At the Lake

At the end of July Mom texted me saying she was going on a last minute trip the next day to Nellie Lake to see Grandma. After a furious day of texting, planning, and making sure the boys didn't kill each other while I was distracted, we decided to take my van up and bring the boys.

They were SO good on the 9 hour drive, it was kind of unbelievable. When we got up to bonafide Northern Ontario territory, they were blasting the rock cuts on the side of the road. I had to take pictures, it makes me all nostalgic to see that. Also, I've been called a liar by certain southerners who don't believe that they use mats made of old tires to keep the rock from flying too far when they do the blasting.

The boys were pretty sceptical when I described Grandma's house. I could see the disbelief in their faces, what do you mean she has a lake and a beach in her back yard? And you can just pick blueberries and raspberries off the bushes in her front yard? If they had known the word, they would have called bullshit on me! And then we got there, and it was even better than they could have imagined.

Grandma's house from her beach

The neighbor's favourite mode of transportation

(All of these pictures were taken with my phone, I wish I had thought to use a better camera, but my phone is what I had with me)

We saw family, friends, and had lots of adventures. Mom had to leave after a few days to go back to work, but the boys and I stayed on so we would get to visit with Lise and Ashwyn who were coming all the way from Wales! I have so many pictures from this visit, so I'm going to resort to a barely narrated photo dump post. Enjoy!

We saw an AGFA poster in the radiology department at the Iroquois Falls hospital :)

Felix was fascinated with the chipmunks. Arthur liked them but didn't want them coming too close. Felix took the same approach he took with all the other wildlife (including Grandma's cat), which was to chase the poor thing while screaming it's "name". Chipmunks got special treatment in that they not only had a toddler screaming "chippy!!" at them, but he was also hucking peanuts at them.

The boys were away from home for a long time, about halfway through they started sharing a bed. I would come to bed later to find them snuggled up or holding hands. It was heart breakingly cute.

It was the 100th anniversary of the town (Iroquois Falls) so I picked up a couple shirts for the boys and Grandma got some flags to match.

The boys got to do some blueberry picking. REAL blueberries, not the swollen flavourless things we get here…and they loved it. Felix got really efficient at it, and not a single blueberry he picked went anywhere but in his mouth.

Arthur was very excited to uncover a "t-rex tooth". It was actually a stone in the driveway, not that we told him that. He would go check on it every day, thinking there was an entire t-rex skeleton under there.

And this post is big enough. Photo dump part two will commence shortly!