Top Flumps: Day 142 - Anniversary

Very long and picture heavy blog post 😁

16 years ago today I walked down the aisle in the The Swallow Royal Hotel. It was a blistering hot day and my fake tan was rubbing off on to my dress. The wedding organiser said she had never met such a calm bride in all her years of working there. This makes me laugh 😂

We had a lovely day celebrating our marriage. The venue was amazing, food was good, disco was fun, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. We had our pictures taken up by Cabot Tower and the car driver bought me a lemonade ice lolly as I was boiling in my big, heavy, dress. 😅

One of the best bits of the day for me was going to see my Grandad who decided not to come as he was poorly and didn't want to ruin my day in anyway. 💙

The best man speech was brilliant, with a powerpoint and music and my Dad brought a tear to everyone's eyes. My brother Craig read out a letter from Grandad 😢 and Rob did a lovely job of thanking some special people in our lives, summing up our relationship and the plans for our future. 💖

The disco in the evening was great fun!

It was a bit rubbish that our hotel suite was destroyed by people being silly and Dad and Rob were up hoovering digestive biscuits and corn flakes out of the bed at 2am while I sat in the bathroom crying trying to get all the pins out my hair. Still can't laugh about that. 😏

Once they'd finished clearing up the worst of it Rob and I exchanged wedding gifts we had got for each other. Rob thought it was hilarious that I had bought him a very nice, expensive pool cue and he bought me.... Finding Nemo DVD, special edition though! 😕

I really loved having breakfast with friends and family in the morning as we went over things from the day before that we would have missed and we were soon off on our way to the airport as we were leaving for Cancun, Mexico, for our honeymoon. We stayed at the Moon Palace Hotel and I loved it. I really want to take the kids there but Rob's not keen. Hopefully one day he'll let me. 🤞

Where they to? - 7th August Toronto

Our alarm sounded but we made the fatal mistake of pressing stop instead of snooze. We woke at 10:18 sweating profusely. The temperatures aren't much hotter here but the humidity is such that the moment you step from an air-conditioned room you feel the wall of heat hit you. We threw on some clothes and stumbled down the stairs to our saviours - Pam and Rob.

Pam's sister is best friends with Ang, Mush's second cousin. It sounds like something of a tenuous link but we'd been assured that we'd be well received and you soon lose your inhibitions for meeting new people when you embark on this kind of trip.

We were right to be hopeful as the welcome was as warm as you could ever wish to receive and their house has a truly dramatic, yet wonderfully peaceful setting atop 185ft cliffs overlooking Lake Ontario.

We quickly became grateful of the creature comforts as we got in their air-conditioned 4x4 and toured along the south of the city on the shore of Lake Ontario until we reached their house in the suburbs. Rob manages building projects for a living and he's made use of his skills to create a house that most of us could only dream of. It's a kind of place that makes you realise why people emigrate.

Mush was pleased when we opened the door to be greeted by 2 dogs, Bear and Bentley. Bear is somewhat more diminutive than his name might suggest with him being a wise, old Shitzu and Bentley is a Miniature-Poodle puppy with boundless energy reminiscent of Pooh's friend, Tigger. Fortunately, there is a gate at the bottom of the garden making it possible to play a game of fetch with the dogs without tumbling off the edge of the cliff. Bentley isn't strictly a resident of the house, being the pride, joy and, occasionally, the terror of Wes and Ashley, Rob and Pam's son and daughter-in-law to be.

Still running a temperature and feeling poorly, Mush went to bed and had an afternoon nap. I, meanwhile, went for the most practical hike that I've ever been on in that I didn't actually have to leave the shower cubicle. No sooner had I worked up a sweat than I was standing butt-naked under the shower head. I was going to take my GPS mapping device with me in case I got lost again but I didn't have any pockets and didn't want to get it wet. There are some neat little gadgets in the house that haven't yet found their way to the mainstream back home yet such as chilled, filtered water on tap in the fridge and, my favourite, a little baby shower thing, at ankle height, which I thought was for washing sand from between your toes. It turns out that it's called a toetester and, basically, you turn on the water and adjust the heat while poking a toe or 2 into the flow. Once you are happy that you won't fall foul of hypothermic phallus shrinkage or, conversely, melt a few layers of flesh off, you press a button and the proper shower head starts spraying. Splendid.

Today was a special day for us - it's our first wedding anniversary. Pam took us, one-at-a-time, to the shops to buy one-another a card. Mush also got me some Terry's Chocolate Orange Chunks and I got her a lemon meringue, well, Pam got it which was wonderfully kind and she was even thoughtful enough to put a candle on the top for us.

In the evening, we had a barbecue in the garden overlooking the lake as the sun set. Delicious, home-cooked food, jugs of ice-cold beer on tap and great company was just the right way to recharge the batteries and give us the perk-up that we both needed. For all of the sight-seeing and experiences of the last few weeks, we were becoming a little weary and the chance to speak for a few hours to some people other than each-other, in a homely environment, was a great comfort.

We caught up on some much needed laundry as we've found that the washing machines in the hostels are really cunning devices which have a speaker in them that makes a sound like a washing machine while a little man inside pours a bucket of water onto your clothes, steals a sock and then just spreads the mud stains from your trouser leg onto your other clothes.

We are going into town tomorrow to take the trip up the CN Tower which, contrary to popular belief, is the world's tallest tower at 1815ft 5in. I think we'll do it fairly late as we've seen lots of daytime views from mountain-tops and the like and I think we'll get some lovely photo opportunities from the top as the horizon is illuminated by the glow of the city lights.

We are going to leave Toronto in a few days to head up to Montreal and then Quebec City for a fortnight or so, but we are coming back to Toronto to go on a 3-day canoeing trip in Algonquin National Park, about 80 miles North of here.

We'll leave you tonight with a special message for Mush's brother, Mark. Mark tells us that he has often seen these confectionery items in American films called Twinkies and wondered what they are like. Mark, as you suspected, they're lush. Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately, the light was all wrong in the first few photos so we had to munch our way through a few twinkies to get the right shot. If anyone else out there has any ideas of foods that you'd love to try but don't have access to, that you'd like us to enjoy on your behalf so that you can share in our pleasure, be sure to let us know and we'll see what we can do.

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Speaking of my big brother Mark, he got married 10 years ago today! I can't believe that it's been that long! I was secretly 10 weeks pregnant with Oscar at the time. It was a lovely day.💕💙

Anyway, back to the here and now! I did the usual routine in the morning but added in some before pictures of my hair as Leanne was coming today to cut and dye it.

The lovely Jodie popped round with a bunch of flowers to thank me for having Alfie to stay and just as a little treat which was lush.

Then later on the postman delivered this from Lucy.

She is one of only a handful of people to call me by my real name 😁

Then Leanne arrived, who I haven't seen since before lockdown started and she brought me some flowers too.

Then when Rob got home from work he had a large bunch of flowers for me. 😍

Feeling really loved today and grateful for having so many people in my life who care about me. 💕💛

Leanne was here for a long time and she even managed to convince Leo to have a little trim.

I had my hair done which was so nice to be pampered and also had an overdue catch up with all the things that had been or not been going on. It was decided to just highlight my hair as I've got so much silver now that the regrowth would just need touching up all the time! I might go darker for winter though, we'll see.

I gave the boys an early dinner as Rob and I had a date night planned. We had booked a local puzzle room and we were both looking forward to it.

We loved it! We didn't get out in time which was really frustrating but we certainly enjoyed the challenge. We just got stuck on a couple of things and we used up way too much time on them, which was a shame. Never mind. Can't wait to do another one!

We were back within 2 hours of going out and the boys were all still in the exact same position we had left them 😂

My sister sent me this video of my Dad having a blast up the field. So nice to see him having some fun.

Did anyone else see the sky this evening? It was amazing and such pretty colours. The boys were all out on the trampoline enjoying it too. ⛅

I can't believe how late it is again! I realise I've done a mammoth blog entry this evening but I really should be trying to get to bed before midnight. This is the second evening in a row I've got to bed at gone 1am!

Plans for tomorrow, clean out gerbils, sort uniform, run, shower, look making a list of cars, looking at potentially booking a little holiday, food shop and I'm going for a walk with my friend Sooz at some point. Don't know what everyone else will be doing, but I'll be busy. 😂