ladyblog

This morning Eddie was having his breakfast outside when he had a surprise guest. I’m so glad he got the camera in time.

On Friday, June 19, my mother-in-law, sister-in-law and her fiance Bob and Eddie’s cousin Patrick (who lives in Indiana) came over for a visit. We enjoyed a leisurely dinner Friday night and then were hot to trot on Saturday morning.

We started  Saturday with garage sales in the neighbourhood. That made us really hungry and so our next stop was for dim sum where me met up with cousin Ting. After that we headed to the Experimental Farm to see the flowers again. We found that the Iris plants had peaked the week before when Eddie and I were there but the peonies were spectacular. From the Farm we went to the ByWard Market so Patrick could taste his first ever Beaver Tail and enjoyed watching the festivities. Our next stop was the Royal Canadian Mint. We took a tour and learned a lot about what is produced in Ottawa and Winnipeg.

Jason was with his friend, Lora, at her parents home about an hour from Ottawa so he met up with Eddie after we explored the Mint. We came home for a rest and a swim before heading out for dinner with cousin Ting and Tyrone. By 10 pm we were exhausted and very full!

Bob prepared our Sunday Father’s Day breakfast which we really enjoyed. Thanks Bob. 3 1/2 hours later we ate again! Lora picked Jason up and headed for Toronto while the rest of us headed over to Saigon Boy for PHO. It was a fun and food-fill weekend with decent weather and lots of laughs.

Alice and Bob brought me some plants for our garden and then she went to our next door neighbour and took a trunk load of plants back to Toronto. Our neighbour has a green thumb with perennials covering most of the front and back of her house.

Originally this weekend was to include Pauline from Australia but unfortunately her health prevented her from making the trip to Canada. Hope you are feeling better, Pauline.

Here is the video of our weekend.

June is here and the weather is finally getting warmer. We’ve had a good month so far. We started with a visit from our friends, Ron and Elaine and their two children Cassidy and Dakota. They brought along a friend, Mecheon. Ron is a pastor so they didn’t arrive until later in the day on Sunday. The weather was beautiful on Monday and they took the GPS and explored downtown Ottawa. They saw the important buildings and even had a horse and buggy ride. Later that day we splashed in the pool and had a nice dinner together. We ended the day playing the Wii. I think the kids had more fun creating their “Mii’s” than actually playing a game. You can see the short video here. Be prepared to smile! When most of us retired for the evening, Ron and Elaine went to see the new Star Trek movie. The visit was far too short and we hope they will come see us again soon.

Ottawa has an Experimental Farm that’s not too far from us. Last Friday Eddie and I went out for some Greek food and then were off for a drive when we decided to stop by the farm and see the flowers. What a treat! The peonies, columbine and iris’s were all blooming and it was such a show. Some of Eddie’s family is on their way here as I post this and I am hoping to take my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law to see the colourful show as there were so many blooms on the peony bushes. Here is a taste of what we saw.

I’ll be sharing about our visit soon. There is a lot on the list of things to do and I hope we can do it all.

Remember when April showers brought May flowers? Well that doesn’t happen any more because it rains non stop in MAY! Ottawa has a Tulip Festival in May and Jason, Irene, Gordon, Nancy, George, Eleni and Erin all came to visit us and to see the tulips . . . but it was too cold and it RAINED. I had visions of us all tip-toeing through the tulips but we never saw them. However, that did not stop us from have a great time together and doing other things. We even celebrated Irene’s birthday!. To prove what a happy time we had take a look at our pictures HERE. Hint:  If you click on a picture you can zoom in for a better look.

Later on in the month Eddie had a business trip to Florida from Tuesday to Friday. I had great plans of digging in the garden and planting flowers - NOT. The rain kept me indoors most of the time he was away. During a rare dry moment though, we had a blue spruce tree and an old mock orange bush removed from the front of the house. It broke our hearts to have to destroy the tree but it was getting too big and was too close to the house. We had three garden/tree specialists all tell us it had to go. Of course, I had my camera ready to record it all for Eddie to see. As I write this he’s on the plane waiting to take off from Ft. Lauderdale to Montreal and then on to Ottawa. I haven’t told him the tree is gone - I’ll let you know if notices it right away. Meanwhile here is the video. (This may take a few minutes to load.)

I am looking forward to a dry and warm month of June.

April was so busy that I got lost in all the photos and events. It started with a trip to Florida April 5-16. Next was a visit with some friends here in Ottawa and then a trip to Toronto. I really wanted to have our photos posted sooner but this switch from PC to MAC is slowing me down.

Our trip to Florida was fun. We managed to see many of my family members and even some school friends - some I haven’t seen in 40 years! I overlapped with my sister (Nancy) and brother-in-law (George) for one day at the beginning of my visit and then at the end overlapped a day with my niece (Eleni) and her daughter (Erin). In between we had a private tour of the new culinary school at my High School.  This new building/school is the result of my cousin Manuel’s vision and dream and was very impressive. Way to go, Mr. Gombos!

Eddie was able to join us the weekend of my mother’s birthday (April 11). We celebrated at Mama’s Restaurant. We were able to do a little gardening and enjoy being together. Here are the Florida pictures.

I was back in Ottawa the evening of April 16 and on the 17th some of Eddie’s childhood friends came to visit us. We had so much fun eating, playing the Wii and touring the Market. Here are some pictures with Sam & Sharon and Raymond & Stella.

Their visit was far too short but the next weekend Eddie and I went to Toronto where we saw them again as they helped us celebrate Peter’s birthday. I also saw many of my dear friends from Ladies Group and Bridletowne that weekend. Here are those pictures.

So, you can see that April was a blur and a lot of fun. May has also been busy and I will be posting about that very soon.

I’ve been in Florida since April 5. I came down to be with my mom for her 83rd birthday which was on April 11. While here I found some old pics on my PC and showed them to Mom. She gave me a few more to scan and I put together a small (almost eight minutes) slide show. Some of these pics are of Mom and her two sisters growing up but most were taken during my lifetime. There are hundreds more - probably thousands - but these are all I have for now. I’m still learning how to use my Mac so putting this together was a real learning experience for me. I wish Jason and Irene were here to help me! Anyway, here is the slide show.

I hope to post my Florida pictures when I get back to Ottawa. I hope you will drop by again to see them.

Last Wednesday afternoon our friends, Marge, Malcolm, Trevor, Guy and Nicki all came to visit. The men went to the hockey game (Ottawa Senators vs the Tampa Bay Lightning [Senators won]) while we ladies watched 2 chick flicks (Moonstruck and Bella). The next morning Eddie fixed us a big breakfast and then we had a mini tour of Hogs Back Falls and downtown.  It was bitterly cold so we didn’t linger at the falls but we did walk around the ByWard Market. We saw the shops that Pres. Obama visited when he was here in February.  Apparently business inside the Market has gone up 25% since his visit! Guy and Nicki left for Toronto just before lunch. The rest of us had a leisurely lunch at an Irish Pub. By 1:30 we had said our good byes. It was a really short visit but we had enough time to make some nice memories.

Jason, Irene and Gordon came to visit us during the Winterlude Festival. Unfortunately the temps rose just enough to cause a mini-melt of the canal and ice sculptures so we had an indoor visit together. By Saturday the canal was open again for skating but we decided to stay in. The day they left Eddie and I did go for our first stroll on the canal with our friends Lisa and Ronni and their girls.

The following week Scott and April and their boys came for a visit and we walked the canal again while they skated. There were so many people enjoying the festivities. There were horse-drawn sleigh rides, tee pees and refreshment stands set up and colonial demonstrations of all kinds. It was so “Ottawa”!. You can see our pics here. Now, of course, the water is starting to flow again and the stands are starting to be disassembled. It’s nice to see the beginnings of spring and our next big festival will be the Tulip Festival in May. Ottawa is a very colourful town and we are having fun enjoying all it has to offer.

Back on Feb. 19 my friend Lisa and I went downtown to see President Obama’s motorcade when he came to Ottawa for a quick visit. If not for Lisa I wouldn’t have known where to go. We took the bus downtown because so many streets were closed for security reasons. In fact, the paper said that people living near the airport were not to open their windows or doors.

We found a great spot and could hear the walkie talkies that the police were holding. It was very exciting when we heard, “Airforce One has just landed!” We decided that I would take the videos and Lisa the snap shots. I managed to put together a little video on my new MacBook (a huge accomplishment!). You may have seen the first clip that I posted on YouTube showing all 42 cars in the procession. This new post includes part of that one as well as the stills.

I will be posting photos from Winterlude soon so please drop by again soon.

Everywhere we look it’s white. Snowbanks are several feet high and rooftops look like they are sagging from the weight. The other night our neighbors phoned and said they’d be over in 5 minutes to rake our roof! Sure enough, Ronni, Lisa and Rosalie came over with a “roof rake” and proceeded to tackle the mound of snow hanging from our roof. This was a new experience for me so I had to get my camera.  Here are the pictures. Thanks so much, guys! It’s great to have neighbors watching out for us.