11 months and counting.....

I don't know if I said before how much I enjoyed our holiday. Well I did. We have been going to Nova Scotia on holiday for a number of years now. Husband and I first went in 1996 on an off-season holiday where we just turned up with no accommodation booked and winged it. (In other words, the kind of holiday you absolutely positively cannot do once you have children.) We arrived in Halifax just as a hurricane was working its way up the eastern seaboard, threatening to make landfall in....well, Halifax. (For any Nova Scotian readers, this would be the wee hurricane that didn't do much a couple of years before Juan which definitely did.)

Husband and I had never been in a hurricane before and had no real desire to change that state of affairs, so we figured out we would be better off further north. We pretty much picked a guest house out of the phone book and off we went. We arrived at a B&B in Port Williams run by an indomitable lady, a retired school teacher called Mary. She was filling baths with water and baking bread like there was no tomorrow, just in case the hurricane decided to make life a little awkward (it didn't, as it happens). We discovered that we loved the B&B and the Annapolis Valley where it is located.

We returned to Nova Scotia in 1997 when I was pregnant with First Born and again stayed with Mary, who fussed over me and my morning sickness very nicely (her breakfasts have to be seen/eaten to be believed). When FB was born, Mary and her church ladies sent me a beautiful quilt which arrived completely out of the blue in the mail.

We didn't feel we could inflict young babies on other aircraft passengers so it was 2005 when we returned to NS with two boys in tow. Mary hadn't changed and she immediately adopted the boys. The boys, in turn, made themselves at home and cheerfully invaded her entire house. We have returned every year since, so 2008 was the boys' fourth trip and our sixth. We have travelled all over Nova Scotia as well as the neighbouring provinces of Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, but we always return for at least two or three nights to stay with Mary in Port Williams. We love the place. You had probably figured that out.

We have now been home from Canada for a good week and a half so naturally we have already booked our flights for next year. 30 June 2009 here we come. Life is that bit nicer when you have a trip to Nova Scotia to look forward to! In the meantime, we have some of Mary's home-made strawberry jam in the fridge to keep us going, at least for a little while.