We aim to get back to southwestern Ontario every summer to visit as much of our family as we can stuff in. We tend to time it with an event, so we can mass-pack visits with lots of people into one day. Aunt Maria offered to host the Verkley summer picnic, so we said, we’re coming!!

This year we did a ton of driving around, but had the convenience of staying in the same place for all but one night, which was really nice. Lugging a suitcase from house to house is a drag.

I rented a car for us, and when I got there to sign the paperwork, they upsold me on an SUV rental. But then they offered a new white F150 pick-up truck for the same price. Jeff lept and said “We’ll take it”. It wasn’t just new. It was BRAND new. Just 26 km on it!

We stayed at my sister Julie’s house with her husband Wole and our niece and nephew, Selinah and Jordan, who are really fun and pretty low-maintenance at 6 and 4 years old! Gone are the days of sitting on the floor playing with them. I didn’t even colour this time, and I love to colour!

On our first full day, we took Dad with us and went to get Jeff’s traditional Ontario meal: peach pie (from Shakespeare Pies) and smoked pork chops (from the Pork Shoppe), and fresh corn on the cob!

Aunt Cecilia came to join us for supper! Julie and Wole have an amazing back deck with a big covered table for outdoor dining.

That afternoon we had fun using ChatGPT to take pictures of everyone and put different hairstyles on them. And then we used it to take Dad’s beard off, since he’s had a beard longer than I’ve been alive, to see what he’d look like. I don’t know if it nailed it, because I don’t think that’s how he’d look, but I do know that Cecilia and I probably shouldn’t go super short with our hairstyles. Julie can pull it off though! She has such thick hair, she can pull off any length! Later we even gave my sister-in-law Leanne some blonde hair!

Jordan is fond of his uncle Jeff!

We had perfect hot summer weather for the Verkley picnic! Although we all got tornado emergency alerts on our phones while we were eating! Well those of us who weren’t on Bell because the signal is so poor for Bell (in many places in SW Ontario!). Fortunately, the storm didn’t hit us!

We stopped at the St. Jacob’s Farmer’s Market on our way (don’t stop there at noon hour on a Saturday! Parking was impossible!). Since it was so hot, I picked up a straw sunhat!

I always feel like I didn’t get enough time to have enough long conversations with enough people. But at least we were all in the same collective space together for an afternoon! Thanks for hosting Aunt Maria!

The next day we met Jeff’s parents, and his brother Brian who came down for the weekend from Thunder Bay, for lunch at the Mandarin! Then we went back to their house to spend the afternoon together. Jeff’s Mom and I played some cards while everyone else was feeling pretty lethargic from their big Mandarin meal.

We had several meals out during the week. Little Jordan mostly only eats fries in restaurants, but Selinah is a steak and burger lover! And somehow, she is missing 4 teeth and she still could even eat corn on the cob!?

One night we went to Port Franks to hang out with many of Jeff’s high school friends! It was my first time meeting most of them, which can be a bit intimidating, but they are all so fun, it was a great time!

As I said later on Facebook, I finally said, “I wanna learn how to play pickleball” in front of the right person! Ross immediately said, let’s go! He dug out a couple paddles and balls from his garage and taught me how to play in his driveway in the dark, with just the garage lights illuminating our court! It was AWESOME! It reminded me more of ping pong than tennis I think. I guess my ping pong sessions with my nephew Easton have been paying off because I wasn’t totally terrible! I missed the ball a few times when it bounced slower than I was expecting. Those whiffle balls are a bit slow after a bounce!

One day, we reserved for Dad for anything he wanted to do. We ended up at a 10am play in Port Dover!

It was described as a relaxed performance, meaning the house lights weren’t dimmed all the way, and the side door was left open. They played the loud noises in advance so people with various sensitivities would know what to expect. There were community living guests and a group of Alzheimer folks in attendance. We got tickets in the second row!

The Lighthouse Theatre is a nice venue. The theatre is on the second story, accessible by stairs or an elevator. It is a hundred-year-old auditorium, with a nice tin ceiling.

The play was “Liars at a Funeral”, with just 5 actors who all played a couple of roles! The entire play was set in a funeral home. The set was really well done, and the actors were terrific! I thoroughly enjoyed the show!

Afterwards we went for a perch lunch, but they were all out of perch! Dad and Jeff had some pickerel instead, while I had to stick with the chicken due to my annoying shrimp allergy and the likely fryer cross-contamination.

On our way back from Port Dover, Dad spotted a local brewery he hadn’t sampled before, and we stopped in for a bit.

He tried several samples until he found one he wanted to take home.

Later, at dinner that night, Julie asked Jordan to make the face as if an enormous plate of fries was just served in front of him.

What an expressive little dude! haha!

We had another day with Jeff’s parents, and had many rounds of One Eyed Jacks (I think that is what it is called!). It’s a card game with poker chips you place on a board. I won some, I lost some, but overall, did pretty good!

That night we made it to Jordan’s sportball practice. For the first half of the summer, it focused on soccer, and now he’s into tee-ball. It was pretty entertaining watching a group of 4-year-olds. What a great coach too! Mostly I think we could watch Jordan all day. What a little ham. He didn’t care if anyone was watching him. He was dancing, hiding bean bags under his hat, putting his baseball glove on top of his hat, and he could really slug that ball!

Selinah had a big long list of things she wanted to do on her summer vacation. We were aiming to help her strike off at least one new thing off her list, and that turned out to be a visit to a pet store.

THANK GOODNESS THEY DON’T HAVE PUPPIES IN PET STORES ANYMORE because she really wants one, even though she’s even more allergic to dogs and cats than I am.

We visited the birds and the fish and watched a young man play with a kitten behind a glass wall. There was a python that Julie nicely warned me about – “Lisa, back up!” and then they helped me pick out a new toy to take home to Hank.

We had one last outdoor lunch before we were off to my brother’s house for the last night, so we could see our nephew Easton (who wasn’t able to make it to the family picnic).

At my brother and sister-in-law’s house, we made crunchwraps for dinner, one of my favourites!

We packed the rest of the day full with ping pong, Jackbox games on the tv, game show watching, visiting their new decks, watching the Perseids meteor shower, and listening to Easton play the guitar. I didn’t take a single picture all night? I’m a terrible blogger!

It was so nice to sleep with the sounds of southern Ontario in our ears, with the guest room windows open. All the crickets and frogs and whatever else was loud all night. We tiptoed out early to get to our flight home.

We boarded the flight, and then were delayed almost a full hour. I was stressed out! We had dental appointments booked with not enough time to spare! I ended up dashing off the plane in Whitehorse and jumping into a cab, abandoning Jeff to get the luggage and truck, since I had the first appointment. WHEW! I made it!

We spent the night in Whitehorse and picked Hank up Saturday morning from the boarding kennel. The owner liked Hank and said he was a good quiet boy who played well with others. Yay!

Then we battled the rough road all the way home for 7 hours. It’s funny how once you decide you’re going to move away (did you miss that post?), suddenly the aspects of living here that you used to tolerate just fine, become a bit more annoying. I’m not going to miss having to board Hank 7 hours from home, staying over in Whitehorse, padding an extra day on either side of travel to get home, and the rough Klondike Highway and all the stones that flew from other vehicles into our windshield. Also, I think next time I’m wearing two bras because my boobs were trying to bounce right off.

Thankfully it is a long weekend in the Yukon! That means we have Monday off, I have a long overdue haircut booked, our summer list of chores to do is still lengthy, there is a baseball tournament in Minto Park, and fall is in the air 😭 Summer is too short and barely even arrived, and this morning we had hours of dense fog settled on town, a sure sign of fall. There is a hint of autumn in some of the leaves, but not too bad yet.

Since we have decided to move back to Ontario (Thunder Bay area) in 1 year and 8 months from now, we’re thinking it’s a great time to plan our first yard sale, to start reducing how much we have to move (again). It’s great that we have so much time to downsize! Last time we decided to move, listed the house, had a yard sale, and moved across the country in about 6 weeks!