I got to spend the weekend with my best friends Anna & Grace at their cottage at the beach! I had fun!

He said

This week was really a high-speed blip on our radar. Mostly, for me it was work-related given that we’re approaching another camping, week-long vacation. Typically that means I have some more weekend stretches and my days off are not together. It’s a reasonable trade-off given that I had a Thursday to spend with Emelia, and am off tomorrow to spend it with both Danielle and Emelia. And the schedule was even kind enough to allow me to sneak off to the cottage to meet up with Danielle and Emelia yesterday afternoon.

But, first we did a little tweaking to our plans for the next trip out in Wolfie which starts this Friday! Last week, we thought we’d find a new campground halfway between Bon Echo and here, that put us close-ish to Chantelle, Todd & Marshall. And we did find a new park to try in Sibbald Point, but as we got closer to plans, it just made more sense to not disrupt Charlie & Todd’s life by having them come meet us, and we go to them. The added bonus to getting more time with them is the drive from their place to Bon Echo is a beautiful northern route that skirts the lower end of Algonquin Park and one we wouldn’t normally take. So, we end up getting a beautiful drive to our favourite camping spot!

So Friday we will leave once Danielle shoves the last kid out the door and then we make a beeline up to Bracebridge to hang with Charlie, Todd and Marshall. We’ll have all day Saturday to see their new slice of the world and then Sunday morning we’ll head out in time to arrive  Bon Echo for our check-in, lunch and to meet up with the Jornitz family. And then it will be a week of campfires, S’Moreo’s and listening to the loons sing to us at dusk! (I won’t be up to hear the early pre-sunrise calls) Not that anyone is counting down but we have five sleeps to go!

But, back to the week that we just wrapped up… Thursday was my day off so Emelia and I hatched plans of what we could do which very quickly became another trip to the Thames Pool to play in the water given the heat and humidity we’re experiencing this summer. But first call to order in the morning was our involvement in the craze that has overtaken the country and playing Pokémon Go – the app version that it seems the entire world is playing. The game gets people up and out of their house walking around in search of Pokémon’s in a virtual world created by the app on your phone. So, Emelia and I spent two and a half hours walking almost four kilometres in search of Pokémons and Pokéballs and had a lot of fun in doing so. And we even learned some new landmarks in our neighbourhood to boot!

In the afternoon and after some lunch we got out bathing suits on and headed over to Thames Pool to play in the water. The forecast was calling for rain but it looked like it would impact our afternoon swim plans. We got their just ahead of the open public swim time which afforded us much better success at finding a parking spot compared to last time and were in the pool to start the open swim time. About a half hour in the skies started to look dark and the weatherman looked wrong. About an hour into our fun and swimming the rain started. The nice thing was we weren’t immediately kicked out. Their guidelines are no lightning or thunder, and it can’t be raining so hard the life guards can’t see the bottom of the pool. However, about twenty minutes later, we arrived at that place and our swim was cut to an hour and twenty minutes. Emelia decided she was okay with that as she was getting cold anyway.

We arrived home in time that she got some play in with the daycare kids and was able to work on a fashion show that she’d been coordinating with the kids all week. And I was home in time to run over to our friends Michael & Paulette and help them with some problems they were having with their computer mouse. And after getting home from solving that, Dad was at house with some tech help he was needing too. It was good to be able to solve both problems relatively easily and get them back to business with their computers. Guess I do know what I am doing… some times.

The rest of the weekend did put me in the store, which gave Emelia time to escape to Ipperwash to her friends cottage to play. But with me having an earlier shift Saturday I was able to escape from work and meet Danielle and Emelia at the cottage for some beach and campfire for the night. The morning alarm went off earlier than I wanted, but I made in to work, had a great day and am sitting here looking at a day off tomorrow and only five more sleeps until we’re back out in Wolfie! All of that on our radar puts me in a very happy place!!

She said

This week was pretty uneventful during the week other than work and our normal evening activities for Emelia. The weather was amazing all week and we spent as much time outside as possible. The highlight for Emelia mid-week was a trip back out to the Pioneer Village so she could have a special day with Poppa. I love the relationship Emelia has with her grandpa, they are so incredibly close and they adore spending time together. They both love everything about the village so Emelia was so excited to go out with Poppa for the day to be his special helper in the print shop. She came home so proud of herself because she was able to work some of the presses herself and set type. Our little girl isn’t so little anymore.

Before we knew it the week had flew by and the weekend was upon us. A few weeks ago we had planned with the Carter’s that Emelia would stay over this weekend at their cottage on Lake Huron. The girls were so excited to see each other. Originally we were supposed to go up to the cottage Saturday morning but mid-afternoon Friday I got a message from Susan asking if Emelia wanted to come up for an extra night. I don’t even think I finished my sentence asking Emelia before she squealed yes she wanted to go. I quickly packed her a bag for the weekend and Susan came to pick her up for the extra night.

After I got some groceries bought and my bags packed I made my way up to meet everyone Saturday morning. The rest of the weekend we spent the weekend between the beach, the cottage, and playing outside. The kids had so much fun, spending their day doing what kids should do in the summer, play with their friends, splash in the lake and build sandcastles. Today we said good-bye to our friends and made our way home.

Tomorrow we all have the day off together and are planning on spending our day as our small family unit and plan and dream of our next family adventure which is only 5 sleeps away.