thankful

for moments like these where you forget that you woke up on the wrong side of the bed and are able to enjoy nature with some precious souls. Shane drove Elizabeth, Catherine and I to Cataracts Provincial Park today. It was a small area but that doesn't diminish the grandeur of the gorge. The waterfalls are something worth visiting and we happened to have it all to ourselves. It's a new place to love!

We also continued the drive to Placentia hoping to visit Castle Hill, neglecting to check if it was open before going. It wasn't, but we enjoyed the trip, listening to random 90s and early 00s selections, looking at the incredible Autumn colours, or simply dozing in the back, haha. We ate at Monty's on the way back and also fit in a little run in Shane's big truck before dark. Another first.

I'm glad to have Catherine home for the long Thanksgiving weekend. We've been catching up on lots of Once Upon a Time this time around. Binge TV watching is the best.

Happy Thanksgiving!

home sweet home

Best things about coming home:

Mom kindly making me an especially delicious supper to welcome me home.

Seeing progress made on the back room Dad has been working on bit by bit over the past year.
 
Having Catherine's sense of humour back in my life.

Seeing Elizabeth's engagement ring in person.

SNOW! I was ready for some winter in my life.

Chilling in my room, catching up on my blog browsing and eating half a dozen clementines in one sitting.

There are many, many good things about being home, especially at Christmas time. 

Christmas Eve was a great day in particular. We had lunch at my Aunt & Uncle's house and cousin Beth and her hubby Louis were here for the week visiting from Montreal. Elizabeth got Shane to come along for the festivities as well. Dinner observed one of the most entertaining conversations I've heard in a while. It revolved around "late" thank you cards and the appreciation of facial qualites in a wedding photo. Translations of the word 'pancake' came up as well: 'crepe' or 'pancake-uh'.

 We took photos by the Christmas tree. It's become an annual thing.

Catherine and I decided to stay in town for the Christmas Eve event at Elim church. To pass the time, we went to the mall, wandered around downtown, then went to the park.

We came home and finished wrapping presents. Catherine was especially helpful, the good little elf she is.

xo

light

 a few more from the lantern installments

lantern festival

 Victoria Park Lantern Festival brought a little bit of magic to our city this weekend.

st. john's weekend - part 3 (sunday)

Sunday was a fairly relaxed day. We went to church at Elim in the morning, had a quick little lunch back at Nan's, then headed over to our aunt's house for our cousin Bethany's bridal shower! They had the 'design a wedding dress from TP' game. I'd played the mummy wrap before, but never the dress. Elizabeth and I transformed Catherine into a beautiful blushing bride as you can see, as she holds her bouquet of flowers, haha. There was also a 'guess her age' game with a ton of pictures of her childhood. I was always just one or two years off the mark! Prizes were from Davids Tea, the really cool company Bethany works for. There are plans for it to come to St. John's and I'm pretty excited about it. There were also lots of presents to open:

Can I take this moment to declare my love for Manna Bakery? I was already in love with their bread, but add that amazingness to their curry chicken as well? Delish. I love the variety of food at showers.

We went to Cape Spear afterwards with high hopes, but there was a ton of fog and misty rain that we didn't anticipate at all.

Nice out right? I suppose we should have known, but the rest of the city was just overcast. We definitely weren't dressed for a walk in that dreariness so instead, we drove back to the mall to see The Green Lantern. We wanted to see Bad Teacher but it was sold out when we got there. It worked out quite alright though. Good movie, and they kept it pretty PG considering its Gossip Girl, Blake Lively and mchottie, Ryan Reynolds. We drove home that night, rather slowly. It seems every single time I've driven home from town in the evening there's some sort of terrible weather to face, these days: unending fog.

And that concludes our June 25th weekend!

st. john's weekend - part 2 (saturday)

We arrived downtown around 11:30 but could not find a parking spot to save our lives. After about 25 minutes of driving around the heavens opened up and finally bestowed one upon us. And in the process of discovering said spot, we noticed a mass of people making their way towards the waterfront. We, being our curious selves, decided to ignore our breakfast/brunch seeking bodies to find out what the fuss was all about.

 We quickly realized that it was the rally to save and keep the Search and Rescue program here in Newfoundland. It kind of has a place in our hearts not only since our father is a retired fisherman, but also because a Michael Petten, from our home community and older brother to one of Catherine's best friends, is only still here with us today because of this program's existence in our province.

If he had to wait for them to arrive from Nova Scotia, where Harper's government wants to relocate it, he surely would have perished in that frigid Atlantic; he was waiting over 2 hours for assistance as it was from our shores! That place does over 500 rescues a year, and in the matter of lives, that's no small number. We heard his mom give her few words on the matter in front of the huge crowd and we were so proud of her.

From there we walked to the Duke to get some brunch, once again, the place was packed and we got the only table left in the house. Our "weekend brunch" hit the spot. We even saw good ole "Tinny" again. Catherine decided to tweet "Newf celeb sighting: Tinny from Republic of Doyle at the Duke! Where's Des?" just for fun. We abandoned the idea to go to the pottery craft place only for the fact that it was all the way at the opposite end of Duckworth and we ultimately wanted to head in the opposite direction. 

So we went back to the Newman Wine Vaults to take a sensible look around the place, without the chairs. We continued on and browsed a couple of little stores we'd never noticed before along the way. Lots of people were out walking and it shaped up to be a beautiful day, considering the dreariness we've been living in for the last three weeks. Not only did it not rain like the forcast foretold, but the sun actually showed up!

This is the face of an ecstatic girl. It was about this point when she discovered that Allan Hawco of Republic of Doyle retweeted what she'd said earlier. We had a good laugh at that!

We walked by the ole train too. We decided to end our train adventure when some cute newlyweds showed up to take pictures; we figured we'd share. We went back to Water Street, stopped to rest our feet and drink something hot from Coffee and Company (the wind still made it a little chilly), and picked out bridal shower presents for our cousin.

Since it was such a nice day we went up to Signal Hill to check out the view, learn about Marconi and radiowaves, and people watch a little (as always). Lovely.

(the two photos above are from Evannah)

From there we got some things to bring to the birthday bonfire in Middle Cove Beach. It was Janessa's birthday and it was a perfect way to spend a Saturday evening. We chilled from 8 til 11ish eating the mandatory hotdogs and marshmallows, doritos, and cupcakes that Evannah made; playing with light up toys, catch phrase and enjoying the fireworks show that a nearby group were shooting off. The beach was really lit up that night, fireworks and at least a dozen other fires.

We really enjoyed ourselves!

st. john's weekend - part 1

(proud parking moment)

Catherine and I spent this past weekend in St. John's for the occasion of the St. John's Days as I mentioned in a previous post. We didn't get to do all that we had originally hoped to do, but we definitely didn't feel like we missed out. Some things were switched, skipped, or replaced and it was just what we needed!

Friday we were a little later getting into town than we had planned as we were held back by police directing traffic around a nasty accident along the highway. I sincerely hope they are okay whoever they are. A bit of a sad start to a trip, but we took more caution with our own driving.

Since we arrived late we were a little late getting to the Newman Wine Vaults for the Shakespeare by the Sea skits, late enough that they had the doors locked. There happened to be another visitor trying to get in and we conspired ways to try and get someone's attention. We were about to give up and were around the corner when the fellow reject ran to tell us the door was open (because he had practically kicked it down). It was an interesting experience to say the least. I think I mostly enjoyed the atmosphere, that it was glowy in the candle light and just plain old and rustic. I like old things.

Afterwards we decided to walk around and figure out where we wanted to eat supper. As we did, we came across some of the cast and crew from The Republic of Doyle doing some filming on Duckworth. Pretty cool to stumble upon. The only person we recognized in the crowd was Marthe Bernard, who plays Tinny. We then settled on the Yellow Belly. It was blocked, upstairs and down with only one little table left meant for us. I had pizza and she had a burger & fries which sounds kinda boring but it was so delicious. Not your typical greasy feed; this was the good stuff. Catherine kept making funny faces the whole time, and I can't recall why haha.

(ignore my scary eyes...)

From there we took a little walk around then headed over to Nan's house where we were to spend the next two (broken-sleep-filled) nights on her pull out couch. It's a really nice couch but a not so nice bed.

(I apologize to my friends who I did not inform of my visit to St. John's. This was a sisterly bonding trip after all.)

a sisterly excursion

Yesterday, Catherine and I took a little drive and wandered over to a town called Dildo. Modernly known as such an unfortunately crude word, I wouldn't want to change it and it's not so strange when know the history behind it!

The French had originally named it "d'îles deux," most likely for the two islands that rest just outside the harbour of the quaint little community. "Dildo" probably happened when our lovely accents tried to pronounce it.

Either way, we were excited to meet Captain Dildo, and visit the cute little shop he was in front of. We bought a couple of little things then drove through the town to take it all in. We also explored a couple of spots in the surrounding areas, Old Shop and Markland and found they sounded a lot cuter than they were; great for a drive, which is what we wanted. It was a lovely little day trip and a lot closer to home than I realized. Or maybe it was just that time passed really quickly as we sang along to songs on shuffle and yelled out every sign we passed along the way.

Here's to more trips like these!