We sent out a few invitations for folks to come visit during March Break but no takers so it was a good week spent doing little activities here and there.
The kids are at the age where waking up with them is a thing of the past (thank the maker!). I usually hear them rustling about and they settle in watching the iPad (usually stuff on YouTube Kids) together in Sierra’s bedroom, or they split up and someone watches the iPad while the other watches the TV. This allows me to roam out of the bedroom around 9AM most days and it wasn’t uncommon to see us emerging from the house around 11AM. March Break was pretty golden for sleeping in and taking it easy.
Before March Break started, Vero had done a lot of research to make maple syrup from our trees. While we’ll probably dedicate another blog post to go over the process and lessons learned, the majority of March Break was spent making syrup every day. At one point we had TOO much sap and Vero had to scramble to get griddles and use BBQs which was amusing.
Saturday was a day of pouring rain. Luckily I had seen the forecast and decided to order a couple of ‘escape room’ type board games. I have to admit I had fear in spending $50 on a game where you solve it once and it’s useless to play again because you’ve solved all the puzzles.
But the game turned out to be a giant hit in our house which took all week to finish up (on and off. I would say we probably played 8 hours total)!
We played Escape The Room – Mystery at Stargazer’s Manor. The game is pretty neat. You’re supposed to set a 90 minute timer but we didn’t want to feel rushed which turned out to be the best idea for trying to play a game with your kids and trying to drag it out as long as possible.
You start out with one envelope and they have a puzzle to solve. When you think you have the solution you align symbols on a ‘solution wheel’ and if you get it right you will see two symbols of the next envelope to open (e.g. two stars). There were a few easy puzzles that Sierra figured out immediately but there were two that took a few hours to figure out! We let Sierra do a lot of the puzzle solving but it was neat when she was stumped and we all came together to figure things out and it STILL took a couple of hours to figure out!
Like I pointed out before, $50 to spend on a one-time board game is a hard pill to swallow at first but once I saw how long we spent on it and how it came in and out of our lives during the week, I realized that I could be spending $50 taking our family out to McDonald’s so this was money well spent.
Now all I have to do is convince others to buy similar games and then we can just swap them!
Rainy Saturdays also consist of doing science experiments. Ezra wanted to just mix flour and water and other ingredients together to make a fun mess. But then he realized that he might be able to make some bread with it! So we popped it in the oven. After tasting it he said “Oh no, it’s not very good is it?” Ha ha! That’s what recipes are for!
Sunday we headed out to Gatineau to see Arthur L’Aventurier with his new show promoting his travels to Morocco. Ezra watched a lot of Arthur at his daycare so he knew all the old songs. His latest video hasn’t had as much airplay in our house but he said he recognized most of the songs.
He’s a great children’s entertainer. Lots of storytelling, singing and even inviting kids on the stage to participate. I even got to hear my favourite song Emeu (French for Emu) which is a hilarious song.
The last time we saw Arthur Sierra seemed disappointed that she didn’t go up on stage when she had the chance. But both kids didn’t want to go up on stage this time either. But Ezra was clapping along a lot and they seemed to enjoy the show afterwards. During the show it’s hard to tell if they are having a good time or not…maybe their rock n’ roll parents are expecting a lot more clapping and singing along? Maybe I’m the odd person out and everyone else likes to watch the show? Ha!
All week long the kids were making leprechaun traps for St. Patrick’s Day. It was neat to see them expand a bit each day during March Break. I’ve never caught a leprechaun so I told them not to get their hopes up.
But come St. Patrick’s Day they came out of their rooms to find that the leprechaun had nibbled on a few chocolate coins and ate all the Lucky Charms but evaded their traps!
This poster of Taylor Swift reminds me of the afternoon that I convinced the kids to help clean up my CD collection. It was growing over the years and I don’t have much more shelf space so Sierra and Ezra helped me move half the collection into some drawers. Sierra really enjoyed the game of ‘alphabetizing a collection’ for a couple of hours but bailed on the ‘now we get to put 200 cds back in their cases’ game!
Tuesday morning we headed over to the Embrun arena where they had free skating. It wasn’t as packed as last time which was great. Ezra was not in the best of moods going to the arena and he wasn’t enjoying skating. But out of nowhere we came up with a game where we would try and reach each of us and he was having the time of his life! He made it around the rink the entire way which is the most he’s done in his life. Sierra is really good at skating and she goes around on her own quite easily now. Maman was zooming around when the kids and I took a popcorn break. Sidenote: the popcorn there is top notch…it’s the stuff that looks like a yellow nuclear bomb of salt hit it.
Ezra and I took a break while these two kept going around
Hilariously Maman and Sierra shared the same ‘tight helmet’ impressions
I can’t remember why he looked so shocked but he always laughs at this photo
Look, another batch of syrup!
The bowling lane in Embrun was a bust when we tried to go so we set our sights on the Casselman bowling on Wednesday. It was our first time there and it’s a pretty great spot. We didn’t have to wait for a lane when we showed up so that always helps.
Ezra is not someone who enjoys trying new things. He kept saying “I don’t want to go bowling.” but he thoroughly enjoyed himself and every day since then he asks “Are we going bowling today?”
Sierra was excited to go bowling as she had won a game when she played at a birthday party last year. But she didn’t feel too good after this game and she said she didn’t know when she would want to go back!
Another maple syrup update as I go through all my photos from March Break. It’s interesting to see the change of colour throughout the week.
Thursday I headed out to Hawkesbury to pick up some new tires for the old car down in Gaspe. Now I just have to figure out how to get them there! It was a nice day for a drive down the highway. A balmy 15 degrees in March is not a bad thing. Of course I had some Rebel Force Radio (best podcast ever) along with some Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe to keep me company.
I also managed to make a quick pitstop in Wendover to play some ball with friends.
I guess the kids went for a bike ride while I was away as this is the first time I’m seeing these photos!
Vero had way too much sap to boil by this point of the week so she went into overdrive and started using the BBQ and the neighbour’s griddle to keep up with the amount of sap coming out!
The kids were nice this week and got to choose a reward so they decided a picnic in the park was a good idea. I’m pretty sure they packed the entire box of Ritz Minis because we didn’t have any come Sunday when we were making lunches for the kids!
I told Ezra he looked like Jaws.
I think this photo was taken at the park where they have this spinning wheel contraption. Supposedly they had created a ‘no’ game when Matante Andreane was visiting where if you say no while on the spinning wheel then you get pushed over into the snow. We were playing the same game all week but the kids wanted us to be pushed into the sand! Luckily Vero and I didn’t fall into the ‘no’ trap but they kids hilariously said no quite a few times and ended up in the sand. Ezra was dropping sand out of his shoe every two minutes.
Here I am trying not to get motion sickness on the swing
Friday we invited some friends over for ‘tire’ which is…taffy in English? I think it’s maple taffy. Here are the kids enjoying some hot dogs.
Melody sniffed out the good toys hiding inside the house so I stayed and played with her for awhile. Here we were identifying the colours of gems.
Tire time! I also put on an appropriate French folk music playlist for the event. Lots of fiddle.
This was after their fifteenth serving. Look at the smiles!
It was interesting to see Ezra and Melody interact. Ezra was very bossy to her. We had never seen that before. But perhaps this was his first real time in his life where he got to boss around a younger person after years of being bossed around himself? There were some hilarious interactions like “No Melody, you cannot put your juice box on that swing!” and then they would argue about it.
Friday night I went to see Lisa Leblanc at the National Arts Center (photo from the NAC Facebook page). I’ll write more later but it was a great sendoff to an incredible Chiac Disco tour.
Saturday Sierra went over to a friends house so Ezra got some quality time with his parents. We went for another picnic and we had a hot tub later on which wasn’t too hot considering the tub was accidentally set to economy mode so I was sitting in 98 degrees for a half hour with Ezra.
On Monday Ezra has to do a presentation on someone he admires. After candidates such as Robert Munsch and his sister, he finally decided to talk about his Maman and how much he admires her production of maple syrup. We did a photoshoot and sent a photo to his teacher so he can show everyone.
And here I am on a Sunday night, lunches packed, baths done and the kids upset that they will have to wake up early to go to school tomorrow morning. You and me both! It was a good break with fun activities to do together.