Patsy

A friend of mine moved to Canada and said he's seen more of his mother-in -law in the last 2 years than he saw of her in Liverpool in the last 10!!
Is that right dyou think? Obviously u will need to put family and friends up who come to see u, but is it an ongoing calender? I'd be interested to hear of those who have made it 'out there' to answer this post!

Judy in Calgary

We seem to average three sets of house guests per summer. This varies from family members who are close to us, to friends, and now even to children of friends who are in the footloose and fancy-free age group in which they travel the world.

But I guess there is reciprocity. When he visits Europe our son has plans to stay with London- and Paris-based friends who have been out here to visit us.

What your ex-Liverpool friend may not have told you is the other side of this coin. That is the fact that visits "back home" tend to put a dent into your holiday (vacation) entitlement. Instead of being free to loll around on a Mediterranean beach or whatever, you may find yourself spending all your time visiting friends and rellies. That can be quite a sacrifice if you appreciate how short the average Canadian vacation is.

Over the years we have experimented with different solutions. Occasionally we've gone to visit family members. Sometimes they've come to visit us. We've taken a sprinkling of vacations that were for ourselves and no one else. On still other occasions we've managed to persuade family members to vacation with us in neutral territory. The last solution I've mentioned, when we've been able to pull it off, has turned out to be a most satisfactory arrangement.

ClareBC

My MIL has been over 6 times in just under 4 years.

By the end of this summer we will have had 19 family and friends staying with us (gulp) (two sets are overlapping :scared: )

However, last year we only had a couple of visitors, so it can vary enormously.

Clare

Biiiiink

We're expecting our first set, the in-laws. I'm only a recent arrival, moved into this house 4wks ago. They said they wouldn't visit for a year which really got my hopes up. We told the in-laws that my parents were coming and guess what, they *had* to sneak in a visit before them. Bah.

So don't think you're escaping :scared:

R2D2

Our first visitor is coming out on the 1st Oct for 2 weeks, and only being new to the country ourselves, we cannot answer the question "what will the weather be like then" ? Can anyone enlighten us and them?

Judy in Calgary

The Weather Base web site is a great place to look up historical temperatures and precipitation records for any town in the world. Here is its Edmonton page.

From that you will see that, over the last 21 years, the average daily high in Edmonton has been +10 deg C, and the average nightly low has been -1 deg C.

The averages do not tell the whole story. I find that you need to be prepared for potential extremes. So it's useful to know that the highest high in October has been 28 deg C, and the lowest low has been -26 deg C.

Another useful web site is the Weather Underground web site's Trip Planner feature. You can use it to submit a query about weather statistics for a given city during a given date range. Its historical data covers only a few years, in Edmonton's case nine years. However, I find that that gives me quite an accurate snapshot of a given period.

If you ask for weather statistics for October 1st to October 15th, you find the following (all in Fahrenheit, unfortunately):
Now I go to a trusty metric conversion web site so that I can insert Celsius equivalents next to the Fahrenheit figures.

A quick and dirty way of converting from Celsius to Fahrenheit is to double the temperature and add 30 degrees. Take 20 deg C, for example:
Close enough.

To convert from Fahrenheit to Celsius, do the reverse. Subtract 30 and halve the result, as in:
Another thing that's useful to know for a given date range is the time that the sun sets. Here are Edmonton's times.

By the way, if your guests are going to the mountains, check out Jasper's or Banff's historical temperatures. Jasper is at a lower elevation than Banff, so typically is 1 degree higher than Banff.

bombards

We don't even arrive in Toronto until the 12th Sept ( well actually going over today but only for a week).

My MIL has already booked her flights for Christmas!!!!! Don't mind as she is a lovely lady and the girls will love having Granny over for the holidays. (and she can do a spot of babysitting so we can go out alone. )

Bombards

dbd33

My parents visit most years. The usually come for a month or six weeks splitting the time between my house and my brother's farm. Their visits to the farm tend to get cut short when the parents realize that the farm still has animals, the brother still has a child and the farm house still has dirt floors. They return complaining about the dogs. They don't like dogs.

They usually come in the summer and, each year, are shocked to find that their grandchildren have gone to Europe or the US; they take this as a personal insult claiming that their purpose in coming is to see those grandchildren. There is one grandchild who's always around but she doesn't count as she's mental. Over the years that they've been coming I've lived with a Swiss, a Newfie, a mainlander and an American, none of these people has been able to produce vegetables stewed sufficiently and this has been a steady source of tension. So is the non-availability of English bacon, the same stuff they couldn't get last year.

When the parents come they make a point of digging up each of these exes and taking them to dinner. This never goes well. The year of the big power cut was, however, something else. The day started badly, the previous evening the parents had had dinner at the house of the Swiss woman and had returned fuming over some perceived slight, I failed to get up early enough to avoid more of this in the morning. That evening they planned dinner with the Newfie. In the middle of the afternoon the power went out. Their chosen restaurant couldn't operate without power so they invited the woman to the house she and I once shared where I barbecued for them. The American, who was out of town, returned the next day and was incredulous. Pretty good going, even for them, three women enraged in three days.

We now have a dog. A large one.

Woodstock62

Great post!

Have sent you karma

Biiiiink

Your parents remain in touch with all your ex-gfs??? :scared:

dbd33

Thank you.

dbd33

Several of them, yes. It's not ideal.

Judy in Calgary

My husband's and my parents keep in touch with the ex spouses of our siblings. I think the psychology of it is based on, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

dbd33

There's also an argument about access to grandchildren though it's a pretty much moot when there are different countries involved.

Pretty Flowers

Since I moved over here, I've had the parents for a week, and am just recovering from a week's visit with some friends of theirs. Fortunately the house is now quiet and I can wander around in my underwear again!