I arrived back in Canada after 5 weeks in the UK and Ireland and was excited to spend a whole week at home.  Dave was having his Bachelor party the weekend before his wedding, my Niece was turning one and then of course Dave and Amy were getting married the following weekend.  So despite being home, it would not be a nice relaxing week of recovery.

I booked a day before i would normally have come home so that i could attend my Niece’s first birthday party!  I arrived the day before and was able to help make her smash cake, which we made in the shape of a pineapple.

It was also one of her cousins birthdays as well so it was a joint birthday with LOTs of kids.  Alayna is the first grandchild on my side of the family but on her dad’s she’s the 12th (I think) so there are a lot of cousins!  It was threatening to rain all day so it wasn’t as much of the pool party that we wanted but luckily we heald it at the family greenhouse so there was plenty of room in the warehouse area.  After cake and swimming and playing, everyone was pooped out and it was time to go home.  Molly was being really good despite only being a few months old.

The next day was the start of the bachelor party which was taking place up north in cottage country.  A big group of us rented a cabin on a lake and were ready to spend the weekend chilling and celebrating Dave’s last weekend as a single man!

We had to stop by the train station to pick up Elliot who was one of Dave’s friends he had met in Australia who flew in for the wedding.  After picking up Elliot it was off to cottage country!

We didn’t waste any time getting the table set up (If anyone of you guys are reading this that know the inside joke of the table, I am glad we brought it) and cracked a few beers!

The cottage came with a few boats and the sweet dock, which had a pretty good chill potential.  I don’t really know what else to write about so I’ll just post a few photos.

I also played a lot of can jam which I happened to be pretty good at.

Oh and Euchre

After the weekend was finished we headed back and made the compulsory stopped at Webbers on the way home.

Upon my return to Niagara, I didn’t really have any plans for the week but it turned into a pretty busy week.  Dave decided to do a beer and wine day where we went to the new Bench brewery which is a fairly new brewery in Niagara that finally has their operation up and running.  It was pretty good and the company was good too!

The next stop on our little tour was  Featherstone estates winery.

and after that Megalomaniac winery which had a beautiful view of the region from their hill top estate.

We could see the clouds rolling in and the beautiful day turned not so beautiful pretty fast.  Luckily we were done the winery pat of the afternoon and needed to transition to food.  Dave wanted sushi so we went for all you can eat in St. Catharines.

After dinner we returned to Dave’s house and played a game of settlers which i haven’t done in  a while.

The next few days were just living my life which you probably don’t care about.

The thing I don’t miss though is waiting for the bridge as a boat goes through the Canal.  You literally just have to sit there and wait for the boat to pass through and it could take up to 20 minutes.  A few years ago a boat crashed into this bridge and so now they give it even more time before the boat arrives.

My dad wanted to take me to the new brewery in the are called breakwall, so we went one evening.

We also had to go to the local brewery as well and Molly seems to like beer!

The morning of the consisted of Golf and beers which was fun since I haven’t played golf in a while!

Then it was off to freshen up for the wedding.

I brought my hot date with me!

The wedding was beautiful and a lot of fun!

We then had some family time before it was time for me to fly out again.

I stopped over in SF for a few days before heading to Amsterdam.

Tuesdays is the weekly meetup for the East Bay Beer Runners and so I headed to Oakland for the weekly run!  I got there a bit early and helped mark the course!

After the run, we went to the Chinese food restaurant that served the weirdest stuff and  we went to town!

after a really fun night with my run club peeps, I was off to New York and then Amsterdam!