Fantastic Weekend Part Two

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OK, now on to the rest of the weekend. We drove into St. John's on Saturday morning. St. John's is "the city" in Newfoundland. I asked Jer before we went if he knew how to get there. This turned out to be pretty funny since the directions were pretty much, take a right out of Harold's driveway and drive for about an hour and twenty minutes and you'll be there! Not too many roads around here!

 

St. John's is a beautiful old fishing "city." Quaint streets, lots of churches and rows of colorful houses that they refer to as Jelly Bean Houses. We went to the wedding ceremony at 2:00; the church was gorgeous. It was built in the 1800's by a bunch of fisherman...for no charge. It took them 29 years to finish! The ceremony was beautiful. We had until 7:00 until the reception started and Jerry's cousin Wayne owns a pub in the city. Many of the guests went there in between for a pre-party! Jerry, his Dad, myself and a few other "non-Newfoundlanders" had a surprise waiting for us. They have a very fun tradition up here that they refer to as "screeching in," which means they make you honorary Newfoundlanders! Unfortunately, it involved kissing a dead cod fish and taking a shot of "Screech," which they say is Rum, but it tastes more like a cross between whiskey and battery acid! What a fun time we had! You can see our official certificates in the picture. The reception was so much fun and Aimee looked beautiful. Jacob and Emma were so good about wearing those darn "fancy clothes" all day and they looked great. They really had a good time the whole day.

 

On Sunday we spent some time in St. John's with Jerry's cousin Sheila and her family. For those of you who came to our wedding, you may remember Sheila as the girl with the beautiful voice who sang at the church. It was so incredibly windy on Sunday that we could barely walk through the city. Sheila told us we now know why "Newfies" walk bent forward! We went up to Signal Hill, which is the site of the very first inter-continental communication between North America and Europe. It was SOOOO windy up there that we literally had to hold onto the kids because we thought they might blow away! Even the locals said it was unusually windy, you can see for yourselves in the pictures!

 

We drove back to Placentia Sunday night. As we were driving down "the hill" into town, there was a white SUV in front of us. The driver pulled over to the side of the road suddently, without signaling, so Jerry drove around her to avoid hitting her. The next thing you know, she has pulled in behind us and is right on our bumper, driving exremely aggressively and flipping us off!! She was on the phone and Emma said "she's calling the cops!" We laughed and said she was not doing any such thing. About 20 minutes later we were at the restaurant in his family's hotel having dinner with Sheila and Scott. A police offer comes in looking for John Kelly (that's Jerry's cousin who lent us his car for the weekend while we're here. Someone says, "Jerry, aren't you driving John's car?"  And don't you know it....the girl WAS calling the police!! It turned out that when Jerry explained what happened, the officer said that the locals pull over to avoid the potholes all the time. He gave Jerry a warning, but we had such a laugh about it!!  We didn't tell John about it because we had planned to frame the warning and give it to him as a gift! Too funny, of course he found out about it (small town and all!!). The kids think the whole thing is just hilarious!!

 

Anyway, we're still loving it here. The kids don't want to leave tomorrow. Everyone is so nice and friendly. Everyone we see says "Oh, you're not from around here. You must be in for the wedding then, right?"  I'm finding myself speaking with a little Canadian accent, saying "right?" at the end of every sentence! I have to run for now, but will update again soon!