Warning: a lot of photos coming your way!
We had a terrific holiday in the Muskoka's this summer. We rented a cottage on Mirror Lake in Port Carling and invited Uncle Cory along for the week. Our good friends (The Antonides, who you may recognize as one of the 3 families that travelled with us in Vietnam in 2009) live across the road from where we were staying and it worked out wonderfully. They have 5 children and three of them we got to see a lot of - Joel is Keaton's age, Eve is Chloe's age and Quinn (although a few years older than Meg) was wonderful to play with Meg and love every minute of it. We had a relaxing time and enjoyed lots of sunshine and some rain too. I read. The boys fished. Chloe loved her social time with Eve. Meg enjoyed having us all together and all the beach time she got. It was a fabulous week away.
Here are some of the photos of our little vacation.
We spent most of our vacation enjoying the cottage and the lakefront property it was on...
There was a lot of fishing (both from the dock and from the fishing boat). We fed the ducks often and they loved coming by for visits. Keaton and Chloe loved jumping off the dock for old golf balls that someone had thrown into the water... Meg always watched with much interest.
Cory (being the wonderful uncle that he is) spent hours in the water with Keaton and Chloe. Their favourite thing to do was take the board out in the water and see how long it would take Uncle Cory to knock them off it and into the water. You could hear their laughter all the way up the hill - in the kitchen of the cottage.
We visited a fun little park a few times, it was down at the water where we launched the boat in Port Carling.
We couldn't be that close to Killbear Provincial Park and not make a day trip over to do our cliff jumping. We took Eve and Joel with us for company and the kids took turns jumping off the lower cliffs into Georgian Bay's chilly waters. We all took a try, myself included and Uncle Cory had his first jump ever. The water was rough and cold so the kids wore life jackets. The boys (Cory included) spent a long time hunting and finding crayfish by the rocky shoreline area. They also found a snake nearby and the kids wanted me to take a photo to remember him by.
Thanks to the Antonide crew for a fun week. I managed one photo of all 8 kids!
We spent our final night at the house around the bon fire. It was a beautiful full moon kind of night and I could of stayed there another week (at least). We got lots of family down-time and it was exactly what we all needed. Thank you MUSKOKA'S!