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I am pooped. I haven’t been sleeping well. Why am I so bad at sleeping???

It’s been fun here so far. It’s also been really cold, like -15ºC, and then another 10ºC of windchill. I haven’t experienced this weather in a long long time. Maybe rainy Vancouver isn’t so so bad.


We played Wasabe. Rosemarie and I tied.

I think it would be fun to actually gather all the ingredients in the game, and every time you complete a roll you actually get to make it and we all get to eat it. That would be awesome, except some of the ingredients are strange like urchin and blowfish.


On Wednesday Rose and I went for a quick snowshoe in the forest behind our house. We didn’t go very fast. Very leisurely.


It’s hard to make a snow angel in snowshoes.

The Haberl kids dropped by for a quick visit, and then we had dinner with Kate’s kids.

Yesterday was good. I met up with Lauren and Sarah Swan for shawarmas downtown. I consider shawarma an Ottawa thing. We were going to go trampolining after that but then decided not to, and to get bubble tea instead. Sarah knew a good place that lets you substitute the tea with water, so no caffeine. The place also can serve the bubble tea hot, instead of icy, which is much more appropriate on a day like yesterday.

I actually ended up ordering a strawberry yoduly bubble tea with pearls, which had no tea at all. It was made with drinkable yogurt and real strawberries and was extremely extremely delicious. I want to go back to that place!!! This is the place, if you are in Ottawa and want to check it out: http://www.letseat.at/MySweeTea

After bubble tea I met up with the Ace Gang for our first reunion since Christmas 2008, I think. (The Christmas we were all in Sydney together.)

It was fun catching up, and we went out for dinner at the Clocktower near Leslie’s place and my bacon, apple, and dill sandwich on a potato bun was really yummy. We took a picture, but I don’t have a copy. I would make a terrible photo journalist.


Oh and here is Rosemarie with her secret santa gift in Vancouver. Scott made her a sushi kit with every single possible thing she would need to make sushi: rice, nori, sushi mat, rice vinegar, wasabe, ginger, chopsticks etc etc. I think she liked it.

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Every Ottawaian (sp?) knows that Canada Day in Ottawa is the best. I planned our trip so that we could spend Canada Day there! And this years’ party did not disappoint. I had a top notch day.

We started off the day with Rosemarie, busing downtown and going to the Museum of Nature to look at bugs and freak animals. After that we went to the hill to see the crowds.

Her and I scarfed down a poutine surrounded by people all crowded around trying to get a glimpse of Will and Kate. We didn’t see anything really, only on the video screen.

Then she went off to meet her friends and Scott and I went to a party at Leslie’s for beer, Canadian music and patriotic snacks.

After a few hours of that we headed back to Parliament Hill to stake out a spot for the evening concert. We met up with way more people and had quite a large group. I thought the concert was actually better than usual. I had actually heard of some of the bands (ha) and even heard a new guy that I really like (Dan Mangan). There were acrobatics and drumming too.

Scott and I snuck out about 20 minutes early to race around to Major’s Hill Park where we grabbed a nutritious dinner (a popsicle) and watched an unobstructed view of the fireworks. Noice.

It took us ages to get home due to some unusual bus patterns but we made it home (reunited with Rosemarie) where we scrubbed off the sweaty filth of the day and ate a midnight snack of two kinds of cheese and two kinds of crackers. Awesome.

Ummm then the next day (the last day), we did some frantic packing and a quick coffee with the scrapbook ladies and then Jill drove us to the airport. Our flight back was uneventful.

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THURSDAY did errands and packed up and sorted a lot of stuff from my old room. Scott and I made banh mi for dinner and then we rushed off for games night at the Haberl’s house.

Tons o’ games. Tons o’ friends. Homemade salsa (thanks Natasha!) and beer and cider and champagne.

At one point we had THREE simultaneous games of Settlers going on. Awesome.

There was also birthday cheesecake for David and I. :D

quality picture taking Katrina :/

Finished the night off drinking games and beer pong and then crawled up to (the ultra comfy) bed.

It was a really fun day. I especially like that all my friends are becoming friends with each other too! Thank you Monica for planning it.

Next morning I didn’t feel that great but we had to come home fairly early to catch dad and Kate to say goodbye before they left for the cottage. We did a little more box sorting and C-Day planning and then Rosemarie, Scott and I bused downtown for Canada Day. Stay tuned for the next entry!

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On Wednesday we went to Calypso water park. It was very cold (about 14ºC if I remember correctly), cloudy, and it even rained quite hard for a while. But a combination of warm water, a lot of stairs, and great company meant we still had an awesome day. There were NO LINES. I think the max time we had to wait was about 5 minutes, and really most of the time we just climbed right in. We got to try every slide, and lots more than once.

We climbed SO MANY STAIRS. It was especially apparent after climbing the new slide tower two times in a row with no breaks. Rosemarie calculated that we climbed the equivalent of about 170 stories throughout the day! OMG! No wonder my legs were all wobbly.

Mandatory water park shot

The new waterslide tower. 10 stories tall!!

AQUALOOP!!!

4 toilet slides (2 with tubes, 2 without)

Family slides are the best slides

Mega racing, and two mega wedgie inducing slides

The park was soooooooo busy. Haha

Oh and the lazy river, kids play area, and crazy wave pool were also awesome. We went in those about every 4 slides or so to warm up.

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After the party everyone left but Scott and I got to stay at the Monnon’s overnight. We watched the video my dad made (which we forgot to get a copy of… oops!!) again and looked at some of the pictures from the day. Then we crawled to our guest suite, aka the Monnon’s enormous campervan that is actually 100 square feet BIGGER THAN OUR APARTMENT. IT HAS A KING SIZE BED! Unfortunately it took me about 5 hours to fall asleep from all the adrenaline of the big day, and possibly the chocolate cake.

The next day was warm and sunny so (after a quick couple games of Settlers) we headed out into the water for boating, tubing, kneeboarding, and jetskiing. It was awesome. They even let me drive the jetski!

Life jacket issues

Calm

Medium

EXTREME!

Out on the boat

Chillin'

Then we came home, ate party leftovers for dinner, and played games with Rosemarie.

Up to Tuesday now. We did some typical tourist things during the day. Picnic lunch by the river, War Museum, market, Lois N’ Frima’s. I’d never been to the museum before, so that was neat. I learned some things that I don’t think I caught in Mr. Couturier’s grade 10 histoire class. I have to say thought that after finishing the WWII section I was quite war-ed out and was ready to leave. So we caught the bus to the market and scarfed down some ice cream before it melted down our arms (semi successfully). It was really hot out.

View from Mackenzie King bridge on a muggy Ottawa day

What a great look for Scott

Then bused over for dinner at my aunt and uncles’ house with my cousin as well. Lots of chatting and quite delicious veggie burgers (Costco brand!). I’m not sold on those weird thin buns for burgers though. :D

Since Rose didn’t have to work the next day we stayed up quite late playing the new game she gave us, Carcasonne. I like it so far, but we’re all still getting the hang of it. It’s not as complicated as some of the others ones though, although we did have to do some Googling for tile clarification!

Playing Carcasonne