Busy July

These first couple of weeks of July have been extremely busy.  I'm looking forward to the dog days of summer when hopefully things slow down a little.   

There's lots of stuff going on, and I don't really know where to begin.  My Renegades hockey team has been winding down the summer season.  Unfortunately we had to forfeit a couple of games that were in conflict with watching the Edmonton Oilers play in the Stanley Cup final.  But despite a slow start in a higher division, and these forfeits, and some significant injuries to at least four our of players, we have managed to battle our way into third place in our division.  I will likely miss the last game of the regular season as it will be Helena's 16th birthday, but I made it out to more than half of the games this year.  The playoffs will get started in the third week of July.

Some of Margarit's relatives from Austria visited with us for a week in the first half of July.  Marlena is the daughter of Margarit's second cousin and she visited with her daughter Joy, and her partner Katya.  Prior to stopping in with us they stayed in Point Roberts with Natalia.

Our daughter Anna moved out earlier in the summer but recently decided that she needed to move back home for a while.  Together with her boyfriend she has reluctantly moved back home until they can both find gainful employment.

We brought the Austrian relatives out to Nordegg for a couple of days towards the end of their visit.  I think they quite enjoyed it.  On July 12th Margarit had somewhat of a marathon day.  She had to drive the Austrians from Nordegg to Calgary to catch their flight home.  Then she journeyed to East Coulee to pick up Anna.  From there, they returned to Calgary to pick up Anna's boyfriend at the Calgary airport.  He arrived shortly before midnight, and then they all blasted up to our place in Edmonton.

The next day Margarit blasted back out to Nordegg and we spent a couple of peaceful days together before jumping back into the chaos that has become our lives recently.  We spent a couple of nights together in our bedroom in the guest cottage.

Technically my brother-in-law Shawn and his fiance Lisa were the first to stay in the guest cottage.  But that was over a year ago, when it was still a construction site.  They crashed in there for one night, with an air mattress and sleeping bags.  Since then the cottage has been completed, and almost all of the tools and construction materials have been cleared out.  Margarit and I christened the place by being the first to spend an official night there, since the place has been completed.

Around the same time the tree in the yard on which I had mounted the bat-house, came crashing down.  Carpenter ants had weakened the base by eating through the wood and weakening it.  In the middle of the afternoon it crashed down with a big bang, but fortunately the bat-house was not damaged.  I will have to find another tree to mount it on.

I played golf a couple of times and then on the evening of the 15th Margarit headed back to the city.  I hit the road the next day, after finishing up some chores and cleanup.  I look forward to meeting Anna's boyfriend, and to celebrating Helena's sweet sixteen.

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