Summer Days

One of the things I am beginning to realize about my summers is that they are (if possible) even more busy than the remainder of my year. With that in mind, my summer thus far can be summerized in two activites; vacation and camp.

In my family "summer vacation" is the loose translation of "going east to visit family during warm months once school is out". Travelling out east is also synonymous for another term; Swiss Chalet. Having spent all 10 weeks of my vacation last summer out at camp I did not accompany my family out east and a severe case of Swiss Chalet deprivation ensued. Luckily I was able to pacify this malady by indulging in Swiss Chalet no less than 3 times that week.

Mmmm, Mmmmm, Mmmmmmm.....Seriously, if anybody would like to sign my petition to bring a REAL Swiss Chalet back to Winnipeg let me know...

Anywho, first stop after the intense tag team driving expedition led by my parents and I was the Nottawasaga Resort for a Blunden family get together. I enjoyed seeing cousins I had not seen in a long time and/or ever in the case of Erika and Cole.

Erika and I crawled around on the grass playing cats. Shortly we were also joined my Malcom, however it turned out that several trips around the yard was enough for Malcom and a game of shoot the cats with army machine guns was the final result of that excersise!

It is not truely a Blunden family reunion until someone cracks out the bagpipes.

Uncle George (of whom I should mention is a "married into the family" uncle) plays us a merry rendition of some Scottish tune. My mum (also a "married in") gets her go later on.

But on the OTHER side of my family, the McMillans, we sport a slightly different tradition. I am not sure about your families but it's never truely a McMillan family get together until several somebodies start cracking horrible puns. No, not just bad; horrible. I reckon my favourite was the year they brought out the forestry puns. I'd love to go into firther details but I'm afraid it wood bring out repressed childhood emotions I'd rather keep repressed!

*shakes head*Oh well, there is nowhere to go but back up from here I guess. We also did a little bit of "rural exploration" (I feel it warrents a different name than "urban exploration" because we were litterally out in the middle of the Quebec countryside).

There were better pictures than this one, but I liked this one because it is of "the secret room". This is our property at Locklee, but over the years it has become extremely worn down and trashed. It is still beautiful though in a sense, and to some, still haunted. The thing about this room was that nobody knew about it for years after we (and by we I mean my mum's family as she was growing up) bought it. Well one day they were hanging around Locklee and noticed that there was a window at the front of the house, but once you actually took the stairs up to the second floor, there was nothing. My mum was chosen as the one to climb the rickity ladder and look through the front window and to her horror and suprise there was a room. And it was fully furnished; bed, sidetable, washstand and everything. To add to the mystery, the room was right above the kitchen, which meant in those days it would have been the warmest and most comfortable room in the entire house on cold nights.

As for the following weeks, I came back home in a roundabout fashion to begin working at camp for my second summer.

My first week I was in a cabin counselling as well as teaching the crafts skill (more about the special-shiftyness in said craft shack later). On of my highlights for that week was the fashion show in which my girls all dressed up as different staff members (and with relatively similar likeness too I might add!). They were from L-R Ringo, Cannonball, Stan (the camera man), Babs, Ginger, Sprite, TiG (moi!) and Sunshine!

Then last week I was on maintenance. "I got to drive the gator like nobody's buisness."

Sweet Deal.

Graduation

Graduation came and went in a flurry of about 20 hours, and although severly jet-lagged and sleepy I managed to enjoy myself and even smile for some pictures (this is rare folks; how many times do you reckon you've spotted the blue footed booby ?) Anyway, with over 250 graduates from FRC it was a very interesting (and long) ceremony. i reckon there were people on stage I had never met before in my life. Nelly and I also reckoned that the robes looked like judge robes. I thought that we should be given a gavel and the right to over-rule some people's diplomas.


Next came dinner and dance. After coming home later (opps-apperantly the girl who had her hair done right before me *cough*Mandy*cough* kepty changing her mind, she only went half an hour over not to mention she was coming to my grad but graduatied last year...) and feeling a little guilty because I don't approve of making your grad date wait, Sean and I, and my parents headed to the legislat. building for some pics., followed by the Winnipeg Convention Center.

Picture at the Leg.

Father-Daughter Dance!

Oh-and did I mention that several people were wearing the same dress? Thats okey though, it was too awesome anyway, and at least they were all different colours. Not shown, Nicky who was sporting the dress in a pretty darkish blue.

Following the dinner and dance was Safe Grad, in which I danced a lot, went a little cRaZY and got a temporary airbrush tattoo (watch out mum, I'm a wild one : P) ! The pictures from Safe Grad took ~10 minutes to load and then never showed up so I'll post them later. Look forward to Nelly and Jared doing the robot-wow, I gotta love my friends!