Welcome to Our Web Page
When this web page began more than twenty years ago, it described most of the activities of our whole family. Now that most of our children have flown the coop, it is mostly about what Ann and I (Dave) have been up to. I update it most weekends. We save all the messages over the past year in an Archive along with links to what we were doing ten and twenty years ago.
You can click on the pictures above to get a bit more information about each of us.
Monday December 23
A poinsettia our neighbour Barb gave us for looking after Luigi while she was in hospital
Last week Ann spent a lot of time making large batches of chili and potato kale soup. The former was taken to an alternative service at the church, eaten by us for dinner, given to the Fram's since Debbie has been ill recently, and taken to the Roadents' Christmas party about which there is more below. The potato kale soup was also eaten by us for dinner and taken to the church Souper Sunday fund-raiser for the Mi'kmawey Debert Cultural Centre.
A week ago Saturday, I got up early to make a batch of rolls to accompany Ann's chili for the Roadents' pot-luck Christmas party. It was preceded by a walk in Laurie Park, which is the normal starting point for the Roadents rides. About 20 of us walked along the trails to the beach on Grand Lake where we stopped to pay tribute to our friend Gord Kyle. Gord was a close personal friend to many of us as well as being a former president of the Ramblers. We found out about a week before the party that he had scheduled a medically assisted death for that day to alleviate his suffering from cancer. Although it was a sad occasion, we were sure that he would have wanted us to enjoy the day. After the walk, we all went back to Dick's place in Fall River for the pot-luck lunch. Afterwards, Ann went with Erika and Manon to the Ramblers book club while I stayed behind and helped clean up.
There have been several other pre-Christmas social gatherings. A week ago Friday, Ann met Cindy and Vicki for lunch at Ela!, the Greek restaurant in Dartmouth Crossing, to celebrate their birthdays, last Tuesday I went to a gathering at our biking friends Bob and Mary's place while Ann was at a choir practice, and on Saturday we went to a winter solstice gathering of our neighbours at Carl and Roxanne's.
We have also continued to stay active, walking with the Roadents in Shubie Park on Wednesdays and skating twice a week at the RBC Centre, though, now that it is open, we will probably switch to the Emera Oval when the weather is good.
Our house after the storm
(not much power from the solar
panels ☹️)
We had our first major snowstorm of the season on Saturday: about 25 cms when all was said and done. Since then it has been cold and will continue that way for the rest of the week. That, and another 5–10 cms forecast for tomorrow, means that we will have the first white Christmas for quite a long time. Katy, Ben, Andrew and Alex set out this way from Renfrew on Saturday morning but they wisely stopped in Fredericton for the night. They arrived safely at Mona's (Ben's mum) yesterday afternoon.
Yesterday there was a special service at the church featuring a cantata called The Promise of Light by Joel Ramey. The choir, including Ann and Glen, have been practicing it for some time. I went to see it along with our neighbour Roxanne and several of our Rambler friends: Anne, Pamela, Tom, Mary, Manon and Dave. We were all suitably impressed. Afterwards several of us went for coffee and treats at Café Marco Polo.
This morning Ann and I went out to the airport to pick up Morgan and James but, when we got there, we found out that they actually wouldn't be arriving for another hour. We decamped to the Big Stop in Enfield where we had lunch and then returned to pick them up.