Our New House - Week 4 Update

This weekend was usually set aside for the annual Cyclefest held in West Montrose by the Waterloo Wings. However, the Wings decided to retire the event and this year was going to be just a friendly campout. Once again, Heather and I decided against camping, which proved to be a good idea given the sketchy weather.

We went to the campground in the morning to pick up Heather's parents and we drove to New Hamburg for breakfast at the Old Country Restaurant. After breakfast, I took everybody to Woodstock for another look at our house. Changes from last week included stairs to the 2nd floor and the basement, a bathtub, water pipes, electrical wiring, electrical panel box in the basement and freshly delivered roof tiles and brick waiting to be applied to the house. The work is progressing at a brisk pace.

Front view.

Rear view.

From Woodstock we drove through Breslau to check on more house construction, to Waterloo for a pit stop at Williams. Then it was back to Kitchener to Campers World to look at some RV that Jim and Sandy are interested in purchasing. Finally, we arrived at Marj's in Alma for supper. By the time we left Marj's the skies had opened and it was raining quite heavily. We dropped the parents off at the campground and we made it home by 6pm.

A rainbow over a field of corn north of Waterloo.

Our New House - Week 3 Update

We left Sudbury at 8:30 this morning after a short stay although we did manage to visit the grandparents just before leaving. I took pretty much the usual route home: Hwy 69/400 to Barrie, then Hwy 27 to Pete's Donuts, then turned right towards Hockley Valley. While there we encountered a mass or 20 or so cyclist riding together and slowing traffic down for some 6-8 kilometers. That must have really pissed off some motorcyclists. From there we went through Orangeville, Arthur, Shakespeare all the way down to Woodstock where I arrived on fumes.

We got to Woodstock at almost 3pm to look at the progress on our house. To our amazement, this week the whole framework was in place, majority of the windows were installed and a couple of doors were also there. The floor on the main floor was also there for us to take a walk through the house.

Front view.

Rear view.

After a few minutes of taking in the sights we set off to Branford where we'd visit Darryl and Erin and their 9-month old twins Vincent and Avery. As always, it was an enjoyable visit. We finally made it home at 10:30 pm, just in time to get to bed and get ready for another week of work.

Quick Trip Out of Town

A couple of weeks ago, Heather and I decided to get away from town after all the hoopla of the previous month or more. So if we are going to get away we might as well go all the way and so we drove to Sudbury right after work. We arrived in Sudbury at 11pm and stayed up for about an hour. Today, we left home after 9am and headed to the driving range to loosen up. We also stopped for breakfast at Tim Hortons.

After the driving range, we all went to a new Wal-Mart store just to waste some time before arriving at Stonehill Golf Course at 11:30, well ahead of our noon tee time. The day was very hot and we were glad that we booked power carts as even on a comfortable day, the golf course is very challenging to walk through.

Stonehill Golf Course.

We kept score on and off for most of the day. Heather and Sandy stopped playing midway through the back nine while Jim and I laboured through the entire 18 holes. We arrived at the clubhouse at 4:30pm. Our reward after such an exhausting day was a great supper at Casey's. We spent the rest of the evening watching movies at home.

Greg & Justyna's Wedding

Greg and Justyna's special day was finally here. For Heather and I that day arrived well before 5am since we had to go to pick Agnes in Elmira and take them to downtown Waterloo for a 6am hair appointment. I was also then in charge of doing a quick Starbucks run with a list from all the five girls in the wedding party. Since I don't frequent Starbucks, only detailed written instructions will help me in getting what is needed.

The other four guys in the wedding party joined me sometime later at my parents' place where the photographer and videographer recorder our preparations. The limo picked us up at around 11am and took us to church for the noon ceremony. The girls arrived right at noon and the ceremony started a couple of minutes later.

The bride and groom.

Once the ceremony concluded it was off to the Sun Life building in Kitchener for some photos. Since the bride and groom both work there, we were able to get indoors and it helped since there was a persistent mist throughout most of the afternoon. The process of shooting photos was very long since we had nearly 4 hours to kill before the start of the reception.

The photos were bound to get silly.

After we finally made it to the reception, we partied well into the night but a grueling day finally got to us and Heather and I left at 12:30am. Congratulation Greg and Justyna!