today i attended a school assembly, at which our eldest received an end-of-year award on being a respectable and responsible young man, but which also included a graduation of students who i do not know, have never met, and besides attending the same school as my eldest, have absolutely no affiliation with. well, did i not have to choke back tears watching videos and hearing speeches about these wonderful young children. what business did i, a woman in her late thirties, in her luteal phase, have attending an assembly like this at this time? big mistake. HUGE. i had to excuse myself to wipe my eyes in the bathroom lest a parent ask “which is yours?” to which i would be forced to reply “none” (but at the same time, all of them).
an impromptu update
sup kids. i’m back. or i’m here… for right now. and what do i feel like rambling on about today you may be wondering, kind reader? heck, i may not even know myself. but i’m sitting here, addressing this website after it almost went down on me during my annual renewal – an auto-payment that … Read more
The summer we moved across Canada.
We did it. We moved across the country, from coast to coast. We travelled for 12 days and it was basically my entire personality all summer. I made a little video about it if you wish to check it out, on my Instagram. There is also an entire highlight devoted to it, if you care to take a peek.
On Cross Country Moving and Summer Vacation
I haven’t written since winter, and here we are now, mid-June, the precipice of summer before us. Normally (well, what is “normal”) I’d be excited for the hot weather, trips to the beach, planning a long trip to Cape Breton, and arranging our days off with our summer visitors. But this June has other plans for us. Our minds are occupied with routes and kilometers. Distances from point A to B and which hotel has a waterslide. Email’s to our eldest’s school administrator that reads: “I’m actually not sure if he will be starting school here in the fall, if he does, he won’t be here long. We’ll let you know as soon as we know. Thanks for your understanding.”
On Being Selfish and No Longer Tracking Outside Time
That’s it, we’re an indoor family now.
Just kidding. Sort of…
2024 End of Year Review
And just like that it’s been almost 6 months, hasn’t it? I simply can’t go back and recap it all, so I’ll bullet point it just so I don’t forget, and then attempt to get back to regularly scheduled programming. Thanks to all our family and friends who made it another great year for us in 2024. It was definitely a challenging year, starting with a hospital stay for the baby, and me injuring my back, and getting pneumonia at the end of the year. But ultimately, as I’ll recap for you, we outdid the negatives with some amazing times.
Nana in Nova Scotia
We returned from Keji on Thursday, happy but tired, to a house that hadn’t been lived in in weeks and was full of laundry. Thank god for wonderful neighbours who notice you’re away and take out your garbage, otherwise we’d have been in really bad shape. Matt was back to work the following Monday, so we were busy getting back to base before that.
I got to experience what August would be like from Monday-Wednesday, while Matt resumed work after a joyously long paternity leave, and my mom arrived to help fill the gap on Wednesday. It was a bit rough as everyone adjusted to our “new normal”.
Thankfully, Nana arrived to save the day, and helped us transition to life back home and one parent back to work.
Camping in Kejimkujik
Don’t ask me how to pronounce it. I don’t know. I just say Keji but even that I pronounce differently each time. I may not know how to say it, but we went there, and it was beautiful!
Now let’s go back. Back to FEBRUARY, which is when we had to line up (virtually) to get these reservations for the middle of the week in July. Wow, how camping has certainly changed in the last few years. The days of rocking up day of, and getting a site, are long gone.
My friends and I agreed that renting the oTENTik’s there would be a good camping compromise (we aren’t all campers, and we all have young kids) but they are quite popular, so the second the website opened for bookings we were all in que to reserve our spot. Despite refreshing the page the second the bookings opened up, we were all still 3,000-something in line. But we managed! And 5 months later, and only a few days after our Cape Breton Summer, we were off…
Cape Breton Summer
Hello dear blog that I have neglected for over a month. Oh the things that I wanted to share here, but haven’t found the time. Even if I can find the time to sit down to write, my mind is instantly blank – amazing what four years of no sleep will do, isn’t it? But alas, here I am now, in my prime parenting capabilities (ie one child watching Paw Patrol on the iPad while one kid watches the new Spongebob movie on the TV and bless the baby for still being asleep). So, let’s start at the beginning shall we – back to the end of June and beginning of July. Where we start our “summer vacation” – as we live by the eldest’s school schedule – and begin our summer in Cape Breton.
(I must note here, in the spirit of *realness*, that I made a classic mom mistake – acknowledged that the baby was in fact asleep. Veteran moms know this is an absolute faux pas that will immediately cause the baby to awaken. I will return later today… hopefully.)
The Red Harbour House
Well, it certainly feels like we are full swing into summer mode already! With another month behind us, May blessed us with some beautiful weather and lovely adventures. In terms of outside time, our goal (as always) was to beat last years numbers. Last May we racked up 93.5 hours and this May we did almost 96… So close to 100!
We were treated to a lovely vacation at an AirBNB called Red Harbour House in Lower Ship Harbour by my father in law who was visiting for a week. It was nice to get out of our house and enjoy the water and just experience a change of pace. We all know the end of winter seems to drag on…
