A Weekend Away with My “Besties”
Every single week since Covid shut the world away I have had the blessing of “Zooming” with my 3 best friends from Belle River High School, Rosemary, Barb, and Mary.
Like my sisters, we used to get together every May if we were able. This year we booked an Air B & B in the wee town of Blenheim, Ontario, and counted down the days until we could actually see each other in person.
I flew in from Edmonton, Mary flew in from Calgary, Barb drove in from Tecumseh, Ontario, and Rose drove down from Kitchener, Waterloo.
Mary would be a bit later than hoped for and she had a bit of a covid scare so we weren’t even sure if she could fly at all. But after a week of testing negative every day.. all was good and thanks be to God , she arrived safely and soundly.
Barb and I met Rosie at Jack’s diner in Blenheim and had a lovely lunch and catch up with each other …..and one of the nice women who served us who had an amazing story to tell about her surviving against all odds . ( Cancer, a heart attack, and even Covid. Wow!)
Then it was time to check in to our lovely 5 bedroom home that was situated across from a farm and right on the water!
The place was perfect for those of us with bad knees because we took the bedrooms downstairs and Mary and Barb took the upper rooms with shared bathroom.
The girls brought in TONS of good foods and drinks for us for the weekend. We had yogurts, bagels, cream cheese, milk cream, tea, coffee, meats, cheeses, crackers, salty treats, bottled waters, and so much more. Thanks SO much , my friends.
Our proprietor left us a nice bottle of red wine on the counter too!
When Mary safely arrived that evening we ordered the most yummy pizza from “Franco’s” in Blenheim and chatted the night away until it was time to retreat to our rooms for a good night’s sleep.
After a wonderful breakfast with my friends, (plenty of coffee or tea and I enjoyed a bagel with cream cheese) , showers, etc., we got down to some serious gameplay.
I taught the girls who didn’t know how to play Codenames and we all had fun with that. Then we headed out onto our sunny deck for a few rounds of Password. The sun felt so good but our Rosemary did end up getting a painful burn on the left side of her neck and ear. D’oh!
We decided this was the last year for birthday presents but we totally enjoyed the books and surprises that were gifted to each other.
We had fun fooling around with a lovely shawl from Mary and I’m excited to read all the wonderful books I received from she and Rosie. One of the surprises (from Barb) was tickets to see “Joseph” in London at the Grand Theatre.
After dinner at “Crabby Joe’s” ( that night it was more like ‘crappy Joe’s’ to me with the echoing room filled with sports teams and my marginal dinner…ha ha) I tried to take a ‘selfie’ outside the theatre. We were laughing so hard at my giant head but another guest for the play ended up taking a decent photo of us.
The show was fabulous! And for community theatre the cast was great too. Simple but very good sets, excellent harmonies and choreography, fun ‘colour/sex’ blind casting (all the sons of Benjamin were different races and a mixture of men and women) , and the 2 narrators were outstanding.
( As a side note- all the audience members were instructed to wear masks for the whole show and we had no one behind us as we chose the top row. Safe as we could be in these days of never ending Covid.)
A BIG thank-you to Barbara for the great gift and to all my besties for their generous and thoughtful presents.
More adventures to be shared……