wednesday.

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late last october, Belinda did a round-the-world tour, and made a stop in Welland on her way through Canada!  this is a sneak peek into her visit…

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wednesday.

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last week involved a LOT of travel.

I started out from welland.

headed to kingston to drop off tashie.

then to montreal to visit philip.

then to ottawa to visit heather.

then to kemptville for the week for a course.

then back to ottawa to see heather and pascale et michel.

then back to montreal to enjoy my birthday long weekend.

then kingston to visit mom and dad and pick up the doggie.

and back to welland.

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along the way, over the course of two weeks, I got to see some pretty beautiful skies.  and now that I download them, I notice are all also very similar.  must be this time of year…

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monday.

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last month the ham fam descended in ktown, and dana, ashley and philip joined us for the may long weekend.

on sunday we decided to take a little day trip into prince edward county.

so we drove out to the ferry…

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monday.

quick!
time for an update.

and since it’s christmas time, once again we’re off to kingston…

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after the traditional exchange of weird and wonderful gifts…

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it was time to get dinner ready…

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and enjoy another yummy homecooked meal.

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I stayed in kingston for a few days and hung out with the family.

and now I’m back home, heading to work tomorrow, and likely heading back east for more visiting this weekend.

…but now it’s time to tidy the house from the aftermath of the christmas-present-wrapping path of destruction that I left behind before I left.

yech.

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thursday.

so it turns out I’ve had these SNOWMAGEDDON photos uploaded to the blog for weeks now, but never got around to writing a new entry for them. typical speedyness of yours truly. sorry for the extreme delay.

so to set the stage – it’s about a week and a half before christmas and we hear that snowmageddon is on it’s way to niagara, and pretty much the rest of ontario too. so martin and I decide hey, let’s drive to hamilton for the night, stay over with dana, and go out and shake some cans. so we did. when we woke up the next morning for the usual 1 hour drive back to welland, well, it was a tad snowy. and the 1 hour drive took 3 hours. here is the aftermath:

my new house with snow and christmas lights a-blarin…

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martin shovelling (but not smoking, I’d like to point out)…

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me coming in from the snow…

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the view of the snow from the porch windows…

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and the snow in the backyard…

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the snowbanks were HUUUUGE before we left for our christmas holiday in ktown. HP helped to spread the snow around onto the street…

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and apparently we have snowplow tractors for our neighborhood snow removal needs. here’s the tractor after pushing all the snow from the intersection into our yard. the snowbank on that corner was massive…

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and here are martin and HP being very productive…

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and then after that, for the next 3 days… more snow…

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so after the snowstorm(s), we packed up the dogs and the car, and off to kingston we went for our christmas holiday. here I am on one of our pit stops along the way…

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and a cool rusty old sign we found at said pitstop (it was the pitstop to nowhere!)…

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here are lisa and I decorating the hamilton family christmas tree. very tinselly.

christmas was fun. this was the first christmas in YEARS that I’ve spent with my family. we never got together over christmas when I was in vancouver because the weather out here is just too unpredictable at that time of year, and you almost always see news stories of people stranded in airports for days on end because all flights have been cancelled. and I was never keen to end up being one of those stranded people. so visits were mostly limited to the summer months.

we had turkey and fixins again, which was AWESOME. we did the whole present thing, and got lots of swag. it snowed a lot, but then again, it snowed a lot EVERYWHERE over the holidays. on sunday we were originally going to head back to welland, but there was another snowstorm on its way and up to 100 km/h winds, so we decided to sit back and relax and head back on monday.

so on monday we arrived back in welland around 5:30 or 6pm, just as it was getting dark. I told martin I’d put the dogs in the backyard so that we can unpack the car easier. I swung open the back gate and peered into the yard as the dogs rushed in. hmmm, strange.

I sez: “hey martin?”
he sez: “yeah, go”
so I sez: “ummm, the shed is gone”
so he sez: “what do you mean, gone?”
so I sez: “I mean: gone.”

so we investemagated.

this is what we found…

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and this is what martin ended up doing the next day…

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so no more shed. and it was no small shed either, it was pretty big. as you may recall…

aw crap.

but I don’t think we’re going to get a new one this year. I’m planning on putting in a veggie garden and hopefully start a flower garden, and we don’t have anything other than a lawnmower to put in a shed right now (except we don’t actually own a lawnmower yet either, but we will once the grass starts to grow!), so I’m going to wait until (a) they go on sale next fall, or (b) I miraculously come up with the extra cash.

and things have been not-terribly-exciting ever since.
except I found out the other day that we have a neighbor who brings his dog over to our house when tasha is out, so that his dog (and presumably tasha as well) can get some excercise.

apparently they do this for 15 or 20 minutes.

I call it tasha’s treadmill…

that’s all for now folks.

next up: the new aquarium!
and I promise it’ll be up soon.

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