What a fantastic long weekend! Miia and Chris have spent the past 11 months on an amazing adventure that took them from Canada across the pond to incredible places in Europe, Asia and Africa! They returned to Canada this past week and we were honoured to have spent time with them this weekend at the Lake listening to their tales. Here are some pictures!

The first is Lily and Miia in the kitchen with Miia teaching Lily the finer aspects of plastic and metal acoustics. We spent a fair bit of time catching up while hanging out in the back yard. I really like the side profile of Mike :-) The next photo is of me with Lily. Miia showed us this great technique to lugging around our 24 pounder without having to use both arms - VERY practical! There's a great shot of Anthony planting one on Connie :-) Miia had a very special talent of pacifying Cora so she was blessed with many Cora holdings! There is a less than flattering photo of myself holding Lily in the tent. She did really well so long as she was in bed with Mike and I. Regardless of how many layers we put on her, she just wasn't warm enough. Which isn't surprising since it went down to four degrees on Saturday night!
When I asked Whalen what he was doing with his bus, he replied "I'm riding the school bus"! I'm notorious for self-portraits with Lily (one needs to be when their husband is allergic to taking photos) so one of the photos is an artsy fartsy attempt.

En route back to Beeton on Monday, we stopped by my Aunt Heather's place. My cousins Hana and Blair are active kids and have a trampoline and pool in the back yard. As this is the beginning of the season, they needed to fill the pool with water. So the Town of Markdale brought out their pumper and filled the pool with water - I love small towns! Whalen was in his glory that he got to get so close to the fire truck! Aunt Heather's cat had Kittens so Chris was in his glory!

My favourite part about our drive up north is the spectacular view of the wind turbines just outside of Shelburne. I think it is a beautiful testament to the initiatives to find other types of power.

Once back at home, Lily and Chris spent some time playing with her toys and I tried to get a group shot of Lily, Miia and Chris but was slowed down with Miia's unintentional 'drop' of the baby. However, we did prevail and have a group photo :-)

One of the final photos is Lily having dinner. I felt it appropriate to have a photo of our Lily at the final stages of her first long weekend of the summer. She was so tired that it took a good 40 minutes to feed her and then she fell asleep! I had to wake her to rid her of the spinach and she was only half awake for her bath. She went to be an hour early, slept six hours, fed then slept another four hours!

Hope each of you had a great long weekend! Please feel free to send us an email to let us know what you're up to! PPS