Guest post by Tina!

The following was written by our dear friend Tina, who recently spent some time with us. Thanks Tina for taking the time to write this!

When my husband and I found ourselves with a free long weekend in February, our thoughts immediately turned to Ottawa. While the city is a fabulous place in the winter, we also wanted to spend our time off with our dear friends Katalijn and Nolan.

While they are technically Riley’s longtime friends, their recent addition to my life has enriched it in every way.

They kindly offered to let us stay in their house… which was actually a bed and breakfast in our case since they not only housed us, but fed us (delicious food) and entertained us. I’m still waiting for the bill to show up in the mail ;)

We packed up our one and a half year old daughter, made the five hour trip and spent several days with this wonderful couple.

There were many highlights of the weekend. The first was meeting Zora – the amazing puppy Nolan and Kat adopted from the humane society. She’s a lovely dog and so well behaved. Nolan and Kat are doing a great job at obedience training.

Another highlight was a girls’ night out at the curling rink. I filled in for Nolan, which the other team members agreed was an improvement in every way - haha. I hadn’t thrown a rock since my teenage days, but I was able to make some respectable shots by the middle of the game. Kat was one of the stars of the night, but my second rock in the last end was considered by the other team as the throw of the game. Word got around and there were several offers from national women’s teams to serve as a spare. Unfortunately, the money offered was not enough, so I’m going to stick to recreational curling for now.

Kat and Nolan also took us to the greenbelt, where we fed chickadees out of the palms of our hands. My daughter was fascinated that birds were coming to eat out of mommy’s hands. A wonderful experience.

We look forward to our next get together with Nolan and Kat. We wish they lived closer to Toronto, but it is always nice to know they are only a five hour drive – or an e-mail - away.

Life is keeping me busy!

It's been a while since I posted, for which I apologize... Life has definitely kept me busy, but in a good way! As I mentioned before, we had a long weekend, and instead of getting a cottage ready for the summer, which is what the majority of Canadians is doing but since we don't have a cottage, we spent the Monday in Brockville with Nolan's parents. It had been a while since I had seen them, and we had a really nice time catching up and just hanging out. Perfect!
Wednesday I was up at the PRF again, to attend some site visits for a new biomass study that will hopefully be put in and harvested later this year. It's very exciting and includes some leading edge harvesting equipment and other technologies. I actually spent the other days in the office, which doesn't happen very often anymore these days!
The weekend was great. Well, it started with a visit to the vet which went well for Murphy, but unfortunately Fertile might need some more dental work done. But first we have to wait and see what her blood tests will say, since there is also a chance she might have hyperthyroidism. But besides that she is very healthy! On Saturday we had our running friends over for a lunch and birthday cake for Debbie. Lots of food and lots of sun. Tom decided to stay home, since Nolan has been nursing a cold for the past few days, and he had his hopes on a Boston qualifier time the next day during the Ottawa Marathon. Saturday morning was quite chilly, we even had the heat on since it was so cold and damp in the house. However, by the end of the day it got really humid, sticky and warm. I went for a 9k run at the end of the day, and got back completely soaked! Strange how it can change so quickly.
On Sunday we ventured downtown to watch the Ottawa marathon and half marathon, which was somewhat strange. We both have ran it so often that it felt weird to be on 'the other side'. But it was fun cheering people on, and it was quite impressive to see how many runners in as many shapes and form are participating! I knew several people who participated, but missed half of them just to the sheer number of people. The half marathon had about 11,000 runners, and the full around 5,500 runners. Quite a few!! It was really fun to watch, although the steady rain did make it a bit tough. By the end we were soaking wet and cold. Especially for Nolan, who still didn't feel great, the rain didn't help. But we still had a great time!
Tom did manage to get his BQ, which was very exciting! Now it will be a challenge to actually sign up for the race. Last year it sold out in about 6 hours... JoAnn was the only one running the half from our core running group, and she did really well and finished strong. So proud of her!
But I'm also proud of all my other friends that ran a race (there were also a 5 and 10k) that weekend: Debby, Julia, Ann Marie, Julie. Did I forget anybody?? Well done ya'all!!
I am currently back in Petawawa. I spent the day in Mattawa at the Canadian Ecology Centre, to meet up with some of my FRP and CIF colleagues. It was nice to see everybody again, had some good meeting, a great bbq lunch and nice walk (despite the mosquitoes...). The weather has also greatly improved. After all the rain we had last week, this week proves to be more sunny and also much warmer! Tomorrow they're expecting a high of 32...
I have to admit, I'm a little nervous for tomorrow. Our new ADM is visiting the PRF, and Pete and I will be presenting. It is a great opportunity, but I am also a little scared. I know he is a nice guy, but I don't know him well enough to know what to expect. But on the other hand we'll be talking about something that is dear to our heart, so it might come naturally! We also planned a field tour for the afternoon, so hopefully the bugs will behave themselves...  I will let you know how it went!
This evening, so distract myself from the presentation tomorrow, I went for a great run along the Fish Hatcheries in Petawawa, a great trail system. I guess I did have some energy left to burn. I felt really good, and I have good hopes that I might actually get back into our running routine. At least it's going into the right direction!

Active and fun weekend

This past weekend was one of fun, friends, activities and fresh air! On Friday we met up with Denise and Dimitri to catch a glimpse of the opening of Winterlude. D&D are a Dutch couple that moved to Toronto last year, and we'd met them before in Ottawa a couple of years ago. We decided not to go to the Quebec side to actually participate in the opening activities, but we were able to watch the fireworks from Parliament Hill. And admittedly so, we were are very impressed with the quality and the duration of the fireworks.  It seems like they wanted to make up for not having any for New Year's eve... After the fireworks we went for a stroll through Confederation Park, where the ice carvers were in full swing creating the most beautiful ice sculptures. We'll have to go back soon to admire the results. There were some smaller sculptures ready, and they were truly impressive! Dimitri took several pictures, maybe I can see if I can post some of his pictures.
The next morning we all slept in (so deserved!), and D&D were impressed with how quiet our neighbourhood is. Nice to hear! After some blueberry pancakes (homemade!), we headed to the canal to go skating. The ice was absolutely amazing and the weather could not have been better with temperatures around freezing and lots of sunshine. A real pleasure! By the time we left around 3pm, the canal was over-crowded with people, but it was really nice to see so many people out there enjoying the ice.
Afterwards we went for a bowl of soup at Pub Italia. Next time we'll have to try some of the beers there as well :) Denise and Dimitri left for Kingston at the end of the afternoon, and we took it easy for the rest of the evening and called it an early night, since we'd have to get up early the next day to go running.

It was just the three of us this time, since Ann is still on her cruise... So JoAnn, Nolan and I set off, but unfortunately JoAnn had to cut her run short due to some rib pains. Nolan and I kept running, and did our loop around the Government General office, a favourite, although it's even nicer in the summer when everything is green. But nonetheless we had a great run and I manage to get over 18km in, which gave me a much-needed confidence boost for the half marathon, which is only in three weeks!

That afternoon we had more friends coming, Scott and Bonnie, who are friends from Nolan from university. It was really nice to see them and their two kids and to spend time with them and catch up. So overall it was a great weekend, it just went by so quickly!