February 2021 – Palmer's World

First skate of the year!

Maman teaching Sierra how to get up

Learning checkers

Some days I feel that Sierra wants to go on her adventures without her brother. This was one of those days I felt that so we brought some snowshoes and went over to the Castor River area to traipse through the snow. We had a lot of fun as it was a nice day.

Taking a break with a thermos of hot chocolate

Everyone has trouble getting up after falling!

Measuring different quantities of snow for school.

I’m not sure what Sierra was supposed to draw here!

Ice cube experiment

The Besnard Lakes came out with a new album this year which is fantastic and they had three livestream events which were equally fantastic!

Getting pretty good at whisking eggs!

Making some Valentine’s cookies. I’m pretty sure we ate all but one of them by Valentine’s Day!

We all thought it would be a funny idea to bury Maman and Dad. I couldn’t handle it at one point but Vero quite liked it!

Hopscotch!

I always laugh when I see that some form of food is on the schedule for school. I always figure the teacher just needs to make it for her kids so she has everyone else do it with her! Smart.

Benoit tipped me off that the hot thing that is selling on the market were these old Marvel cards that I collected. In fact, these cards were the things that actually got me into collecting comic books! Anyhow, when I was younger I always thought everything I purchased would be worth money so of course I was interested in selling some!

In the end, the bubble burst as fast as I entered it. I think this Deadpool card was selling for $80. To put that into context, I paid $1.25 in 1991 for the X-Force #1 comic book that the card came in. That’s quite the profit!

I did end up selling this card a week later. It sold for $45. Let’s subtract $15.40 to ship it. I offered free shipping. Let’s also remove the $5.09 for the Ebay fees. I also bought some hard plastic protectors. Let’s say that’s a $1 each. So I ended up with a profit of $23.51. Not too bad considering it was a card that came in a comic book for $23.51. But making that profit does put things into perspective at 42 years old. Is my time worth $23.51? Let’s imagine I put an hour of effort into taking photos, posting the thing, answering any questions, packaging it, driving to the post office and sending it off.

As I grow older and older I have come to realize that my time is worth money and unless I’m going to make a LOT of profit on something, it’s probably not worth my time. Perhaps it’s something that I can hand down to my kids to sell and they can make money from it.

Cute!

Before bed one night Sierra wanted to show me all her funny faces

I can’t stop laughing at this one!

Once in awhile Sierra and Maman have a picnic snack

I think Sierra wanted a picture of someone who is scared

We are very fortunate to have great friends. Mike, Melanie and Max let us use their ice rink while they were away.

A helping hand

Sunny day at the rink

One of our favourite trails around us now has ‘No Trespassing’ signs on it which is a bummer. But we stumbled upon another trail system and they even have little signs of the mini trails set up! We have a feeling this is a school project they did one day and we love it!

GTs are not that easy to lug around!

Vero got me these keychains for Valentine’s Day. One says “I love you” and the other says “I know” (from Empire Strikes Back). I was joking the other day that the better response would be “This is the way.” which is from The Mandalorian. She modified the keychain after she heard me laughing about this idea. I love Vero!

A shield has to be made and Maman had the brilliant idea to repurpose a pizza box!

You can see the thought of winning dance in her eyes.

Sierra attempting the hill herself

Hanging out in the snowbank with my girl

Sierra wanted to take a photo of us so we decided for the creepy photo shoot.

I can’t remember what this day was. I think it was hat and tie day, or pink day.

Oh now I remember! It was the virtual winter carnival at school and people had to wear hats and ties!

Pretty amazing how many cards Nanny Ruth ended up with her 90th birthday. I think the final total was close to 170?

Hanging out in the fort

Fun with a spray bottle, food colouring and snow

Sierra BEGGED to sleep on the floor overnight in her fort. I really didn’t think it would work but she insisted. I’m glad I gave in pretty easy because two minutes after the lights went out she came to her senses and moved into bed. Imagine if I would have been arguing with her for 30 minutes?

Ezra loves playing with his sister when she is done her school in the morning. You can also see that he is starting to converse when we ask him questions. Do we know what he is saying? Nope. But it’s fun. You also see that they are watching the Friendly Giant which they are fond of.

It’s a pretty exciting day when a new Star Wars shirt enters the house!!

Ezra sure loves a game of Musical Thunderstruck

Our typical routine has us finishing up our bath around 7PM and Ezra gets his bottle of milk before bed. Here were the kids sneaking in a story in the living room instead of their bedrooms before Ezra headed off to bed. Vero has a good routine with him for bed that I have learned. First there are goodnight kisses from Sierra and Dad. Then there’s a routine where Maman puts him in his bedroom and he tries to escape while screaming down the hall until Maman runs and picks him up. He has a really good laugh at that.

Then the sleepsack comes on with some tickle time so he’s laughing before settling in for the night. As I type this there are two books on constant rotation in his rocking chair….Boots and Je t’aimes de la tete aux pieds which is always a fun one. Then the light goes off and a little humming of a tune (my favourite is the Friendly Giant song which I know is some classical music piece that I cannot remember right now) and then put into the crib. He is a really great little boy and sleeps through the night most nights. Apologies to all the parents out there giving me the dagger eyes when thinking of their own children’s sleeping habits.

I am not entirely sure why I took a photo of this mayonnaise but I may as well profess my love of it right here, right now. My go-to breakfast these days has been a pumpernickel bagel with this mayonnaise and some tomato with salt and pepper. Sierra is even helping me make it these days which is pretty good. I did have to teach her the limit of three shakes to the salt and pepper as I got a LOT of salt one morning!

Having fun before supper. Maybe I was trying to take a photo of my new Pearl Jam shirt that I had forgotten about in the garage for a month?

This kid does NOT have it easy in the winter. It’s very hard to move around!

No wonder he doesn’t like winter, look at his sister dumping snow in his hood! Also, I have fond memories of the month of January and February when we got dumped on with snow. I was excited that winter had finally arrived compared to the Green Christmas we had.

Someone wanted to help knock snow off of the trees

Warming up some cold hands

Someone loves Dad’s hat!

A perfect winter day – with hot chocolate and mild temperatures

Hot chocolate was a constant request from the kids (and Maman!) this winter

Reading

Hockey

Ezra loves this music machine that hangs on the fridge. You can see he understands what we are asking him to do as well. He’s also getting really good at being on the couch. We only have to watch out a few times when he’s going for a tumble.

Ezra has some strong muscles! This was probably taken after our morning walk. We try and get out whenever it is not too cold.

Stopping for an icicle treat

Ezra really likes to help me get the guitar out of the case and pass me the guitar picks and as you can see, he likes stepping on the guitar pedal below! That thing probably won’t survive the winter! You can also see in this photo that I am playing my 12 string which I haven’t done so in years. I actually have downtuned it a full step which is easier on the the neck and I got a really strong capo. I’m really enjoying the 12-string guitar these days even though I don’t have a built in tuner like my other guitar Ruth does.

My good pal Danny built this zamboni for his rink this winter. I thought it was the cats meow.

Someone REALLY LOVES pushing his cart around and picking up toys.

Looking for a toy. We don’t spend too much time downstairs so it’s a treat for Ezra when we do go down there.

Ezra is surprisingly stable on this GT and there have been many mornings where we go for a walk and we are pulling him on this.

Spider-Man in the house!

This was taken on one of the coldest weekends of the year. We still managed to go outside a few times but it’s pretty hard to keep positive in -35!

Ezra loves pushing the mop around

A bunch of Ezra’s teeth finally showed up

Riding the train

Trying to learn Rabbit Foo Foo

First skate of the year came pretty late in January. Not sure if it was the best idea to bring Ezra there without a helmet. We brought one the next time. Not sure if he liked the ice. It’s hard to understand the concept of slowing down on ice when walking!