Paulette

The benefits of the solar heating are already being noticed by more than me.  Here’s proof:

It’s been 2 summers since Kathryn last swam in our pool.  Oh she’s been in up to her waist or her knees a couple of times attempting to make it all the way in.  She always backs out and claims it is too cold.  She is tiny and doesn’t have a layer to keep her warm.

Now the water is staying at a warm temperature just in time as the summer sun finally arrives in Ottawa.  She actually went in today by herself.

You can’t imagine how good it feels to reach down to the jet of water coming into the pool and feel the heat!  I keep saying “I love free heat”.  Dave reminds me that it isn’t free, we did pay a lot for the solar panels.  That is true but from here forward there is no added expense. 

I love free heat.

I had lunch today with Paul.  He is my cousin Liane’s husband.  We lost Liane almost 2 years ago.

Tuesday the 29th would have been her 52nd birthday.  We had lunch and got caught up.  We talked about Liane.  The loss is still great.

It’s my brother Peter’s birthday today.  Happy 49th birthday!

Next year is the big 50!

Twice in one week?  Sometimes that happens.

Peter & Kathy missed last week’s family get together so we did it again.  We had hoped that the kitchen would be operational by now but it wasn’t.   We had no time to prepare so we opted for pizza this time.

It is Peter’s birthday on Tuesday.  We celebrated with a cake.

Here’s a shot of the gang.

More pictures here:  http://briangarson.com/contacts/grenons

Dave and Ruby had us over for dinner tonight.  Another “Garage Kitchen” rescue from caring people.

We had Dave’s famous “Maple glazed cedar planked salmon”.  It was delicious!

I’ve worked with Dave for over 10 years now.  He’s been a good work buddy.

He and Ruby are definitely at the top of the list for an invite once we have our kitchen back.

Guy (a.k.a. Roger) , Melanie and Faith are in town for a few weeks.  They came up from Texas where they’ve been escaping our winters for the past 10 years.

We had a BBQ with Mom & Dad.  We enjoyed the pool and managed to get through most of dinner before a little rain showered down on us.  We scrambled to get things put away.

The shower didn’t last very long and we were able to stay outside which is a good thing since we don’t have an inside to go to.

Faith was a lot of fun to be with.  She has changed a lot since we saw her in Texas in October.  She is conversing more and growing up fast.

We had lots to eat and lots of laughs.  I totally forgot to take pictures.

We’ll try to do it again before they leave.

Today is Kathryn’s birthday.

She can’t have a regular cake so no cake picture!

Kat has been eating very healthy foods with no preservatives etc.  Lately we’ve been eating a lot of homemade yogurt.  She wanted to try making frozen yogurt so we bought her an ice cream maker for her birthday.

We tried making frozen yogurt and after 30 minutes of it swirling around it didn’t seem to be getting solid.  She took the mixture and put it in a bowl in the freezer.

The next day we took it out and it scooped just like frozen yogurt.  It worked!   We are going to be trying some flavoured frozen yogurt too.

Here’s the birthday girl.

Happy Birthday!

Love Mom & Dad

We had a family get together at Ken & Amy’s today.  They had the whole family over for a BBQ and as usual it was amazing.

Amy always puts out a wonderful feast with a variety that compares to no ones.  With all the good food available the highlight and anticipation is always for “Aunt Amy’s famous brownies”.

We had a special guest this year.  Iso, a childhood friend of Granny’s was over for a visit.  It was nice to see her again.

Thanks Ken & Amy!

Carla was generous enough to offer the kids a wall unit they no longer needed. Kat decided she could use it in her new house.

It has glass doors and glass shelves. Carla took the doors off for us so that all we had to do was move it. Dave and Paul manage to bring all 3 units up the stairs and out of the house without damaging any walls along the way.

We used our trailer to move them thinking we could fit all 3 in it at once. But they didn’t all fit so we made 2 trips to Hong’s house. The plan is to store them in their basement until Kat & Hong move in March ‘09.

The units didn’t fit down the basement stairs so we opted to leave them in the garage until Brian moves out in Sept ‘08 then we can store them in our basement. Whew!

We decided to bring the doors here since it all ends up here anyway. When we unloaded at our place the 2 long doors were broken in half. Oh oh…

We’ll wait and see whether they want to replace them or not. I guess we aren’t very good movers.