Sad News

We learned the sad news yesterday that Dorinda Cavanaugh passed away.  She was the Director of the adoption agency that facilitated Maya's adoption.  Over the last 40 years she facilitated almost 5000 adoptions of orphans.  What a remarkable woman! She will be missed by so so many! Her obituary can be found here.

I'm happy that Maya was able to send a card to Dorinda a few months ago, thanking her for finding her our family. (This was completely Maya's idea.)

Rest in peace Dorinda! We are eternally grateful for what you have done for us.

So Long Summer!

This summer just went way too fast!  We were lucky to have nice weather on the weekends, so we got up to our cottage as much as possible.  This year was the year of boating.  We bought a new canoe and also learned to sail an old sail boat that had come with the cottage.  On top of that our friend Lisa gave us a wonderful floating mat, which was very nice when the water was cold.  

We were able to have three sets of guests visit.  Maya  also saw her friend, Ella, quite a bit.  They enjoyed doing crafts and walking to the Book Nook. Here are some photos from the summer...

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 Our cottage

 

Leaving the store with our new canoe

  

We enjoyed many nice boat rides up and down the bay

  

We got the old Sunfish sail boat out of the shed and it was actually seaworthy.  Mike and Aidan took a free sailing lesson at the marina and took it out on the bay a few times when the water was warmer.

 

Here's Aidan with cousins Dexter and Justin, hanging out on the blue raft.  

 Justin and Aidan body surfing the waves

 Aidan and Maya with neighbourhood friends Andrew and Liam

 

Maya with "cottage friend"  Ella doing crafts at her grandma's cottage.  They painted rocks and had a "rock shop"!

 On one of many walks to the Book Nook

 The Book Nook

 

 We finally got to try Ted's Range Road Diner,  a restaurant in a Quonset hut with surprising good food.

 We went to Blue Mountain once this year to ride the Ridge Runner

 And the mini jeeps

 We also went to the Owen Sound Farmer's Market

 It's the nicest farmer's market near us

 

 On Labour Day weekend, we took a fishing charter called "U Catch 'Em"

 Unfortunately we didn't!!!  Aidan was very disappointed.

 

 We enjoyed the boat ride anyway

 Although the summer went far too fast, we are hoping to enjoy a few more weekends this fall up at the cottage.

Summer Vacation - Part 2

We took the ferry from Victoria to Washington state and visited Olympic National Park.  It had some beautiful views of the Olympic Mountains.  Then we drove a few hours to Seattle.  I was pleasantly surprised by Seattle and the vibrant museum district and market.  Well worth visiting.  We went up the Space Needle, toured the EMP museum, science museum, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Chihuly glass museum as well as Pike's market... phenomenal!

 

 

 Olympic National Park

 Lookout on Hurricane Ridge

 View of snow-capped mountains

 View of Space Needle from below

 Checking out the views from the observation deck

 Seattle Skyline

 Seeing who had the scariest scream / face at the horror exhibit at the EMP museum... I won hands down!

 Checking out the video game exhibit

 The most fun part was jamming (very loudly) in the sound booth

 Visiting the vibrant and colorful Pike's Market

 I had to get my photo in front of the original Starbucks store

 Mike and the kids with the Space Needle in the background

 I wanted to visit the Bill and Melinda Gate's Foundation Visitor Center to teach the kids about philanthropy and giving...

There was an activity at the end where the kids could write things down and have them projected on a screen.... I was pleased that Maya wrote  "Let us change the world and be very caring".  Mission accomplished :)

 While Mike and the kids went to the science museum, I checked out the Chihuly glass museum... Wow!  This guy took glass blowing to a whole different level.....

Summer Vacation- Part One

We took our summer vacation early this year and travelled to Vancouver, Vancouver Island and Seattle. We had sunny weather all but one day out of ten and it was quite hot. Vancouver and Tofino are beautiful places to visit when the sun is shining.  Tofino had some beautiful hiking trails with lots of old growth forest and beautiful views of the ocean.  Here are a few photos from our trip.....

 

View of downtown Vancouver

On the ferry to Vancouver Island

A short, but stunning, trail on the way to Tofino (see next three photos for views)

 Ocean and mist near Tofino

 Charge!!!!!

 Hiking in the rainforest on the one day it rained

 

 We had a wonderful time at the small aquarium in Ucluelet, which had lots of touch tanks

 The Lighthouse Loop on the Wild Pacific trail had the most stunning views of the trip (next 4 photos)

 We also enjoyed the funky botanical gardens in Tofino

We signed up for a boat ride to the hot springs, which turned out to be a ride from hell (no joke)

 This photo does not do the trip justice ... for most of the ride the waves almost engulfed the boat. It was the scariest boat ride of my life! Maya was very frightened.

 

Luckily we survived to enjoy the views and hot spring!

  The water was very hot so we mostly just dipped our feet in

The ride back to Tofino was much calmer and enjoyable (thankfully)

 We also saw a black bear