We're having a great time so far!

 

Flight on Zoom was great - we left early and arrived 45 minutes early! Thankfully Aunt Diane had checked ahead to see our schedule so she was waiting at the airport for us when we arrived. After stopping by her house to unpack and freshen up Diane took us to Arundel to see Arundel Castle , and wander the town for a bit. Got some great photos that I'll put on Flickr when we get back.

 

After, we went for supper at a pub close by with her cousin Richard and his wife Shirley. We had a few good laughs, drinks and a good meal to boot. Erin had to nudge me a few times on the way home to keep me awake and we finally surrendered to our exhaustion by 8:00 pm… 12 short hours later, Aunt Diane, gave a knock on the door to get us up to start the next day.

 

We spent a great day in London yesterday. We bought a couple of tickets on the hop-on/hop-off tour buses and managed to pack in a pretty good sampler tour of London . We actually ended up getting on and off several times as we made our way around the city. We stopped at Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square , & Harrods, wandered around China town & Soho then ultimately ended up at the South Bank for a stroll. We had dinner overlooking St. Paul 's Cathedral as the sun set on the water and then hit a few pubs as we made our way back to Victoria Station to take the train back to Diane's.

 

Today, Alex and Marcus are joining Aunt Diane and us for a trip to Portsmouth… and tomorrow we're spending the morning with Ros and Robin. Hope the weather holds – so far we've had good luck!

 

Erin & I are off for a quick long weekend in London. Oliver is getting a weekend off of his own with Grammy & Grandpa.

We're both looking forward to seeing some of the Coleman's on the other side of "the pond" and enjoying a whirlwind tour of London.

Labour day has passed and with it comes the (almost) end of another great season of cottaging. I say almost as there's still a couple of weekends left to go up for close up etc (and maybe a weekend of winter cottaging) but after labour day it's a very different (and equally as fun) experience up north.

Erin, Oliver and I didn't get up as much as we would have liked to this year (of course anything less then moving up Victoria Day and coming back at Thanksgiving would qualify as "not getting up often enough") but while we were up there it was a ton of fun. We were worried at first that this year would be nothing but chaos as we chased a now-mobile Oliver around the property but it turned out to actually be a little easier this year rather than last.

One great help was the new deck across the front of the cottage - we had it for the end of last season but Oliver didn't start walking until Labour Day weeked '05. This year he had a good 50 feet of "fenced in" deck to run free on, so Erin and I could sit out there with him and but not have to be always on top of him.

As the previous post indicates it was also a bit of an exciting year as well. Right before the August long weekend our chain of lakes was hit by a pair of tornados (F0 & an F1). Thankfully no one was injured, power was down for only a few days and the community rallied together to get everything cleaned up.

An extra little bit of excitement came as Jim finished the pine ceilings in all of the bedrooms! Needless to say everyone is glad to have the pink insulation and plastic sheets covered up. The ceilings look great and Erin and I both look forward to waking up to them each morning.

The slideshow below is of all the photos from the 2006 season:



All the photos can also be seen here.