Relaxing in Grand Bend

Finally we got to relax in beautiful Grand Bend.

Well, SOME of us got to relax... :)

Brad's mom recently bought a gorgeous resort-like home in beautiful Lambton Shores, just down the road from bustling Grand Bend, nestled in the trees... campfires in the yard, fireplaces in every room, a jacuzzi, a jet tub, and our own private glass and stone tiled shower in our bedroom... it was a little piece of heaven.

We had a great New Year's party with the Delaware Posse; it was great to see everyone! Too bad we missed the girls - they were partying in style elsewhere, but we're looking forward to seeing them on our next trip. We'll make sure of it. :)

We also got a chance to spend a night with Ted, Mel's dad, in Collingwood. It's so gorgeous with all the snow! It's easy to see why it's a resort town. Ted is hung up with a bad back and a bum shoulder, so he's a little disgruntled, but he was delighted to have us and we were thrilled to be there. We really enjoyed ourselves. It's so nice to catch up.

We stayed with Art & Amy while in Toronto for a night; as always we were treated to popcorn and wonderful company and we were excited to see how cute Amy is now that she's five months along! Art wanted to call the baby Santa Mullin; I think Amy has other ideas...

Because our flight was delayed, we agreed to fly out a day later which was an unexpected and pleasant surprise! We got a chance to stay with Jenny & Ian - and Ian had only recently acquired the Beatles for Rock Band... Art & Amy came over and we had a rockin' good time! Nothing is funnier than watching your musician friends trade instruments and wail on Beatles tunes. Nothing.

Our flight home was a gong show. We got delayed, held up, re-routed, waited for soggy baggage, and in the end we were incredibly thankful to be home, safe and warm, when the trip was all over.

And that was Christmas! Now it's back to the grind... when something eventful happens, IF it happens, we'll be sure to blog about it.

Hope you had a wonderful holiday too!

We're Having An East Coast Christmas

For those of you reading from Upper Canada, you may not realize that here on the coast, we do Christmas a little... differently.

On Christmas Eve, Mel's brother Kirstan, her mom and her mom's partner Neil set up the Annual Crab v Lobster race on the kitchen floor. Apparently the results are somewhat suspect, and an investigation has been undertaken. The photos have been confiscated for evidence; we'll post those when we get them back. But the event overall was a great laugh; the REAL winners were those of us feasting on the race participants the following day!

Christmas Day, we enjoyed a huge feast of lobster and dungeness crab. Kirstan showed Brad how to plate the first one, deftly cracking its knuckles and splitting the shell with a kitchen knife... and then he handed Brad his own lobster to tackle. It was like dinner theatre - a show and a meal in one!

Mom MacRae put on a pot of seafood chowder and we ate like kings.

Five hours later, we had turkey dinner with all the fixin's. :)

Visiting Mel's Gramma and Grampa MacRae is always a treat; Grampa got out the MacCallan Cask Strength and we all had a little taste. He says he's "saving the good stuff" for our next visit. We can hardly wait! Gramma shared some of her family recipes - like gingersnaps and pinwheel cookies - and we're looking forward to trying to make them ourselves next year.

Gramma also put on a pot of seafood chowder; Grampa served up some turkey and fresh dinner rolls and we ate... like kings.

Christmas on the coast is a Good Thing tm.

The Great Tree Lighting Of '09

Now that the tree is on it's feet.... it needs some lights!

Brad is sad that the days are gone where he and his dad would go out to the garage, lay out all the strings of lights in careful rows next to each other, test each bulb one by one, curse and swear, and finally come in with just enough lights to cover the tree.

I told him I could tie them all in knots and the cats could chew on some wires if that'd make it feel more like Christmas...

He settled for a batch of Gramma Bouchie's shortbread cookies. :)

Fat Fat offered to help, but his idea of "helping" is "eating".

Maeby and Fat Fat were exhausted from all their "helping".

After the tree lighting, we sat and enjoyed the tree's warm glow and played a little night music.

Operation Get Tree Standing

We don't know which one of us had the brilliant idea to throw out our perfectly good Christmas tree stand when we left Toronto on the Big Adventure, but you can bet we were regretting it when we finally got our darling tree home.

So we figured, hey, if our parents could build a tree stand out of a couple of two-by-fours and an ice cream bucket, why can't we?

Well, I'll tell you why we can't. We had no idea what we were doing.

With no plan, several nails and screws and some wood we farmed from the recycled materials bin at the school of architecture, some duct tape and a glass or six of wine, we set out to make our very first homemade tree stand.

Maeby had some good advice... but she's hard to understand at the best of times.

In the end, she took on more of a supervisory role.

With bucket firmly affixed, it was time to apply it to the stand.

That's where it got difficult...

We think it worked out very nicely.

Until we watered the tree... and inadvertently watered the rest of the living room floor.

It's amazing what duct tape will do. :)

Et voila!!

Merry Tree!

Why the cat bit me.

I think this one is pretty self-explanatory.

For those of you who missed the back story...

Daedalus had begun chewing the hair off his front legs and was becoming quite disgruntled. Brad gave him a good brushing and we discovered what we later found to be FLEA DIRT. In 10 years, we have never had even one flea - and that's on three cats! We were mortified.

We didn't want to do a chemical bath in our living space, so we sought out alternative ideas. Thankfully, we have friends with expertise and vets with suggestions, and we were armed with a plan of action. We were going to shampoo the cat, vacuum the rugs, spray the place with eucalyptus oil, and give the cats a bout of flea treatment.

The first step was shampoo the cat.

And that is why the cat bit me.

(Can you blame him, really?)

For those of you wondering how the story ended, after feeling terribly bad about the entire ordeal, Daedalus is now a very happy flea-free animal; I have almost entirely recovered from the bite after an ugly round of potent antibiotics (save for the awesome welt left by the puncture wounds), and we appear to be flea-free!

Hooray for cats! :)

How things are... going.

So architecture school is going well...

... but the sofa is a little small.

In other news, if you know Mel's dad, Ted, you'll know that the "scathing look of death" aka "stink eye" runs in the family. We don't recommend you practice this skill too hard at home... or else THIS might happen.

It's been an eventful December.

December 15 - visitors!

Tonight, Cheryl & Theresa came to visit. Fat Fat was so happy to have someone else to badger for pets. We had a great visit; it was so nice to have guests in our new place!

Speaking of guests, when are you coming over???

Parade of Lights!!!

To get us in the Christmas spirit, we went out to see the Holiday Parade of Lights. Or the Festive Electric Parade. Or the Seasonal Glow-in-the-Dark-apalooza. Whatever non-denominational inclusive title you want to give it. Santa was at the end of it, so it's still the Christmas parade, any way you slice it. In Halifax, they do it at night - so it's COOLER. :)

We went down to the Sally Ann and picked out the most AWESOME Christmas sweaters we could find. Criteria: warm, ridiculous, and hideous.

We'd like to think we succeeded. :)

We stopped into the Uncommon Grounds at South Park and Fenwick and got the most fantastic winter-y coffee hazelnutty mocha-y soy-y (soy-y?) coffee-y drinks ever. Mmm.

Then it was off to the parade!!! We got a prime spot on a little hill next to a family with a kid who was convinced he was a jedi. He was priming himself for later concussions by tossing himself repeatedly down the hill - if we laughed, he threw himself harder. It was so hard not to laugh. :)

And then... it was PARADE TIME!!! (I brought my very broken glasses and prayed nobody saw us. Good lord. Just my luck we'd run into Johnny Depp. "Oh, hey Johnny, yeah, the parade is sooooo great.... Oh these? Yeah, I heard having a twist tie holding your frames together is the new black. (pause) It's not? Well, THIS is embarrassing.")

So apparently the parade marshall was phoning it in this year. The first float arrived, sped past us like it was late for the parade, and then two more floats flew past us. Then some tweens baton-twirling... and then.... NOTHING. For easily 20 minutes. People were leaving in droves - did they really think the parade was over? Two dodgy floats and some pre-teen baton twirling??! Good grief.

And then...

get ready to look closely.

(Okay, not THAT closely... it's pretty obvious. Like today's Metro Toronto "Peterborough Pete" gaff, only a little more PG-13, thank god...)

Honestly, I couldn't dream up something this stupid to Photoshop. This was the sign on a float in the Holiday Parade of Lights here in Halifax. The float was entitled "SANTA'S SIGN SHOP". What, did he have some sort of equal-opportunity mandate where he had to hire a bunch of dyslexic elves? Is this part of Harper's Literacy for Kids program? Holy crap. Please, tell me someone else saw this.

The rest of the parade was uneventful; the small boy got tired of tumbling down the hill on his head and his parents got tired of watching him, so they went home. After that, it was just floats. Floats and more floats. Here are some of the highlights as we saw them:

This one actually looked like something!

They had DANCING GINGERBREAD PEOPLE!!! DANCING!!!

It was awesome.

Pyro AND smoke? Sweet.

Hard to see, but if you look to the right, behind the tree,

you can see the dancing MacPass.

For Toronto folk, it's sort of like a metropass but you put it in your car and you can speed through the tolls on the bridge without the battering-ram hummers chasing you.

Awesome.

"C100 everywhere!"

That's the slogan of the radio station that SHOULD be called

"C100! We'll Nickelback You To Death!"

But they DID have a cool Buzz Lightyear in their float...

That was solid.

It almost makes up for their insufferable programming.

Thanks to Dal Architecture for their confusing

people-dancing-in-a-giant-bedsheet float.

I hope nobody needs emergency services during the parade...

because it's going to be tough to drive fast

with all those lights in your peripheral...

not to mention, you're stuck BEHIND A PARADE...

All in all, it was a great evening.

Hooray for the holidays!!