The Cottage

The cottage.  Our family's first real vacation.  We didn't really know what to expect.  That's kind of the danger with renting something online.  Pictures can be deceiving.  Just look at a listing for a house in your town on a real estate website, then go to an open house.  It can be a big difference.  We lucked out in that the cottage itself was pretty nice for a cottage.  Being first-timers in cottage rental we thought we did okay.

Then we looked at the state of the beach on this "beachfront" cottage.  Now I don't have a whole lot of experience with Lake Erie, but the few times I've seen it, it was decent.  This beach, however, was frigging disgusting.  There is a full 20 feet of black sludge covered in a green icing .  And it stunk.  Not exactly the kind of place you want your kids playing in all week.

That's the "beach".  If you tossed a rock in, it splashed up black sludge pudding.

So we had to find other arrangements.  We were told about this provincial park by one of the neighbours.  We took a wrong turn in the deserted park though by following the "This way to swimming" sign.  What we found was a barren rock beach littered with the carcasses of dead fish.  

Mmmmm.

We ended up finding the good part later in the week, so all was good.

In the meantime though, we also found the neighbouring towns had free pools.  It was here that I showed my boneheadedness in its full glory.  As I was in the pool a full 10 minutes before I noticed my cell phone in my pocket.  

Crap.

Three days in rice and I was able to turn it on and save all the pictures.  Thank goodness for that life hack meme.

(Disclaimer: The next part is gross if you've never had kids.  If you have then, you'll see the humour.)

So the final evening we decide to go out for dinner.  A few minutes in, we noticed Miss Thang Two (formerly Thing Two) stunk.  It was my turn.  Of course there's no change table or counter in the men's washroom, but we make due.  It was a minor deuce, a two wiper.  No more than five minutes later, she reeked again.  Mama's turn.  Thang Two comes back to the table in a diaper only.  The diaper did not hold in all the contents.  Shorts in trash. Happy girl.

Here's the gross part. A woman walks by the table and slips.  Looks down and sees some "food" on the floor and tells the maître d' about it.  We look over and to our horror/hilarity, the "food" had squirted right out the diaper.  Gnarly.  I managed to clean it up with a bunch of wipes and dispose of it in the loo before they showed up with  a broom.  Ah, parenting.

Should we have told them about the biohazard? Probably.  Did we?  Heck no.  We paid the bill and high-tailed it out of there.

But alas, the vacation, like all good things,  came to an end.  Both kids learned to doggie-paddle in the pool and we had some laughs.  All in all, a successful first family vacation.