Trip Summary

I won't go over every single thing we did on vacation but I'll at least cover a few highlights and some new things that Calleigh has been up to. First of all, let me just say that I have never seen worse weather while up there. In the 12 days that we were there, we had one half day of sun. The rest of the days it either rained or was completely overcast. Two times we woke up to sun and got excited only to be crushed 30 minutes later when it was gone for the rest of the day. Gigi was going to take Calleigh swimming every day and they ended up going exactly zero times. We didn't even put the raft in. Unheard of! Despite the abysmal weather, we did enjoy ourselves. There is never a dull moment when you have 20 people living in a house together (with only three bathrooms I might add!). Anyway, here are some highlights of our time there:

• As I mentioned in a previous post, the big news is that each of the cousins is going to build their own cottage which will be 12 x 16 in size. It will be one room and it's main function will be a place to sleep. There will be no bathroom in it as that would require a new septic system which would cost mucho dollars. The cost of building each cottage looks to be about $1,800. The menfolk and Camille spent much of the time (in between rain drops) digging the holes for the foundation. We also got cement delivered and that was laid in the six sites of the cousins that were in attendance this year. The plan is that next year we'll build them and should be able to live in them depending on how fast they go up. We're pretty excited about this development since many of the couples are sleeping in tents and obviously with more babies coming into the picture soon (hopefully), we really need more housing.
• The five younger couples played the Newlywed Game and I'm proud to say that Duncan and I kicked some butt. We were the champions!
• The three older couples played amongst themselves on another night and Lori and Charlie won. My parents had an uncharacteristically poor showing.
• Shawn planned the scavenger hunt this year (which means I got to participate!) and it went very well. I was on a team with Devin, Heath, Leigh, and Mia. We finished either second or third I'm not sure, but we had a great time. My parents, Duncan, and Steve were the winning team. This is the second year in a row that Duncan has won. In case you're wondering, we did the hunt at night so Calleigh was sleeping soundly with Uncle Shawn keeping watch.
• Alison, Kelly, and I stayed up until about 1 am every night playing the best game on the planet, Dutch Blitz. I could play it for hours and hours.
• And yes, I really meant it when I said a gallon of milk is $7.11. I only drank a gallon and a half of milk in the twelve days compared to that much in about 3 days here at home. The prices of everything in Canada are crazy and the exchange rate is almost one for one these days. A lot of it has to do with taxes too. I bought a Gatorade for $1.79 and it came to $2.12 after tax. I'm so glad I could help pay for socialized health care.
• We sure did miss Dewey and Marlee on this trip but since there was no swimming, I felt a little bit better. Dewey lives for swimming in the lake. Shannon was on puppy duty back at our place and she sure wishes they had made the trip. They were very bad with their bathroom habits. On a brighter note, we did enjoy having Snickers and Reeces, the Min Pins up there.
• The berries were awesome! Apparently the weather had been very nice during the month of July and then after all the rain in August, the blueberries and raspberries were ripe and ready for the picking. We have a ton of them on our property alone and I picked raspberries several times. I didn't even make a dent in how many there were and I felt terrible that they were just going to go to waste. I ended up making the Brownie Delight raspberry dessert and it was pretty neat to use raspberries that I had picked myself.

So there you have some bullet points on our activities. Now for the important parts. How was Calleigh on the trip and what new things can she do?

• Within about two days, she knew everyone's name. And as I mentioned, there were 20 people there. Of course, some of the names were pronounced slightly differently such as "Noni" instead of "Toni." But she had no problem just going up to people and saying "Hi Charlie."
• I kept her on American time (which is one hour earlier) and she went to bed at her usual bedtime of 7:30 and woke up at about 7:30 every morning. She didn't wake up one single time during the night.
• Most of the time she took her morning and afternoon naps and it was a nice break for me to be able to read, play games or do whatever.
• She learned some new phrases such as "Oh boy" and "All done." I'm not clear that she's clear on what "All done" exactly means since she's been saying it half way through her meal. And as you may know, she usually eats her whole meal!
• Keeping an eye on Calleigh proved to be a big challenge. Here at home, we have gates up and so she's confined to pretty much one room. Up there, there are no gates so she had a bunch of rooms to wander through not to mention a set of stairs. I would have to literally follow her wherever she went to make sure she didn't get into any mischief. It was certainly not a passive activity since Calleigh is not prone to just sit there and play for long periods of time. She was constantly on the go. We brought a few toys with us but they were rarely played with since there were so many other things to get into such as puzzle pieces, domino's, rocks, baby food jars, pots, pans, telephones, etc.
• One of her favorite activities was carrying around a little chair that Noni had gotten for her.
• Calleigh loved Mia who is six. Whenever Mia would come around, Calleigh's face would light up and she would yell "Mia!"
• Despite the weather, Calleigh still managed to spend quite a bit of time outside....getting dirty. She quickly realized how exciting puddles were and would stand at the edge of it and say "puddle" over and over again and point at it. I would let her put her feet in a little ways and then pick her up and take her in the opposite direction to get away. She would immediately turn around and try to go back to the puddle. She's a stubborn one!
• One of my favorite times was when she and I went to pick raspberries. I took her into the bushes and she immediately sat down and would wait until I picked some berries to hand her to eat. She ate many, many berries. She also did some blueberry picking with Papa.
• Calleigh is now sitting on my lap facing me to nurse - - rather than lying down. It's been a much better bonding experience this way. At any rate, one morning she was sitting there nursing and then all of a sudden pulled back a little, looked at me, and said "Hug" and put her arms out to hug me. I was astounded! I didn't even know she knew that. I just about melted. She now does it quite frequently but usually only to me. That's the advantage of nursing her I guess!

Well, I'm sure I could keep writing and writing, especially about Calleigh, but I better close off here. I hope to write some more tomorrow night so I can get caught completely up. Calleigh's cousins, Derek and Tyler, are visiting this week so there's a lot going on with that too.

Here are a few more pictures in closing...