Beautiful Muskoka!

I love Canada! What a vast, beautiful country we live in! The east coast offers the ocean, red roads in PEI, a breathtaking coast line and much more! Ontario and Quebec are dotted with thousands of lakes and amazing Niagara Falls. Heading west we visit Manitoba. Unfortunately this is a province I don’t know much about other than it gets cold there in the winter! Saskatchewan offers a unique experience of very flat, open fields and you can see forever! Alberta and British Columbia are the home of the Canadian Rockies and are absolutely beautiful as I had the opportunity to share with you last month.

All of this is to say, I love my homeland and the wonderful variety of countryside it offers! Do you know that it would take me 2 ½ days to drive to the next province west of me? Now that’s a large province!

This past weekend and again today, I’ve had the opportunity of traveling just 2 hours north of me to beautiful Muskoka. It’s a wonderful, quiet drive, mainly on 2 lane highways. (Uh oh! I enjoy driving on these which means I must be getting old!)

Mom and Dad are renting a quaint little cottage at Muskoka Baptist Conference Centre near Huntsville which is set on the shores of Mary Lake. The cottage is set just feet from the waterfront, with beautiful picture windows that offers the view of some amazing sunsets! (2 pictures above were taken from the front deck of the cottage!)

The one small drawback to the cottage is that it's set at the base of a hill which means 50+ steps each time you go to or from the cottage. (This picture is half of the steps up to the car!) I don't mind it at all when I'm going to chapel, the beach or basically anywhere. When it's tough is the days we move in and out of the cottage! After about 30 steps my suitcase (which lets be honest is far larger than it need be!) seems to weigh double what it did at the bottome of the hill! You'd think I'd learn to pack less stuff but alas, not yet. Can't even begin to imagine how much stuff I'll have to carry when little Miss Hannah is with me!

I visited with mom and dad last weekend and will be heading there again today. My 7yo niece is up this weekend which should be fun. Guess I’d better get my Barbie game face on! My brother will also be there with his little guy tomorrow. Noah turns 3 next weekend so we’ll be celebrating his birthday this weekend. It’s hard to believe this cute little guy is 3 already! I haven’t seen him since early May so I’m well overdue for some Noah snuggles.

(On a side note, I went to my other brother’s place last night and his little guy is 1 ½ and not too fond of Auntie Cathy right now! I walked into the house, he took one look at me and said, ‘Bye bye Auntie Cathy. Home now’ :o) Guess he figures when I show up his parents are going out and he was having too much fun with Daddy to risk him leaving. Let’s just say he was glad when I went back out the front door a couple of hours later and cuddles and kisses will just have to wait for another day!)

A few years ago Dad decided to buy a boat and it’s been a ton of fun! Unfortunately it went on the fritz last weekend and is currently at the boat hospital in Huntsville. I’m hoping for a quick (and inexpensive) recovery for it so that hopefully we can go out on the lake this weekend. As of yesterday they were still waiting for a part to come in so I’m not sure if we’ll be on the lake or beside the lake this weekend.

Sunday night I’ll be moving to my friend Deb’s cottage which is also at MBC. She and I have been enjoying a week together for the past 10 years and next week is the one! Yeah! We have a ton of fun and enjoy spending time together. Not sure what our plans are other than we’d like to find a day to go to an outlet mall located about an hour away and also go see, ‘The Devil Wears Prada.’ Looks like a good movie. Has anyone seen it?

Deb is the ultimate person when it comes to self discipline in eating so this will be helpful too. I want to keep on the downward track that started a couple of months ago. There’s a Curves in Huntsville that I’ll be visiting and may also go to Deb’s gym with her a time or two. I may not lose any more while on vacation but even if I can hold my own I’ll be happy. (Sorry Mary-Mia, even though I’m watching I will be indulging in popcorn at the movie. I know you don’t like movie popcorn. May I have yours?)

With being away, it means I’ll also be missing my daily fill of blogs and email. *Gulp!* The new referrals are due out within the next week (hopefully!!!) so I’ll be trying to steal some time at a computer at the Huntsville library or borrowing a laptop at MBC to get my fix! A week away from the computer would be awful! Do you think I have a problem? Yes! I know I do but it’s all good when it comes to preparing for Hannah and celebrating referrals with friends!