Last Newfoundland Post

This is the last Newfoundland post. After this I'll have to try and catch up on all the goings on since we got back to Ontario. I even have a finished knitting project to show (I know!).

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We spent some time at DH's parents cottage on Bonne Bay Pond, just a little south of Gros Morne National Park. It's very nice and peaceful down there and we always try to go even if it is just for one night.

We went to the beach while we were there and Jillian had fun getting in and getting wet but Claire preferred her water play on a smaller scale:

My mother in law got out a bunch of kitchen utensils including a funnel and an egg beater and Claire sat on the deck and played for an hour or so. I love that she's got water in a cured pork riblets bucket. How Newfoundland is THAT?

That evening we went to the shore to have a small fire and make s'mores. My in-laws have a contraption for frying fish that works well for making s'mores. I just pre-assembled them in the little dips in the tray, closed it up and roasted it over the fire till the chocolate got melty.

Claire liked helping make them but she wouldn't eat them. She kept asking for "raw marshmallows" instead. She was also a bit more fascinated with the fire than I'd have liked and DH resorted to drawing a "little girl line" in the sand that she was not allowed to cross. After that she was quite fierce in her policing of the line. Nobody was allowed to cross it.

Jillian, typically, had no qualms about eating smores. It was messy but she loved it:

I hate that the right side of this photo is shaded. Seems that if I am close to a subject and using my flash, my nice long zoom lens shades the world from the light from the flash. Maybe time to start researching good flashes.

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Another day, while my aunt was visiting, we went for a scenic drive along the Bay of Islands out to Bottle Cove (and the ocean). Claire did a little bit of wading in the cold North Atlantic but Jillian quickly immersed herself. We didn't have swimsuits or extra clothes...nothing. But who can care when the kids have this much fun:

That's my awesome Aunt Janet holding Jilla in the surf, "Look Mom...I swimmin'".

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The girls and I stayed for a week after DH went back to Ontario and once he left, the weather improved vastly. I even got to go to my parents cottage for a couple of afternoons to relax. On the last weekend I was there, my cousin Tanya came to visit and the whole family went to the lake.

I guess it was because of the Olympics but my mother remembered how Tanya and I used to foolishly pretend we could syncronize swim when we were kids. She all but forced us out into the lake for an encore performance (it was coooooold). I'll spare you the many photos she took while we were out there but here we are warming up (that's Tanya standing up and me with my leg in the air):


We laughed and laughed as if we were nine again. In the end I was glad Mom sent us out there.

After we came in and got dried off, Jillian noticed that we had wet hair. She was utterly fascinated by it and kept talking about it and touching my head. After a bit she announced that she too wanted wet hair and when we looked, she was doing this:

Too funny!

Also, remember how when we were in Rose Blanche (last post) we went searching in bogs for cute frogs? Well, one day at the lake, we must have seen hundreds of them in the lake. It was freaky. I was getting ready to either a) call Environment Canada to see what was up or b) hook up with Moses for the trip to the land of milk and honey. Next time we were out I went to see how the plague was progressing and I couldn't find even one frog. It was strange. Now I wonder if frogs have some sort of go-ashore-and-mate day or something.

Ok...all caught up on the family vacay. Back to reality next time.

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.

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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):



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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.

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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.

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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!