4:30 and headed up to Toronto to go to the dreaded Rogers Stadium. We had some lessons learned from our last concert there so booked a different lot for parking. This was a massive improvement from last time.

Once the girls were off on their own seats John and I made our way to our section. The concert from start to finish was incredible. The music was amazing—he brought out some guest musicians and the highlight of the night was when he brought out some members of Guns & Roses to perform their song Patience which brought John and I back to our youth instantly. It also really made us feel really connected to Greg not only because Slash from Guns and Roses was one of Greg’s favourite guitarists, we were introduced to Chris Stapleton years ago by Greg. The whole night in that sold out crowd, in an open stadium was just perfection. After the concert we made the painful trip home, we had to battle our way out of the lot and deal with two shutdowns for construction on the way home from Toronto. In the end we got home well after 2:00 in the morning which made the next morning really rough for work.

The rest of the week was navigating some things for our family. On Saturday Emelia took a much needed mental health day with her best friend and went to Niagara Falls for some needed retail therapy. Emelia and Bri along with Bri’s sister and mom had a great day. We are forever grateful to have them in our lives, the girls are like family to each other and when Emelia needs another ear she always has her second mama, Michelle. While the girls were away I made my way to Kitchener with Matthew and Shawn so we could continue to help Testza and the girls prepare their house for sale to get them back to London with family. We made a huge dent I then work, The girls and I tackled the bedrooms and purged, cleaned and staged them, Matthew and Shawn cleaned up all the construction mess in the basement while Testza continued to organize the main floor and pack it up. We are closer to having it ready for staging. Tomorrow night I will pick up the girls bring them to London so Testza can get some appointments out of the way and have a kid free house to get more work to be done. As always with our family we are forever the village taking care of each other.