How we ended our weekend

One month done

1/3 of our social experiment (going without a childminder) is finished; 2/3s to go. No injuries or lost children so far...

Track and Field

Seb made the Track & Field meet in his age category. His events are: 100m relay with 3 classmates (he is the slowest, so will probably go first but STILL needs to know how to hand over the baton) and standing long jump. Yay!

The meet is on May 8(and hopefully he won't spend a cold, wet day in the park, like they are today) and they practice 3 times a week until then. His dad is trying to help out.

3rd time lucky?

Before

The usual

My love and my sister have over the years put a lot of effort into our courtgarden. However every summer, we race to open the house, full of glee that we are back in the village, and then reluctantly peer over the stone wall to view the shambles of weeds and moss and more.

This year was going to be different. We have people using the house from mid-April - mid-August. So whatever we did could be tended to, nurtured, cared for.

Thus, last week my green-thumbed fella hopped on an Air Canada pass and spent 6 days working the soil. And voila. It's looking wonderful!!!
 

His trip was not without bumps - rain, hail, more rain, locking himself out, a sink and dishwasher that still weren't hooked up, jetlag, no heat on the ground floor, plus loads of indoor tasks to accomplish. But he was in France... so he ate cheese, caught up on village news (such as we have a plaque on our house about the alley's new namesake), hosted a friend from Toronto for one evening, drank a  bit of wine, ate a pizza from the weekly pizza truck, marketed on Sunday, caught up with a friend over lunch in Paris,  got to be the first user of the now-functioning dishwasher and more.



 
Lucky, lucky us.

Do we know this man?

Personally, I prefer the one who sits down at our family dinner table every night, but this one is pretty good too.

Is Lego listening?

Lego recently met with SPARK - a campaign to end the sexualisation of girls and women

They did some research about our Lego friends and opened up a dialogue. Let's hope it sent the execs straight to the drawing board, then to the factory and finally to the marketing department in time for Christmas 2012.

Grandad knew that

Eat here

I wonder how many Grandad had tasted off the list. I know Sophie will be game over the coming years.

Sticky Smiles

Last Friday, we had Carrie over for a belated birthday supper and made her sticky chocolate pudding cake... Rumour has it that we may see her this Friday too and then she and Bri take the kids another Friday afternoon! I like the sounds of that.

Why the Whales Came

happy readers rescue a whale

 Our family's recommended book came up for reading this week, so we hosted the DYRS crew on Saturday morning. My love organised a marvelous session if ever there was one.

Seb had us relaxing by listening to various whale songs; we watched a clip of a mostly successful rescue of 6 beached whales, and then another with an indeterminate ending; the kids rescued 3 very heavy whales who had beached themselves in our yard; we wrote postcards to our Minister of National Defence to stop sonar testing and underwater explosions when endangered pods are near; oh and we discussed why villagers were hostile to one particular character, as well as other character and plot elements to the book.

And we all ate well of course.

moving a whale by using found 'logs'

moving a whale with a found scooter

assembling materials to move a beached 'whale'

some of our young readers and their parents

and the rest squeezed into our ground floor

What is it about ties?

Seems like I am out-numbered

The juggle

I shall not forget my children...

We have successfully completed the first 10 days of our childcare-less experiment. Each day of the week, a different person is taking care of our daughter; our son is usually picked up after-school by me but sometimes it will be his dad and sometimes a friend of the family... And then the grandparents are coming both when I am away and when Mike is traveling for a week.

So far the kids are cool with it but I end up a nervous wreck, fearing that I have forgotten them and that they are wandering the mall or hanging around outside the corner store asking strangers for candy money...

Cookies and more

Monday being the 2nd holiday where everything seems closed and my lovely fella works (so we can have a big summer holiday), I shouted out to our Kinder classmates to see who would like to come and play. A lovely group of 8 poppets assembled to build a railway and play with plasticine and decorate - and consume - cookies!

He made us laugh by saying the sun had burnt his mouth!

Scrubbing up for the Easter Bunny

I may be the only parent in North America who gives her children bath products - and only bath products - for Easter

But they couldn't wait to get bathing!!!

Flash forward 20 years???

Eating well over Easter weekend

Lots of fresh, yummy food was consumed. Not so much candy to be honest (though more than usual).

Even Mon'ika ate well

Orange knots - a challenge from an old friend

Orange, beet and black olive salad from Plenty

The one and only Jelly Belly

Seeing how far caramel can stretch

and how sticky it is

Yes, we even had  the traditional chocolate bunny

The mirage

What I usually show you of my adorable, clever children:

How my off-spring are usually acting:

a Good Friday indeed

For those who were not contemplating the journey of Christ or freedom from slavery, Friday was a day of anything but rest. Dad worked. Mum raced around trying to keep 2 school-aged kids busy = happy when loads of stuff is closed and most friends have relatives and Bunnies to be seeing in/out of town.

So what did we do?

One of us went to a 3 year old's birthday party, while the other 2 ate fresh donuts at the Portuguese bakery (I figured it would be hopping and it was). We saw the movie The Secret World of Arrietty (new release of Studio Ghibli and lovely as ever), stocked up on Easter candy thanks to grandparents, had our first smell experience of Lush (the bath bomb shop), rode the TTC, played with our neighbour a wee bit, played some T-ball with Dad, played a round of Carcassonne (thankfully not Horse-opoly) while eating Portuguese Easter bread . Pretty nice day all in all.

(yes, those are hard-boiled eggs IN THEIR SHELLS)

Plenty

Plenty - the recipe book
Plenty - we are blessed with abundance

Just a snip

Just a wee trim this past weekend. Their dad was not impressed that the girl's hair cut cost a buck more even though it was shorter than her brother's...

T-ball reving up

Seb & Jack have signed up to do t-ball ( a version of baseball) this summer. But it is Sophie who is really coming out swinging, especially when her dad bought her a t!

That Fleet Jeet

Our sweet Auntie Jeet spent a long weekend with us. Her cuddles impressed Sophie, while her knowledge of land mines impressed Seb! She took the young fella to a movie and me to the One of a Kind show (twice). We all ate at a fab vegan restaurant and shared many lovely chats. Gotta like that kind of visit.

We were sad to see her go but best news, she is coming back in June - when she might take another stab at beating Auntie Roberta's best house guest ever record (right, Jeet?).

Book Club

We read Wonderstruck for our most recent family book club session. One of the related activities was to curate a family collection. Being us, we scrambled around 10 minutes beforehand and threw things into a box. At the Club, we were given an old spice rack as a display cabinet. See what you recognise and let us know why you think it is there.