What have we been doing all summer?

We're back on the blog!

This summer has been busy but our internet was non-existent and we had to rely solely on our phone data which we treasured. Hence the lack of communication through the blog.

We're now on our way to Harlingen, Texas where we plan to spend the winter. But what were we doing all summer?

Well, for one, I got a part-time job by accident. How can this happen? Glen found a job at a Lavender Farm working in the field. After a week of hard labor in very hot weather, and having both hands severely stung by bees (working with the beehives), he just had to quit. His mom had just died surrounded by family (including us) and being the executor of the will, he had to travel back and forth to Burlington a few times. The poor man was completely exhausted! I urged him to quit.

Meanwhile, when he was still working, the owners mentioned that one of the girls just quit and they had to find a replacement. So he suggested me! Without my knowledge! But this job was mainly working in the store and participating sparingly to the production of their lavender products - filling containers, affixing labels, pricing, packaging, etc. I thought it could be interesting so I met with one of the owners who happens to be a Quebecer. Well, needless to say that we hit it off immediately!

So I happily worked at the Prince Edward County Lavender Farm all summer and enjoying every minute of it.

But they kept me busier than expected. I found that I really didn't have much time to do much else than work, laundry, walk the dogs on the beach (I know, such hardship!), cook and clean (someone's got to do it!) and sell the campground's 50/50 tickets which go towards activities like free lunches, dinners, etc. The lady who used to sell the 50/50 tickets was not well last year and had told me that she wasn't going to do it anymore. Turns out she passed away this summer, never coming back to the campground. I felt so bad that I volunteered to do the job. The problem is that it takes half a day to go around 2 streets (short ones) as everyone wants to talk. It's nice and I made a lot of new friends but sometimes I really didn't have the time to chat but it's hard to say no.

We also tried to do a few improvements to our "home".  We started by removing the carpet on the slide and replacing that with vinyl flooring. Soooooo much better than stupid carpet! It was a fairly easy job after removing the millions of staples used to keep the carpet in place. The workers who put these trailers together must be trigger happy with the staplers!

I then put up some wallpaper which went up really easily except that afterward, it started peeling off the wall (only in a few spots). I had made sure to sise the walls beforehand and then generously applied glue and the paper, being a bit stiff, was really easy to manoeuver. I finally used 2 sided tape to stick it back to the wall as adding more glue didn't work. Now there are a few pockets of air where it didn't stick so well but all in all, it was an improvement to the dreary brown.

I also painted the sliding door to our bedroom to look like a barn door. I had seen that in a lot of renovations in magazines where people would add a sliding barn door to a modern interior so I thought: why not? We added an electric fireplace to help with heating the trailer when we don't necessarily want to run the furnace. I love seeing the dancing flames when the lights are down in the evening. We bought a very comfortable chair to replace one of the yellow kitchen chairs we had. It's a butterfly chair, quite deco, and we can actually wash the fabric it's made of. So far none of the dogs have used this chair so it's our "hairless" chair to use when we're wearing black. Perfect!

I have painted the entertainment unit a creamy white which I also used to paint all the cabinetry in the bedroom. I used the same wallpaper (yes it peeled there too) on the brown wall and the sliding door on the bedroom side. We're lightening up the place! Another improvement was to add a foam slab to our sofa seat, remove the uncomfortable backs which I replaced with pillows, and recover the whole thing. I admit that I went a little crazy on the fabric and will replace the body with a solid colour in the future. The good thing is that it is all removable and washable! And a lot more comfortable!

One big job we did was scrape the deck of the remaining peeling paint it had and use an opaque light grey stain to cover it. What a difference!

I also got a lot more dogs to groom from the campground. It kept me fairly busy on my "days off".

We got to see some new to us birds and attracted Orioles to our campsite with grape jam (a tip I got from my friend Helene).

A Brown Thrasher

Northern Flicker?

Cliff Swallows
In the Spring, they gather mud to build their nests.
Glen won a second place award with this photo.

Bohemian Waxwing?

King Bird

Yellow Warbler

Beautiful female Red-Wings

Tree Swallow?

Rough-winged Swallow

This year's crop of goslings

Oriole eating jam just by our deck

Glen and I at Presqu'Ile Park

Sanderling

We went out for lunch a couple of times. Once at the North Docks which sits on a bay. They even had a Vegan BLT sandwich! But the best place was the Inn on the Lake located by the lake on the mountain. Such a beautiful place to have lunch! It feels European. The food was good and the service excellent. We definitely want to go back!

North Docks

Inn on the Lake - you can see the lake in the background.

Inn on the Lake

Miller House is across the street from the Inn and is also popular.

We had the pleasure of having our grandson William over for a full week! We had a lot of fun with him!

William and Cheeka are best friends

Cheeka adores William and won't leave his side.

In the pool

Visiting grandma at work

Relaxing on the lake

Enjoying the beach

Our beach

Movie night with popcorn

The boys enjoying the big waves

Yep! It was all good!

And last but not least, my little cheeky Cheeka braved the water and the waves to swim out and retrieve a stick! I am such a proud Mama! She who wouldn't even step in a puddle gradually got braver and started to retrieve in the shallow water. I then took out with me in deeper water to swim (always following the treat I have in my hand like the proverbial carrot in front of the horse) and finally she went out by herself and swam out to the stick. She got so brave that she didn't even mind the waves!

There she goes!

The dogs sure enjoy the beach!

Here is Ally following her new friends

On the dunes

As you can see we had a pretty busy summer, hence the silence on the blog.

But now we're on the road again just starting our journey down to Texas. Our first stop was on the States' side of Niagara Falls at the Cinderella campground. A small campground beside a motel, it is decent enough but was very wet and muddy which did quite a number on the interior of our trailer. I've decided not to worry about it and clean like hell when we get to our destination!

Our waterlogged site at the Cinderella