Nathan and Liesel ejoying their favorite pasttime

You may need to turn up yor sound!

Happy Birthday Liesel!!!!!

To my gorgeous wife!!!

Hope you have a fantastic day today! May your first birthday as a US resident be a wonderful experience, and may the rest be even better. I look forward to the many adventures that lie before us in the USA and can't wait to share them with you. Thanks for everything you do for Nathan and me, the way you look after us and make sure we do not lack anything. We are truly blessed to have you in our lives and pray that we may be able to spoil you even if it is only a fraction of what you deserve. We love you so much!!!

with heaps of love

Your two men in your life

Grant and Nath

Just another average weekend

Well, there is nothing phenomenal that we did this weekend that is really worth writing about. On Saturday, we headed down to a another park for a picnic. This park again is in a beautiful setting. A place where anyone who is a little boy at heart will love. On the one side of the park is a train line, a river runs down the other side, and with the airport being about 3 miles away, aircraft flying a couple of hundred meters above on their final approach. Then of course there's the playground. Nathan had a great time running up and down and exploring the structures. At lunchtime, we decided to bring out the food.... bad idea. Five seconds after the containers were opened, insects (bees, I think) descended upon us. Didn't take us long to realize that if we stayed we may get some extra protein in our diets, so we packed up and headed back home to have lunch in an air-conditioned, pest-free environment.

That afternoon, Nath and I went to Costco, to get new tyres fitted to Liesel's Buick. The service is exceptional, as these tyres come with lifetime pressure checks, wheel balancing, and tyre rotations. These are the tyres that will get is through the winter season, and are specially designed for snow! Bring it on (in small quantities please)

On Sunday, we went to Church, later on that afternoon, we went to Barnes & Noble bookstore. In the children's section, there is a Thomas the train train set laid out. Nathan can easily spend hours here playing with Thomas and all his friends. And that was our weekend! Tomorrow (Monday) I have been invited to play beach volleyball again by a colleague at work. It will be at the same place as last time, on Lake Erie's edge, but this time we will be playing under flood lights since the sun is setting so much earlier!

Next weekend is a long weekend here in the USA as we celebrate Labor Day on Monday. This day officially marks the end of summer :-( We will be driving to Liesel's family in Detroit to spend the weekend there (about 3.5 hours drive). So my blog may only be updated on Tuesday once we return from Detroit.

Then, of course, its my beautiful wife's birthday on Tuesday. Looking forward to spoiling her on her special day! Until Tuesday next week then........ (video to follow shortly)

Nathan helping with the washing

Nathan helping Liesel do the laundry

Preparing for Winter

Now don't read too much into the title. We are not on the brink of a blizzard just yet! The weather has been generally the same as last week with high's around 25C. It was raining on saturday, and since we couldn't do any outdoor activity with nathan, we decided to take a drive to Burlington Coat Factory. This is a wholesale factory that has all kinds of clothing and other stuff like baby furniture, but they specialize in winter clothing. We thought that we may get better prices for some winter clothes now, before there is a huge demand for it later on in the year! We found a big winter jacket for Nath, as well as a very cute (and warm) snow suit. We are making sure that he will be ready for sledding when his granny arrives in December! When we tried it on him, he wasn't too impressed with this bulky blue uniform, but I suppose you can't blame him when its 25C outside ;-)

As it rained throughout the day, I took Nathan with me to Costco (similar to Makro). This is a excellent place to be if you want to covet! They have all the latest and greatest plasma and LCD televisions. Then we also had a few samples of food that were being handed out all over the store. Not a bad way to spend a rainy afternoon!

On Sunday we went to church as usual. Nathan is loving church because he gets to hang out with other children his age in the nursery! Today, the lady watching them told us how Nathan was pointing to differnet animals and telling everyone in the room what animal it was, and then he made the sound of that animal. The others in the class clapped for him each time! He seemed to love that so much that he even started clapping for himself! This kept the "teacher" amused the whole time we were in church!

After Nathan's afternnon nap, I took him with me to the Westlake Recreation Center. Here I signed up for indoor volleyball that will take place from September 6 onwards. It is held every Wednesday night from 8pm to 9:30pm! Looking forward to getting back into the game!!!! After the quick sign-up Nathan and I spent some time in the playground before heading home for supper!