Convocation!

Last Thursday was John's Doctor of Music convocation. To celebrate this grand event, his parents arrived the weekend before. A party, hosted by dear friends of ours from Da Camera Singers, was held in John's honour on the Saturday evening, and then we enjoyed many family dinners and much fine wine and scotch for the remaining days leading up to the convocation.

The convocation day was filled with great joy - a luncheon at the faculty club with John's parents, Kathleen's mom and John's supervisor. After a few photos of John in his DMus robe and hood, the ceremony began at 3 PM, and lasted about 2 hours. Kathleen found out the day before that all convocation ceremonies would be webcast on the University webpage, and we were able to inform the rest of John's family from Ottawa, and to our, and their delight, they were all able to see John walk across the stage and receive his degree. It was a very joyous afternoon indeed.

No rest for the wicked though, We had to run off to the Winspear shortly after the ceremony for a concert with the Richard Eaton Singers, as they were performing their fall concert and CD release. John was to conduct nearly a third of the program, so it was a great way to get his acquainted with the audience and musicians as a Doctor of Music.

Some pictures of the convocation and concert are posted below:

Kitchen Renovation Completed!

As of yesterday, all the things that needed to be done in order to get into our new kitchen have been completed. Plumbing is all installed and working (including the extra quiet new dishwasher that has been sitting in our carriage house for the last 12 months) - and things are being put into shelves, breakfast appliances brought up, and COOKING can begin!

We thought this would be a good post to place a few "before and after" photograph so you can see what has happened in since John started ripping off the back splash exactly three weeks ago today.

Thanks for following us on this journey. Keep logging into the blog though - there are always new things to talk about and discoveries to be made!

Kitchen Sink Area (east wall)




Kitchen Fridge Area (west wall)




Kitchen Stove Area (south wall)




Two other angles of the stove and sink area:




Two pumpkins we carved for Hallowe'en - OK, unrelated, but we had to put them up here before we forgot!

Counter top is finally in!

Here are the some updated photos - it really is starting to look like a kitchen now! Tomorrow we finish up the plumbing, and the hookup of the dishwasher. After that - it will be official! We can start using our kitchen again!

Huzzah!