Month: June 2015

Planning for PEI 2015: Day tripping

One year ago today, we arrived in PEI:

Prince Edward Island - day 1

*happy sigh*

We’re still a few weeks away from embarking on our PEI 2015 adventure, in that delicious time when you can actually start thinking about all the things you want to see and do, but before the panic of packing and attending to all the forgotten last-minute details.

I think the thing we are most looking forward to during our PEI vacation this year is exploring. It was our favourite part of the trip last year. There is something delicious about turning down a random road and wondering what’s around the next bend.

The Points East Coastal Drive site lists eight suggested routes for easy PEI day trips, conveniently arranged by subject matter. Like bays, beaches and boats? How about lighthouses? Or maybe a vineyard and distillery tour is more your speed? I love the chatty, colloquial but richly detailed nature of these articles – it’s like having an Islander as your navigator, pointing out things that only the locals know.

Speaking of Islanders, how fun is this? Tourism PEI has launched a program called Ask an Islander. They’ve engaged several PEI personalities to be ambassadors, including Chef Michael Smith and photographer Dave Brosha. I love this idea, and keep going back to the site to see the new questions and answers as they are posted.

Have a favourite PEI day trip to share? I’d love to hear your suggestions!

Disclosure: Points East Coastal Drive is a sponsor of this blog. However, my love affair with PEI is 100% genuine and I’d be happy to talk your ear off about the Island any day of the week.

Photo of the day: Three handsome fellows

This photo session for a colleague and his family was supposed to take place on Father’s Day, but we got rained out. Today was a perfectly perfect day for pictures, though, and you couldn’t ask for three funnier, kinder or more patient subjects for family portraits!

Three handsome fellows

Adorable, right? They were wonderfully patient with my ideas and let me boss them around a hike that only got us a little bit lost. This was my absolute favourite kind of family portrait session: casual, playful, and with lots and lots of laughter.

Kind, funny and photogenic, too – I can’t wait to show you more photos from this fun afternoon!

Photo of (yesterday): Saying goodbye on the last day of school

Technically this photo is from yesterday, but I loved the poignant moment so much that I knew you wouldn’t mind if I shared it as today’s photo of the day.

Saying goodbye

I swear, I never leave the boys’ school without a smile on my face and respect in my heart for the hard work these people do. We’re lucky to be a part of such a wonderful community. Every time I look at this photo, I can’t help but smile.

Now it’s time for a summer of beaches, parks, family visits, road trips, and adventures big and small. BRING IT ON!

Photo of the day: First and last days of school

You can pick out more than a few changes from September 2014 to June 2015, not least of which are haircuts, growth spurts, and the fact that mom remembered in June what she forgot in September – to turn on the autofocus!

First and last day of school!

They’re growing up WAY too fast! Simon in the bottom photo is the same age Lucas is now, and if you look close, you’ll see they’re coincidentally wearing the exact same t-shirt. Hand me downs FTW!

first & last day of school

First and last day of school

First and last day of school 2011-2012

188:365 First and last day of school 2010 - 2011

And just like that…. it’s summer! 🙂

Photo of the day: Undulating clematis

Can you tell I’ve been having fun in the garden lately? Not actually doing any work like planting or weeding or pruning, mind you, but poking around with my camera, exploring the shapes and colours.

Purple clematis up close

This is a purple clematis that grows over a chain-link fence near the driveway. I love it because it grows vigourously year after year, with big showy flowers, with no intervention or attention from me whatsoever. That’s my kind of garden!

In which she fights the urge to wrap her boys in bubble wrap

Help me navigate this one, oh wise and experienced bloggy peeps. I’m trying to be free-range relaxed, but my inner helicopter parent is screeching for control.

As I’ve mentioned, we’ve signed Lucas up for soccer. He’s loving it and to my great surprise, so am I – so much so that I regret not caving in to Simon’s requests back in the day. Because this is Lucas’s first year, however, and because he is a child of Beloved and me, well – let’s just say that he’s no David Beckham. He’s getting pretty good at actually paying attention to where the ball and game play are, but there are kids on his team who have two or three years of experience already, and he’s no match for them with his extensive three weeks of drills behind him.

Soccer star

So here’s the thing. This is the first year the teams in this league have a goalie, and they take turns rotating playing goal. (Do you call it a goalie in soccer? Or do you play goal? I am so clueless. Can we talk baseball instead, because I can absolutely wax poetic about the infield fly rule and other baseball arcana. Soccer – not so much. Before I dredged the David Beckham reference out of my subconscious, the only soccer player I could come up with is Pélé.) The coach has asked them if they want to play goal and apparently every kid has said yes, so he made up a schedule and circulated it to the parents, saying “here’s the night your boy will play goal, please let me know if you or he decide that he doesn’t want to play goal.”

Ugh. I don’t particularly want Lucas to want to be the goalie. I don’t want him to play goal partly because even at seven and eight years old, those kids kick hard, and I’m not sure Lucas is ready for that. Every game, there’s at least one kid in tears over an injury of some sort. I can’t help myself – I just don’t want him to potentially get hurt.

Moreso, though, and I feel great shame in having so little faith in him, but I don’t want him to lose his love for the game if he gets trounced in goal. I absolutely don’t care about whether his team wins or loses, and I think losing is an important lesson. They don’t actually keep score at this level, but every kid knows whether they’re winning or losing. I just don’t think he has the focus or experience to even see when the play is coming toward him, let alone the game skills to know how to block the goal. You can shake off a ball to the face or a hard but misplaced kick – but being the kid that let in eleventy goals takes longer to heal.

And so there’s my struggle. I don’t want him to be hurt, physically or emotionally, and I personally don’t think he’s ready to take on the responsibility of goal keeping. But I don’t want to be a bubble-wrap mom either. Lessons are learned best when they hurt. A little bit, anyway. I don’t want him to play goal, but I don’t want to be the only mom who says ‘I don’t want him to play goal.’ And I don’t particularly relish either the conversation where I explain to Lucas why I don’t want him to play goal OR the sleepless night before and endless hour of anxiety the day he actually does play goal.

Ugh. What do you think, bloggy peeps? Any of you with more experiences as soccer moms and dads care to offer any insight?

Photo of the day: Nature’s paintbrush

I was creeping around in the garden this morning as the sun came out after all that infernal rain recently, and found this baby clematis just waking up.

Nature's paintbrush

Pretty, heh? And I really didn’t do much more than adjust the exposure a bit and add a light gradient to the bottom corner because the green was blown completely out. The purple in the back is a fully bloomed clematis. You’d never guess this was on a chain link fence over my driveway, would you?

Photo of the day: Tristan’s big race

They say that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, but sometimes it rolls out of the orchard, down the farm lane and clear into the next county.

We were bemused last year when Tristan placed well in the school’s track and field events, as he’d never really expressed an interest in running – aside from never really going anywhere slowly. “He runs like the wind!” I remember his vice principal confiding to me in tones of hushed wonder, and he seemed to have a natural flair for running. We were so surprised and pleased, though, when he placed so well in several running events this year that he was invited to represent his school at the pentathlon (a 100m race, shot put, long jump, high jump and 800m race) that both Beloved and I made arrangements to come out and cheer him on.

We cheered ourselves ragged (okay, maybe that was just me) when Tristan came first in his heat in the 100m race to start the day. That’s him in red, #17.

Tristan's big race

He came in fourth of a dozen in the 800m race (missed third place by a whisker – really less than 3/10 of a second) and came in sixth overall.

As we sat in the stands waiting for the 800m race to begin, I was pretty sure my heart was going to either burst or come to a full stop from a complex mix of emotions covering the spectrum from “be careful” to “run hard” to “no matter where you place on this race, and no matter how big and smelly and hairy your feet might get, you are always my boy and I think you are a spectacularly amazing human being.”

When we teased him about where his speed comes from, he shrugged us off in the way only a teenager can. “I just don’t like to go slow.” I, who have nearly killed myself trying to keep pace with him on our evening dog walks, can testify to the absolute truth of that.

And you know what? He DOES run like the wind!

How to manage your CSA share (alternate title: Learning to love the chard)

I am pretty excited that our community supported agriculture (CSA) share will start arriving soon. We’ve signed up for a half share, which means we get a massive load of fresh, local organic veggies every two weeks from June through October.

I laughed when I saw a recent post on Apartment Therapy with tips about how to prepare for your CSA share, not because I don’t think it’s a clever idea for a post, but because since this is our fourth year with Roots and Shoots, I wish I’d read something similar back in the day. The CSA share does take a little more managing than the average trip to the grocery store, but it’s so worth it!

CSA share in the fridge

I love our Roots and Shoots shares for many reasons, but one of the biggest is that it pushes us out of our culinary comfort zone. We’ve learned to love kale, kohlrabi, garlic scapes, fennel, brussels sprouts, Hakurei turnips, acorn squash and lots of other previously-intimidating vegetables. Which brings me to the point of my post today. There is one veggie that I know will show up in copious quantities in the share, one that I will almost always try to trade out for another share of kale or radishes or just about anything – one I have decided that I will embrace and learn to love once and for all. Can you help?

What the holy heck do I do with Swiss chard?

In the blog post from Apartment Therapy I linked above, there’s a passing reference to wilting it down: “Since it’s easier to store a few cups of chard than a few bunches, consider wilting them down as you get them and adding them to dishes as needed.” What does this mean? How do I achieve this space-saving alchemy, how long can I store it after I wilt it, and then what do I do with it?

Enlighten me, wise and sage (and marjoram) bloggy peeps – help us learn to love the chard!