More Newfoundland Vacation

We've been back from Newfoundland for a while but I haven't managed to find the time or energy or attention span to do much blogging till now. My seasonal allergies hit me full force the moment I got off the plane in Toronto and I can hardly stand to be upright, let alone stare at this monitor, for more than short stints of time. I'm allergic in both spring and fall but fall is especially bad because my eyes get really itchy and photosensitive. Nothing I do, not even prescription eye drops, helps. I hate to say it but I'm praying for frost.

In other news, Miss Claire starts at Junior Kindergarten tomorrow (how'd THAT happen?) and I start back to work on her school days and so life will settle back into a routine by early next week. Maybe I'll have more blogging energy then.

Till then, I want to devote a little more blog space to our Newfoundland vacation. This blog is the closest thing I have to a baby book or scrapbook or family journal so if I don't write things here they vanish.

While we were home, we spent a weekend in the small outport of Rose Blanche. Both of my parents are from there and I still have some relatives out there that I like to visit.

1-2:
Shortly after we arrived we took the kids for a walk out to the lighthouse. We had been telling the girls that we'd see the ocean and they really liked staring out at the water:

Jillian announced "dis is ma favwit oshun" over and over again. They're Newfoundlanders at heart, I'm sure of it.

I snapped this pic out by the lighthouse too. Claire likes picking wildflowers and giving them to all the girls she knows. I think the shirt says it all though (my good friend gave it to her):



3-4:
After dinner, my uncle asked if DH and I wanted to go fishing. We both love going out in the boat and catching a few cod so we jumped at the chance. Here's my Uncle Cliff driving the boat with his house in the background (the red one):


I didn't take many photos while we were fishing because I was having too much fun. When we got back to shore, Uncle Cliff sat on the wharf and started cleaning the fish. The girls came down to watch and Jillian was really into it:

She looked in that big stinky bucket and talked about the fish for a long time. Then my uncle starting giving her gross things like fish skin so she could throw it out in the water. She'd grab it and squeal with delight and toss it over and then they'd watch all the little fish eat what she threw. Fish guts...hours of entertainment. Urk.

5-9:
The next day we went "frog hunting" on the old road to Harbour le Cou. The road is lined with little tiny ponds and bogs and are a hotbed of amphibian life. My aunt put handles on a couple of ice cream tubs and for frog catching:

It was a bit of a misty morning and we thought there would be dozens of frogs around but we didn't find any. It was frustrating. The kids were losing patience. Did we give up and go home? Nope. My dad went offroading:


Here he is pointing at the bog with a frog in it.

We modified one of the buckets to try and catch the frog to show to the girls:


But he was too smart and too fast. All I got was a photo:

Oh well...it was fun anyway.

10:
All too soon, it was time to head back to Corner Brook. Just before we left, my 99 year old grandfather sat down on the floor to talk to Jillian. She had taken a bit of a shine to Poppy and decided that he needed kisses before we went:

CUTE!