Category: Holidays
Monday, Feb 18, 2013 | Baking, Cooking, Dogs, Family, Holidays, Kids |
Just what it sounds like. We took the dogs sledding!
It’s “Family Day” holiday here in Ontario, so we’re hanging around doing things together as a family, as dictated by our children. I’ve actually spent most of the day in the kitchen, making a ridiculous list of homemade items, which I shall share with you now, so as to make me feel like I’ve accomplished something. Okay, I’m a little bit grumpy. I just spent most of the day in the kitchen!
Four loaves of bread. Yogurt. Turnip & beet pickles. Pulled barbequed beef in the crockpot. Homemade buns on which to serve pulled bbqued beef.
I guess that’s all. These holidays always throw me off. Truth is, I feel like I’m holiday when the kids are at school and I’m getting to write all day! So I’m looking forward to tomorrow.
Friday, Dec 28, 2012 | Birthdays, Fun, Holidays, Photos, Play, Soccer |
Christmas eve elves
AppleApple discovers something else she’d like to do: learn how to play the cello!
Settlers of Catan and butter beer
cousin love
Santa, with pillow-enchanced profile
er, too much butter beer?
Tomorrow is my birthday. I usually get all philosophical right about now. But today I don’t feel philosophical. I feel busy. Tired. Happy. Surprised, though I shouldn’t be, by the ongoingness of laundry and dishes. And these people I live with keep needing to eat.
We enjoyed four consecutive days of Christmas celebrations with various parts of our extended family, and some friends, too, although my camera didn’t make it to every event.
For the record, that’s four consecutive Christmas dinners: ham, ham, paella, and turkey.
I embraced the excess, then wondered why I felt so sluggish on yesterday morning’s run. Especially because I took Boxing Day morning and did not get out of bed til noon, reading and finishing Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walter, in one big gulp.
So many late nights. So many second glasses of wine. So much wheat and butter. Why so sluggish?
Yes, really, Carrie, why.
This morning Kevin rented a full indoor soccer field (huge!) so his U12 boys team could practice. AppleApple and I got kitted out in soccer gear and came along. It was 90 minutes of blissful scrimmaging, the boys’ team against everyone else — adults, friends, siblings. AppleApple was the only girl, and I was the only woman, and I’ll admit I felt a little intimidated going in. I’m thankful to have joined that team last spring, because all I can say is: soccer … so fun! It would totally be bragging to mention that I scored the sweetest replay-worthy goal (yes, against 11-year-old boys), but I can’t help myself. If only I could score goals like that for my current team. Sadly, we don’t play against 11-year-old boys, which is not to malign the skills of the boys, who are actually very good, and made us play hard.
Now Kevin is trying to snag more field time. And I think it would be fun to play on a co-ed team together — taking our marriage to new places, whilst our knees and hamstrings are still in working order. See, this isn’t a dream that can really wait for retirement.
“I wish we could play every day,” Kev said, and I had to agree. So that’s what we’ll do if we ever strike it rich.
Tuesday, Dec 25, 2012 | Dogs, Holidays, Kids, Morning, Photos |
early morning sticky buns
stockings
new Christmas jams/hams (click on photos to see in full)
doggies’ first Christmas (click on photos to see in full)
Sunday, Dec 2, 2012 | Chores, Holidays, Kids, Play, Weekend, Winter |
Wake to a winter wonderland.
Date with daughter: Starbucks and errands uptown. Such a good start to the day, I’m thinking every Saturday morning should begin with a date with one of my kids. Albus calls the next one.
Advent begins. “Mom is so freaky organized she’s got an envelope in her office with advent activities!” (This is true. I just put them away from last year’s calendar, knowing the season would come around before we knew it. And here it is. Looks like we had a lot “hot chocolate for breakfast” last year.)
Today’s activity: Get a tree!
Uh oh. First we have to clean up the gigantic Lego living-room mess.
Good opportunity to create a new Lego playspace upstairs instead. Buy small area carpet while shopping for the tree, which comes in a box. Yes, we bought a tree in a box.
Tree-in-box was family decision: it’s economical and reusable. And it’s not like we’ve been hiking out to our back forty and chopping down an adorable and unique tree replete with picturesque memories that the children will carry with them forever. No, for the past couple of years, following some truly disastrous never-again hiking-around-tree-farm-experiences, we’ve purchased our tree in a Dairy Queen parking lot. So, really …
Also this afternoon: big kids had their second babysitting gig (he’s the other curly head in the foreground).
And now it’s dark, and we still haven’t had supper. Kevin and the boys are out picking up a take-out Thai order. I’ve got a very hungry and grumpy child curled in the rocking chair beside me, and another trying to solve a sudoko puzzle at the dining-room table (and she’s stuck on something, from the sounds of it). Also crossed off the list today: fresh sheets for everyone, tons of laundry, library run, creative Shakespeare presentation completed, and — still in the works — bread baking.
Hey, food’s here! As Fooey says, “Let’s eat! Let’s eat!”
Tuesday, Aug 28, 2012 | Dogs, Family, Holidays, Kids, Reading, Summer, Travel |
Sunday, day one. Pack up post-successful-soccer tournament and drive east 281 km to spend night in hotel, booked in advance. Eat pizza in truck. Feed dogs by roadside. Arrive after dark only to discover hotel has no adjoining rooms. And the gym is already closed. Split up into two rooms, boys and girls (with dogs in boys’).
Monday, day two. Take dogs to vet (it’s a complicated story). Spend morning at hotel, swimming, running on nearby lakeside trail. Pick up dogs mid-afternoon and drive east 111 km to visit new nephew/cousin. He’s only five days old!
Tuesday, day three. Visiting with family, swimming in the basin of a nearby lock, running/hiking on a beautiful wooded trail, playing badminton and soccer, walking dogs on rocks, staying up late to watch silly tv (everyone) … oh, and doing that 11-year-old specialty: the I’m-bored flop.
Wednesday, day four. Brunch with grandma, aunt, uncle, cousins; say goodbye. Pack up and drive west and north 423 km. Threaten at various points during the journey to pack it in and just go home (arguing children, restless dogs, exhausted parents). Instead, surge ever onward. Until we get here.
Thursday, day five. Dogs cry all night; luckily only Kevin and I can hear them; unluckily, we are running dangerously low on sleep. Luckily, I find on the cottage shelves a light and fluffy book into which to disappear for the better part of the day: The Nanny Diaries. And the children play. And we swim. And we walk the dogs around the rocks and woods. And we celebrate Fooey’s birthday (again!), this time on a boat in the middle of the lake.
Friday, day six. Dogs sleep better. Kevin and I sleep better. Motorboat and water skiis tested out. More swimming. I disappear into past issues of The New Yorker, discover the journals of Mavis Gallant from Spain, early 1950s. As the writers of The Nanny Diaries would say: “Swoon.” (Only they’d say it about the hunky guy upstairs.)
Saturday, day seven. More water-skiing and boating. A long swim out to “Poop Island,” accompanied by kids and Kevin and my dad in canoe and kayaks. More long-form essays in The New Yorker devoured. More food eaten. Dogs happy in shade. Ahhhhhh.
Sunday, day eight. More swimming, skiing, boating, eating, reading, all crammed in before a late lunch. Pack up. Boat out. Drive west and south 302 km, with interlude by the side of the road due to vehicle trouble. (Should have gotten a photo of that for posterity.) Four kids, two dogs, two parents, seventeen bags of dirty laundry, and by golly, we make it home. CJ: “This doesn’t feel like my bed! It feels different.”
‘Til next summer, then.
:::
A brief addendum, applicable only today. I’m signing books this evening at Chapters in Waterloo from 6-8. Stop by if you’ve got a few minutes. We can chat about The Juliet Stories. Or swap summer holiday stories.
Sunday, Aug 5, 2012 | Holidays, Kids, Soccer, Weekend |
for full view of misery, click on photo
So far, our long weekend has had its share of ups and downs: emotional highs, boredom, excitement, complaints, getting along, and, perhaps just as often, not so much. We’ve been at AppleApple’s third tournament of the summer, and the first for which we brought the whole family along. It’s tough on her siblings, and Kevin and I get it. Being dragged along to an event that is not your own. Sitting on the sidelines watching game after game. Waiting in between games.
Everyone also stayed up late in the hotel last night, and had to be woken before they were ready this morning.
Yesterday was also maybe the hottest, most humid, least windy, sunniest days of the year. This morning, for variety, it poured rain.
Hence the accuracy of the grumpy face above.
But that said, we also had a lot of fun. Swimming, a little holiday away, a kids-eat-free breakfast buffet, our first experience of shopping at a pet store for supplies (!!), not to mention some really inspired soccer playing. More on that soon.
