Reuben's Birthday Weekend

It's time for another long and boring post. Work is very slow so I am going to write as much as possible because I have nothing to do here and I'm trying to make the day go by just a little bit faster. Anyway, it's almost lunchtime so that's a good thing.

This past weekend it was Reuben's birthday. We knew we wanted to do something special and since travelling is our specialty we spent some time working on where to go. Eventually, we decided on Brockville and Merrickville, both within an hour's drive of home. We had thought Calgary at first, to take advantage of my working at WestJet but then it was so far away and we didn't want to spend them money to go to the mountains so we opted for something closer to home. Plus we hadn't been to our own church for 4 weeks so it was good to be home for that.

On Friday after work, we headed out with our suitcase to Brockville. We took the 416 up to the 401 and got off the 401 at Prescott and then drove down Hwy 2 to Brockville. This was a little more exciting than the 401 as it follows the St. Lawrence river. There were some great views and great countryside homes to see! In Brockville we drove around to find a restaurant and ended up at the Brockberry Cafe. It is a small, family run business but the choice, wine and food were all excellent. We loved the wine we had, not sure what it was, something Italian! Reuben had his famous Philly Cheese Steak sandwich that he always gets and I had a great salad with Thai chicken and mandarin oranges. We had bruschetta to start so we were too full for dessert.

Then we checked into our hotel. It was a really nice room! I couldn't wait to give Reuben his birthday present (his actual birthday was on Sunday) so he opened it then. He was very surprised! It is a GPS locator. We've been having lots of fun with it!

In the morning, we checked out the complimentary continental breakfast and were dismally disappointed. There were some dry croissant bagels with jam. Some bread, muffins (not fresh). And coffee and orange juice. oh well, we filled up anyway. On the road we decided to skip the Brockville Farmer's Market and used our GPS to get to Merrickville. We had to pass through Smith Falls' and since Reuben had never been to the Hershey factory we stopped by and purchased some much needed chocolate. Then it was on to Merrickville. It was sort of a cool and windy day but at least the rain held off until we left. We toured around the cute shops, saw the locks and had some lunch at the Yellow Canoe cafe. It was a nice time, I'm glad we went.

On Sunday, we had a very fun dinner party at my parents' place. Ribs, chicken, fettucine, salad and a wonderful chocolate mousse dessert birthday cake.

Then on Monday we were supposed to have a church picnic but the weather was decidedly not picnic-like. So we grabbed all the food we had planned to bring and brought it to Mom & Dad's and had a smorgasborg dinner.

All in all, a wonderful and memorable weekend.