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