Visitors!? Yep, all the way out here!

In a nearly unprecedented occurrence, my niece, Kelsey and her boyfriend, Dan, came out to visit us for a few days! Upon hearing they were coming and after the shock had passed, Carol and I decided it might be time to vacuum the place and get some sheets for the bed in the spare room. We have been working in the ensuite bathroom to try and finish it all up. We needed to put the baseboard trim and door trim on, trim out the window, "fix" the painting mistakes (blotches of wall paint from errant roller passes), hang pictures and install towel bars. When I first tried to trim out the pocket door, my finishing nails were too long, getting in the way of the sliding door and jamming the whole thing up. As I worked to remove the too-long nails, I somehow managed to detach the door track from the framing and screwed up the whole thing. My only option was to cut a big hole in the drywall so I could access the track attachments, screw it all back together, repair the drywall, repaint the wall, and finally, attach the trim using shorter finish nails. "Why do things the easy way?", has become my motto working on this house, it seems.
Having gone through all that, and after filling the nail holes and sanding everything smooth, we were finally able to put the finish coats of paint on the trim. Wow, everything looks so nice! There's a lot to be said for having rooms "finished"! One down... every other room in the house left to go. Yikes!

On a roll, I trimmed and painted the window in the spare room so it would look nice when our company arrived. After buying a new vaccuum cleaner a few weeks ago, the house wasn't in too bad a shape. We did give it a good going over just to make sure. Having guests come to stay sure has a way of moving "housework" to the top of the "To Do" list!

Both Dan and Kelsey are paramedics (EMR's/EMT's/medics/???) with the City of Edmonton and are fortunate enough to be able to organize their days off so they can have 4 or more days together every once in a while. To take full advantage, they were working until 3pm on the Friday, and then driving out to Kamloops. I met them shortly after midnight on the Trans Canada Highway in town so they could follow me up to our house. If you've never been up here before, suffice it say that you don't want to drive up here in the dark as your first experience in finding our place. It would probably be a long night for you (and for us!). As we finally arrived at our gate, I got out to let Dan know to continue up the driveway as I closed the gates behind us. He opened his window and as I leaned in to give him the message, Kelsey, eyes as big as saucers, exclaims, "Holy shit!"
I'm happy to say that after that initial shock, I think she had a great time over the 3 days they spent here. Carol took her riding on Sunday and Monday, with the latter being a 2 1/2 hour adventure through the forest behind our house. Sierra had tried to take advantage of Kelsey's inexperience on their ride on Sunday, but was a great partner for her on the Monday ride, behaving himself the entire time. Jake got spooked by a VERY scary rock and the four of them barely managed to escape with their lives - if he was telling the story!
We also spent a lot of time exploring on the ATV's. Dan brought his quad and with ours, we had enough space to fit a couple of dogs, and the four adults. It made for some fun adventuring. The weather cooperated big time and we had comfortable, sunny weather for almost the entire weekend.
I mentioned the dogs earlier. There is a little story there. Buddy, Kelsey and Dan's golden retriever, is a sweetie who gets along with everyone. He and Ben spent the weekend playing together. Sadly, our other dog, Joey, has a hate on for strange dogs and Buddy was no exception. Even with her muzzle on she was very aggressive so she had to spend most of the weekend in the laundry room, where her bed is located.
We ate some awesome meals over the three days, BBQ'ing a small turkey on Saturday, ribs on Sunday and leftovers on Monday.

It was a busy but fun "long" weekend. It was nice to spend some time getting to know Dan, and it's always great being with Kelsey. She has grown to be a very nice young lady and I'm proud to have her as part of my family.