Snow Day

Remember the excitement of waking up on a school day and tuning in hopefully to the radio on a messy weather day, hoping against hope that school would be cancelled and you could just roll over and go back to bed? 

Well that would have been a good idea this week! If only I'd known we were expecting a storm. Except we weren't! They were calling for some possible snow later in the day, maybe some rain. With already snow packed roads, a nice coating of rain can turn the bus route into a skating rink. I wouldn't recommend driving 70+ kids in those conditions!

Not knowing the forecast was calling for anything, I got everybody up, started breakfast and we were half an hour away from going out to the bus stop when I happened to see a Facebook post mentioning an extra day off. Wondering what holiday they had planned, I read further and found out school was cancelled IN CASE the weather turned later in the day and made the roads messy.

The kids thought they'd go back to bed but they never fell asleep, they were too busy on their iPods to shut their eyes! After a few hours of that (and some Rainbow looming), I told them Checkers needed a walk. He actually is fine for exercise but telling them I just want to go for a walk or telling them they should get outside to play is an undertaking I didn't want to fight out. When it's for the dog, they're much more willing. I go with whatever works!

We spent an hour following the paths to find the beaver pond and dam and home again. We used to go for walks in the woods all the time and they talked about things they remembered from when they were "little". It was cute to hear them recall details and stories. They kept asking for pictures which made me sorry I hadn't brought my real camera! If I'd known they'd be willing to work the photo ops for me.... Oh well! The best camera is the one you have with you!

Underneath that snow is a huge rock. It seemed much bigger to them when they were 2 & 3 and needed a boost to get up on it. They call it "Rocky Mountain" because it was sooooooooo large and hard to climb back then!

Voila le beaver dam!

and what's an event without a selfie?!?!? I love the rosy cheeks and big smiles :)))

 

When we got home, everyone was tired and hungry so Honey got to work and whipped up grilled cheese sandwiches for her sisters and herself.

In the celebratory spirit of the snow day, we ate lunch in front of the TV and I introduced them to some of my old faves, Bewitched and Diff'rent Strokes. Honey wasn't impressed that Bewitched was in black and white and complained until I changed shows. We all howled at the antics of Willis and Arnold and watched as many shows as we could before Teena & Boo came to visit. I have them hooked now and we'll be watching lots of episodes! We're loving our Apple TV!!!

Camping 2013

Summers go soooooo fast! Every year we say "we should go camping sometime!" and most years we end up pitching the tent at GG's for the golf tournament and that's about the extent of our tenting time. This year we took a weekend and actually went to a real campground, woohoo!

The kids love it and lugged up all the sleeping bags, mattresses and pillows quite excitedly. Then I remembered what I hate about camping: the loading & packing of all the stuff! Gotta make sure to put the tent in last so it's the first thing on top when we get to the site. But the cooler should be packed last so it'll stay colder that way, but it's one of the biggest things so should go into the van first.... it was almost a paralyzing conundrum! Finally I had everything ready to load. Unfortunately it wasn't at 2pm as I'd planned, it was 5:30! I was going to take the girls out and set up the tent ahead of time and come back for Murray so we could eat at the site and have a bonfire. Another plan gone bad but not the end of the world.

We got everything set up and explored a bit and then turned in for the night. Checkers was incredibly restless and preferred to roam around and shake his head every 5 minutes. It was a looooooooooooong night! The kids were oblivious but Murray and I woke up not feeling too refreshed!

Nevertheless, we're camping and we're going to have fun darn it! But what to do? We shall go on a lovely nature hike and find the waterfall! We are certainly not sitting around in a tent to play iPods! I told them if they wanted to play video games in the woods, I could have thrown them over the fence in the backyard and saved myself a LOT of work! I didn't spend 5 hours baking, packing & loading to watch them do what they could do at home! They weren't very moved by my speech but didn't ask for electronics again.

We eventually found the start of the trail and began the hike. They were all excited at first, zooming along, racing around and chasing each other along the path. Then the novelty wore off after an hour and we still couldn't tell if we'd found the waterfall or not. We'd seen some water flowing over a small pile of rocks in a stream but were looking for something a little more impressive. The brochure mentioned it was "small but striking" so we kept looking, and looking and walking and looking. We ran out of trail and started back around the loop we'd taken and saw lots of other stuff in the woods but nothing that we'd consider "striking" !!! The girls weren't impressed either and made sure to let us know by subtly mentioning things like "I'M BORED. DO WE HAVE TO KEEP GOING? WHEN CAN WE STOP? CAN WE TURN BACK YET???" At one point, Murray overheard a grumbled "I feel like complaining my head off!" He lost it and said "we didn't have to come camping you know."  (<---- a="" br="" murray="" s="" that="" tirade="">
We got back to the campsite and had some lunch and shortly after that, Boo got dropped off for a sleepover as Teena & Dale had a party and we won the babysitting lottery :) They were quite excited to have her there and showed her around and got her bedroll set up. They spent the rest of the afternoon at the playground and activity centre while I cleaned up lunch, read my book and then got supper ready.

That night we did have a campfire and s'mores, roasted hotdogs, sparklers and a couple Dragons Eggs that we probably weren't supposed to have. (something about no explosives in the rules I realized after). Grammie and Grandad love campfires so they joined the party and supplied the hotdogs and stayed to enjoy the evening with us, hooray, a party!

By the time our guests left and brush & flush was done, everyone was wiped and settled down without too much furor.

Teena had saved the day and brought some ear cleaning stuff so I was able to get Checkers' ears in better shape and he slept better which meant we slept better. Somewhere towards morning, I felt Murray pushed up against me, so much so that I was barely on the mattress anymore. I looked over to see what was going on and Checkers had confiscated his mattress so he was trying to get off the ground and use mine! (despite the fact that I'd made a very nice dog bed with the removable trunk liner and some towels!!!)  Fussy puppies do not make great tentmates.

Lovey & Boo were awake at 6:30 and fairly chatty so that was the end of my shuteye! We tried to read quietly in the tent but that didn't last long and everyone got up for breakfast. They went for a swim while I dried out the tent and tore it down and reloaded the van. We grabbed a pizza lunch at the canteen and headed home!

Good times!!!

they got the "small" part right!