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.”
Blog
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…
Mother’s Day 2024
Continuing with our tradition (which we started last year haha) we spent Mother’s Day weekend visiting some local nurseries in the Annapolis Valley so I could get all my plants for the season. I actually really enjoy this, despite the boys being a bit more rambunctious this year, which made for a slightly less relaxing, browsing, chilling type experience and more of a “slow down!” and “No running!” type of experience. Maybe because it was Mother’s Day, or maybe it is because we live amongst such lovely east coast personalities, but everyone is always so kind and forgiving to us, whenever we go with our wild children.
The three nurseries we went to this year were: Summerland Nursery in Wilmont, Briar Patch Farm & Nursery in South Berwick, and Glad Gardens Family Farm Market & Greenhouses in Waterville. (The last two are only minutes apart on Hwy 1.)
On Becoming a Mother: A First Birth Story
Mother’s Day is approaching which has me reminiscing on all of my births. If you know me, you know I’m low key obsessed with birth and LOVE a birth story. I’ve already written down the story of my third birth, but now I want to share the story that made me a mother, the birth of my first.
My eldest was born at 38 weeks and 3 days, which is to say that he surprised me by arriving “early”. I knew my mom had me late, and my sister on her due date, and since this was my first baby, I just assumed I would go past my due date. Well we know what they say about assuming …
A Stop in Paradise
Springtime in the Annapolis Valley! Is there anything better than seeing the sun shinning warmly after all these winter months? Spring is definitely in the air these last few days, and we have been taking full advantage. It’s been an absolute delight to be able to be outside more (we’ve done between 3-5 hours a day every day this week) and the kids are certainly reaping the benefits. Slightly later bedtimes have led to better sleeps and sleep ins, which I hesitate to even write lest I jinx it. Sure, we had (what I hope to be) one last illness take over the household – but it’s behind us, lingering coughs aside, now, and we are only looking ahead! Onward!
With the warmer weather comes one of the great East Coast Living Perks: the opening of the fish stands.
