september twenty-six

Sean had swimming class first thing this morning. Today, we realized that one of Sean's friends from daycare was in his swim class. Though only a month older, this kid is in the class older than Sean due to space in the classrooms. It was actually Sean and his friend who recognized each other, otherwise, I would have had no idea....

After coming in from swimming class, I got the kids organized to spend the night at my sister's house. After getting them organized, I packed up the car (was leaving my car with the kids and my sister as well) and dropped them off there. Crossing my fingers that they don't cause too many problems at my sister's place for the night.

I headed back to my house, got my stuff organized for our night away. On our way to lunch, we ran a few errands, and then had lunch at our fave local greek joint. And then we headed up north.

We arrived at our destination late afternoon. It's a nice little area, about an hour from Montreal, give or take. We had a view of the lake from our room.

After we were settled into our room, we headed up to Jamie's family's country house to see the exact state that it was in. It hasn't really been used in the last few years, as it's slowly been falling apart. I would say for the first few years of our relationship Jamie and I used to spend not only Victoria Day and Labor Day weekend up at the country house, but numerous weekends during those two weekends all summer. Until the plumbing stopped functioning.. until it just started to fall apart. The home was owned my Jamie's late grandparents and now it was left to Jamie's mom, and her 2 brothers.

As you can see, to the left, the ceiling fell off.. and to the right, mold, which is ALL over the ceiling. What you see in the picture is not even half of the mold.

In the front facing the lake, the floor fell through right above the basement door. If someone realy wanted, they could pry it open and probably get into the house that way. Gross, but possible.

Windows were shot to pieces.

It's sad. Jamie used to spend time here every summer, Jewish Holidays, etc. He grew up coming here every summer throughout all of his childhood and some of his adulthood. The only way to fix this would be to tear it down and re-build, and because of new bylaws with zoning, that is not even possible. Maybe there is a loop hole with leaving one part of the foundation standing so it would pass, but we'd have to look into it. However, that's if we win the lottery. There are so many things we want to do in our own home first, before we'd even fix up the country house. Plus, it's not even ours right now to fix up. It still belongs to Jamie's mom & her 2 brothers.

So upsetting.

This is our room and our defective jacuzzi. Pissed about that one... tell you more about that in a few minutes. Jamie and I already said that we would never come back here again...

Got an update that my kids are good and had a good time today playing with some of my sister's friends kids. Apparently Sean has a thing for older girls!

Awww, he's still holding her hand!

Anyhow, on our way back to the room, we picked up some groceries at the local store, so we could have some cheese & crackers with our wine. We chilled for a bit, had wine, cheese & crackers and eventually got ready to go out for supper. We went to this really tiny Italian restaurant in the area, actually, it was the only Italian restaurant in the area. The food was decent, they actually had whole wheat pizza on the menu (impressed me!) and the service was not bad. It seemed to be family ran, including the wait staff.

After dinner we tried to use the jacuzzi back in our room, and it lasted for maybe 4 and a half minutes before stopping. We couldn't get it to work again. And of course, there was no one at the front desk any longer when we called. They were closed for the night. We only got this room because of the jacuzzi and now it doesn't work. They'll be hearing from us in the morning...!

So I stayed in the tub a little longer, but Jamie didn't care to be in there if the jets didn't work, and once I got out, we hung out and watched some tv for a bit. I am going to shut down and and go back and cuddle. After all, we're up north to celebrate our anniversary. Too bad it's too cold and we can't sit out on the patio... next year we'll have to go earlier in the season to celebrate our anniversary. Unfortunately this year, our anniversary happened to fall on a Jewish Holiday. (Actually, I think next year it does as well...)