achy

Wow, I feel old. This past weekend was one of the busiest I've had in a very long time and I'm just in pain today! LOL

Saturday morning I was up bright and early to get to my hair appointment. From there, I headed over to my highschool reunion, which was a tour of the school. It was cool to see so many people I haven't seen in 10 years! Man, I can't believe it's been 10 years already. How crazy is that? Feels just like yesterday and a lifetime ago all at once. I picked up the letter I wrote myself 10 years ago and man, was I ever a melodramatic teenager! It made me laugh and cringe a little. It's a good thing I didn't accomplish everything I'd envisioned for myself, though, mainly because I would have married the wrong guy!

Anyway, here's a picture of me and some of my classmates (I'm the one not looking at the camera, fourth from the right - not including my niece Maddison, who's in the stroller on the right):

From there, I raced home, got changed and we headed out to Morden for Sheri and Jonathan's second wedding celebration. Vergil was a little annoyed with me because we left an hour later than I had said we would, and he was hungry, and it was rainy and windy, and his morning was not as productive as he would have liked. By the end of the night, he'd mellowed, so don't worry. We're not fighting. Not that we even really know how to fight and I don't count being annoyed at each other as fighting.

Anyway, we ended up getting to the picture location earlier than the rest of the wedding party, so it all worked out in the end. I even got to help Sheri into her dress, as planned. I just hope I didn't bruise her ribs - I had the lacing done up pretty dang tight. She made me loosen it at the end of the evening because she was just about ready to pass out.

Sheri looked fabulous, naturally, and Jonathan looked pretty decent too. LOL The wedding was a lot of fun - very relaxed and happy. At first it was a little weird when people started clearing out by 10:00, but then I remembered that 80% of them were driving back to Winnipeg that night (including us). We stayed until 11:00 and got home around 1:00 am. That's probably the latest I've been out in months and months. Again with the feeling old.

Funnier still was going to a picnic the next day for my reunion. Most of the people there have kids and we were laughing at ourselves when we were talking about going to bed 'late' at 11:00. Ten years ago, we would've only left to go partying at 10:00!

Here are some pictures of the wedding for your enjoyment:

Sheri, looking gorgeous:


Sheri and Vergil:


Jonathan and I:


Jonathan and Vergil (laughing at their own wittyness):


Jonathan and Sheri's Mom, Mira:


The classic shoe game:


Dancing:

happy anniversary to us

Three years ago today, I married the best guy ever. And do you know what song came to my mind in honour of our day? "You ain't seen nothin' yet / B-B-B-Baby, you just ain't seen n-n-n-nothin' yet!" I don't even like the Bachman Turner Overdrive that much, but there you have it. My life as a musical.

And to further that musical, now I'm singing "Rain rain on my face / hasn't stopped raining for days / my world is a flood / and slowly I become / one with the mud" (Flood by Jars of Clay). It's raining as I type, in case you haven't figured that out yet.

Anyway, here's the official 'word' on our weekend away. We stayed at the River Gate Inn on West Gate (near the Misrecordia Hospital for those of you who live in or know Winnipeg). It was a great Bed and Breakfast. Vergil and I both agreed that it was like staying at someone else's house, but not being obligated to hang out with them (the B&B takes up the basement and the first two floors - the family basically does all their living on the third).

This three-floor (four including the basement) house was built in 1919 and, as a lover of old houses, this place is a beaut. It has been immaculately maintained and improved. It still feels very Victorian, but is in no way stuffy or uninviting. Our room was gigantic - complete with a king-sized, lavishly linened bed, full bathroom with a rain-fall shower head and jetted tub, a beautiful view of the yard a massive closet. They've got a great finished basement equipped with everything you could possibly want to entertain yourself - like a gigantic TV with DVD and VCR, a snooker-sized pool table, board games, and even a pinball machine.

And let me tell you about the breakfasts. 'Wow' about sums it up. Karen, one of the ladies who works there, prepared eggs Florentine for our Sunday morning breakfast (complete with spinach, mushrooms and red and orange peppers) and Belgian waffles with Saskatoon berry compote and Canadian back bacon for our Monday morning breakfast. I can give you an idea of how good the waffles were by saying that she refused to tell us how much butter was in the recipe. Man, the thought of them still makes my mouth water. If you stay at this place for no other reason - stay for the breakfasts!

We had a fantastic time. It was really neat to feel like a guest in your own city for a few days. The only disappointment was our dinner on Sunday night. We decided to try The Currant restaurant at the Inn at the Forks. The food was really good, but we didn't get served. Almost literally. We waited for about 20 minutes before a server (who wasn't supposed to be our server) kind of stumbled up to us, full of apologies and hastily took our order, then bopped back and forth asking if we wanted a starter or wine (which by then we were far from interested in). We got our food in a decent amount of time, but no one came by to ask how it was, the bus-girl ended up refilling our water on occasion and at the end, the same stumbling server came back confessing that this was probably the worst service we'd ever had and it's not usually like that and he didn't know what it was and was this our first time to this restaurant? Oh, sheepishness, sheepishness, can I get you the bill? The guy who was 'supposed' to be our server was obviously too embarrassed at that point to even try to take things over, I guess, but I couldn't help but think that the guy who'd taken over could have very easily handled the situation a whole lot differently.

If I had been in his position, I would have apologized to us for the wait, explained that the person who was supposed to be serving us was swamped and that I would be taking over. Then I'd do my waiter-y schpeal about specials, recommended a starter and a wine and gone off to let us figure out what we wanted to order. I'd come back, take our order, bring us our food, check in on us (while our mouths were full, of course), refilled our water / wine on occasion, offered us dessert when we were done and politely brought us our bill. Simple as that - as though nothing were amiss. But no, this poor kid essentially blamed the other guy for the foul-up and pretty much did nothing to remedy the situation, causing embarrassment both for himself and his colleague.

We probably won't go back there - not until we're older and richer, I think.

But enough ranting! Time for some raving! (In a good way, of course!)

Here's my official recommendation if you're interested in 'getting away' in Winnipeg (or if you're visiting and need a place to stay) without going very far - stay at the River Gate Inn! Do it! It's well worth it. Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to meet Michelle, one half of the couple who runs the place, but we did get to meet her husband Keith - a very tall, very pleasant guy who spent the entire weekend working on his backyard - hauling gravel and arranging huge limestones for their backyard patio (a project he told us he'd been working on since last year). Keith was very self-effacing, claiming at least a dozen times that Michelle usually does the tour thing and is far more thorough and sorry he missed so much stuff, but we thought he was great. And next time, we'll get his recommendations for restaurants!

And that's that! Happy anniversary to us and we wish that everyone could have had as nice a weekend as we did!

post about my husband

Wow. In a few weeks, it will be my and Vergil's third anniversary and a few weeks after that will be eight whole years that we've been together. Crazy.

I know everyone says these kinds of things about their husbands (and well they should), but I feel so blessed to have been able to marry my best friend. He gets me, even when I don't want him to. He gives me space to figure things out myself, even when he knows what I probably should say or do. He's intensely loyal and trustworthy. He's my defender and my biggest fan. He loves me even when I'm being foolish, selfish or just downright stupid. He lets me be better at things than him. He supports me, no matter what crazy idea I might get in my head. And, for those of you who know anything about him, you know he makes me laugh - all the time. He's one of the best situational comedians I know. He never tires of making me smile and I don't think I could even put into words how much that means to me.

All that gushing about my husband to say that I'm getting more and more excited for our 'anniversary weekend'. We usually try to do something special on the May long weekend to celebrate and we usually hope we can go to my Uncle's cabin

but it's a pretty popular spot, and my uncle does have dibs, since it is his and all. :) Anyway, since my uncle claimed his 'dibs' for that weekend, we were left to decide what we should do instead.

In the past, we've done bike trips in Spruce Woods and Lac du Bonnet, but this year, Vergil suggested we rent a hotel room for a couple nights in an effort to just 'get away' for a while. I thought that was a great idea, but figured out pretty quickly that nice hotels are dang expensive. So, since I've had such great experiences at Bed and Breakfasts before, I thought I'd see what Winnipeg had to offer in that arena. Here's what I found:

I'm not going to tell you where it is, in order to preserve the 'getting away' aspect of our mini vacation, but let me tell you, I'm so excited I could almost cry. I LOVE old buildings and this one takes the cake. It is gorgeous, in a great location and has a fascinating history to top it all off. Here's a picture of the room we'll be staying in:

It's got its own private bathroom (with a jacuzzi tub) and it overlooks the pool in the backyard. With any luck, the weather will be warm enough for us to actually use the pool!

So yeah. I'm pumped. And I wanted to share my excitement. Which is what I'm doing. :)

Here's some more pictures of the inside:

The Library:


The Living Room:


The Dining Room:


The Staircase:


What a great place to spend a weekend with a great guy!