….in most of Canada we’re celebrating Family Day on Monday
What a wonderful way to start a long weekend with a 6k walk. The weather was perfect. Sunny and mild. A great day to take photographs. Here are a few shots that I took this morning.
….part of a bouquet from my husband
….I enjoyed part I so much I decided to do a different twist on Cee’s challenge for ground
As I was searching for photos of the ground I discovered photos with different perspectives of this week’s theme. Here they are:
Flying Above the Ground (over Italy)
Walking Under the Ground (tunnel under Humber College)
Dug Up From the Ground (ruins outside Florence)
Drawing on the Ground (drawing in Assisi)
Running on the Ground (Frances at the park)
Eating from the Ground (Horse in Florence)
Walking on the Ground/Grass (for the first time)
Playing on the Ground (Camp Kawartha)
Jumping on the Ground (Jump Rope for Heart)
Sitting on the Ground (in Rome)
Lying on the Ground (in Rome)
Examining the Ground (Stuck in the mud in Assisi)
Shadow on the Ground (in the park)
…..despite the terrible events that took place in 2016 on a personal level it was a wonderful year
Most people would agree that 2016 had to be a terrible year for natural disasters, untimely deaths of beloved celebrities, horrendous terrorist attacks around the world, the Syrian refugee crisis, Brexit and a nasty election campaign in the U.S.
Even on a personal note, 2016 hasn’t been all sunshine and roses but there were many memorable and special moments.
In January our son ended up staying with us for an extra week before heading back to London, England. The circumstances of his extended stay aren’t exactly positive but we did have him with us and for me that was special. By the way, at the end of December of last year, he slipped on the ice and broke his upper arm and he required surgery. The surgery was successful and he was released from the hospital on January 1st. 
In February my friend M celebrated her 64th birthday and my niece, S, her 26th.
The biggest event in February was our daughter’s wedding to her first love and partner of 10 years. They met on Feb. 10th so they decided on their 10th anniversary they would make it official and tie the knot. What a special day!
In March while we experienced snow, our future daughter-in-law was sitting in an outdoor caffe in Assisi planning her wedding.
In May we celebrated Mother’s Day with the family in the backyard (a little chilly) and at school we had our Forest of Reading celebration, Jump Rope for Heart and our annual Fun Fair. Winnie also had her first swimming lesson and her Daddy started Go Cart racing. Also A and J and their brother-in-law, G, ran the Sporting Life 10k.
In June two of my colleagues retired from teaching, my very good friend, A, celebrated her 75th birthday and our son and his love were married in London at City Hall.
Our school choir also sang at a Blue Jays game and we put on our annual outdoor extravaganza at school.
July was the highlight month of the year for our family. We took a trip of a lifetime. My sister and her family from Calgary and my two daughters and their families and my husband and I travelled to Italy to celebrate the union of our son, B, and his beautiful Iranian bride, Az. We travelled for the first 11 days visiting places like Venice, Florence, Bologna and Lucca and then we all met in Assisi where the actual wedding took place. After three days in Assisi we made one more stop in Rome before flying back home.
In August I was able to open up the cottage and spent about 5 weeks there off and on. My husband and I celebrated our 41st wedding anniversary and I had another birthday.
September brought a new school year and my last first day of school. My husband had been coaching a small group of boys from our extended family to get them ready for this year’s cross country team and they were all entered into the Railpath Community Run. In fact there were 11 of us from the family that ran that day. I was happy to do 5k without stopping in 45 minutes. At least I wasn’t the slowest person on the course. The boys did really well and some of them walked away with some prizes.
October was another busy month with a lot of milestone birthdays. My husband turned 65, my dad 90, my son-in-law 40 and Winnie celebrated her 1st birthday. I also organized and ran my last book fair school. We raised the largest sum of money ever. I now I have the fun job of buying books and supplies for the library and classrooms.
In November my oldest daughter, A, celebrated her 37th birthday. Where has the time gone? My younger daughter, Winnie and I attended the Royal Winter Fair and I, along with five other teachers took 59 students on a three day overnight winter camp in the Kawarthas.
In December my Dad moved from his apartment to the retirement home across the road. We held our annual craft night at school, held a Christmas concert and had our staff party at a local restaurant. Christmas was a three day affair; one day in Hamilton, another in Toronto and the third in Oshawa. On the 30th of the month we celebrated the birthdays of our twins who are now 35. As my principal and friend M would say ‘Carol you’re old!’
So as you can see there were lots of bright moments in 2016 for me and the Cormier family. Wishing you all a bright, happy, healthy and prosperous 2017.
Cheers!
….thanks to Ailsa for this week’s travel theme
The beautiful and unusually balmy days of November appear to be behind us. With the forecast of cold and possibly snowy days in the coming week, especially further north, I decided I couldn’t put off installing snow tires on my new car any longer.
On Friday morning I woke up at 5:30 so that I could get to tire department at Costco by 6:30. The evening before the nice man at the counter after giving me a couple of quotes for snow tires strongly suggested that I arrive no later than 6:30 even though the place didn’t open until 7:00. I walked through the doors at 6:35 and found myself 14th in line. When the gate was finally lifted, promptly at 7:00 the second man in front of me was informed that he was the last person to be guaranteed getting his car back by noon. The rest of us might have to wait till 8:30 in the evening before we could pick up our cars.
Feeling that I didn’t have much choice in the matter I decided to leave it and I walked to work. Luckily it was a PA day and I didn’t have any classes to teach. It took me about two hours to get to school but I did stop for a coffee and bite of breakfast at a Tim Horton’s. Later in the day a friend drove me home and I no sooner stepped in the door when the phone rang and I was told that my car was ready. The same friend drove me back to Costco. I am now ready for those ‘snowy’ days ahead.
I know you’re thinking that this is a pretty cheesy way of getting to the theme of snowy but I do have some photos that are snowy white to share with you. Seeing that we haven’t experienced any snow yet I’ve gone into the archives to find some appropriate ‘snowy’ shots.
The photos include whitening the feathering on a Clydesdales feet with chalk, the snowy white marble of the Trevi Fountain, my granddaughter’s snowy white yogurt face, a lovely creamy white ball of buratta cheese, a snowy white peony from my garden and snowy days from last winter.
Are you ready for the onslaught of snowy days? It’s coming!
Cheers!
…..thanks to Cardinal Guzman for hosting Changing Seasons
October has been a month of birthdays in our family and all were special birthdays. We started with my husband’s 65th birthday, then my father’s 90th birthday, my granddaughter’s 1st birthday and my son-in-law’s 40th birthday. October also saw the colours finally change and mostly towards the end of the month. Finally the month ended, as it always does, with Hallowe’en and what a glorious day it was for trick or treating.
….my favourite part of my trip to Italy took place in Assisi
Part 1
I’ve saved the best part of my trip for last. As some of you know my son was married this summer. The family part of the wedding took place in the hills of Assisi. In June, B and A were officially married in the registrars office in London, England and the guests that attended were mostly friends and work colleagues who lived in England.
In July friends from Canada, England, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy and family from Canada, Germany and Iran came together to celebrate the union of our son and his beautiful bride in a traditional Persian ceremony.
The family stayed in a beautiful hillside resort, Casa Rosa, above the town of Assisi. Originally all the cottages had been farm buildings. The cottage we stayed in was formerly the pig barn and then later the horse stables. The view from our patio was breath taking and the property was surrounded by olive groves, lavender, fruit trees and rosemary.
Our accommodations were very comfortable and you would never have known that some of the cottages previously housed farm animals. We were warned to watch out for scorpions, yellow spiders and asps but we didn’t encounter any of these creatures. We kept looking over the hills in hopes of seeing some wild boars but we didn’t see any them either.
We took a walk along some of the trails that surrounded the farm. The trip out was pretty easy because it was mostly downhill but returning was a little more challenging. We passed numerous pieces of abandoned farm equipment along the way.
On our first evening in Assisi we took a taxi ride into the town of Assisi and had a wonderful meal on the patio of a local restaurant. It was our first real introduction to the family of the bride. We pretty much took over the restaurant for the evening. I tried to take photos of all the entrees that were placed before us but sometimes they were so mouth watering that half the plate was eaten before I remembered about taking photos. All in all it was a great evening and a good start to the wedding festivities that followed the next day.
More about the Persian ceremony in a few days.
Ciao!
….a beautiful Tuscan town
On a Sunday, my husband and I decided to hop on the train in Florence and do a day trip to Lucca. Sundays and Mondays are not the best days to travel in Italy. At least on one of those two days tourists will be disappointed to find that shops and attractions are closed to the public. Luckily there were enough stores, churches and caffes open to keep us busy for the day.
Lucca is a historic city with Roman and Etruscan roots. In the 15th century a wall was built around the city that still remains today. The top of the wall is a great place to walk and ride your bike.
As we walked through an opening in the wall we were greeted by narrow cobblestone streets, numerous Gothic churches, beautiful piazzas, outdoor caffes, and stages and signs for music festivals.
I just read recently that there are 100 churches in Lucca. We definitely didn’t see that many but the ones I did see were very impressive.
Our original plan was to go to Pisa as well but it wasn’t to be. We were just too exhausted to make the extra trip. I’m not that disappointed. So many people told me that Lucca would have been their first choice as a destination.
….the conditions were perfect
Back in August I signed up for the Railpath Community Run. Initially I thought I would do the walk but every year for the last three years I end up running the course. I guess the term running is debatable in my case but once I start I don’t stop to walk. I’m not very fast, in fact I know people who can walk faster than I run.
On Thursday, my daughter and I made our way to the Henderson Brewery where the running packages could be picked up. This is the first year that the micro brewery, situated on the rail path hosted the event. We stayed and sampled some of the beer after picking up our numbers and t-shirts.
My husband has been coaching a group of boys, ages nine to thirteen, for the last four weeks to prepare them for this year’s cross country run at their school. We’ve known most of the boys for 10 years and we consider them family. Despite my husband’s current medical condition, going out two to three times a week to work with the boys has been a very uplifting experience for him. In his younger days my husband was considered a world class marathon runner.
This past week K has been flat on his back with debilitating pain in his knees and ankles. At the hospital they thought he was suffering from an onset of severe rheumatoid arthritis and they sent him home with a prescription for morphine and a phone number for a rheumatologist. To make a long story short, he was able to get dressed today and make his way to the race to watch his team run.
There were 13 of us from the ‘family’ running and I was the only one who had signed up for the walk, which was after the run. Instead of making everyone wait for me to finish the Community Walk I decided to do the run section instead. I learned a new term today that applies to me. I’m a ‘snurtle’ which means I run slower than a turtle. My only goal today was not to be the last one on the course.
Well I reached my goal. There were four women slower than me and I ran a personal best. The run is 45 minutes long and I was about 200 metres shy of the 5k mark. I figured I would have hit the mark in about 47 minutes. In past races I’ve never run better than a 50 minute 5k.
The boys all ran 8K, some faster than others but in the end three of them took first, second and third place in the under 18 category. Pretty impressive. My daughter, A, ran 8K as well and my daughter-in-law, J, ran 7K. We were all happy with our results and after the race we hung around and had a drink at the brewery. We also stayed for the draw prizes and three of the boys walked away with a gift and I won a prize. Not a bad way to end an event.
Next year I’m going to aim to get to that 5K mark before the 45 minutes are up. It will probably mean losing some more weight and running more often but I’m confident that I can do it. Who would have thought at my age I would become a runner.
Cheers!
…..as promised in my last post, Last Four Days at the Cottage here is the rest of that weekend
Going to the cottage with A and J is always a lot of fun. This year my birthday happened to fall on the last of those four days. Our good friends and neighbours at the cottage were also up and they invited us over for dinner on the Saturday. It turned out to be a little bit of a celebration. They toasted A and J’s wedding which took place earlier in the year and to my ‘last year of being young’. This was in reference to the fact that next year I will be officially declared a senior. I personally don’t think that I will all of a sudden become old just because of a number attached to my age. I never tell the students at school how old I am because I know they will automatically think that I’m ancient. They think that 40 is old.
The next day, which was my actual birthday, we packed up to go home. I’m sure that my daughter was given instructions by my family to be back by a certain time. When we got to the ferry dock we were the last car put on the barge so we had enough time to make a few stops on our trip back to the city. We stopped at Wendy B’s in Lafontaine and picked up a few snacks to enjoy on the trip home and the girls picked up a birthday present for me from her small gallery in the back corner of her store. 
This lovely bracelet also came with a pair of beautiful hand painted earrings.
On the way home we were approaching an antique market outside of Cookstown that I’ve always wanted to stop at but never have. This trip we decided that we had enough time to stop and have quick tour of the place. We weren’t disappointed. I love collecting old bottles and found a few to use as subjects in my paintings. I also found a rack of new linen tops that were on sale and I treated myself to a beautiful orangey button down blouse that I can also wear like a jacket. Here are some of things that we saw there:
When we got home there was a parcel waiting for me from my friend, D, from the cottage. She ordered me a new game called King’s Cribbage.
My daughter, granddaughter and son-in-law were already there. My husband and son-in-law were busy cooking up ribs. We had a glorious outdoor meal with the family. The baby is walking holding onto things but she has managed a few steps on her own. I received a gift certificate for an art store (always appreciated) and my husband combined my anniversary gift with my birthday gift and bought me a great macro lens (which most of you already know I’ve been using a lot).
Last weekend my husband and I made our final visit to the cottage to close the place up for the season. I know it’s early but this year is an exceptional year with milestone birthdays in October.
Cheers!
Mama Cormier 