Hoppy Easter!

Hoppy Easter, Love the soon to be 3 Walshs!

I hope everyone had a really lovely long weekend. We got to spend some time with friends and family and heaps of food so everything was lovely here.   3 points to G for happily signing up for all photo ops I request!

Life with my iPhone (or a photo essay of what's up)

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="482" caption="Mining in the basement"][/caption]

Today my friend Annie commented that I hadn't posted in a while. I realized it is because it was getting to the point of too many things to post about...so I went through my iPhone and have posted a few photos of what has been going on and I can catch you up!

Garret and Kevin (his Dad) spent some serious quality time in our basement a few weeks ago, insulating the crawl space under the kitchen. It is like an  oubliette down there complete with spiders and dirt and general grossness. The two of them dug  it out and insulated underneath to help make it a more efficient space.  Above is a pic of Garret showing off all his hard work to my Mum.  I threw the miners light on her that my brother Elliott got me for Christmas--useful in many applications that light!

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="482" caption="testing new fixtures"][/caption]

We spent several hours  looking for new lighting. I hated our old fixtures  so we installed these snazzy new ones. yay.  They look great and really add a nice somewhat industrial feel to the living room. So everything was going great! We painted, put up new lighting...then this happened:

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="482" caption="G and Kevin changed over some plumbing...which I originally thought would be one small hole. This is them taping up the sheet so dust didnt go everywhere (totally didnt work by the way)"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="482" caption="Ok, this is kinda scary, but totally fixable right? (also, how nice is our new paint?! way snazzier than gross beige right?)"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="482" caption="Clearly it get's worse before it gets better. sigh"][/caption]

It's not the end of the world, but DEFINITELY not what I was expecting!  Hoping that we can work on getting that fixed soon. yikes. [ Side note: that show on the TV is "Happy Endings" I think its on ABC? We have become obsessed with it and marathoned through the first season recently. To sum it up in one word? Amah-zing.]

Garret and I have also been really lax with getting wedding stuff off the ground.  My Mum called and nicely yelled at me telling us to get on it since my shower is coming up. So I dragged Garret to The Bay thinking we would have a fun date night.....Wrong

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="480" caption="Wishing the zapper thing was a gun as this kind of shopping is apparently not the relationship builder I thought it would be."][/caption]

It seems we strongly disagree on our vision for the house. I want pretty things and he wants boring things. And I can say that since he never blogs on here so can't defend himself (HA!) I remind him I am the designer but he never goes along with it. crap.  I was complaining to a friend and she pointed out her philosophy is "she who washes the sheets can pick the sheets" and since a month ago Garret had to ask me where the detergent goes....I think that that means I WIN!  If that also stands true for she who cooks gets to pick everything for the kitchen, then my life is complete.

Moving on....Easter weekend we were the Travelling Wilburys. Barrie to North Bay to Meaford.  The Shwalsh's have adopted the Walsh tradition of always stopping at Webers when we are on HWY 11 north. And south too actually. In fact anytime we pass by we must stop in....10:00am is no match for our love of burgers. Gross? Maybe, but don't you judge us! We had our first stop of the season on Saturday, and also hit it up on the way back down on Sunday. (This is not a friend of the operation Wedding Dress diet. shhhhh)

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="480" caption="It's that time of year again!"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="481" caption="While in North Bay we stopped in with Charlene to see Garret's Grandma. We wore bunny ears into her nursing home which was a big hit. I also won a free coffee on that Timmies cup I am tightly gripping there."][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="480" caption="Crazy cool Jello dessert"][/caption]

We left North Bay mid day Sunday and headed to Meaford for my side's family dinner.  It was a long drive, but 100% worth it to get to spend some time together!  We have done our holiday dinners with close friends (who are at this point really just extended family) for the past 7 years or so. It's so nice to have a crowd of people you adore sitting around one table.  I didn't take any other photos with my iPhone of Easter dinner so for now this dessert pic represents an insane amount of delicious food, great laughs and the greatest people I know!

Best laid plans

We had decided that Sunday would be it--the day we finally got around to finishing some of our to do list (frankly at this point I would be happy with starting it!!!!) However we both had a little bit too much fun on Saturday night at a family wedding. The bride looked beautiful and everything was lovely. There were a few drinks, midnight pizza and poutine, a late night dance party, and G, Elliott and Taylor had a 3am swim! (I missed out on that as I went to bed at 2am like the sensible gal I am haha)
I will post some photos as there were a few classic moments for sure--- but I only have 1 on my phone:



My Nanny hit the dance floor and we rocked out to Justin Biebers "Baby" before she retired to drink some beer and people watch.

So Sunday was spent being lazy and eating grilled cheese sandwiches perfectly grilled by my mum. We had ice cream cake for Ashley's birthday and several naps. Nothing got done but it was SO worth it!

***Some additional glimpses of the night:

[slideshow]

Pretty Good little Sunday

:::

Mum and I got up early and just sat on the couch discussing life love and the pursuit of happiness. Before I knew it it was 11am, and I had promised my grandma I would come to her house and start going through my grandpa's things. She said she just can't bare to see her husbands life reduced to "stuff" but she just needs things packed away. It is just too raw for her. 61 years together and suddenly you become single again. She has been part of Joan and John essentially all her life, it is so sad to see her struggle with who she is as herself. Mum and I made piles to take to the community outreach, piles to throw out and piles of things we want to keep. I ended up with a brown suede fedora, a book of quotes and his old burberry umbrella. The umbrella is so old that it appears it might disintigrate at the first sign of rain, but it just screams "Grandpa" to me and I love it. We spent a few hours immersed in his things, which was both sad and funny. He kept some of the strangest things over the years. I found notes I had tucked in his pocket when I was 10 years old. Seeing what was important enough for someone to keep for 18+ years really says so much about a person. I have always known he loved me, but I just felt such a sense of being loved today, it really meant a lot.