Fun in the Sun

It's come to my attention that we haven't expanded on the kids summer vacation. And considering they have an astronomical amount of time off school they have been up to quite a bit besides cottaging.

Watch out Karate Kid, Cam now knows all your secret moves after spending a week at, you guessed it, "Karate" camp. Along with his friend Oliver, Cam came home every day pretty exhausted, which is the point. Cam had some mixed emotions about his time there, we had a few separation anxieties when it was my turn to drop off the boys. I even committed the sin of taking him back home with me to put him in bed for extra sleep. All in all, by Friday PM pick up I am pleased to report that he had liked his action packed week; although the Thai Chi was a little boring.

We then had a few slow weeks where we bummed around the house and caught up with some friends. We had a walk in the ravine with Angela and her girls one Thursday and got caught in a huge downpour, only to be caught again in another huge downpour that night at Abbie's soccer. Wouldn't you know it, it was our turn to coach and once the rain stopped our wet Blue Jets wouldn't move and lost pretty badly. That was the Thursday before the tournament and if you have been keeping up to date know that they did actually win and have the bling to prove it:)

As we had a messy June with our renting situation, Andy and I were in no mood to be planning birthday parties. So poor old Jas and Abs had to wait and Abbie is still waiting. I had bought Jasmine a Nancy Drew mystery CD game at a bargain price of $5 at Walmart thinking it would pump up her pressies. It was only when she opened it that we realised that it was a host-a-mystery party game, so viola! We had a party plan. So date set, out went the invitations and we have a Nancy Drew/Dinner party/movie/sleep-over. We first sent off the mini detectives on a training exercise, armed with photos of sections of the ravine where there were hidden balloons with numbers on them. They then had to add them all up to get the magic number being our phone number(yes you can use math everyday).As we have never been involved with a mystery game it was hard to know how it would go down. Luckily it all turned out fine. We had set up several rooms, one for the crime scene, Nancy's room, a Cyber Cafe, a mystics room and police station. We had 9 kids running from room to room, going onto the Nancy Drew's website for clues, they even had to ring a phone number for a secret message. Eventually the mystery was solved and everyone could sit down for dinner. After watching a movie I took the girls on a midnight walk (at 11pm!) through the ravine which freaked a few kids out but no one was lost. I think everyone pretty much went to sleep by about 12.30am so it wasn't too bad. Although the kids weren't too pleased to see their parents in the morning i can assure you Andy and I made them feel wanted:) So one party down two more to go.

We were a little late getting our pool up this summer. With a few dramas on the way, such as a family of mice chomping on the old pool, we eventually got there. They are so much fun, even Andy and I go for a swim around and around as that's all you can really do. It's definately great entertainment and all the neighbours know when we are home. I think that our pool has had more use than some of the bigger in-ground pools around us.

Abbie was at a summer sizzlers camp last week with her friend Amber. These camps are run by the Parks and Rec centres, and a bunch of teens try their hand at amusing the kids with heaps of activities. Abbie really enjoyed the art side of things and came home with a painted bird house and other stuff.This week Jasmine and Abbie are attending a Theatre camp. Out of all the camps this is a big hit. After only one day i've had an earful of everything they have been doing. This is right up their alley, and at the end of the week Andy and I get to watch them in action as they will both be preforming a play. You'll never guess it, but Jasmine is one of the main characters, she's pretty chuffed.

While the girls are away it's the last time Cam and I will spend alone before the new school year starts. You may be thinking that I may get teary and maybe I will; but my future of free time is looking pretty good right now. It means getting to the gym regularly and more tennis until they bring down the nets. Until then Cam and I have this little time together, although at the moment he is at a friend's house and he had a friend over yesterday and I'm not sure how tomorrow will pan out; but I'm sure we'll spend some time together :).

Jo, out.

Muskoka Madness

We're just back from our second lake cottage get-away of the season, this time thanks to the outstanding hospitality of the Emersons and the awesome Lake Muskoka. It's the Toorak of cottage country and it's not hard to see why with the multi-million dollar cottages, all much grander and lavish than our home in Oakville. Kent and Aleyks have rented the same place for the last several years and it's not hard to see why. The owners have built themselves quite a compound with 3 'cottages' (aka mansions) four docks, two boat houses and two floating rafts mored just off shore. A natural spring trickles clear, cold water down the rocky shoreline into the lake. Pretty hard to take, check out the panorama I took from a boathouse upper deck.We left after the peak hour traffic on Thursday morning and took the 2 hour drive through Gravenhurst to the small town of Torrance on the south shores of Lake Muskoka. Kent had picked up a 175hp jet boat the day before and we wasted no time getting the kids into a fantastic 'biscuit' and towing them around the lake at a high clip. I also got back on water skis and tried a little too hard to improve on my last outing, mostly resulting in high speed wipe-outs, a headache and my balls as earrings at one point. I was pretty happy to get straight back up though so that was good and I wasn't as sore as last time, but that's relative, I was really sore last time. Jo also had a go and did get up although only briefly, the photos on Flickr show her out of the water nicely. I then took Kent for a spin and succeeded in putting him down really hard by driving the boat far too fast, poor guy. I hope he's forgiven me, I think the spray from his stack is still raining down on the lake right now.But despite that he got right back up, kicked off onto a single ski (no mean feat at 25 knots) and showed us how it's done with some outstanding slalom skiing. We spent heaps of time in the boat, which could hold everyone at once. The kids loved the water which was a great temp and spent time swimming between the rafts and scooting around in the kayak and canoe. We dropped the kids off at a small island in the middle of the lake, Exile Island as it became known as. Stocked with some water and snacks we left them there for an adventure and they hollered to us back on shore when they'd had enough (actually Cam fell into the water without his life jacket and they had to 'rescue' him which dampened their spirits a little). At night we had a fire and toasted marshmallows and wieners and were pleasantly surprised to not be bothered by mossies at all. The kids spotted a large turtle in the main boathouse which was pretty cool and we saw several loons diving for fish in the lake. Friday was the better day weather-wise with blue skies and a cool breeze. We headed out into a larger part of the lake to Ship Island, a small rocky bird reserve populated by lots of cranes. We stopped about 50 meters off shore and all enjoyed the warm lake water by diving off the boat.We drank Corona's, margaritas and Caesars, ate like kings, swam, boated, watched a float-plane land in the lake and got heaps of sun. The kids were awesome together and all us parents enjoyed ourselves at least as much. Today we're back home and all a little 'done', back to work tomorrow for a rest [grin].

Andy, out.