This Is The Life!

Last weekend we played host to a lovely couple whom we were meeting for the first time.  That was when we were in our “Downton Abbey” mode, this weekend we are playing host to Reena, my brother and his friend so it’s a lot less “Downton Abbey” and a lot more “19 Kids and Counting.”

Nobody is standing on ceremony now, it’s every man for himself.  Papa has been immersed in his new Sony E-Reader with the new Clive Cussler novel, GranNan (poor woman) has been battling a migraine all weekend so has been holed up in her bedroom with the shades down, GiGi had to work yesterday and has been off all day today visiting his girlfriend’s parents so they’ve both been gone.  We’ve (by “we” I mean my husband, it’s been too long since I’ve used AutoCAD for me to be helpful!)been struggling to draw out our proposed deck plan so we can go apply for a building permit (our fourth, you would think we ought to know what we’re doing by now) on Monday.

The boys have been the boys, playing on the tire swing, using their Planes: Fire and Rescue Smokejumper characters to rearrange the gravel on the drive, running around the front yard chasing Ender Men and rescuing the trapped Princess Peach and Rosalina (at 7:00am, I don’t think anyone appreciated their efforts!) and generally just being boys!  The Toronto contingent came here needing to work on Uncle Schmee’s boat, he’s been trying to clean, paint and repair it for months now, so we (quite smartly) left them alone today and they’ve gotten a fair amount of work done.  They have to go back home tonight or tomorrow (for work they say but I know that my brother is going to the Queen concert, jealous!) but will be back on Tuesday for a few days to finish things up (hopefully!)

I know that technically they are guests since they don’t live here full-time but they’re also family so I choose to treat them as such.  This, having a whole boatload of people running around, is exactly what I wanted when we decided to move here.

The farm has always been our “go-to” destination for fantastic parties and one of the reasons that I wanted to move here was so that I could enjoy the parties without having to pack up the boys, drive to the farm, refrain from drinking (Don’t Drink and Drive!), then get the boys cleaned up and ready for bed in order to toss them in the van and get them back home!  Now that we’re here I have everything I need for the any situation that could possibly arise with the boys right at my fingertips and I don’t have to worry about driving anywhere! I do, however, have to worry about feeding all of these people!

The absolute best thing though, is that the boys get to see their grandparents and their GiGi every day.  They get to see Uncle Schmee every time he comes home (which isn’t often enough!) and they will grow up knowing that all of this family belongs to them.  They will also get to know the many new friends that come to visit, last weekend they were a little unsure about Reena’s parents at first (Little Man declined to enter the kitchen when they were in there even though he know darn well that Papa was there too) but by the end of the weekend they were both helping pack up the “Tin Can” and were very sad to see our guests go (I still get asked when the Tin Can will be coming back!)  This weekend they managed to convince Uncle Schmee’s friend to teach them how to hammer nails into wood and have spent many hours running around with hammers in their hands.

The group sail discussion

Right now there is a massive pow-wow going on with the men-folk.  Something to do with sails, obviously serious, since there are six of them out there doing something.  I have not been called in to consult (for which I’m grateful) so have no idea what’s going on but I do know that if we didn’t live here we would have stayed away today (so as to not interfere with the boat work) and the boys would have missed out on whatever nuggets of information that they have gleaned in the last half hour.

Next up will be a massive amount of meat cooking on the barbecue with a houseful of people trying to find seats in order to fuel up for their last few hours of painting and cleaning.  It’s going to be crazy, loud, unorganized and wonderful.

I’m so glad that I can finally say…this is my life!