How we left Waterloo

Our final two weeks in Waterloo were a blur of visiting, boxes, packing, organizing, boxes, saying goodbyes and more boxes. For the first half of our first week back, we spent a lot of quality time with Tessa (Tash's "local niece" in Waterloo) and Lily (Dave's niece). We took them to African Lion Safari one day, mini-golfing the next, and finished things off with a Blue Jays-Minnesota Twins game on Wednesday. The Jays walloped the Twins 13-1, which made the whole experience very exciting for the girls -- and for Tash and Dave, too.

The second half of the week was spent visiting with Dave's relatives at Sandbanks, a provincial park between Toronto and Kingston. Nearly everyone from his dad's side of the family was there, which in itself made the gathering important -- his family isn't very large, but it is scattered across North America, and so such gatherings are rare. In addition to time spent visiting and hanging out on the beach, we also enjoyed a delicious, expansive, seafood buffet.

Our second week was spent madly trying to get all of our belongings packed into boxes, while at the same time visiting with as many Waterloo friends and family as possible. Surprisingly enough, we actually managed to get everything either stuffed into a box and sent on Greyhound, or crammed into the back of Dave's car. We also spent a good amount of quality time with people. We had a "come-and-go" at Tim and Janice's house (the friends who let us stay with them) the Friday before we left, which gave us a chance to see lots of people, and say many goodbyes.

Sunday, August 5 we left Waterloo and headed into Toronto. We went out for lunch with Tash's niece and attended Dave's office mate's wedding in Mississauga later that same day. Monday morning we hit the road, Alberta bound.