For Christmas this year I got a combination of presents that are my most favourite ever I think.
It is a new espresso machine and a bean grinder! I use this multiple times a day to make delicious coffee.
I made this video the other day and my brother in law suggested I added a little Ode to Joy to it, which seemed fitting.
So far we are having a wonderful trip. Getting work done while exploring some of a new area to us. The one downfall has been a lack of coffee.
Before we left I came very close to packing my aeropress coffee maker which is what I use at home. It packs up small and would have been easy to bring, but I figured hotels aren't going to have a kettle and our Airbnb is likely to have a coffee maker.
The second part was wrong. There is a kettle here at the Airbnb but not a coffee maker. There was instant coffee and I've been drinking it for days. I've been spoiled to be able to work at home and make a decent coffee just about when ever I want,
And I've been missing that.
Yesterday when everyone went into one store I ran across the street to Bed Bath & Beyond and bought a single cup pour over device. This morning was so much nicer! The $3.99 has made a huge difference.
The hotels will still likely either provide coffee, or have coffee makers, but this is small and easy to pack. I'll have decent coffee the rest of the trip now. Speaking of which, I think I could use one right now.
Today I had a few errands to run. On the way home I decided to grab a coffee and take a short break. It is a beautiful spring day so I pulled off the highway and spent a few minutes drinking my coffee with one of the best views around.
There’s a little park in Grand Pre which looks over the National Historic site and out to Blomidon.
I think TAN should give me some free coffee or swag for such good product placement 😆☕️
At one of my favourite local coffee shops doing some work while waiting for one of the girls to get done dance class. Love watching the freshly roasted coffee beans cool off, the best time to be at the cafe.
Today I was meeting with a friend I hadn’t talked to for a while to have coffee and to chat about working remotely.
It’s not very often I leave the house to work so I decided I’d head down early and do some work from the cafe. It’s nice to get a change of scenery every once in a while. I decided I’d also try standing to work while I was there so I took my keyboard, mouse, and roost stand, with me. It worked out really well and I got to drink delicious coffee at the same time.
I think my laptop could use a bit of a cleaning though.
A perfect way to spend a bit of time on a Sunday afternoon while the rest of the family are celebrating birthdays. Drinking a coffee directly beside the machine which roasted the beans my coffee was made with and accompanied by a good book.
Yesterday Jen took all the girls to Moncton on an overnight trip so they could watch the So You Think You Can Dance tour which came. They all love the show and love dancing in general so it was awesome this opportunity came up for them to go.
This left Noah and I home alone for the evening and night though! As they were having a fun get away we decided we would have our own fun here. Instead of coming right home after school we decided to go get our selves a little treat. I had an awesome coffee while he had a peanut butter brownie treat. The weather was awesome for this time of year so we decided to make use of it and head out for a walk around the marsh as well.
By the time we were done it was pretty much time to eat. Noah had a few different ideas for what he wanted for super, but finally decided on going to Boston Pizza. He worked hard on the activities in the kids menu until his food arrived and even beat me at a few games of X’s and O’s.
It couldn’t be all fun and games though. Once we were home from supper we quickly did the things around the house that were needed for the next day and did his reading homework. With those things out of the way we had the rest of the night to relax with each other. One of his favourite things is to play Go Fish using the Jetpack cards I picked up while at the Grand Meetup for work. While we were playing he made me laugh. I’ve obviously set some different expectations in him by my past actions. He asked me if when I change jobs if I would have to give the cards back to work :-). He remembers cell phones and other things I had to return previous employers. Not this time little man. For one I have no intentions on going anywhere, and I’m pretty sure they’ll let me keep the cards.
We finished off the night with a bit of a snuggle on the couch with some carrot sticks as a snack and then off to bed.
I had a rough night sleeping, I’m sure from a combination of not used to sleeping alone and being worried about over sleeping or not waking up if Noah needed me in the night. As it turns out he slept all the way through. I told him in the morning Mom would be mad because he slept all night. He was confused and asked mad at me or you? At you I told him. She’s going to say, how come when Dad is here you sleep all night for him, but when I’m here you get up and come see me in the night? His response was, Dad you told me to stay in bed all night. HAHAHA!
Today I was able to get out on my first shopping date with one of the kids for the year. We’ve started drawing names so each Jen and I take out two kids individually to pick out small gifts for their siblings and have a treat with Mom or Dad.
We had some ideas before we went on what he wanted to get them and as luck would have it we could get all three at the same store!
We timed it around lunch time because for his treat Noah wanted a cheese burger. Trying to be good I packed a wrap and apple for myself to eat right before we pulled in so I wouldn’t be tempted by McDonalds food.
Once I had Noah all setup with his happy meal I tried opening his toy for him and knocked over my full hot coffee all over my foot and floor. Just the kind of scene I wanted in a busy restaurant. Noah thought it was kind of amusing and we were both impressed the have me a new one when I went to tell them what I had done.
Besides that mishaps we had a fun time. Looking forward to getting out with Alexandria very soon as well.
Over the past couple days since seem to have been drinking a lot of Tim Horton’s coffee. While the coffee isn’t great the company was awesome!
Today we arrived home from a great long weekend away. We went to visit our good friends in New Brunswick. It’s always nice to get to see them and their family. It’s also nice to get away from the every day routine for a while as well. Also I may have been spoiled as they have an espresso machine, so there was good coffee all day everyday.
Given my new running goal I knew I would have to get a run in while I was there. I figured Sunday morning would be a good time so Saturday night I mapped out a few different routes. I wanted to get in a 10k so it would make the rest of the week easier to reach my goal. One option was to run a 3.5k loop from their house a few times and that’s what I settled on. Until I ran up the first hill which was long and steep. Before I made it to the top I knew I was changing it up and running the 10k loop I found that went down a windy side street. There were still hills but I wouldn’t have to go up that one hill two more times.
Besides the cold, there were a few flakes in the sky when I first left, it was a beautiful day out. There were a few times where the wind was really strong which made it even colder feeling, but not too bad. As it wasn’t the route I intended on I didn’t really map it out super well and where I was my phone didn’t get any signal so it wasn’t terribly surprising I got off course a bit and was a bit lost. The realization came when I could see up ahead that the road I was on came to an end. There had been an intersection a little bit back so I was pretty sure that’s where I was supposed to have turned instead of going straight so I turned around. There was someone out in their front yard so I asked them to be sure and I was right. Between the hills, cold, wind, and extra 3k I was pretty sore and tired at the end, but there were some great views looking across the US border.
We had a lot of family fun as well. We headed out to a farm over in Maine just across the border. We played some mini golf, visited the animals, and got to see a water slide to no where. If we had come a bit earlier in the season we could have done their corn maze and carousel too. We’ll come back next year I’m sure.
The river front in town was beautiful. We had a pretty warm day so we decided to spend some time down there. We took a walk across the bridge then down the river for a while. It was wonderfully relaxing. Sitting on a piece of wood washed ashore and watching my family play and looking down the river was some of my favourite time during the trip.
