Ryan James O'Sullivan

On Friday afternoon I arrived at work and had a strong urge to A) find a way to watch the England Game (I will not weep, I will not weep, I will not weep) B) Get out of the city ASAP.  The only problem was I was at my office with a full work day ahead of me.  So I decided noon was high time to get the hell out.  Confirmed it with the Boss and I was outtie.

We hit the road super quick and managed to get up north before the England game was too far in (20 minutes in if I remember right).  My Grandparents and my sister Amanda were already up there and we got right down to having a blast.  The Saturday forecast was calling for rain (of the thunderstorm variety) so we decided that Friday should be beach day.  We spent a few hours down there and had a blast.  Paige isn’t big on the water (we are working on it) but I managed to get quite a bit of swimming in since Tammy wanted nothing to do with a cold lake (silly Arizonian).

For dinner we BBQ’d some Sliders which were surprisingly fantastic and had some french fries (which I thought were terrible, but everyone else insisted they are fine… so clearly they are crazy…).  Parents arrived up, we went to sleep.  Profit.

Saturday did not bring the rain that was threatened (until later, but we’ll get there) and we ended up having another great day at the beach.  This time my dad, my sister Jess and my sister’s boyfriend joined in on the beach fun.  I even laid out and tanned for a bit and needless to say I’m pulling off the Irish-Red-tan quite well right now… Last season I think I made it down to the beach 2 times all season and here I was pulling that off in one weekend, it was awesome.

After we finished at the beach we decided to head to the Kawartha Dairy to grab some shakes and ice cream.

It was then time for dinner… after dinner Jessica and I decided we would go ATVing.  The plan was to take a fairly short ride out to the main highway and come back.  We got about 75% of the way there and we arrived at a small intersection and Jess asked “what’s that way”.  Of course this type of question between siblings can only lead to crazy exploration and down the street we went towards Murphy’s Corners and Ridge Road.

We arrived at the Ridge Road church and I pulled over knowing that there was a geocache I had failed to find there last year.  We spent some time looking (and I knew where it was this time having asked someone…) and we came away empty handed.  Just as we were giving up the hunt for the cache thunder started to roar in the distance.  Looked up at the sky and holy crap it was black to the south-west.  ”Let’s get out of here dude…”.

We made it almost back home and ran across a deer.  We stopped to watch him eat grass and check us out.  Then it came.  BOOM.  HAIL.  ”Shit Jess, book it, book it”.  The deer was off in to the trees and we were doing the speed limit busting our asses to get home.  Hail and rain falling hard.

We quickly outran the storm (yes that is actually possible) and made it home unscathed.

Sunday we had father’s day pancake breakfast and we were on our way home.  Father’s day dinner was our usual trip to Swiss Chalet.

The above is around 600 words to say this:  This weekend fucking rocked.  I haven’t had that much fun or felt so fulfilled up north in a real.long.time.

This weekend the weather forecast was looking rather craptastic and my sister Amanda is moments away from popping out my Nephew so we decided to stay in the city for the weekend  At the start of the day it was looking like any other weekend in the city: Laze around, clear out the TiVo, commit random acts of computing and get some time in the backyard or park across the street for Paige.

The thought of another weekend lost to routine was too much to bare and I suggested we grab a nice dinner downtown and maybe go for a walk along the waterfront.  We decided to hit up The Old Spaghetti Factory and end our evening taking a walk along the boardwalk at Woodbine Beach.

The Spaghetti Factory was great as always.  I decided since we were on a bit of an adventure I would order something different; I ended up going with the Spicy Chorizo Sausage Penne and I was not disappointed.  Tammy had the boring ol’ Spaghetti with Meat Sauce.  When it came time to get the parmesan cheese on her spaghetti however things got interesting:

That’s right… the lid popped off the dispenser!  After some laughter a new serving was quickly delivered.

You never know how Paige is going to handle a new restaurant and she loved it too.  Her favorite item was the minestrone soup.

It was a great meal and we had a lot of fun there.  After dinner we were off to the beach

My usual waterfront hang out in Toronto is usually a bit further to the west in Marilyn Bell park.  My years working at Exhibition Place, particularly during the CNE were made a little more sane when I could take a relaxing hour or two and sit and watch the boats go by.

So this was my first time in “the beaches” proper (I refuse to call it The Beach) probably since my grade school days.  I must admit that I was impressed.  There were signs of the ongoing city workers strike (the beach clearly hadn’t been cleaned in a bit so there was some obvious litter but it was very minimal in a city that hasn’t seen garbage clean up in nearly three weeks) but all and all it a was a beautiful place to spend the evening.

Paige certainly had a lot of fun

As someone who spends as much time as possible in the summer in cottage country I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised by just how much Toronto had to offer.  It is very easy to forget and take for granted all the stuff there is to do in your back yard – I know for sure I won’t let another weekend in the city go by without considering my options for what we can do as a family to make things more interesting.

And speaking of interesting – a funny story before I conclude.  We decided to leave our stroller by a park bench while we all sat out by the water.  We had been very passively keeping our eye on it and just as we were starting to leave it vanished!  We quickly scanned the board walk and saw our stroller being pushed away by a group of people!  I’ve never seen my asthmatic wife run so hard in my life.  She bolted and started hollering at the people and in the end managed to get our stroller back.  Their explanation? “We thought someone left it”.  Uh huh.  So another thing to remember if you do a weekend in the city – you are still in the city and need to be mindful of that

I wouldn’t have changed a thing – it was a perfect evening.

For a full look at pictures from the day check out my related flickr photoset here.