The scene: the breakfast table. Home of some of the most interesting conversations you will ever witness.
Ezra: “Je met des crottes des yeux dans mon bellybutton comme Sierra!”
Me: “What?”
Sierra: “Yeah! Mon bellybutton est une bonne place pour mes crottes des yeux. Je peux jouer avec! Mais pas les crottes secs, juste les autres.”
Me (internally): “And this is the generation that will save us all?”
Look at that front tooth hanging!
Not ten minutes later Sierra came crying saying that her tooth was hurting! Sure enough it was dangling from her gums so I pulled it out and now this is what she looks like without front teeth!
Sierra is quite the songwriter. I hear her singing all day long about things that are going on around her. She puts on some concerts once in awhile. I believe her last concert was 15 original songs!
I gave her a songwriting challenge the other night on the drive home from gymnastics. I asked her to come up with a song about a unicorn who was lost and then found her friends again. It’s really interesting to see her come up with songs on the fly!
The next challenge I gave her was to think of how to make lines rhyme. That was a little tougher!
A month ago Ezra came come from daycare and would be singing songs that we didn’t recognize. “Tom…Tom le cowboy” or “Whoa oh! Super Croco!”
We found out that he had been watching specials by Arthur L’Aventurier whom we weren’t familiar with.
Turns out Arthur is a child entertainer who has been working for 28 years. It seems like he started out releasing music but also released video specials that included music. For example, his latest special was him travelling to Australia and you watch an hour of him travelling around and singing songs about Australia.
Vero and I think it’s a clever way to get to travel around the world! We are jealous.
Anyhow, we started watching these specials with the kids and they were entertaining and we found out that Arthur was playing a show in Buckingham which is fairly short drive away if we take the ferry across the Ottawa river.
It was a complete surprise for the kids and I’m not even sure they understood what was going to happen when the curtain opened in the theatre. I think they were expecting us to watch a movie with him!
The show was great. Our seats were great. We could get up and dance with plenty of space. Arthur and his guitarist Pierrot (?) would ask for kids to come up on stage to hop like a kangaroo. Or parents and grandparents to come up and dance to “Super Croco”. They are catchy songs with kids in mind as they latch onto very easy words like “Koalalalala”. I think I would have loved to be a children’s entertainer. You get afternoon gigs that don’t last too long (an hour?) and you’re not playing in pubs until 2am in the morning! What more can you ask for?
The show itself was pretty good. They would sing a song and have clips from the Australia trip playing in the background. They would ask the kids questions and then sing more songs. The show was primarily from his Australia special but he played a few older tunes as well.
Ezra said he enjoyed it but he’s still at an age where in public he doesn’t dance around like he does at home. But Sierra was loving every moment of it…dancing, clapping, singing along. It’s fun watching how much fun she has at events.
We are quite lucky to be able to see these things around the Ottawa area from time to time and we look forward to the next time Arthur comes to town!
Also, the merch table was great. $5 for a DVD that I can get for $20 off of Amazon? Come on. What a steal.
Ezra is 3.5 years old now and he spends a lot of time in Sierra’s room so it was time to start thinking of giving him new things in his bedroom to make it more fun.
Here he is with Sierra’s old table and chairs that Grandma and Poppa made for them. In the spring we will give it a fresh coat of paint. He is quite excited.
But what will Sierra use now? We ended up getting a desk from Ikea that can raise up as she gets bigger.
We ended up swapping their dressers to make room for her new desk. It surprisingly worked out pretty well. But Sierra went from six drawers of clothes down to three large drawers so she had to get rid of some clothes that she never wore. That’s not a bad thing to do!
The six drawers in Ezra’s room is a little bit of overkill for the moment but we don’t want to get rid of furniture if we don’t need to. His room is still in a transition phase anyhow. Probably when he moves to an actual bed we will rethink how his room layout should be.
Sometimes ulterior motives actually become less important than you originally thought.
When Muse announced they were coming to Montreal during March Break Vero and I hatched a plan which involved inviting my parents to babysit the kids while we took off for the evening.
Then as time went on I realized that it would be fun to have my sister and her family up for March Break at the same time. It’s not often we all get together.
The Muse concert was a blip on the grand scale of fun we had during the entire week together. I think we all thoroughly enjoyed it and I’m pretty sure I’m still hearing Mom’s laughs sliding down a hill on a tube!
An hour into everyone showing up for March Break, Abbey hit Sierra and her tooth fell out! At least we were expecting that tooth to fall out!
I don’t know who started the ‘pile everything possible on top of Uncle John’ game but it was a daily occurence. I always laughed when the girls would say “Please come downstairs Uncle John, there is no trap.” and Erra not understanding the subtle art of lying would say something like “We have a trap set up for you Uncle John, please come down!”
Ezra told Aunt Maureen that only kids could fit in his bed. He thought it was hilarious when she tried out his theory.
Day 2 – a big surprise was in store for the kids. We went to see Disney on Ice!
We didn’t know how Ezra would enjoy a show for more than an hour but he was surprisingly ok with it! I think the popcorn and cotton candy from Poppa helped! I managed to sit with everyone in the same row as Ezra sat on Mom for the entire show (I had managed to get a ticket right behind everyone at the last minute).
Treats! I joked to some folks at work that Poppa is like a dog off a leash whenever he sees popcorn or french fries available.
The show was great and I was excited to see how excited Sierra was. She clapped and sang along the entire show.
Day 3 – Heading to the park
Looks like someone is stuck!
We had a Don’t Fret session lined up for Friday so we started to practice out a few tunes. Here we were practicing the Unicorn song.
Aunt Maureen picked up barrel of monkeys for Ezra. Poppa was showing him how to play it.
Poppa and the girls having a movie night with some snacks.
Day 4 – Vero brought out some balloons to show everyone how to make animals with them.
We went to Montreal to check out ONE OK ROCK, Evanescence and Muse. It was a great triple bill of bands. Muse had a great show with less production elements than previous tours but that didn’t take away from the great show.
I usually complain about the photos Vero’s iphone 8 takes but this was was a winner!
(not our photo) A cool shot of when the streamers shot out.
Day 5 – It’s rare that the Ottawa area gives us some sun but it sure did the morning we went tubing! It was a great spot that Vero had been to a few weeks back with the kids while I was out of town.
Dogpile!
There weren’t many people out that day so it was great to walk up the hill and not wait long to go back down.
Poppa spied a chipstand and picked up some fries for us.
Before our attempt to all go down at the same time. Hilariously we were all six feet from the hill so it took a lot of pushing to get us down from where we were!
I messed up and went ahead of everyone else!
I always laugh when I see Poppa and Ezra go without us.
A rare photo of the girls on top of Uncle John WITHOUT a pile of blankets and pillows!
Day 6 – Just hanging out
1 Abbey = 1 Sierra + 1 Ezra
Only took us 75 takes but we got a decent photo of all of us before Grandma and Poppa left.
Photo with the grandkids
Grandma made us a few loaves of bread before leaving. Thank you! The kids still ask for grandma’s bread and jelly each morning.
Day 7 – Ezra’s first time on skates! We had been waiting all winter to go skating on the Vars rink but I think it opened for two days during the week. We did find some skate time in Embrun during March Break so we took the kids out. Ezra did pretty good for his first time! He got about 50 feet ahead of where he started and then was done for the day.
The kids showing Vero how to skate.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
A treat after supper. I thought we had some photos from our Don’t Fret session that evening but I guess not! The entire family got to participate and it was great to sing and play with John and Maureen for the evening rather than playing solo. The highlight of the week!
Day 8 – Abbey almost couldn’t leave!
Day 9 – The end of March Break and what a great day it was! It was so windy that we brought the kite out. It was Ezra’s first time flying a kite by himself.
It was a great March Break spent with family. Tons of laughs and the kids and parents were entertained and that’s what counts! Thanks for everyone coming for the visit.