My Trip to the Motherland

It was great to be back home - I hadn't been up there in well over a year and it was 2000 when I last was actually able to spend Christmas there. Here's a quick recap with pictures.

Up at 4 am on 12/21. Correction, I got up at 4; Shannon, having gone and seen King Kong at the 10:20 pm show the night before, never went to bed. His brother had fallen asleep in the recliner and just before 5 we woke him and he drove us to the airport.

During check-in, they told us that we might have to change planes in Charlotte. Our flight was supposed to be to Norfolk, VA, with a touchdown in Charlotte to load/unload passengers, but with us staying on. No biggie.

In Charlotte, it took us several minutes to find out that the remainder of our flight had been cancelled. Great. Luckily, we were first in line at Customer Service. At first they were going to fly us to Newport New, then drive us to Norfolk, which would get us in around 2:30. Hmmmmm ... since we had a 11:20 connection in Philly to Ottawa, that was a bit of a problem. Oh! You're going to Philly?!? Honeychild, we can get you there direct. Problem was, it was boarding at the complete opposite end of the airport. After problems changing our ticket (since the computer had us already onboard a flight), a quick call to the baggage people to find our luggage and retag us, CS put us on one of the express carts. Unfortunately, it only went 1/3 of the way. As we approached the escalator, the driver asked if I was handicapped? Disabled? Sure I'm not handicapped? Once we determined I needed to be, we hobbled upstairs and was shortly whisked on. We made it to the flight just a couple minutes before the doors closed.

Once in Ottawa, we quickly got through customs and waited. And waited. I really wasn't surprised that our luggage couldn't keep up with us. Even though my parents were over an hour away from the airport, all our bags were driven to their house the next day - although that didn't stop me from going shopping that night for "just in case" clothes!

The rest of the day was spent visiting with my parents, having Tim Hortons and enjoying watching the snow fall. We also met their latest "baby" - Dad raises guide dog puppies for the first year or so of their lives. This is Leamie.



To those that know them: my parents' new house is very cosy and quite nice. I wasn't able to picture them in town before, but now I can.

I'll try to keep things a little more brief ...

Thursday lunch, I met up with some of my former coworkers. First, I would like to say, AL IS A STUPID LOSER FOR NOT JOINING US. It was weird going in the office - so many changes in the 4 years since I worked there and even a lot since last year when I visited. We joined JD, Linda, Julie and Paul at the Knight's of Columbus, where a buddy of JD's fixed us huge plates of wings, fries and chili. Unfortunately, it was too short and we had to move on.

After spending part of the afternoon looking for Shannon's phone (Leamie had hidden it, as it turned out), we headed up to Kanata to see Mary Beth, whom I've known since grade 9 (well over half our lives now!), and her husband David. We hadn't seen each other in over 2 years, which is when they came down here to visit us.

sidebar: I give up on the pictures for now ... I'll never get this finished if I wait until I have time to upload them elsewhere

We had a very lovely evening and their new house is very beautiful. Unfortunately the evening was much too short (even with us leaving almost at 11:00). Just as we were leaving, it started to snow and halfway home we were almost persuaded by the weather to stay overnight in Castleman - kind of ironic when Mom used to tell me to stay at Mary's when the weather was bad when we were both in band in high school!

Friday we had lunch with my friend Jamie, who I also used to work with at Welch. Jame - if you are reading this, you are doing great on the exercising! Afterwards, we rode around town a bit before heading over to Massena, NY for a better mall. The town over there is crappier than Cornwall, but still have better shops!

The actual weekend was fairly quiet. We went to church for both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Christmas Eve, Shannon and I were the greeters at the door. They couldn't get anyone to do it, so Mom had volunteered her and I, but we subbed Shannon for her. (Dad was assigned another job). It was nice to see people I hadn't see in 4 years since I moved (hadn't been at Mom and Dad's on a Sunday since before the move). Some vageuly remembered me (as in "You look familiar"), others were thrilled to see me. One of my favourite was seeing someone who spent most of my childhood/teen years trying to make me feel like a loser (she was often successful) and seeing her do a double take when she saw me. Yeah, so I am still chunky, but I think that I looked pretty darn good on Christmas Eve. Plus, I have such a handsome husband.

After church on Christmas, we opened our gifts. I think that everyone was happy with what they got. We also did all the calls - talked to all 3 of my siblings and to my grandmother. The weather was gross, but we ventured out for a bit to take Leamie for a walk. Christmas dinner was interesting - my parents were renovating their kitchen and had their oven converted to gas, but didn't have it vented yet. They had been lent a George Foremen rotissie oven to do the turkey in, but we couldn't get it to work, so the turkey was done in a small crockpot, the beans in the electric skillet and the dressing and mashed potatoes in the microwave. It was still yummy!

On Monday we met up with my friend Crystal. Remember that name - one day she will be a famous director (and is already heavily involved and recognized in the Sudbury Theatre as well as festivals in Toronto). After lunch at East Side Mario's, we went to Zellers where I got my Canadian Toque to go with my Canadian shirt she got me.

Next day, with the only perfect weather of the trip, we headed to Ottawa to come back home. Our little man was very glad to see us (my brother-in-law had picked him up from the kennel). Our luggage was able to join us the next day after I had returned to work.

All in all, it was a good trip.