Hangin' With Grammie

This weekend I headed down to my Grammie's after work on Friday. I got there about 8:30 and she had waited to have supper with me. :) The table was all set with cold cuts, sliced tomatoes, cheese, lettuce, etc. When we had finished and got our cup of tea, we headed into the living room. I had made her a copy of the interview Sarah had done with her several weeks ago. It was so cute, she kept telling me the same story in real life as she was telling on the video. AND, she would laugh at the exact same spots in the same way. It was quite cute.

After we had finished that, we looked through some old photos and I heard more stories about her family and growing up in England during the war. She's had so many incredible life experiences, I love listening to that stuff.

The next morning we slept in a little (her more than me!!) and got up, had some breakfast (more tea) and got ready for the day. We were heading to the Huron Country Playhouse to see Cotton Patch Gospel. Unfortunately, we got there a little late and had to slip in the back. However, there's not a bad seat in the house, so it was just fine. At intermission, we headed out to the washroom and then decided to get an ice cream. (Haagen Dazs) While we were purchasing it, they made an announcement that the program would start in 5 minutes. "Do we have time to eat it?" Grammie wondered...I said I thought we did and the woman in front of us assured us we could take it in with us.

As we approached the Playhouse, we saw that same woman standing outside eating her ice cream next to a sign that said "No food or drink allowed inside" So, we stood and ate our ice cream. As we were standing there, the woman that had taken us in late to the first half of the performance, came over and closed the doors and gave us a look as if to say "can' t you 2 get it together?" Ha ha. We had to sit in the back again for the second half, but that was fine. It was a great play.

We headed back to Sarnia and when we got there, we weren't too hungry so we stopped in to Sears for a few minutes. Grammie was thrilled to find 2 tops that were on sale AND when she scratched her card at the counter, she got an additional 25% off!! We then headed to Swiss Chalet where we made a pact that neither could order our "usual" quarter chicken dinner. We ended up getting Shepherd's Pie and it was really good. We finished off with strawberry shortcake back at Grammie's. I had a great time and I know Grammie did too. I'm so lucky to have her!

Get Your Motor Runnin....

Some time ago, I wrote about a special birthday present from my friend Char....a ride on a Harley. Well, the time finally came. Last Saturday, I donned my Harley T-shirt and headed off to St. Thomas to meet up with our "biker buddies". Char's mom has a single-rider Harley and arranged for 2 of her friends to take me & Char on the back. We met in the Tim Horton's parking lot and got suited up with Harley jackets and helmets. Char rode with Bob and I was with Burt. (I was kind of glad I was with Burt as his bike was black...much cooler:)

We headed out of town and started our 4 hour adventure. It was GREAT! I just love the feeling of being on a bike...the wind in your hair (and face!) the roar of the engine...it's awesome! We toured around Port Bruce, Long Point, etc. and ended up at Turkey Point for some lunch. Then we headed back.

Bob & Burt were great. You can tell they just love to ride and were glad to get out on such a beautiful day. They even said they'd take us again. Wahoo!

IKEA...I think I've got it!

This weekend I was staying with my sister while her husband is in Germany on business. One of the projects she had on the list was to assemble a storage unit from IKEA. No problem. I love doing this type of thing. I know, it doesn't seem typical of me, but I become a little obsessed when I have all these parts spread out infront of me with the promise of "building" something. Anyway, I opened the box and pulled the pieces of wood out onto the livingroom floor. Since I was home alone, I decided to turn the TV on to keep me company. As luck would have it, Dirty Dancing was on. It's been a LONG time, so I decided to watch it while I assembled my masterpiece. (incidentally, the first time I saw that movie was at a birthday party when I was about 10...hello? inappropriate!!)

As I slid the first two pieces together with the notch & groove, I thought "sweet, I'm going to have this finished when Jo-Anne gets home and unveil it for her ...hmm, why is this hole not lining up with the screw? Let me try it this way...nope, that's not working either. Let me try another piece. Uh oh...we got a mis-drilled set. This is not good...nothing is fitting. Guess I'll just sit back and watch Patrick Swayze do his thing."

However, seeing the unassembled pieces staring at me from across the room, I had to go back to it. For the life of me, I could not get the pieces to match. I threw down the allen wrench in frustration and finished watching the movie. When Jo-Anne came home, she found me enjoying the final dance number surrounded by IKEA parts. I explained that she got a "bad one" as it doesn't fit right. She assured me that I was just having a "duh" moment and she would get it to work. Mmhmm....let's see...
About half an hour later I was on the IKEA website desperately searching for instructions or help of any kind. I ended up calling IKEA and talking to a guy that thought I just needed to "flip" one of the pieces. I assured him I had tried all possible combinations. He then promised he would e-mail me explicit instructions. (and why do they not include explicit instructions with the unit in the first place?) The e-mail took about 10 minutes to come through and I was sure he had written down my address wrong, but it finally appeared and I was able to print them out. That's when I had my a-ha moment. I DID just have to "flip" one part around. It wasn't long before I had the unit assembled and my Everest for the day had been conquered.

Give it a TRI, and other adventures...

This weekend was full of good times. I'm exhausted, but good times. On Sunday, I went to my first triathlon. No, I did not participate...just there to cheer! My friend Sarah is a triathlete-extreme and she decided to start a triathlon group at our church. She trained 3 women to do their very first race. My friend Sharon was one of them, so I decided to go and cheer them on. It was kind of cool, even if I had to get up super early on a Sunday morning. There is a whole subculture of athletes out there that I didn't even know existed! I even saw one guy running in his bare feet. Considering most of the race was a gravel road...OUCH! It was really neat to finally see Sarah actually competing as I've heard about it for so long. Most times the races are a bit of a drive, but since it was just in Lakeside (about 30 minute drive) I could go!

Friday night I hung out with my friend Adam. We went to this really cool restaurant on the waterfront in Sarnia. It's on the top floor of a tall building, so you can see the whole bay... beautiful. There is a patio up there too, but since it was quite chilly, we stayed inside. I'm anxious to go back when the weather is nice to hang out on the patio. Cool. After dinner we headed to the casino where I was CARDED!! A bit of a compliment I guess! Despite our best efforts, we could not find an ice-cream place that was open. So, we settled for chai tea.

I stayed at Connie & Steve's on Friday night. Saturday morning I got to hang out with Madison for a bit...we had chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast. Sweet! Madison is very excited because they just put a pool in. It's not ready to swim in yet, but still very exciting for a 3 year old!

The rest of the day I hung out with Karla Ann. We headed over to Port Huron to do a little shopping. While we were there, we went for lunch at Olive Garden...mmmmm, yummy. It was good to hang out and catch up. We don't see each other enough anymore. After bumping into Debbie & Rebekah Raes in the mall, we headed back to our home and native land to play a round of Scrabble. Not surprisingly, KA won.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Warbrides

Next Tuesday, the province of Ontario is honouring warbrides with a ceremony at Queen's Park. My Grammie will be among those attending. She's so excited...in fact, I don't know when I've seen her this excited about something. She'll be heading down on a bus with other warbrides and I'm sure many stories will be exchanged.

Yesterday my friend Sarah (who is a reporter) did a story on warbrides, featuring Grammie! It was a very nice piece and the bonus is the 20+ minutes of interview that I dubbed to DVD for posterity. In case you missed the story on A-Channel, I have it on DVD.

It really is amazing when you think of what she had to overcome...she was only 19, pregnant and coming to a totally new country! She couldn't even pick up the phone and call home. I admire my Grammie tremendously. What a wonderful woman.

Kitchen Makeover

Over the past week, I've been preparing and painting my kitchen. Wow, was it ever a big job! It all started when I started stripping the wallpaper. Yikes. It was super-hot weather and I have no air-conditioning. So, needless to say, this was not a fun job. However, I got it done and Wednesday night I started with painting the ceiling. I had taken Thursday & Friday off work, so the real painting began on Thursday. Priming, priming, priming...it took a long time! Fortunately, I have great friends... Bruce stopped by on Thursday afternoon and helped me get the priming done. Then I was ready to move on to the actual painting on Friday. I went from having dingy white walls (one with yucky wallpaper) and SMURF blue trim to having "brown teepee" walls, white trim and "bear rug" cupboards! Check out the photos, I love it!!

Friday morning, Elvin came over to help with edging and in the afternoon, Bruce returned and my friend Emily came over to help too! By Saturday I was in business...the walls & ceiling were done and the cupboards & trim needed a few more coats. (the cupboards actually took 3 coats of paint + a coat of primer) Emily returned and helped in the afternoon completing the very frustrating radiator.

By Sunday afternoon/evening, I was cleaning up, moving things back into place and enjoying the fruit of my labour. My roommate Jodi was away for the whole process and I was looking forward to seeing her reaction, but unfortunately, she beat me home last night, so I missed it.

This process has made me appreciate my job and the fact that I don't have to do manual labour...I'm afraid I'm a bit of a wimp.