The Perfect Summer Weekend...

Well, it's very possible that Steve and I just experienced the best weekend of the summer EVER! Truly, it was perfect (aside from being too short) and had the perfect balance of time together and time with others! It included the best food, the best company and the best things to do! It has raised the bar for all future summer weekends of 2006!

We are still recovering slightly from eight straight weeks of either hosting people for the weekend or being out of town. As fun as all of that was, it does provide a certain inability to conceive of what a weekend alone is really like!!! Though we have made mad attempts at achieving the perfect summer weekends a couple of times, it appears that much of the time, Mother Nature has had a plan of her own!! Whether it be weather or sickness, we have been put in our place a couple of times already and found ourselves unable to do much more than watch the first season of Nip/Tuck on DVD!!

UNTIL THIS WEEKEND!!!!

It started off perfectly by lying in bed until 10:30ish on Saturday morning and catching up on some long overdue rest. I then caught an early flick with Joanne at a hidden jem of a cinema that I never even knew existed (St-Laurent's Rainbow Cinemas...three bucks a movie!!!). After a good movie, some good shopping (yeah for sales at Jacob!) and touring the neighborhoods of Eastern Ottawa, we came home to relax in the sweltering heat of our apartment! We made the yummiest nachos ever and watched When Harry Met Sally (one of the best movies of all time!) until the sun went down and cooled the city off a bit.

When the sun goes down is when you really discover the true meaning of long summer nights! We put on our walking shoes and headed down to the water falls to check out the first night of Les Grands Feux du Casino. It was South Africa presenting their magic and though the show was terrific, it did lack a little bit of fluidity!! Once that show was done we went to Parliament Hill to watch the Sound and Light Show presented by the NCC. I've never really stopped to watch it before and I have to say that it was quite impressive! By 11:30pm I started to have an uncontrollable craving for a McDonald's chocolate sundae (and this is the only part of the weekend that was a let down)..so we headed past the McDonald's on Bank street on our way home...mouth salivating...tummy ready for chocolatey goodness...only to find a sign in the door that says "due to staff issues, we regret to inform you that we will be closed as of 9:45pm tonight. We apologize for any inconvenience.". Well, that SUCKED and I had to settle for a bagel and some chocolate milk once I got home!!

Sunday morning I was up bright and early for my long run with my training group. I was up so early in fact, that I had time to stop at Starbucks and read the paper before I met everyone. For anyone that knows me, they know that I am anything but a morning person however, on the rare occasion that I am an early bird, I can't stop raving about how wonderful it is to enjoy the peace and quite of the early morning hours. I preceeded to successfully complete my run in fairly good time and then headed home to the amazing smell of Sunday evening's dessert baking in the oven (I'll get to that later!!).

The best part about Sunday was that Heather and Bert were coming up to visit because Heather is starting at Queen's in the fall and they were in Kingston searching for her new home for the next two years. This is reason to celebrate for two reasons: A.) because she got accepted into her program B.) because we will now have the pleasure of having her in our neck of the woods for a little while (only two hours away instead of the usual eight and half hours!). All this to say...it was strawberry daiquiris all around!! We went out for brunch (best eggs benedict EVER!)...toured Ottawa (tried the get the Governor General's foot guards to laugh) and came home for a BBQ of garlic butter chicken kabobs!! I even managed to slip an hour nap in there! How perfect is that?!?!

The very best part of the weekend though was still to come!!! After dinner, we brought out our dessert masterpiece (that we could only hope would be as tasty in real life as they were in our heads)...**drum roll please**...home made ice cream sandwiches!!! We baked the jumbo chocolate chip cookies in the morning, stuck them in the fridge, got ourselves so soft serve ice cream and presto...the dessert that keeps on giving!! They turned out to be even better than we imagined and I can't get them out of my head!!

So, sadly, our weekend had to come to an end but, atleast the summer went by with one legendary weekend to remember (as all the best summers do!). We dragged ourselves back to work and longed for the weekend gone by while daydreaming about the long weekend coming up. It's at these moments when you miss being in school and having the summers all to yourself! Cherish it young ones (and teachers!)...because they are gone far too quickly!