A cruisin' we will go!

A few months ago Adrienne called us up and told us about a cruise they were going on with the kids - we were jealous and wanted to go so bad, but the price was just a little out of reach, and plus we wanted to do/had done a lot of things on the house. I would check the site once or twice a week to see if the price moved at all, and it did a bit, but then all the sudden their cheap rate was gone -- oh well, we thought. There'll be more.
Well last week, the cheap seats came back, but this time the price REALLY dropped. They must have had blocks from travel agents that didn't sell or something, because the price was right. Marn and I talked about it for all of about 2 minutes, and decided to book!
We're going Cruising with Adrienne, Den and the kids for 13 days through the Eastern Caribbean!
Back to St. Maarten for a day as well as places I haven't been to; Bermuda, Aruba, Curacao, Mexico, Grand Cayman... We depart from Baltimore and return to Tampa, FL.
For flights, we used Air Miles for a return trip to Baltimore, then bought a one-way from Tampa to Baltimore. We had to purchase a hotel night on the return as well because we couldn't get into Baltimore early enough to make the return flight back to Toronto, so we'll enjoy Baltimore for an evening and come home first thing in the morning.
We are looking SO FORWARD to this trip!!
This will be my first cruise, so I'm a little nervous about the possibility of being motion sick, but 2 weeks in the Caribbean will be just amazing, and we always have fun with the Asbury's. We're looking forward to seeing the kids too because we won't see them over Christmas this year. :(

Here is the Itinerary:
Can't wait!!

Turkey Dinner

Marn and I hosted our first Turkey dinner on Saturday night with Mom, Teresa and Branko. Tony and Lisa and the kids went up north for the weekend, so couldn't make it.
It was my first turkey, and surprisingly it turned out really tasty! Moist, and delicious. I injected it with garlic and and rubbed in 3 different spices... yum. We also had (Mom's recipe) cauliflower and cheese, (Branko's Mom's recipe) Baked Squash, mashed potatoes, sweet potato, corn (off the cob) and Marnie's famous biscuits.... I think I'm missing something, but it was quite a nice feast! Mom brought 2 pies; her famous real pumpkin pumpkin pie and dutch apple and Teresa and Branko brought some wine. It was a good night!
After dinner and resting our bellies, we played Yahtzee! until 11:40PM!

Truth be told, no one knew (except Marn) that I tried to make a "sunbathing" turkey... and it would have worked, but we ran out of time to try and brown it. This is what I was going for:
The "tan lines" were starting to show, but we were getting hungry, and we had to cook a few more things in the oven - the turkey took up too much room. It would have been great!

weekend plans

Well, not much is new here lately, but we are going to Buffalo this weekend to watch an NFL game (Bills vs Jets). This is the 3rd time now that we've gone. Chris is a big fan of the Jet's and likes to go when they are close (Buffalo being the closest they'll get), so we make a day out of it and have a good time, tailgate party and all. We are going to Dad's on Saturday afternoon/night for dinner and to meet his cousin who over from England. After that we're heading to Burlington to stay the night in order to head out to Buffalo early.

Last Saturday we took Echo to Tony and Lisa's for a small birthday party for Kaiya. They asked us to bring him to meet another puppy dane who was owned by Lisa's sister. Echo LOVES playing with other dogs, but this little guy was just too scared for most of the time that we were there. Near the end (when we had to go, of course) he started coming out of his shell and played with Echo a little bit, but we didn't give them enough time to really get comfortable. Echo was trying to play with him SO bad, it was really cute and funny. He'd nudge him a little and try and bite his ears and jowls, but Madden didn't want anything to do with it and sat in a corner cowering, mostly. Echo was really gentle and I think realized that Madden didn't want to play because for the most part he left him alone or tried to get him to play, but very gently. A lot of times he'd lower himself to Madden's height, or lay beside him to let Madden get him. When Echo was that age he was jumping right in to play with anyone/dog that was interested. I hope they break him of that, because that's the last thing you want; a shy and skiddish 160 lbs dog!

Summer Sports End

Our Ultimate Frisbee league ended last 2 weekend's ago and I forgot the post about it. This was the first summer since before our engagement that we were ABLE to make it. The last 2 or 3 years we've been away due to the finals always falling on our anniversary weekend.
Our team has always lost in the finals even after going undefeated in some years. We choked. But Marn and I like to say it was because we weren't there - in fact every game we lost this year, "just happened" to be same weekend that we weren't there (twice)! Coincidence?
Well, we lost in the finals again.... so there goes that theory, but it's a nice thought! But this time we did not choke. The team was really good, and *I* think the only reason they won was because of their superior fitness! They didn't tire out. At all. Ever. They only had 2 subs whereas we had 2 full lines of guys (but only 1 line of girls)! In fact they ran around us no problem. It was a little bit embarrassing, actually. They beat us to every disc up and down the field. Ah well, it's not like they took home any prize money or anything. The over priced RIM league didn't have anything for the winners. What a joke.

Marn played 4's co-ed beach volleyball this summer instead of 2's. Their team also took home the 2nd place team, losing to a 6'10" guy and his team. Pretty tough to compete against that, especially when they feed him the ball whenever they get into trouble. When he's on, he's pretty unstoppable. We also play against him indoors in the winter at Friday night men's league and he's just as hard to stop there. He's a nice guy too, which makes it hard to hate him! :)

Baseball (Slow-Pitch)

This weekend my slow-pitch league wraps up. It's been a fun summer playing, and I realize how much I miss baseball in general, even though this league in particular is very UN-competitive, even though some of the guys think it is. ;) It's actually supposed to be a 35+ league, but over the last couple years teams have been dropping out, so they've been relaxed with younger guys playing. In some cases guys kids have filled in! This year there are only 4 teams, down from 6 last year. This is my second year playing. Our team is not very good, but they're a good bunch of guys and it's fun, although frustrating at times - it looks like we're in 3rd place right now, with the first playoff game last Wednesday which we won (3 in a row!), so we might be peaking right now, which would be great.
I'm leading the team in the home run race with 3 (2 legit, one inside the park). Yes, 3 all year - that gives you an idea on how "good" we are! The next guy in the home run "race" has one which came last Wednesday, but he's done for the season, so I think I'm safe to take the tittle home.

Anyway, I may look for another league next year, or one on a different night. It'd be nice to play on a little more competitive team. There is a co-ed league in Baden that I've seen while taking Echo out for walks, but it doesn't look that great. The fields are also small (where the Schmitt Heads played earlier this summer) which would help my hitting (230 feet in baden vs. 270 where I am now), so my home runs would look like monster shots there and likely fly into the neighbouring backyards. :)

We're going into the weekend with a three game win streak and with the big win on Wednesday against one of the better teams, so we're hoping to make it to the finals. It goes by round-robin point spread and we're +6 to start Saturday morning. Go Blues!
(that would be Labbatt's Blue, of course....)

Busy LONG Weekend!

We didn't really have any plans this past long weekend, other than working around the house, but what a busy one it was! I think we need another one just to recover...
It started (for me) Friday afternoon when I left work at 1pm to get home and sand the deck down. I just lightly sanded it in prep for the staining. I started at 2, and finished at 6. 4 hours of sanding! After that, a light power wash to get rid of the dirt, then off to Candace and Dave's to baby sit the kids for a couple of hours. Braeden is at a really cute age right now and says the funniest things... one example; I was putting him to bed, and after a few episodes of him getting up instead of sleeping like he was told, I told him that I was going to stay in the room with him for 2 minutes, and during that time he was going to close his eyes and not talk. He looked at me and said, "well, ok that sounds like a fair deal" then rolled over and closed his eyes. It was too funny and I tried not to laugh out loud. Even though it was a "fair deal", it lasted about 10 seconds before he started chatting again. One of my first mistakes earlier was telling him that if he needed to go pee to come and get me (he told me he didn't need to go when I put him to bed), so 1 minute later he comes to the stairs whispering for me, "Uncle Andrew, I need to go pee!". Little bugger is smarter than I thought! So we went, and while sitting on the toilet had a little episode because his parents weren't there.... then tried to get off without peeing, so I said, "hey you said you had to pee". He corrected himself and said "oh yah", then proceeded to go. It's a good thing he's so cute! :)

Saturday we bought some paint, and deck stain, and all day painted our whole main floor (minus the bathroom). It's a similar colour to what we had, but much darker. It looks really good, especially next the white doors and trim. The old colour looks so drab now in comparison. I was worried that the colour would close up the floor, but it doesn't - probably not dark enough for that, but there are a lot of windows. We also re-arranged the furniture a little bit. We got rid of the Ikea chair (still looking for a replacement) and put one of our oak bar chairs there, and moved the little cabinet that was beside the large one next to the back doors. It looks good and opens up the room a little more. That took all day and into the evening, and we actually have more to do to complete finish up (touch up cutting in and behind the fridge, etc). Marn's friend came over to help out part way through, thankfully.



Sunday was a day of rest - sort of... I did a little more painting in the early afternoon while Marn shopped, then we went golfing later on. It was 8:30 (and dark) by the time we got back. It wasn't the greatest day of golf for me (99 - yuck!), but Marn had a decent day (107). Yes, I was close to loosing to her. ;) There would have been no iPods for me that day!

(The deck before cleaning and sanding)
Monday was the big deck day (me), and house cleaning (Marn). Staining it literally took all day and some of the evening. Actually, about 80% of the day went to staining the railings alone since I was getting all around the underside of the boards and going in between the balusters, etc. It was just slow.... The deck surface and stairs itself took all of 45 minutes to an hour (with Marn's help). I bought a "pad applicator" earlier for the stain, and what a great purchase. It made it SO easy! I should have actually used it for parts of the railing too and used a brush for the tedious parts only... I'm sure it would have shaved half the time off for me.
Anyway, the deck looks great! When putting the stain on, you have to be really careful to not go back over parts that have semi-dried because it just forms a film over the previous stain and doesn't look right (or that good). We're not pro's, so there are a few spots where you can tell we went over twice by accident. Marn had a brush and did the knots and spaces between boards then I went over with the pad right after. The next deck we build (if ever), we're PRE-STAINING all boards!!
The pictures speak for themselves - we were torn about putting tinted stain on, because we love the natural look of the white cedar, but the "clear" stain only lasts a year or two if you're lucky, and most don't prevent "greying" of the wood; and I don't want to do this again ANY time soon! This stain is supposed to be guaranteed to last 6 years. We'll probably be lucky to get 3 (it never lasts as long as they say).





Marn spent most of the day putting the house back together after the painting the day before and the much needed cleaning and laundry. We both feel like to go riped off for a long weekend, but really all the stuff we did had to be done, so it's a great feeling to have it done now.

By the end of the day/weekend, my back was killing and we're both exhausted. We ordered pizza and sat in front of the TV to watch a movie (Smokin' Aces).

Deck after cleaning, sanding and ready for staining.


Deck after staining!