After closing up shop at work on Thursday, July 24th, Bill and I did some last minute things before hooking up and heading up to the Acreage at Durham for our weekend.
It is the annual Girls weekend for me, with my 5 sisters and Mom.
Arriving by 9:05 on schedule, we were greeted by Donna and Gerry, and Audrey and Tom from Montreal. We set up the Designer for the weekend, visited over a lovely campfire and shared the evening together.
Friday morning, up and at 'em!
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Audrey |
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Donna |
and I said our goodbyes, leaving the men to their boy weekend, and headed to Chatsworth for ours. I always take too many clothes and this year was no different, with the weather
person playing games with what we should expect. I had a jam-packed suitcase plus a camera bag and another carryall. I was pleased to see that Aj also had the same amount of pieces loaded in Donna's Honda even though I'm sure mine was heavier!!
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Gayle and |
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Cathy |
met us at the door and our first job was to unload and choose a bed mate and room.
Gayle and John own a cosy cottage style three + bedroom home just on the outskirts of Chatsworth with a pond and 50 acres of property. Beautiful little spot, quite a change for them from their previous lifestyle in the busy city of St. Catharine's.
Once the sleeping arrangements were decided upon, we took 2 vehicles to meet up with Wendy in Owen Sound.
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Wendy, our talented little sister. |
On the way, it was very convenient to make a couple of pit stops, one at Value Village and one at the Bible Mission Habitat Store in her fair city. We love our second hand shops and I was tickled to find a Kuerig almost identical to ours for $25 and brought it home for the trailer. When we walk through the doors of these shops, we all have a destination in mind and spread out accordingly. Sometimes we offer opinions on another's special find, other times we just meet at checkout with a nod of the head, 'finished?' The rest of the day was filled with eating, drinking, laughing, walking and sharing memories and stories. We get along so well and our biggest challenges are to agree on what our plans for the following day will be.
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Mom enjoying some fresh air. |
We decided to spend Saturday with Mom and exclusively
for Mom. Since she is plagued with mild cognitive dementia, the over night stays are too difficult for her. We booked a room in her building, brought in food, wine, hand written poetry with memories and my little sister, Wendy, even brought in her guitar for some tunes. We took Mom out for a brief outing to see the Hanover dam. It was a fabulous day spent with a fabulous lady. Mom had an absolutely wonderful time and showed off her 6 girls to many of her friends in the Village.
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Mom and Gayle listening to Donna's memory poem. |
We relaxed on Sunday except for more eating out, breakfast and supper, and had a dip in the hot tub and a couple of games of Scrabble and Sequence under the gazebo. By the time the end of day arrived, we were sated and pleased with all that we had accomplished in our 3 days together.
Monday morning was a pack-up, clean-up, go to meet our men morning with sweet hugs at our arrival. The weekend couldn't have gone better and the weather person was wrong once again as it turned out rain-free except during the overnight hours!
Plans have already begun for our 2015 gathering!
Thanks for stopping in, I'm happy to 'see' you.
For sure it was a fantastic weekend and I have just finished sticking some pictures of Mom's day onto some cardboard to take to her tomorrow. I am hoping this will jog her memory or at least give her something to look back at.
ReplyDeleteGreat Donna! I hope it helps too. It scares me that one day she will look at me (us) and not know who I am. :(
DeleteSounds like a very fun weekend with the girls.
ReplyDeleteNice that the weather co-operated too.
Yes George, we usually have a lot of laughs for sure! The weather 'guesser' was wrong again and it was in our favour this time. I was counting on that ! :D
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