Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Petty Annoyances on a Near-perfect Trip

Well - we're back in Lockeport after our 25 day trip to Ottawa to meet our new granddaughter, Ava, and our new great-niece, Alexis.

The return drive was a 2 day enjoyment of late Canadian winter scenery under almost perfect driving conditions. The sky was bright blue, absolutely no clouds, no wind, dry roads and almost no traffic. We left Ottawa about 5:50AM(EDT) on Monday and drove until 6:45PM(ADT) when we stopped in Amherst. Today we left Amherst at 7:00AM and even with a grocery stop in Liverpool were home by 11:30AM - same driving conditions as yesterday. In all, it was probably just about the nicest 1646km drive we have had.

As usual, I have a list. This one is petty annoyances during an otherwise lovely trip.

- the smell and sound of bubble gum
- about 1400km of very dirty snowbanks
- motels that don't have Vacancy/No Vacancy signs (most of the chains I now have observed) necessitating standing in line to find out there is No Vacancy
- non-smoking rooms with corridors that reek of smoke
- key cards that don't work
- no Wi-Fi
- only sport on TV - basketball
- forgetting things in Ottawa, including things we specifically bought there because we couldn't find them here
- insanely long lines at Tim Horton's (long enough we didn't wait)

Anyway, we're safely home, already went to the library and the bank, finally received our energy grant money from the government, Wayne is barbequing dinner, all is well.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Ava Sydney Taylor Cooper


On March 4th, 2009 (9 days late) at about 11:00AM, another little angel joined our family. Ava checked in at a healthy 7lb 4 oz and after the expected initial weight loss has rebounded to 7 lb as of yesterday.

Gramma and Grandpa have been to visit her (and her parents, Dan and Christine) every day - she is making great progress and today was very lively (apparently she is her liveliest between 2:00AM and 4:00AM, information which makes one glad to be a grandparent instead of a parent).

We will be heading back to Lockeport in a few days - it will be difficult to leave her behind and miss so much of her early development, as we did with Isla last year. However it's wonderful to have such a lovely healthy child in the family - we are already very proud of her and her loving parents.

Welcome to the Cooper clan Ava.