Family

My whole extended family on my step dad's side came up to Canada to celebrate my convocation and my grandparent's 50th anniversary along with my maternal grandma and some of my mom's cousins. To make things easier I always referred to them as either the "white" side of the family or the "yellow" side. It was a good system.

It was a great time of family bonding; the joking and teasing from the uncles, the bantering, being spoiled by the aunts, the antics with the cousins, and just the unconditional warm family love that you could feel emanating from everyone. It was beautiful. It made me treasure my family more. I absolutely looooved it.

With the family I finally got to hit up Niagara Falls as a bona fide tourist. Did the whole boat tour thing and we took THE funniest group photo. Everyone has just got the wonkiest expressions on their faces.

We also went to this sleepy town east of Kingston and chilled at a B& B there called Sleepy Hollow. That was a first as well. I loved it. It was so quaint and cozy with a delightful country feel. It reminded me of my Stillwater, Oklahoma days. My oldest cousin, who's my age and I got to share a room with a massive king size bed. We could've fit another one of our itty bitty cousins in between us or two.

One of the funniest memories from that trip was when we went across the border to New York state to see this old castle a la Casa Loma. I was a bit nervous since the last time I tried crossing the border without my passport we hit some troubled waters. This time I was driving with my cousin and we were blasting the music. The customs officer asked us a bunch of questions, but the best one was "how do you know each other?" We gave each other a look thinking...would this guy actually buy the fact that we are indeed related? It was plain from appearances that there's no way we can be biologically related. She's blonde and blue eyed with a pale complexion, and I've got black hair and brown eyes. So we threw it out there tacking on "BY MARRIAGE," at the very end hoping for the very best. In the end he believed us to our great relief, and we went on our merry way.

The castle on Heart Island was beautiful, but a bit disappointing on the inside since it was never finished. As we toured the islands we found out that some people bought some of the islands for as low as $24 way back in the day. Now they go for about oh... a few million. Dang! What an investment. I should be buying myself real estate like that. What with global warming and everything I should buy some dinky little island in the Arctic Circle or something. Maybe that'll pay off.

On the way back to the Great White North we stopped by a go-kart track and roared around the track. It was great fun although I will never will wear a skirt to go go-karting in the future. We also hit up the batting cages where I got whacked by a 70mph fast ball. That put me out of commission, and I didn't even get a war bruise to show for it.

Oh fun times with the family.