Looking back on 2014

LOOKING BACK ON 2014!

Last year I wrote my review but never got around to posting it, so I posted 2013 and 2014 at the same time!

January: The start to the year was the continuation of miserable winter weather; ice storms and heavy snow falls damaged more trees and my commute turned into a 2.5 hr drive from hell on some days!
A pic of our driveway...

Just joking.. but that's what it felt like!
Here's our real driveway...

February: Still cold. We warmed ourselves up with all you can eat Chinese buffet to celebrate several February birthdays in Ryan's family! In this pic is his Papa Randal, Nanny Mary, Sister Ralene, Mum Renee and Nephew Mason.

 

 

Even the kitty cats were cold...

 

April: Mum, dad and family friend Miranda came out to visit for a week before heading off to the boat. I couldn't believe that there was still on snow on the ground at this point! Never the less we got cracking on landscaping around the pool (to our dismay the soil was still frozen hard...didn't plan on that!) We took a touristy trip to Niagara Falls, one of my favourite places! We played arcade games and I even persuaded them to do a round of dinosaur mini golf.. hurrah!

Pool before

 Pool after

April: Ryan and I flew down to Washington DC the next week with my mum and dad. The yacht was moored in Norfolk, Virginia, a few hours south of DC. We were super impressed with all the (free) Smithsonian museums , and the city was absolutely beautiful with lots of cherry blossoms in full bloom. I would say it's the nicest city in America that I've been.

 

Summer: Ryan and I decided not to go away and to just enjoy the house and the pool (which was such a novelty!) On Canada Day we took Mason to see a Toronto Blue Jays baseball game, his first ever!

 

July: Another visit from Mum and Dad, once again passing by on their way to the yacht, which was moored in Annapolis, MD. We took a trip to the CNE (Canadian National Exhibition), and I got free tickets to the airshow from work! The airshow was a bit disappointing, it was so hot everyone was huddled under trees for shade. However, the trees made it difficult to see any of the planes haha! We also had some of Ryan's family round to the house to meet my parents for the first time!

The week after, I headed down to DC alone this time to meet up with Paul, Dee, Derek (Dee's 4yr old son) Mum and Dad! It was a lot of fun and reminded me of all the great things and crappy things about boat life! (Mainly throwing up my breakfast burrito off the back of the boat whilst clinging on so I didn't fall overboard!) and wandering an hour to find a Chinese restaurant that didn't exist (oh google maps you let us down that day!) Let us never speak of that outing again.
We also visited the Smithsonian Zoo with Paul Dee and Derek. The best part was watching the lion cubs, but it made me sad that they were in captivity. It was fun but I don't think I'll visit zoos anymore. It just doesn't seem right.
Annapolis is just beautiful, mum and I liked to frequent the Starbucks with free wifi and I'd download our favourite shows to watch in the evening!

 

 

This summer we had an unexpected visitor at (or should I say IN) our house. A snake decided to start living in our exterior wall right by the front door. It used one of the ventilation holes to get in and out, and one day... if that isn't creepy enough... I found it's skin hanging out of the hole in the wall! Then my dad sent me a link on how garter snakes can lay 50 live baby snakes at once *shudder*.
I'd become quite fond of our little snakey friend, and after several failed attempts to humanely catch it, I waited until it was out of the wall then plugged up all the holes! I think it went to live under the deck which is fine with me!

In November we ended up taking a last minute trip to Cuba! We stayed at the Paradisus Rio de Oro in Holguin. It was a lovely resort and the Cuban people all seemed genuinely happy. Ryan's favourite thing was the swim up bar in the pool! It grossed me out a little though because we would see the same people sitting around the bar for literally hours and hours drinking....and it started to make us wonder where they are all peeing!!! My favourite part was definitely the coral reef off the beach, every day I'd go for a little snorkel, I saw an amazing chameleon fish. Ryan was a little nervous of the snorkelling and the first time he went in, he caught his hand on a rock and thought he'd been stunf by a sea urchin so he was flailing around all over the place!!

December we had a stressful time replacing the floors at the house, but we finally managed to get them done in time for Christmas! We were able to get away to Blue Mountain Resort for a night to celebrate Ryan's cousins birthday! It's like a mini whistler with "ski village" shops and nightlife. The slopes aren't anything like Whistler though! We had a great time and boogied the night away.

That's all I can think of for now. 2015 is going to be exciting because any day now we'll have the arrival of the very first grandbaby in the family. Paul's girlfriend Dee is due to have a little girl at the end of January! Until next year...

Looking back on 2013

                   Looking back on 2013!!

Wow I'm really late doing this blog this year, but as I've said before... Better late than never!! I like recapping the year because at first I think "well I didn't really do anything this year", but then when I really think about it I always come up with something!

February: Ryan and I went to Florida where we met my mum and dad, and Paul and Olly. We spent the first week in a rented Villa in Cape Coral, and the last 5 days we spent on a cruise to the Bahamas! 

Good things: playing jungle mini golf (this has to be one of my favourite things to do of all time!!), also meeting friends and playing stupid drinking games on the cruise "bar crawl". 

The not so good; the kayak tour through the mangroves was a bit of a let down, I was expecting snakes, and perhaps the odd alligator, but there were just tonnes of vines and a tour guide that acted just like Gareth Kenan!

 

 

Spring: this was my time to knuckle down at work. I was still training and in the most important stage of training. Spring/Summer got busy and I had to show that I could handle the traffic! There were some hairy moments that's for sure!

Summer: Paul and Dad bought an Oyster 55 yacht that was fire damaged (limited to the lounge area) and was sitting in a tiny town just north of Detroit, Mi. They came out and got to work on it, working like dogs for a few months and living in a hotel until it  was good enough to live on. I visited a couple of times since its only 4 or 5 ors away. The good; weeeeelll....there wasn't much good lets face it. The not-so-good: definitely when the marina girl gave me the keys for the washroom and said "it's just over there.."  I walked to said washroom, and went inside. Instantly I almost threw up, there was dried up shit in all the stalls and down some of the walls... I couldn't believe it! I went back and ranted to the marina girl. Turned out it was the WRONG washroom, and that one was "out of use for the season". Oops.

 

 

While Paul and Dad were visiting, Mum and Dan followed and stayed at our place in Brampton for the week. I took the opportunity to go with Paul and Dan to Canada's Wonderland, a massive theme park in Toronto. It was loads of fun going on the big coasters, but I had a shock when I started to feel nauseaus! I guess my aging boddy can't cope with coasters anymore!
 

Once the boat was looking reasonable, Mum and Danny came out to help launch it, and the.Olly and Angela came out and helped sail from Toronto down to Virginia! The good; visiting Michigan once the yacht was in the water and looking lovely. The not-so-good: the dingy ride!! I persuaded Ryan (who is wary of all things boaty) to take a dingy ride with Danny and I. He reluctantly agreed, and literally as soon as we set off, a storm hit and we got poured on with torrential rain and wind!! Needless to say he wasn't impressed!

 

August: Ryan's cousin and best friend Chad married his fiancée Kim. She is from a small beach town called Port Elgin, so they held the wedding there. The good: seeing Kim emerging from the shaded path onto the beach to walk down the isle, she was beautiful. The not-so-good: Ryan was wearing prescription sunglasses which he respectfully took off during the ceremony, leaving him unable to see anything the whole time!!!

 

August: August was a very special month for me because I qualified at work. Meaning, I am now a full air traffic controller. When I was training, had I not been successful, I would have been in danger of losing my job entirely. So it was quite a lot of pressure. Big thanks to my trainer Will who worked with me for a whole year, and was ultimately the person that qualified me.

 

Fall: Old family friend Jenny Barraclough and her boyfriend Michael came to visit for a few days on their trip across Canada to whistler! The good: visiting Niagara Falls, doing the maid of the mist! The not so good: the week before they visited it was summer, lovely and sunny and hot. The week they arrived, fall decided to come with them so the weather wasn't the best!

We saw Stereophonics play at the Danforth Music Hall, a super small veune in Toronto, how amazing!!

 

December: We bought a lovely house in Cambridge. I was dying to get out of our rental in Brampton, and I'm glad we did. Although the winter was to be one of the worst on record. There was a province-wide emergency after two huge ice storms hit and the sheer weight of the ice pulled down or damaged loads of trees and electric wires. Many people were left without power for 5 days leading up to Christmas Day. Luckily we had power the whole time, but we did have LOTS of tree damage that still hasn't been cleaned up! We will have to wait until Spring when the snow melts!

Looking back on 2012...

Better late than never!! Here is my 2012 recap!
 

On June 16th 2012 my Nanna Margaret (aka wacky nan) passed away. Before she died, when she was ill, I thought about her everyday. I even dreamt about her. This didn't change after she died, although the dreams have become less and less in the more recent months. She was truly a woman like no other, she made some poor decisions and never had much in the way of money or material goods (despite her abundance of get-rich-quick schemes), yet she had this amazing zest for life that I have never seen in anyone before. 
 As kids we thought it was hilarious when she suggested she try scuba diving by pulling herself down the anchor chain of the boat (even though she could barely walk at the time)... or tried to convince us that people could walk on water (can't remember how that came about),... or when she let Paul and Olly dangle their action men out of the car on strings and drag them along the road as we were driving... or when she let us push her into a swimming pool in a chair fully clothed whilst we filmed it to try get on "you've been framed!"... or when she declared that if she started to get old and lose her mind we had to take her into the mountains to die alone with the wolves!
Even within months of her death, she was adamant she wanted to move to Scarborough/Whitby seaside, maybe it was her lively mind just desperate to get out of the house. She showed so much patience, creativity and happiness despite her circumstances (which were never great) and even in the later years of her life when times were extremely hard for her and other parts of her body were failing, her strong mind was still alive until the very end. Whilst we didn't take her to the mountains to die with the wolves, I think she would be glad that she at least didn't go senile.
I keep trying to be sensitive to any "signs" I might be getting that my Nanna is still around in spirit! I haven't had any obvious signs yet, but one morning about a week after her death, I woke up and had the song "super-Cali-fragelistic-expi-Ali-docious" from Mary poppies (a film I had watched over and over with my Nanna), the song was going round and round my head, but only those words, and I could tell I had been singing it over and over for hours in my head whilst I was asleep. I will keep watching for signs, but either way she is still very much alive in my mind, and always will be. 

Other goings on in 2012!
 

March - I started my generic VFR course for air traffic control in Toronto! This is something I had been waiting for for 3 years, it lasted 6 months and was a lot of studying and hard work, but well worth it! I march we packed our bags (and the kitties of course) and moved to Toronto from Williams Lake. Ryan and I were both extremely relieved to be getting out of Williams lake, not necessarily because of the town itself, but because we felt trapped there until I got my course date.

June - my parents visited us for a few days in June, on their way back from the uk after helping to look after Nanna. Actually, the morning after they arrived was when my Nanna died. It was horrible, more so for my dad who knew that she didn't have long when they had to leave her and catch the plane to Toronto. Despite the sad circumstance, it was lovely to see them both, we spent time looking around Toronto, and visited Niagara Falls.

  June and November - Dave Matthews band! This year we didn't get to see Dave in the Gorge, but we saw him twice in Toronto instead, once in an amphitheater and once in a stadium..we have discovered the outside venues are a far better place to see Dave!

A new addition to the family: Ryan's old cat Kaycee (also a short haired exotic) moved in with us, it was funny to see the cats terrorize each other for the first few weeks, but now they have all settled down and are friends!

September : with my generic VFR course complete, I was posted to Buttonville tower, a small yet busy airport on the outskirts of Toronto. I felt like this one stroke of good luck made up for all the bad luck I've had in the past couple of years!
Also in September my little brother Tom moved out to Oakville to go to college at Sheridan to study media. It has been great having some family close by!

Buttonville Control Tower

December: for Ryan's birthday we had a family gathering where Ryan's family came around and got to see our house for the fist time, we made a big meal and had a great night! Unfortunately December was to be a stressful month. On Christmas Eve Ryan's mum Renee went into hospital. She suffers from COPD which is a combination of emphysema and chronic bronchitis, and had caught pneumonia. The result was that she was placed on life support for 4 days! Thankfully, She is now recovering at home.

It just goes to show that life is short, and can change with the drop of a hat!

Other highlights of 2012:
- getting to listen to Val's debut album release! I'm so proud of her for turning her dreams into a reality, and am looking forward to seeing her when she visits in Spring!

“The dead do not need to rise. They are a part of the earth now and the earth can never be conquered. For the earth endureth forever. It will outlive all systems of tyranny. Those who have entered it honourably, have already achieved immortality.” 

― Ernest Hemingway

Looking back on 2011....

I quite like the idea of my once-per-year blog, it definitely has it's merits: 1) I only have to do it once every year, and 2) I actually have something to write about if I wait an entire year between each post!

This year has flown by,  it's been a tougher year than usual, with lots of stress, hard work and  uncertainty. However, every cloud has a silver lining, and when thinking of my 2011 highlights it makes me realise that life isn't so bad after all, and a lot of people have life much worse.

Without further delay, here are my highlights, and not-so-highlights of 2011!

 1) Another trip to Las Vegas,  this time with my mum and dad! Highlights: Seeing Terry Fator the ventriloquist, watching Dad (attempt) to beat roulette, and the luxurious hotel rooms at the Vdara where we stayed. Not-so-highlights: I'm not sure if this should go into highlights because it was very funny, but Dad declaring that he'd lost the will to live after attempting to consume basically every item at the buffet!! We all ate so much, and that night I lied in bed and seriously wondered if it was possible for my stomach to burst open from eating so much.

lots of booze to swill down all the food...

Mum and dad at the Hoover Dam

Me and Ryan at the Hoover Dam

2) In May, we spent 2 weeks visiting England and a week in Greece! It was such a great trip, it was strange to go back the UK after so long. Highlights:  So many highlights!! So much great hospitality from all my family that I haven't seen in ages. Catching up with old school friends over a delicious curry and a delicious meal courtesy of Esther and Giles. I met my cousin Neil's two children for the first time which was great! Trying to drive in England was hilarious, (I only drove on the wrong side of the road once with Hannah in Leeds... an easy mistake to make!) Ryan and I visited Wainstalls, the village that I grew up in, and I showed Ryan my old primary school (Wainstalls J&I) and high school (North Halifax Grammar). Everywhere looked much smaller than I remember! Also, seeing a taping of the Graham Norton show in London was a definite highlight! Ryan and I were front row of the audience, the guests were Bradley Cooper and Ed Helms promoting Hangover 2, it was hilarious! I can't wait to go back for another visit to England, and I'm hoping it will be sooner rather than later! Not-so-highlights: Getting ill in London, I spent most of the time huddled up in bed in our Holiday Inn room like a little hobbit. Also, I wish we had planned more time in Yorkshire, 9 days just wasn't enough to see everyone!

Me, Ryan, Ether and Giles

Lots of cousins!!

Ryan and I infront of the house I grew up in, Wainstalls W.Yorkshire.

3) The major turn of events in 2011 was that Ryan and I bought a house! It desperately needed updating, and we were up for the challenge. Highlights: The satisfaction of finishing a job, and learning so many new skills. Also, seeing Ryan gain so much confidence, going from "we will DEFINITELY have to hire someone for this job" to "I think we can do this ourselves" was great. I am extremely proud of the fact that we have had no hired help for any part of the project, but definitely gained a lot from my mum and dad visiting a couple of times to help! Not-so-highlights: The injuries. I definitely seem to be accident prone, and the constant falling, bashing my head and dropping things on my toes gets really tiring. Also, most of this years stress has stemmed from this project. just . constant. stress.

The kitchen before (the gross orange shag carpet ran throughout the house).

The kitchen after!

3) August and September brought a slight reprieve from house renos in the form of a visit from Ryan's friends Andrew and Michelle, and a trip to Golden, BC where we met up with friends Laura and Chad to go white water rafting down the Kicking Horse, an icy-cold glacier fed river with plenty of rapids!! Highlights: Watching Ryan get the first dunk of the day after calling me a pot bellied pig (it was so worth the humiliation). Also, I hate to say it, but Andrew and Michelle falling overboard definitely added to the thrill! Not-so-highlights: Having to replace two of the Land Rover tires after one blew out on the highway. $550 later we were back on the road...

4) The fall flew by, and soon enough we were into winter!  Since I worked through Christmas, Ryan and I visited my family in Nanaimo in mid December. Highlights: Playing lots of Cranium! Seeing how much weight my mum has lost (30lbs!)and meeting my brother Olly's girlfriend Grace for the first time. Also, visiting Val and her 2 1/2 year old Jakob, it always great to see how his personality has changed each visit. Not-so-highlights: The trip was too short, (only 2 days)!

View from our house in November

Ryan, my parents, myself and brother Dan walking around Nanaimo Harbour

 

Val and I

5) A great Christmas surprise!:  December 21st, I got the long awaited news that I have been accepted onto an air traffic control course in Toronto in April 2012! It's something that I have wanted for a long time, and was an awesome, very unexpected Christmas present!

With that in mind I'll look forward to the adventures ahead, and hopefully by the time I write my next blog, I'll be a licensed controller ! Happy New Year everyone!