I spent a good chunk of yesterday playing on the computer, thinking about new themes and layouts and whatnot for the blog (what *is* it about January?) and updating to the latest version of WordPress (ack! Change!!) I hate that I have nothing to show for it, aside from no longer being able to comfortably navigate my own dashboard. Sheesh, usually a couple hours online gets me at least a post or two!

So, in lieu of a real post, I invite you to admire these pictures of Tristan and Simon enjoying the toboggans Granny and Papa Lou gave them for Christmas. Bonus: you can admire the nice pix courtesy of my new Fuji FinepixS2000. It’s no dSLR, but it captures some nice moments, no?

Of course, there’s more on Flickr!

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They’re Canadian; of course I had to sign the boys up for skating lessons!

They’d never been on skates before. The morning started out with a lot of this:

After a while of crawling around on the ice, Tristan had progressed to this:

I honestly never expected him to get to this during his very first lesson:

But, most of the time was spent more like this:

Simon was content to stay more or less like this:

Guess which one said he wants to sign up for hockey lessons next year, and which one said he thinks he’ll stick with swimming?

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Not a day goes by that I am not amazed by the simple fact of their love for each other.

Bonus! A few gratuitous beauty shots, courtesy of the warm September sun:

(If you need more cuteness, there’s more on Flickr!)

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Simon’s first day of Junior Kindergarten!

(My babies! What happened to my babies???)

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I remember back in the day, when a weekend away meant throwing a change of clothes in a bag and a stack of CDs into the front seat.

This is how we pack for a weekend at the cottage with kids:

It was an altogether lovely weekend to be outside. When we arrived, it was in the low 20s and humid, but the air became clear and cool overnight – perfect for campfires, but just a little too cool to take advantage of the campground’s inground pools and hot tub. The little cabin has a playground on one side and on the other side a lovely little rock outcrop, perfect for climbing and for admiring the giant trilliums.

The boys seemed to grow up before my eyes this weekend. They were able to play independently, running in and out of the cabin without overt supervision. They’re finally at an age where I don’t have to hover over them, fretting that they’ll slip on the rocks or fall off a climber. (It helped, of course, that the playground is easily visible from the cabin’s many windows, and that there was always a spare adult around to keep a benevolent eye out.)
There was a wagon ride, an ice-cream social, and a community hot-dog lunch. It’s really a lovely little KOA. I’m as impressed with them this year as I was last year.

I was struck by the friendliness of the children on the playground. (And boy, were there a lot of kids! I’m sure the campground was close to capacity, at least for trailer and RV spaces. It was still on the cool and windy side for tent camping.)

I loved sitting on the edge of the playground, watching Tristan and Simon play with the other kids and listening to the conversations going on. I worry sometimes about Tristan’s sociability, because he doesn’t seem to have a lot of friends at school. But on this playground he was friendly and outgoing, and all the kids played together in one big gang. Tristan in particular seems drawn to the six-to-eight year old boy crowd, while Simon was a hit with the nine-to-twelve year old girl crowd. You’ve got to love a playground that comes with built-in babysitters!

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of the weekend’s other annual highlight, the family Texas Hold’em poker tournament. I really don’t know how the kids slept through the gales of laughter that reduced us to tears, gasping for breath. And for the second year in a row, my mother cleaned our collective clocks. She’s a shark, that one.

The best part? This is only the *beginning* of what promises to be a stellar summer.

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We spent Easter weekend with Beloved’s family north of Huntsville. But first, we decorated some eggs.

Mimi and Pipi (a French coloquiallism for Grandmaman and Grandpapa) live on the other side of a gorgeous four and a half hour drive through Algonquin Provincial Park. The boys were so good that I now have no residual concerns about doing this for two days in a row to get to Bar Harbour.

The menfolk agreed that Mimi makes a specacular trifle for dessert.

And slept well on a full belly.

The next day, we tried to make it to an Easter Egg and candy hunt in a neighbouring town. We hadn’t anticipated the snow that fell during our visit, and we were underdressed for the unexpectedly outdoor egg hunt. To add insult to injury, we were maybe 10 minutes late in arriving, and by the time we wandered the arena field, trudging with chattering teeth and woefully underdressed for the 10 cm of fresh snow, we couldn’t find a single piece of candy. The boys were surprisingly good-natured about it, placated by my promise of more candy later in the weekend and anxious simply to get back into the still-warm car.

Cranky, cold and muttering unpleasantries under my breath, we loaded the boys into the car. My mother-in-law had entered their names into a draw, and as I stepped over to the draw table to keep her company, two young girls – maybe eight or nine years old – came up to the car and asked if they could give the boys some candy. They had lots, they said, and noticed that the boys had none. And when one of the girls’ names was drawn, she selected a small prize of a magnetic drawing board (dollar store variety) and brought it directly to Tristan in the car. And then Simon’s name was drawn and I scooped up a Wiggles story book for him.

I was so moved by the kindness of these young girls that I blinked away tears of gratitude as we drove away.

And while a snowy day is not the best for an outdoor Easter Egg hunt when you are dressed for spring rain, it’s great for maple syrup – so we made our next stop a pancake (and sausage and egg and homefries) breakfast at the local sugar shack.

Lest you think I exaggerated the bit about the snow, this is Mimi’s “Easter Tree” dusted in the 15 cm (6″) of snow that fell during the weekend. We had a green Christmas this year and a snowy Easter. Go figure.

Ironically, while we were heading east across the province, my brother and his family made a comparable, but more southerly, drive from Toronto to spend the weekend in Ottawa for Easter. Luckily, we came home in time to spend a day with them.

Simon with his four-month old cousin, Brooke:

Tristan, Simon and Noah playing Cars, doing laps around my mother’s patio table:

So while I’m officially sick of my relatives and turkey (had turkey dinner with Mimi and Pipi on Friday, turkey sandwiches for dinner on Saturday and another full turkey dinner with the rest of my family on Sunday)I couldn’t imagine a more lovely weekend. Well, 15 degrees warmer and a winning lottery ticket would have been nice, but why quibble?

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It’s the fifth anniversary of my due date with Tristan. To celebrate, we had a party!

After considerable angsting on the subject of birthday parties earlier this year, I think I’ve stumbed upon a winning combination.

Take eight boys, ages 3 through 6, and give them some hula hoops.

Add a bunch of foam cubes and a high platform.

Throw in a trampoline, a rope that swings, and a a balance beam.

Make sure there’s some pizza, and of course some presents.

And of course, the icing on the cake is a cupcake cake.

A good time was had by all!

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Have you been breathlessly waiting for the update from Simon’s birthday party yesterday? I know, you haven’t been able to sleep for the suspense. Well, I’m thrilled to be able to report that despite the words you never want to hear your husband say when you have more than a dozen friends and family in the house (“Don’t worry, it’s only a small fire in the oven”), the party was nearly perfect.

I had set my goal for the day at a rather lofty “I’ll be happy as long as nobody cries”, and managed to not only pull that off, but I think everyone had a great time while they were at it.

We managed to play one game, but the kids were content to raid the snack table and play at their own pace.

Simon had a lot of helpers when opening his gifts, and he was surprisingly tolerant of them!

If you want to make a three-year-old really happy, I suggest a drum, a doctor kit, a dollhouse, a pirate ship, a handful of books, a floor puzzle, and some new clothes. (Okay, so mommy probably appreciated the clothes more than he did on the spot – but he’ll be happy when I discard the flood pants that are grazing his shinbone instead of his ankle!)

And Papa Lou makes a very patient patient!

All in all, it was a wonderful way to spend a Saturday morning, watching the happy children that make up our extended family romp through the house while the adults relaxed nearby. They’re the people I love most in the world, and having them all in the same place was more than enough to make it a perfect morning; the rest was just the icing on the cake… the brightly coloured Wiggles cake, of course.

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Back in the day, before we had kids, we lived in a townhouse on the edge of a fairly large urban woods. One of my favourite times to go walking through the trails with my constant companion Katie the Dog was on a sparkling cold winter day. The fresh snow made the world clean and brilliant, and the mud and bugs of spring, summer and fall were absent. I’d daydream about a day when I could bring my future children on a similar hike with melancholy optimism; at the time, we were deep in our struggle with infertility.

Finally, I can bring my boys and the endlessly patient Katie out on just such a day and enjoy a wander in the snow. We can’t go as far, or as fast, as we used to, but Katie didn’t seem to mind. I couldn’t help but laugh at her obvious joy as she leapt over drifts and ran freely down the snowy paths once again, laughing red-cheeked boys running excitedly behind her.

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Apparently, I need to add still more post script photos to my home improvement extravaganza post. As if it didn’t have enough pictures already!

Claudette talks in the comments to this post about the idea for home-made marble magnets inspired by this post of Andrea’s. (Convoluted enough for you?) Ahem, anyway, I made these over the holidays out of some old Christmas cards following Andrea’s example, and I never did get around to blogging about it.

So easy, and fun! I’ll be playing around with new ideas for this as soon as I get another block of free time. (Sometime in 2009, maybe?)

And because I had the camera out, the boys started mugging. If you’re low on your adorable quotient for the day, get a look at Simono the Magnificent, resplendent and shirtless in with his magic cape (the quilt from his crib), his magic wand, and his magic toque. All the Canadian magicians are wearning them these days.

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It was cold. Damn cold. Somewhere around minus 17C with the windchill, I think. And yet, we bundled up the kids, and coerced a few friends, and headed out to see the Christmas Light Ceremony on Parliament Hill last night.

I’ve lived in Ottawa for 18 Christmases now, and this is the first time I’ve ever gone to the Hill for the lighting ceremony. Might well be the last, too!

Kerry and Tristan keeping warm!

Oh, it was nice enough. They had free hot chocolate and Beaver Tails, if you wanted to wait in the massive queue for them. They had large bbq pits set up with free marshmallows for toasting, if you could get your marsmallow toasted before it froze solid. They even had free candles, and nothing says Christmas entertainment like watching your bored two- and four-year-olds in a stiff wind with open flame!

Tristan’s face DID actually freeze like that.

I had hoped for more carolling and Christmas music, but there was only the Peace Tower bells chiming festively. The boys were restless, completely understandable since it was about a hundred degrees below zero and all they could see was a bunch of shivering butts. I had also understood the 5:45 starting time to mean that the switch would be thrown at 5:45, but in fact, that meant that the political speechifying began at 5:45, carrying on in both official languages for the better part of half an hour. Just when we thought it was over, they started playing taped messages from every single provincial and territorial premier, and the shivering crowd groaned audibly.

Angie and Sam looking cheerful despite the chill!

(You can actually see me shivering as I try to hold the camera steady!)

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The boys had a terrific halloween, and by extension, so did I.

A few thoughts on halloween this year:

• I have to admit, I was a little disappointed when I heard that Tristan’s school had a ‘no costumes’ policy. The kids are invited to wear black and orange, but costumes are not allowed. I was disappointed just because I remember the great fun of wearing a costume to school – the excitement, the sense of a special day, the thrill of seeing what the other kids were wearing.

• I can also understand why they did it – it levels the playing field for the kids who might not be able to afford a fancy costume, I guess.

• Speaking of fancy costumes, I got sucked in myself. Even though I nearly choked when I saw the price tag attached to Tristan’s Scooby Doo costume, when I amortized it over three kids I could justify it. Plus, he really loves it.

• Granny, who normally goes out of her way to give us a lift on Tuesdays anyway, dropped in to see the boys in costume between dinner and trick-or-treating. In his excitement to get his Fuzzy Caterpillar costume on Simon said, correctly, “Granny, you’re going to LOVE this!”

• The boys’ excitement was infectious as we walked to a few houses on our street. It’s hard to believe it’s been 25 years since I felt that swell of excitement, walking up the laneway to a house obviously decked out for the occasion.

• Is it just me, or is the upper threshold age for trick-or-treating getting higher each year? I swear, we had more than one young man whose voice was changing, and a few I had to look up to look into their eyes. There is such a thing as too old.

• Then again, kids too young to read a “DON’T RING BELL – PLEASE KNOCK” sign probably shouldn’t be trick-or-treating alone.

• A lot of things are even more fun when you can share them with your brother.

***

This post launches my participation in NaBloPoMo – National Blog Posting Month. There’s no way I could write a novel in the month of November, but since I’m already putting up at least one post a day on weekdays, it would be within the realm of the possible to post every single day. Besides, what else is worth doing in November?

Postcards from the Mothership – now with 20% more drivel!

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As if I didn’t have enough reasons to love and admire Andrea: smart, witty, crafty, an excellent wordsmith, a wonderful road-trip companion, and an awesome photographer to boot.

Check out her collection of Motherlode photos. Aren’t they great???

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