Month: June 2020

So here’s the thing about kites.  If you have one this big, it’s never really going to get up into the air.  I ran A LOT of times to try and get it up and it may have got up a few feet.

Enjoying some hot chocolate from the cup that Matante Vero dropped off for her birthday

A couple of days later the wind conditions were perfect to try out a kite another time.  Luckily this time we had another kite that she got from Uncle Ben and Aunt Krista.  This was a $3 kite and was light as a feather!  It went up with no issues.  After this day I promptly deposited my giant jet of a kite into the trash.  Funny enough, Sierra got the line all tangled up on the $3 kite that I had to go and fish out the old kite from the trash can and get the line off of it a few days later!

I’m not entirely sure why I took a photo of a smoked meat brisket that I did in the Instant Pot, but I’m pretty sure it was to send to Mom and make her jealous!

In the mornings when Ezra takes a nap I am always trying to think of an activity to do with Sierra.  I find that, along with figuring out what to make for meals is the hardest part because I’m not exactly planning ahead.  Luckily she received a necklace craft set for her birthday so we made a bunch of necklaces.

“Here’s Johnny!”

I had a good laugh when Sierra came up the stairs one morning and asked me what this was!

This is what it is!  Yeah baby, yeah!  I loved Austin Powers years ago.  I should rewatch them.

If the pandemic wasn’t around, we would probably have Sierra in some sort of dance classes.  But when that isn’t available, then a Frozen themed dance class on YouTube does just the trick!

Sierra quite likes the board game Trouble that she received for her birthday.  We realized that it’s a lot easier to just play with two pieces at a time instead of the standard four.  Here is her butterfly Alex playing with us.

Hanging out around the campfire

This is what I like to see when I come in after an hour of quiet time.  However, there have also been cases of crayon markings on the window and walls that I’m less impressed with!

Getting a  drink on a hot, hot day.  This was probably taken during an early heat wave of +40 degree weather.  You can’t have Ezra out in that weather for more than 15 minutes.  But Sierra quite likes it.  However, she decided she prefers this smaller sprinkler than the regular one.

Sierra can’t finish a cup of water if her life depended on it, but somehow she managed to gulp this entire smoothie down after running around in +40 degrees!  Smoothies remind me of Brazil.  There were tons of smoothie bars on the streets in Rio because it’s just so hot.

This must be some sort of butterfly superhero!

Sierra is quite helpful in the garden.  Here she is planting potatoes with Maman.

Here are the two gardeners for the summer of 2020.

Vero decided to plant one tomato plant in the middle of our yard because in theory it will get a lot more sunlight.  If it results in a substantial difference we may make raised beds the next year and put them in the yard instead of our fairly shady garden.

There is a fantastic forest in Russell that we go a couple of times a week.  Vero gets to come out with us on weekends when she is not working.

Pretty sure this creature is more annoying than a mosquito when you’re trying to take a nap!

Hanging out 

I’ll have to remember to take a video of our storytime routine but it goes like this.  I read Sierra a story, generally something from Frog and Toad.  Then Mr. Froggy joins us for question time.  I do the voice of Mr. Froggy who somehow sounds like Kermit the Frog.  Generally Sierra’s questions are “What do you want to do tomorrow?” and “What did you do today?”.  I then ask her things like “What was the most fun thing you did today?” and she replies with “Sleep.”  I then have to prompt her (as Mr. Froggy) to tell me about her bike rides, or her times playing with Ezra.  Then when Mr. Froggy goes to sleep she somehow has the same questions for Dad and I have to answer them before leaving the room.  Sometimes these questions go on for 30 minutes!  She is quite conniving when she wants to delay her bed time.

What a shot Maman took!  This was probably the day that we didn’t teach Sierra that she needs to hold onto the line and the kite went flying over into the trees in the park!  The neighbours across the street witnessed me hightailing it across the field trying to catch this kite!  Because the wind was so strong I did manage to get it out of the tree but it took about a half hour.  What an adventure!

I love this photo Vero took just because you can see the immense joy she is having.  Kite flying should be a mandatory class for all kids.

The same day we had high winds, a giant wind gust caught our sun shade and snapped one of the posts!  Sierra was on the deck and Maman had her run away in time.  Pretty scary stuff!  Luckily we had a spare post in the shed so it didn’t take too much work to repair it.  Nowadays, if there is a storm coming we take this shade down.

I was very excited to see that my favourite spot in Hull reopened!

Sierra insisted that Red Rooster comes to bed with me because my eye was hurting.  Vero wanted to use this photo as blackmail.

Another windy day, another kite adventure!

Checking out some worms

Sierra likes to go in the front lawn with Maman.  I believe they wait for the ice cream truck to pass by.  They’ll be waiting a long time!  But I did show up with a couple of bowls of ice cream one evening.

The new water pistols are working great!

With the hot tub broken Vero kept asking for us to buy a pool.  In my mind pools were a couple of hundred dollars.  Little did I know that a kiddy pool this size was $15!  This was the best $15 we have ever spent.  We had another heat wave and we went into this thing every day.

First swim of the year!

We found a bird house on our adventures to the Tweed forest.  It seems to move its spot each time we visit.

We had to ask Nanny Sybil how to make a cucumber sandwich.  It came out quite good!

Fun in the pool.  You will see that there’s a little more shade.  We just hung the tarp up over us which is great for the kids in the early afternoon when the sun is coming down.

Learning how to eat a Mr. Freeze

Piggyback!

Photoshoot for all the Christmas calendars this year!

Vero recreated some favourite photos of her Dad and her for father’s day

When Sierra heard it was Father’s Day she thought “Well that’s the birthday of fathers so we need a cake!”

You can’t say no to cake on Father’s Day!

Milk and Bananas is destined to be a great song.

Early morning walk

Sierra has a good songwriting talent.  Here is her ‘Bumblebee song’.  I think it’s about the time when Vero was a kid and walked into a bush and a bumblebee stung her.

Sierra was very lucky to see one of the daycare providers when we were out biking one day.  She just happened to be visiting her sister in Vars!  We had not seen anyone from the daycare since early March.  Sierra was shy at first but asked some questions later on.

Just hanging out in a princess costume

Is this a dance routine or an exercise routine?

Enjoying a drumstick

Sierra received a funny video from her grandparents for her birthday.  So for Grandpapa’s birthday Sierra did another video which was a copy of exactly what happened in the the video they sent her.  She was really great at listening to direction and she did all of the parts in one take!  We were very impressed.  Vero did a great job editing it together.  The end part of alternate endings happened because Sierra thought it was so funny to have all of us be in the greenhouse at the end.

 

Maman: “Sierra don’t you have something to say to Dad?”

Sierra: “Bonne fete!”

Maman: “No, no, it’s Father’s Day.”

Sierra: “Bonne fete a ton père Daddy!”

 

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Herb-Lovers Lemony Orzo Salad

First off, this has nothing to do with an instant pot but I know that when I search for recipes I wasn’t smart enough to have the keyword ‘recipe’ but I sure have the keyword ‘instant pot’ that I search for!  So I would hate to see this recipe get lost because I don’t use the right keyword.

I did a variation on this salad and it was a hit.  It was a variation because I didn’t have some of the ingredients.  Listed below is what I changed for me to remember what I did!

 

INGREDIENTS

• 12 ounces uncooked orzo
• 0.5 large handfuls fresh baby spinach, chopped
• 1 (398 ml) can chickpeas (garbanzo beans), rinsed and drained
• 1 English cucumber, diced
• 0.5 cup basil leaves
• Lots of lemon juice (recipe asked for 1–2 lemons, zested and juiced)
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• sea salt and freshly-cracked black pepper, to taste
• 1/2 cup of feta cheese
• 1 small can of sliced black olives

Notes:

– I didn’t have the 2 cups of baby spinach they asked for.

– I didn’t have 1/2 red onion on hand

– The recipe asked for roughly cut basil leaves.  I didn’t have actual leaves on hand but I had some in a spice rack.  I ended up using 1/2 cup of basil leaves which I was worried about but I think it came out well.  On the other hand, Sierra didn’t like the ‘black bits’ on the salad and didn’t want to eat any so…maybe I should make her a non-basil bowl the next time?

–  The recipe asked for a 1 cup of roughly chopped mint leaves and I had no mint.

– I didn’t have any lemons on hand to zest and juice.  I added some lemon juice.  Then when we ate the salad we wanted more.  A lot more.  So I think if we had lemons on hand it would be great if they were zested and juiced.

– The olives were a great addition and I think would be even better if we added sliced kalamata olives the next time.

There is quite a bit left over.  Probably eat another meal.

Last night I experienced the future of concert watching and it was through a platform called JuJu Live.

I caught wind of this as Neverending White Lights were going to do a livestream on this website in a few weeks.  This was big news to Neverending White Lights fans considering Daniel Victor had disappeared from the scene for the better part of the past decade.  Rumours of a new album coming out would be squashed and that was that.

But here he was, ready to do a livestream to the comfort of our own homes!  I have never had the opportunity to see him live so when the day came, I plucked down my $3USD ($4 CDN) to see his livestream.

I am no stranger to livestreams.  Every Friday night during the pandemic I would catch Adam Baldwin’s Cross Country Chin Up session and on Saturdays I would check out Matt Mays’ Mantle Music.  It was great to see an intimate performance but the quality of video has been a little lacking.  The audio was great though.  But was there somehow the ability for live-streaming to level up and bring us a high definition experience?

I suppose so and Juju Live did it right!

9PM rolled around and sure enough, the page reloaded with a play button to a video.  I clicked play, and you have the option to have it a smaller size so you can also read the chat comments flying by on the side, or you can choose full screen.

This was a 720p high definition stream and they explain a little about their magic.  They buffer the stream!  So people who are leaving comments are warned that there may be a minute delay because the entire performance is buffered!

It was great.  There were no hiccups to the feed, the sound and video were superb and I’m pretty sure I could have paused it if I wanted to.  What’s even better is that the next day I found that they have archived the video for people who may have come in late or missed it completely.  Gone are the days of buying a concert ticket and missing out on the show because of some emergency that pops up.

For years I have been saying that live concerts need to adopt the pay per view model.  I believe Juju Live is a very strong step in the right direction for this type of service.  It’s definitely a different type of experience.  As Vero put it, these livestreams are very intimate because there’s no crowd interaction so the performers spend more time talking in between songs and sometimes explaining things that you wouldn’t normally see in an arena.

– high quality audio and video

– probably the ability to pause for a bathroom break

– even if there is no ability to pause you can catch the stream again the next day (they say that they will keep it up for a few weeks)

– the price is right.  $4 CDN is a really great price point to get people to tune in.  Imagine a large band like Pearl Jam charging the entire world $4CDN to tune into an intimate concert.

Check out the service sometime, it’s fantastic!

Helping out

All fun and games until something is about to hit a ceiling fan

Usually Ezra is standing up after his nap but this time around he was just lazing around

A typical morning

Blowing bubbles

Ezra is super excited when this toy comes out to play!

Sierra showing Ezra how to repair his car

Ezra loves his patio time

Dancing with Maman

Showing off the salad spinner

Sometimes we lose Ezra under the pile of clothes

Could his first word be “Wow”?

Ezra gets pretty excited when someone comes up the stairs and sees him

A typical scene before bedtime

Enjoying a snack together

The kids get to hang out with Maman after the work day is over

Ezra sometimes straddles the line between happiness and being tired

Ezra checking out the magnolias

I find this photo hilarious.  I swear he’s really concentrating hard to try and stand up but needed a break.

Future bricklayer just like Grandpapa

What kid doesn’t love peekaboo?

When there isn’t a heat wave we hang out on the swing set for awhile

Look who’s getting adventurous and standing up with one hand!

Ezra is not a fan of the sprinkler

Maybe he’s more a fan of the SS Rubber Ducky?  Nope.

A typical sight from the patio.  “Oh, if only I could walk!”  You will see to the right of him that we set up some lattice as a gate.  It has worked ok so far.  It’s a little flimsy but it does the trick.  Not sure if we need to build an actual gate considering by next summer he probably wouldn’t need it.

It’s not often we have supper outside because of the mosquitoes but this must have been an exception.  I can tell it’s suppertime judging by the beer on the table that is for Ezra.  If it’s nice out, we would generally have lunch outside to give Vero a break from the cold basement where she had her office set up in until mid July when she finally got a desk from work to set up in our bedroom.  Our bedroom now feels like my college dormroom with a computer in it!

I had a good laugh when Maureen sent me this letter that Abbey wrote her so she could stay up a little longer.

I’m currently on Month 3 of parental leave and I wish I could say I have a lot of time to spend with Ezra but to be honest, with Sierra in the mix it’s a tough gig.  Even without Sierra involved there’s a lot more to being on parental leave than playing with your kid.  Probably at this point I’m sitting on the couch thinking of what to make for lunch for the family.  So seeing him play in the closet is a common sight, followed by a sandal being chewed on!

A few years ago we didn’t do much with our garden but Vero was keen on resurrecting it this year.  This photo looks like we had just tilled the dirt.

It’s not all that often that I take the time to look at our house from the road.  

This was probably after a morning meal of oatmeal with some banana, or maybe some apple sauce.  A typical morning consists of a bottle of eight ounces, then around an hour later we have some breakfast and usually facetime Grandma and Poppa to chat awhile.

It’s taking him awhile to get the hang of this thing.

Ezra is always happy when Maman is around!

Ezra laughs up a storm when the zerberts come in!  Hilariously he is starting to give zerberts of his own!

Doug at work showed me his wife’s office setup and I thought it was hilarious so I told Vero she should use it.  Here’s my office desk while sitting down.

Here it is standing up!  Genius!

Ezra showing off a bruise on his cheek

Everyone loves the water wall

Ezra really loves listening to music and chewing on this speaker.

Teaching them some skills

And so started the month of him being able to hang off the desk and kitchen table.

A rare family photo

We took the plunge (heyo!) and bought a hot tub.  Unfortunately for us, our dreams of using it as a cool tub were squashed when we got word that we wouldn’t see it until August.  Ah well, it’ll be ready for the Fall!

Fun!

I pulled this out of the fridge thinking it was a summer worthy beer.  I was completely mistaken.  I should read the label before cracking it open!

In honour of Bob and Doug on the SpaceX flight.

Snuggle time around the fire

Testing out the finger after wiping out a few weeks before.  Not too shabby!  Ezra really loves it when I pull out an instrument.

Yet another ride in the bike trailer.  It’s a tight squeeze.  Sierra has been saying it’s too hot in there so she doesn’t want to go as much anymore.  I will have to choose a cooler day.

This is a killer shirt!

Ezra seems to like his new car seat!

Still don’t know what these trees are in my yard nor do I really care?  But I’m sure someone with a green thumb will like this photo.

It’s getting warm enough to not have shorts on!  His knees take a beating on the wood though.  But any kid’s knees must take a beating I suppose.

Favourite beer of the summer?  Most definitely.

It’s great to have frozen strawberries on hand to whip up a smoothie

Mom sent up some masks she made for us.  A funny story about this particular one.  In this photo it fit great.  Then a few weeks later I grab one and I’m in the store thinking “Man, this is ridiculous, it’s tugging on my ears something fierce!”  I didn’t realize until later that Vero had shortened the straps because they were too long for her face!

The pandemic rules were being loosened and we could go out into the forests again!  This was taken from one of many visits of the Tweed Conservation Area.  We had never walked the entire trail until today and it’s a great 30 minute trail.

A new favourite game

Screams of laughter

Horsing around

Hanging out