When we owned Grandview Lodge Resort, we usually hired students to work for us as it was mainly a seasonal resort. Quite often, if an employee was particularly good, they would return year after year, often changing positions and/or departments. It was not unusual for me to become quite close to the office staff as they were the people I spent the most amount of time with. Today, I was in Barrie on business and while I was there, I decided to visit two of our former office managers, also our good friends, Megan Bazuk and Dana St. Germain.

Megan and her husband, Luke at one time even resided at the house with us for one winter and I hadn’t seen either of them in over two years. The last time we visited they had one daughter, Quinn who was still an infant, and they were living in a new house in Barrie. Now they have two daughters and have moved into a larger home where I visited them this morning. Quinn has grown into a smart, talkative little girl and a wonderful big sister to Rhys who is just three weeks older than Makai. Unfortunately, Luke was at work but it was so nice to see Megan in her role as a loving mom, something she is obviously very good at. As she headed off to work for 1:00 o’clock, I went over to visit our other former office manager and friend, Dana.

Dana was first hired at Grandview Lodge in 1990 by Jim and she continued to work at the resort until 1998. As it turns out, Dana is also Rick’s niece by marriage because Dana’s dad, Graham, is married to Gayle, Rick’s sister. She and Richard, her husband, are the proud parents of Noah, almost 3 years old and Thomas, just 6 months old. When I saw the family last, Thomas was just a few weeks old and today I was amazed at how big he has grown. Once the boys warmed up to this “strange” lady in their home, they each took turns being cuddled by Auntie Susan and we all had a nice visit. Dana looks great and she too is a fabulous Mom to her two sons. It was so good to see our former student office employees all grown up and transformed into such caring moms but based on their abilities and performance at Grandview, it is certainly no surprise!