A love letter to Tristan, age 10

My darling Tristan, you are TEN years old today! A whole decade! You’re up to my shoulder now, my tall son, and your feet are the same size as mine. Won’t be long now and I’ll be looking up to you even when your feet are on the ground!

Backyard fun (3 of 6)

Tristan, you still have boundless energy and a good appetite for adventure. You like to climb things, to leap off things, to balance on things. You like to wander and explore with me (and I’m delighted to admit, you seem to share my sense of humour!) You’re a great companion, and I enjoy chatting with you as we walk. I was very impressed early in the spring last year when you committed to training for your first 5K run, and I was especially proud when you persevered through bucketloads of cold rain to finish the run.

142:365 Goode Run (1 of 6)

One of the definite highlights of your year was the arrival of Willie the Cat. Maybe it’s because you share a birthday (Happy Birthday Willie!) or because you’re just a cat person at heart, but there is no doubt there is a special bond between you and that cat. And perhaps even more endearing, it’s clear the cat feels the same way. I’m pretty sure he thinks you’re a tall, hairless, funny-looking litter mate. (In sorting through my pictures from the year for this post, I laughed at the fact that nearly if not more than half of my pictures of you for the year also feature the cat somehow.)

177:365 Hello kitty

It’s great to know I can count on you to help around the house without too much complaint, even if I have to micromanage you, and you’re clearly comfortable taking on more responsibility in the family with tasks like feeding the pets and small household jobs. You also learned to play chess this year, and started taking guitar lessons. You seem to be enjoying your lessons quite a bit, even if you don’t practice nearly as much as you should. You can play a few songs now, and I enjoy hearing you practice.

361:365 Guitar player redux

You still love video games, of course. You like to play Club Penguin on the computer and Skylanders on the Wii and DS. You still like Super Mario Bros and Pokemon. Your favourite shows are Phinias and Ferb and Hello Charlie, and you and Simon like to watch tween shows like Witches of Waverly. I love how you comfortably stand between the childhood that is nearly behind you and the teen years ahead with an easy comfort in both worlds.

140:365 On the carousel

Your best friend is clearly Simon, though you might never admit it. You two are partners in crime, joined at the hip — often literally. I love how the two of you flop together like puppies in a litter, and how you make each other laugh. Outside of the house, your best friends are Theodore and Sophie, and even though Sophie moved across town last year you’ve stayed in touch through letters and weekend playdates.

Uno Boys

You are extremely patient (most of the time) with Lucas, who is more like you that you realize or would care to admit. This photo was one of my favourite memories of the year, when you asked out of the blue if you could read to Lucas at bedtime.

Big brother reading

You’ve done well at school this year, better in the second half of the year than the first. I think it took you a while to find your groove in your first year of French immersion and while your grades have been good, you needed a bit of an attitude adjustment in the first semester, which your latest report card reflects you’ve clearly done. Just last week, I eavesdropped on a conversation you and your Dad were having about what you wanted to be when you grow up. You said you’d like to be an artist, because it would be fun to draw pictures and make paintings all day. It’s no surprise to me that you’d consider a career in the arts, because you draw and doodle so relentlessly that your teacher gave you a special doodle pad to keep you from filling your desk with endless bits of scrap paper. You have special permission to use it only when you’ve finished your in-class work.

333:365 Homework is boring

This is the year when you’ve clearly come to love reading as well. I’m charmed that each night after either your Dad or I read to you and Simon that Simon falls instantly asleep and you lay quietly in your bed reading to yourself. Lately you’ve consumed Bone books and Calvin and Hobbes cartoons and Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, among others. I like the quiet conversations we have when I come down each night to turn off your light and tuck you in.

Hey look Willie, mom got a new iPhone!

Tristan, you’re warm, sweet, smart, energetic and artistic, and I genuinely enjoy your company immensely (when you aren’t fidgeting madly or making the weird, random, repetitive noises that boys your age seem incapable of repressing!) Your quirks make you even more endearing to me, and it’s a genuine joy to have you as my son. Happy birthday, my darling Tristan! I wish you a year filled with joy and delight. ๐Ÿ™‚

Ottawa’s Hidden Treasures: RCMP Stables

I have been blogging about raising a family in Ottawa for seven years and this? May be the best discovery of them all. I’ve recommended a tour of the RCMP Musical Ride Centre a couple of times as an excellent idea for free family fun in Ottawa, but I’ve never actually gotten around to doing it before now. This one has just shot to the top of my list of awesome (free!) things to do with kids in Ottawa!

Most people have heard of the RCMP’s Musical Ride, featured on the back of the Canadian $50 bill, but did you know the stables where they keep and train those magnificent horses is right here in Ottawa? I’d been meaning to take the boys down there for ages, but never got around to it. On Sunday morning, we were invited to join Simon’s Beaver scout colony for a private tour, and I have to tell you, I was amazed that I don’t hear more people raving about this.

There’s a bit of a museum, with a history of the Musical Ride, and a tack station and a farrier’s station. You can see the landau that Princess Kate and Prince William promenaded in when they visited – it was hand-crafted in 1890 in Austria and is still used for ceremonial transport of heads of state. But the real treat is the horses themselves. They’re beautiful, friendly, docile creatures (with a few exceptions!) and I was completely enamoured by Turbo in particular. He was so tall I had to stand on my tiptoes to pat his downy forehead, which he willingly crammed his face into the bars of his stall to allow me to do!

Our tour guide was Constable Ben Macconnell (how cool is THIS? they even have their own Musical Ride trading cards!), and I wish I could remember half of the interesting tidbits and lore he shared with us. For example, did you know the RCMP’s horses are at minimum 16 hands tall, which is a couple of hands taller than they were even 20 years ago, and they’re always black, and have been since, um, a former RCMP Commissioner at some point in the past (sorry, I forgot to take notes!) decreed they would all look the same. Each year, 16 new RCMP members train to join 16 existing members of the team, and they tour Canada and the world as the Musical Ride. Some members who join the team have never even been on a horse before, and they go through an intensive training program and during their 18-week lead up to touring season they spending hours each day putting the horses (and the riders!) through their paces. This year, they will be travelling to England to perform for the Queen for her diamond jubilee. (Can you imagine the logistics of getting 36 horses across the pond? Yikes!)

Since we toured on a Sunday morning, we didn’t get to see the exercises, which is why we’ll be heading back during the March Break! What a great March Break activity, eh? Here’s a peek at our tour.

RCMP stables tour

This is my new number-one favourite Ottawa family activity, and I can’t recommend it highly enough! I’m not entirely clear on whether you can see the horses and riders going through their paces all the time or just in the 18 weeks that lead up to the summer performance season, so you might want to check ahead of time. Here’s the information from the Musical Ride Centre website:

Musical Ride Visitors’ Centre information: tours@rcmp-f.ca

Tours are available:

May 1 – August 31: daily 9:00 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.
September – April: Tuesday and Thursday 10:00 – 2:00 p.m.

Don’t miss this one! ๐Ÿ™‚

This week in pictures: In which Mother Nature reminds us that it is still in fact winter

Nice weather this week, eh? Nice if you’re a skier, not so much if you’re pining for green grass and tulips. Sorry, you can totally blame me. I started BBQing last weekend, and I think the Universe wanted to remind me that it’s not quite spring yet.

The good news is, the weather has been giving me lots of time to practice photographing snow. If you can control the exposure on your camera, you’ll probably need to compensate for the bright whiteness of snow by overexposing your shots a little bit. Your camera tries to balance all the lights and darks in a shot to a nice middle grey tone, so it will darken a shot that is primarily bright white (like a snowy landscape) by underexposing, and brighten a dark scene to a muddy grey by overexposing. (And for some reason, my camera also underexposes wildly with the Lensbaby, so I had to torque the exposure slider on this one almost all the way to the right to get the exposure right on this one.)

Lensbaby snow on the treehouse

I thought this snow-covered sign was pretty representative of the week!

Beware winter walking

And throughout the week, there was a lot of this going on.

Plow throwing bank of snow

It was my Mom’s birthday last weekend, and Lucas helped to decorate the envelope for one of her gifts. ๐Ÿ™‚

Happy Birthday Granny!

I follow a handful of people on Flickr that take really amazing self-portraits. They’re beautiful, artistic, dramatic, insightful portraits and I admire them so much. I *hate* taking self-portraits. Much as I admire the selfies of others, I find my own foolish and indulgent and wonder why you would want to see me instead of any of the other minutiae I photograph every day. (You’d rather see pictures of a snowplow than me, right?) But they say you should challenge yourself in order to grow, so I’m trying to take more self-portraits. I’ll never be able to do an entire year of self-portraits, but here’s one. It’s an okay picture, but even posting it makes me squirm. I do like the caption I posted with it on Flickr, though: “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” ~ C.S. Lewis

"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream." ~ C.S. Lewis

Na na na na na na na na – BAT CAT!

Na na na na na na - bat cat!

I love this picture of the landlocked lighthouse at the Museum of Science and Technology. I love how the colours pop and how the wispy bits of cirrus clouds balance the lighthouse in the composition. It was so bitterly cold as I was taking this that my eyes were watering and my iPhone was hurting my fingers. Brrr!

Wishing I were seaside on this cold winter day

Growing boys earn growing freedoms. I said they could walk to school by themselves, but I did not say that I wouldn’t stalk them on the route to make sure they were well on their way after I dropped Lucas off at daycare.

On the way to school

I’m pretty sure they noticed me. ๐Ÿ™‚