Super catch-up time!

Been lazy again. Here's what I've been up to the last two months! May came and went but had lots of family time:

- M&B came to visit for about 2.5 weeks, which meant good times and eats! Plus a quick day trip to Niagara for fun.
- SJO (hehe, their initials make for good airport codes) also came to visit at the end of the month. Super packed fun days, let's see if I remember:

• Day trip to Niagara to ride the boat into the mist
• Ride on the train roundhouse and mini train (and derailment) as part of Doors Open TO
• Dim sum in Chinatown and greek in Greektown
• Day at Toronto Island where we rode a quad-bike, had a picnic, O enjoyed the splash pool and the beach, and just got to be lazy
• Picasso exhibit at the AGO
• And lots of time for boardgames, both tabletop and on the iDevices :)
• Happy to report multi-modal transportation trips! Subway, streetcar, mini train, bus, ferries, bike, and lots of walking!
  

June went by even faster. All I remember was spending our weekends driving to the suburbs to pick out fixtures and tiles for our upcoming bathroom renovations. Yup, we are crazy and are renovating both bathrooms (one at a time, we're not that crazy). More on that later. But the process of picking out vanities, tubs, faucets, tiles, and much more is stressful... Glad this will be our last renovation project for a long time...

The end of June and beginning of July was definitely fun (and a nice break from our past few weekends). We flew back to Boston for S-P's 10-year anniversary. This was the dorm where T and I met (noting as always I don't remember meeting him at that dance party.. hehehe). I hadn't been back to Boston or the dorm in 5 years! Time flies I tell you. A quick recap of our trip:

• I already blogged about how we rented one of the rooms in the door (available because of the alumni reunion) and ended up in my old room! The house manager tried to get any alumni coming back their old room and was only able to match 2 people with vacant rooms - I was one of them! I couldn't remember how I had my room set up and was amazed how huge those rooms are. It was a bit surreal, but definitely fun staying there.
• Met with one of my best (and real) friends from my MST program (and blog reader, I still hope) for dim sum, and got to meet his son and celebrate his first birthday party!
• Hung out with our fellow SPECs of times past - seriously, it was amazing to see them after not hearing from some of them for 5 years. This of course led to rolling it up with some Catan!
• They had a couple of events planned throughout the weekend including a welcome reception at the Housemaster's apartment, a main event dinner, and a brunch carnival. Ah, the good ol' days of volunteering to serve potatoes.
• Walked around campus, even had food-truck chinese food for lunch.
• Dinner at my favo(u)rite Italian restaurant in the North End
• Shoe shopping. Yes, I bought 3 pairs of shoes, but one cannot resist the better sales and no sales tax!
• Played tourist around Cambridge and Boston

My new Red Sox's hat!

That leads us to July and our bathroom renovations. It feels like we've been at it for a long time, but they just started demo today. Seriously, shopping for stuff not as much fun as one would think. Happy they are finally starting. Stay tune for updates!