Summer in Canada

I have not made the time to update our blog as somehow it feels when you are back “home” it is fairly uninteresting. I have since had a number of people mention that they had missed seeing what was happening in our lives and besides we have had a varied and busy 4 months since our return I thought I would attempt to encapsulate the time.
I arrived in Ottawa from LA to stay with Kristen and her family for two weeks while Ken flew straight to Calgary.
I enjoyed meeting Grayson for the first time and celebrate his first birthday party. He is a sweetheart and took his first wobbly steps during my visit. Adelyn, his 2 ½ year old sister is quite opposite and continues to amaze and challenge all who come in contact with her. She is very bright and articulate but has inherited the family trait of being in charge of her world. Being a two year old with these characteristics makes life less than dull. While I was there I babysat them one at a time while Kristen and Kyle were at work and the other child went to daycare. This was fun as they were both able to have my total attention.
Spring had arrived in Ottawa—unlike Calgary where Ken was still getting snow---and the blossoms and bulbs were out. We had a day at the tulip festival which is amazing. Holland sends hundreds of tulips to Ottawa each year in recognition of the Canadians who liberated their country after the Second World War. The parks and city are a mass of colour.
We biked around the area where Kristen and Kyle live and generally had a lovely visit.
While in Ottawa I reconnected with Diane Sullivan a fellow Calgary potter who has relocated there. We met for dinner in one of the quaint Ontario villages surrounding Ottawa.
For mothers day Kristen signed us up for a walking tour of the city. Our guide is a history teacher who had gone on numerous walking tours of European cities and decided to offer one in Ottawa. It was great and I learned a lot about the history of both Ottawa and Canada. As I was brought up in NZ my Canadian history knowledge was fairly vague so I found it particularly interesting.
I left Ottawa and Kristen and her lovely family knowing that I would see them all again in Salt Spring soon.
I arrived in Calgary where the weather had finally shown signs that winter was over. It was lovely to see Amy, Rob, Alora and Isaac who have established themselves a very pleasant lifestyle. Amy has been accepted for nursing after finally overcome the challenge of math 30 and will start in the fall. The kids are very busy and Amy and Rob are in the height of driving constantly to sporting and school events---oh how I remember those days!!!
The kids are growing up—Alora having turned 15 and Isaac 9. They are both great kids and we love to hang out with them. Alora has become quite the jock and won Athlete of the Year award in her last year of Junior High we are very proud of her achievements. She is off to high school in the fall and we are sure she will do well.
Aaron and Ashley are happily settled into married life and are looking forward to their first baby in January. We are excited for them as for as long as I can remember Aaron has wanted a child and I am sure they will make great parents.
Mike is living with Eun who is an energetic South Korean girl who is a lot of fun.
We had a large family gathering for mothers day at Amy’s with Barry and his sons and families all coming for dinner.
I spent a lot of my week in Calgary catching up with my friends. It was lovely to see them all and it certainly makes me value the years we spent there and the wonderful friends I made and will continue to keep in touch with throughout my life. I never seem to have enough time there to have time to see everyone but I did manage at least fleeting visits with everyone. We also cought up with dentist and doctors visits there too so I was looking forward to going to Salt Spring Island to get some rest.
Ken had bought us a mini van to take out to SS so we will have a vehicle out there.
I had decided that while I was at SS for the summer I would make some pottery and perhaps supplement our income a little. We incurred a lot of expense by coming back –we now maintain both the boat and the cottage and we had to post a $23,000 bond in NZ for the boat. We will get this back when we leave but even exchanging the money to and from NZ currency will cost us a lot.
We loaded up a kiln and clay as well as the children’s car seat and play pen I had bought in Calgary and drove out with Mike and Eun who were to be the first of our many family visitors.
We got to the cottage which had been left in great condition from Len and Shirley who had rented it from us for the last 4 years.
It was great to come out and renew the pleasure we have always had coming here. It is stunningly beautiful and our treed land with our lovely sea view in always a delight.
We managed to get beds organized and had a great few days with Mike and Eun. He has become a fanatical fisherman and spent most his time hanging out on rocks trying to catch something. The fishing was not successful and we had more success collecting oysters at one of the beaches. It is the beginning of the season and they were delicious.
After they left I set up my pottery studio and started making pots which I took to the Saturday market which became my pattern for the rest of the summer and sent some back to Alicat, the gallery at Bragg Creek in Calgary which I have dealt with for 22 years. The economy is tight but I was able to successfully sell enough to make it worth while. Besides as you all know I love to pot and really did enjoy reconnecting with clay.
Our next visitors were Amy, Rob and their family. We had an enjoyable week with them and established what became a tradition of ‘’paint your own pottery’’. This consisted of me throwing a mug and everyone decorated their own to take home. They turned out great with Amy having an advantage having done it before.
Amy and Rob went to Vancouver Island for a couple of days and we took Alora and Isaac beachcombing and found all kinds of strange sea life. They also camped in the tent with Papa and cooked marshmallows and hot dogs on the fire.
When Amy and Rob returned we had a golf day at the local 9 hole course. Luckily it is not busy so we were able to play with the 6 of us all needing many shots and much time searching in the bush for balls, to play without disturbing more adept players. It was a lot of fun.
After they left Dave, Arianne and Alex arrived from Hong Kong. It was lovely to see them. We had not met 20 month old Alex before and had not seen Arianne, now 6, for 3 years. She is still a sweet princess girl who you can not help but love. Alex is as much a “boy” as Arianne is a “girl” and he is very busy driving cars and other boy things. One morning when we went to start our car the battery was flat as he had been driving it as it was parked at the back of the house and must have pushed one too many buttons. He is very happy and we loved having them. Arianne had a night in the tent with Papa also.
Becca was visiting friends in Vancouver for the first part of the visit and Dave had to leave to go to Portland and she took the kids to visit her family in Ontario. Before they left everyone painted their mugs, Dave likening his to the equivalent of his kindergarten efforts!!
We were so sad when they left as they are the ones we get to see the least. Perhaps if we get the boat to Thailand we will see them for longer.
Next visitor was Kristen with Adelyn and Grayson. They were here for almost 4 weeks so it was lovely to have them that long. A routine was established where we would go to the beach each morning and come back in time for afternoon naps. The weather which has been great since we arrived continued to be sunny and the lake water is very warm. Kristen who is doing a triathlon in September was able to practice her swimming and biking. The kids had a lot of fun and it was fun to see Grayson who is now walking well learn a new word each day. Adelyn is a little “toughy” and manages to walk up our long steep driveway on her own---“the strongest girl in the world” as she will proclaim.
Kyle arrived for the last half and Ken arranged for Barry who has been here several times to take him out to their “secret fishing spot” and they came home with several huge ling cod and a pile of crabs.
They left but as I am going to Ottawa on my way back to NZ it was not a long farewell.
During their visit they had friends come here so we went to visit our friends Roz and Bob at Comox.
They had visited us on the boat in Costa Rica so it was fun to see them again. The Filberg Festival was on at the time, it is the largest summer festival in Western Canada and I was able to reconnect with many crafts people I had known in the past.
The next event in our busy summer was Diana and Brian, our very best friends from Calgary, daughter Andrea’s wedding in Vancouver. We went over and enjoyed seeing many of our old friends and acquaintances. Jack and Judy who we had not seen since they were on our boat in the Galapagos were there so it was great to see them. The weather was lovely and Vancouver provided the setting for a beautiful wedding.
After the wedding several friends came over for the day and we had an enjoyable lunch with them on our deck.
It seems as though we have had no time for rest and relaxation—with our guest and my pottery and Ken got a job part time helping out the dive shop—it has been a busy but enjoyable summer.
Mike is coming out again on Sunday and hopefully we can arrange for Barry to come and take us all fishing again. Mind you the freezer is full of fish so am not sure what to do if and when they catch something.
We are at the height of blackberry season and SS has so much fresh produce—and of course it is all organic—this is the riding that Elizabeth May, the leader of the Green Party hopes to run and win in!!!—hmmmm!!!
It seems that although the summer is winding down we will have another month to enjoy our lives here before getting the cottage ready to rent to a nice young man we know for the next 2 years when we will reevaluate our future.