Season's End

Glosette Girl has just wrapped up the play she has been directing: The Merchant of Venice. She worked really hard, especially in the last few weeks when she was in rehearsals almost every night.

Scorsese and Kubrik ain't got nothing on you babe.

Margot and I both went to see the grande finale and I think Glosette Girl did a kick butt job. As the play unfolded and some of the (ahem) sexual jokes piled on, it dawned on me that Shakespeare can be a bit risqué play for kids. But Margot took it in stride and doesn't seem any worse for wear. I don't imagine too many kids got started down the wrong path by seeing a Shakespeare play!

So with the play over that means...no more Daddy-Daughter dates (Margot and I normally go while Glosette Girl is in rehearsals). Le sigh! Oh well, our "dates" were fun while they lasted. We will start hopefully them up again next September.

To make our last date extra special instead of our normal hang-out, Stella Luna, we opted for going to the Foolish Chicken, the only real kid-friendly restaurant in Hintonburg.*  

If you're in the area, check it out. It's like a slightly more upmarket Swiss Chalet. I like their fries but Margot, well she is all about their mean Shirley Temples!

Look at that smile! She knows I'm taking a photograph. Le sigh encore. Here is too hopefully a few more Daddy-daughter dates in the fall.

* There are other restaurants in the area but few that are expressly marketed as family-friendly, unlike in the suburbs where most restaurants are chain restaurants.

How Did We Do It?

Hintonburg is a happening place.  It's near funky restaurants. There are nice schools and parks. And there are real amenities here, like grocery stores, that make it a neighbourhood where you can not only play but live. And all without having to have a car. For that reason, it's not surprising that lots of people are looking to move here.

Sometimes as Glosette Girl and I wander around the neighbourhood, we wonder, just how did we pull this off? How were we able to find our home without having to pay an arm and a leg or buying a teardown property and hoping it didn't come down on our heads?

Maybe it's because:

• We live on the side of Gladstone Avenue closest to the Highway cutting through Ottawa. Originally we thought that that meant it would be too loud here and we would always here cars zooming by although, honestly we just hear the regular city ambient noise.
• Sadly, our street, Sherbrooke Avenue has less mature trees than some of the other streets around here.
• We just got lucky.

Honestly, we don't know.

An example of an apartment for sale in the area

Hintonburg wasn't always such a hot spot. About 15-years ago Hintonburg was notorious for prostitution and other crime. Glosette Girl and I moved in in 2016 and by then it was pretty well on the route to gentrification. Still, perhaps because it was (and is) still a little bit rough around the edges (which I like) we were able to buy our current home without having to enter into a crazy bidding war.

New build = costs big bucks

Occasionally, while sipping wine, we take a sneak peak at the local real estate websites to see what is selling these days and already it seems the price of many homes are now out of our league. We then take another sip of wine and count our blessings!

Parks Creek Easter

Even though all my immediate family lives within a roughly 5.5-hour drive of each other (Toronto, GTA, and Ottawa) it still takes effort to find time to see them. It's particularly rare for all of us to spend any significant amount of time under the same roof.

This past Easter though we did just that. My parents, siblings, their spouses, and our children rented out a house and stayed together for the first time in...maybe 3 or 4 years? The place: Parks Creek Retreat, a beautiful place in the town of Roslin, Ontario, which is near the metropolis of Belleville Ontario.

The location was actually almost perfect. First of all, Parks Creek retreat is literally by a bubbling creek called Parks Creek (no false or misleading advertising there!). It's in the Bay of Quinte area, which is almost equi-distant between Ottawa and Toronto. That area isn't really a hot spot for tourism but it has a relaxing charm that is hard not to like.

The weather hovered between zero and seven Celsius degrees the whole time we were there, which was just just warm enough to go for a few walks and watch nature groggily start to wake up.

Being typical Canadians, we didn't let the cold temperature deter us from taking advantage of the retreat's amenities like the three-season room with outdoor living room.

Did you know if you read hard enough you'll raise your core temperature?

We ate, we chatted, we drank and we played.

Not posed. Don't tell the marketing departments of the beer companies.

Oi. Go long. I said LOOOONG!

  And of course the Easter bunny made a guest appearance!

Margot and her cousin A showing off the spoils

Let's be honest, holiday family get-togethers can be fraught with challenges. But at the end of the day you don't remember that. You remember sipping the craft beer sitting on the patio watching your daughter have the time of her life playing frisbee with her cousins in clothes that probably weren't weather-appropriate because dad dressed her and not her mom. Memories!