What's new here??

Not a lot and yet . . . so much.

The world around us has returned to "normal." The schoolyard behind our house is full of screaming children again as they are back to school. The boys are busy trying to decide what clubs and sports groups they want to participate in. We are back to going to the library on a regular basis. We also need to find some great fieldtrips to plan since Fergus is not returning to Shady Grove this year.

We celebrated the last long weekend of the summer by traveling to my BIL's mom's place. She, Liz, lives between North Bay and Huntsville so is about a three hour drive north from here. They live on a small body of water, Eagle Lake, and while it is inhabited by cottages and houses on one side, it is crown land on the other. That means that it can't be developed any further and will stay nice and quiet. There aren't many watercraft on the lake other than a couple of boats and some people out skulling.

At night, once dark, you can hear the wildlife across the water on the crown land. Some of it is really easy to identify and some of the noises we heard were unrecognizable.

We were invited to a lake party while we were there too. The boys had a chance to play with other kids instead of hanging out with adults all weekend. They weren't too sad to be with adults though. The adults took them fishing, swimming, out of the ATV's, etc. You know, stuff only parents can do and activities we don't have access to here.

We came home on the Sunday evening. Doug had a lot of work to do for Horvath so we came home to allow him all of Monday to work on it. It was going to be a smooth ride straight home since we didn't leave Liz's place until after 9:00 Sunday night. We were going to be ahead of the long weekend traffic.

Wow! Were we wrong! We had a tire go flat as we traveled at 120 km/hour on the highway. Two sleeping children in the back seat. 11:30 at night. What would we do? Find ourselves grateful for the 24hr roadside assistance that comes with our new cars is what. I called Volkswagen and they sent someone to help us change our tire while the boys slept on. Thank goddess for the full-size spare in the boot of the car. This meant we could drive more than 50 km. on the tire. We were still more than 50 km. from home.

After that adventure we were glad that the rest of the week was totally smooth. We did go raspberry picking on Tuesday but otherwise, nothing really exciting.

Last night we had company. Friends, Dan and Catharine, whom we haven't seen in MANY years, live in Orangeville (about 35 minutes from Georgetown). They came by with their 5 year old daughter and had coffee and dessert. Doug and Dan were friends when they were in grade school. We haven't seen them since we all left the Collingwood area just after we got married.

What on tap for this week?? I don't know. Hopefully I will make myself spend time sitting down and working on the Grade 12 Biology course I need for my school application.