Month: April 2019

Who can speak in full sentences (pretty much) these days?  It’s like I’m having an actual conversation with Sierra!  Granted the conversations are things like:

“Maman et Dad va voir le train!”

“Sierra et bebe et Dad et Maman sont dans l’auto!”

“Cachez!  Daddy le dinosaur vient!  Non, ok maintenant c’est Maman qui est le dinosaur!”

I always heard about the terrible twos but I have to say that Sierra is quite the stubborn person at nearly three years old!  Man, when she doesn’t get her way, it’s meltdown city around these parts!

Sierra was lucky enough (and we were equally lucky!) to have some friends to play with on a Saturday where Maman and Dad went to see Muse in Montreal.

Rice krispie square time!

She even planted some sunflowers!

Obstacle course!

Early one morning Sierra awoke to find out that Maman brought home this item from the KISS concert!  I’m still not sure how that thing fit inside the car!

Etienne had a hard time drinking through this weird straw.

I had a good laugh when I saw this greeting card.

Costco is always a fun time when you make it a fun time.  Sierra got to cross off items on the list.

Finally spring time is arriving!

I forget where I saw this but I thought it was hilarious that they called this hand dryer the ‘Canadian dryer’.  Is this a Canadian invention?

Taking care of the sunflowers.

Rubber boots for everyone.

She’s starting to get the hang of it but I think she prefers to forget about the pedals sometimes.

Some friends came over for a campfire one Sunday morning.

I love how a chair blew over during the winter and was frozen solid into the snow around the fire pit.

Having fun with the baby.

Two out of three kids looking at the camera isn’t bad!

We are starting to get photos sent to us from the daycare via some new app they have set up where we get updates.  I’ll try and post some photos of Sierra as long as they aren’t showing the identities of other kids.  Not sure if I’m pushing the boundaries of what not to post but I figure the backs of kids heads are fair game.  Parents!  If you ever see a photo that you want removed, just let me know!

The tough thing about these caption contests is to figure out which angle to take.

Sierra quite enjoyed the Lion King upon the first viewing one Saturday morning.  Sometimes we have to shake it up and change it from Dora the Explorer.

Our first car wash!

When there is shovelling to be done, my helper is always there for at least 30 seconds.

Pretty nice day for some bubbles and a beer!  Sierra and I visited Dominion City Brewing which was a nice spot.  We picked up a few brews to try out and I found out I can order a keg from their store.  I may just do that!

First BBQ of the year!  On the top rack I had this giant beef rib from a few years back when Mike and I split a cow.  I have to say that was a tasty rib and I would like to make a habit of having one to open the bbq season up every year.  Mike saw this photo and said “I hope you invited more people than just yourselves for that amount of meat!”  Yes, I went a little overboard!

BBQ success!

Caveman style!

Tante Vero fixing my mistakes when putting in lulu’s.

Sunday mornings are for good visits with good friends!

The neighbourhood association set up a fantastic Easter egg hunt.  Sierra was very excited to meet the Easter bunny.

The hunt was set up like a bingo card.  A bunch of items were hidden in the park (kites in trees, a boat hidden behind a play structure, a deck of cards under a table).  When you found the item, you got one of the volunteers to mark it off on your paper and once it was all marked off you got to pick up your Easter gift.  Pretty great event!

Sierra’s latest masterpiece.

Vero warned me that my piece of lasagna fell apart.  I’m not even sure if you can call this lasagna!

Sierra welcoming Grand-Maman.

Grandpapa feeding Sierra some yummy dessert.

Helping with breakfast.

Easter egg hunt!

It was really interesting to be the guy on the outside of this jam session.  I had to teach them a few things about musical theory and then I had to transpose some notes for them.  I felt so smart afterwards!  They probably felt quite frustrated with the experience.  The issue we encountered is that an accordion and a violin are tuned to a different musical key so you have to make some adjustments.

Something came up at work so I had to work over the Easter weekend.  Vero, Sierra, Gaetan and Danielle headed down to visit family and stopped at Madrid 2.0 along the way!  DINOSAURS!

Roar!

Swinging with the cousins.

On the hunt for even more eggs!

I’m not sure what happened in this exact moment in time but I’m assuming they were trying to get the perfect photo considering I see 30 others similar to this one!

A springtime tradition!

While I had to work during the weekend, they weren’t full days of work so I realized I had the house to myself for the weekend in the first time in three years.  What should I do with my time?  I recorded a song.  I feel I’m slowly getting the hang of recording to the point where things are just getting a little bit faster and I’m getting a little bit less frustrated.  This was my studio for the weekend.  You can’t see it but off to the side are the pounds and pounds of chicken wing bones.

While the Easter weekend was a little dreary at the beginning, it turned out to be really nice on Sunday and Monday.  I had stayed inside like Gollum on Sunday but Monday I decided to start cleaning up the yard.  The family returned home and we had a great afternoon in the sun and we finished it off with the second bbq of the season.

Hanging out under Maman

 

 

Earlier in the year we sat and slept for eight hours next to the sump pit to see when our secondary pump would go on.  Turns out that it never did, but the third pump (a battery backup) did.

Fast forward a month and on a Sunday in April we had a storm which basically was too much for our primary pump to handle and so the battery backup had to kick in to handle the rest.  Luckily Vero had woken up at 2am to go to the bathroom (thanks to the Sequel!) and heard the alarms going off downstairs.

We watched until 5am as the water just kept coming in and and in and in at a fast clip.  The second pump would never turn on unless we manually lifted the float.  I could never get the float into a good position to turn on because it was positioned higher than the primary.

Well.  I suppose we needed to fix this situation.  I ended up ordering a neat sensor from Ebay called a Levelguard.

 

Instead of depending on a float type sensor, it just triggers on when the water hit a certain point.  We luckily received this on a Tuesday before we were destined to leave town to visit some family on Easter weekend.

Now my system is quite great.  The primary pump kicks on.  If the primary pump doesn’t kick on, the water will hit a Wi-fi sensor which will trigger an alarm and send me an email.  Not the greatest in the middle of the night though since a) the alarm doesn’t wake me up and b) even my phone next to me didn’t wake me up when I received an email.  Next up in our line of defence is the secondary pump that now works great with the Levelguard sensor.  So if the primary is broken, or if overcome by too much water coming in, it will pick up the slack.

After that point, we have another pump which is attached to a battery which is good for power outages.  Case in point, I was stuck working this Easter weekend so I had to stay home while Vero, her parents and Sierra went to Saint-Jacques-des-Leeds.  But in the back of my head I was scared to the leave the home as they were calling for flood conditions all over the Ottawa region and all I could think about was “What if there is a power outage?”

Sure enough, 3:30pm rolls around while I’m laying down some tracks to a new song and the lights flicker, then everything shuts off.  Time to test out the system!

I hauled my generator out of the garage over to the window nearest the pumps and made sure that was up and running.  I plugged the primary in around 4PM and emptied the entire sump pit.  After that I decided it was best to see how long my backup battery could last in full springtime conditions as I had not tested that scenario yet.

6:15PM rolled around and the water level was very close to triggering the battery backup, but it hadn’t yet.  I was quite surprised.  I suppose emptying the pit out around 4PM helped things out.  But it’s incredible to think that two hours went by and the water hadn’t even reached the battery backup yet.  Sometimes I wonder if I should adjust the primary pump sensor a little higher since it’s going off every 4 minutes.  There are two schools of thought.  1) If it’s going to take two hours to hit the battery backup, then what’s the harm in adjusting it so it gets high enough to empty every 30 minutes?  2) The other school of thought is if you end up with a flash flood of rain, those 30 minutes are precious if something else goes wrong.

I also now have a battery power sensor that will trigger around the time as the battery backup with a ear shattering 120db sound!  That’s a little ridiculous but that’s all they were selling on Amazon.  This will be good if the power goes out in the middle of the night and we are not hearing the battery backup come on.

No plan is foolproof, but I would like to think that we are getting close.

Vero and I headed to Montfort Hospital for our second ultrasound which confirmed that we are not expecting twins which in my opinion, is great news!  Everything is looking pretty good. 

 

The Sequel went to a KISS concert!

We were teaching Sierra how to talk to The Sequel by making noises.  The Sequel did not move during this time but has been moving once in awhile.

Nothing much else to report.  Vero is doing well, the family is doing well.  We are just trying to figure out if I’m going to take some time off when the baby comes and we are also on the hunt for an armoire for all the clothes we have to move out of the closet!