Author: admin

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!

 

“Dora et Booo, Dora et Boo!” – Sierra…every single night.

I didn’t think I would watch a show as much as I have watched Dora the Explorer in the past month.  That’s Sierra’s go to show after her bath these days.  Months ago it was Angela’s Christmas, now it’s the adventures of Dora and her trusty sidekick Boots.

Life is good!  Spring is in the air, Sierra is discovering the joy of puddles.  Daycare called Vero yesterday to inform us that Sierra proceeded to jump into a giant puddle and essentially every piece of clothing of hers was soaked.  Not the worst call to get from a daycare!

Sierra typically gets up in the morning and we make her some oatmeal.  I was trying to pawn some of the regular oatmeal onto her that I accidentally bought a few years ago but she’s wise and won’t eat that stuff.  Luckily, I have some brown sugar on the side that I scoop in.

She is really enjoying daycare and we are hoping they enjoy her.  When she gets home we ask her questions like “Who are your friends at daycare?” or “Did you play outside today?”.  She hasn’t quite mastered answering “What did you do today?” as there’s clearly a lot to talk about!

Learning to count is interesting so far.  We are using an abacus as well as her fingers.  But I don’t think she’s getting the concept that one finger doesn’t always have to be the number one.  It can be any of your one fingers.  That’s a hard concept to grasp I suppose!

Sierra is really fond of coming home and playing outside for a bit.  Right now she is always looking for her bubbles.  Some days its frozen solid so Vero has to fill it with hot water and she sits on the front porch and blows bubbles until supper is ready.  It’s neat that we let her do her own thing and peek out the window every minute to ensure she hasn’t run off somewhere.  Freedom is close at hand with this child!  We will soon feel the shackles of THE SEQUEL soon enough!

Bath time and going to the potty are still a hassle with Sierra.  Even though she loves the bath when she gets in, it’s World War III getting her in there.  We’re also not entirely sure how to tackle the potty issue.  She doesn’t really seem to be bothered if she goes in her pants all the time.  On the plus side, we don’t have a fussy kid?

Sierra likes to sing a lot and she has recently picked up the ukelele and strums along.  It will be good to have a singing partner with me!

 

Sierra loves helping bring in the recycling bins.

Clearly Sierra is more interested in Yoda instead of Dad’s killer dance moves.

Sierrasaurus playing cards with Dad.  The goal of our game is to get rid of your cards the fastest.  Our game involves having five cards and one player puts down a card and the other person has to match the colour of the card.  If they cannot, they have to pick up cards from the deck until they can find a colour match.

I’ve been using Google Photoscan to go through Vero’s old pictures.  First off, I have to say that the app is quite fantastic after a year of upgrades.  Secondly, I am enjoying finding gems like this one!  I have been putting these photos into Google Photos which basically is a chronicle of our lives.  I was wondering if it’s better to open a ‘family’ email that all family members (Aunts, cousins, etc.) could have access to and put their photos up.  Might be an interesting move.

The loneliest spot at the rink is at the sidelines.  It was soon after this that we brought Sierra skating.

It was a beautiful, mild day when we brought Sierra for her first skate.  There were a few people out on the ice rink playing hockey so we appreciated at there was a side rink for us to have for ourselves.

She was definitely taking after her father.

I think she was getting the hang of it.  Hey, what do I know?  I have no idea how to skate.

I don’t know what they were watching on television but clearly it was too scary for Fredo.

Vero and I finally got our last will and testaments done up.  What’s more important about this story is that there was a chocolate shop across the street so we picked up this treat.

Etienne and I recruited a few new bodies for our daily walk along the river.  It’s getting quite nice down there, but a little tricky to navigate as there is a couple of feet of snow and some soft spots.

Sierra and Jon having fun at Victor’s second birthday party.

We snuck in a roll of bubble wrap into his gift!  Everyone (other than the birthday boy) had a great time!

A few weeks later I’m typing this up and thinking I already miss that long goatee and hair.  SOMEONE insisted I get a trim!

The man of the hour, enjoying a gift in the form of a ring.

I honestly have no idea what Sierra is trying to show us in this photo of her and Tante Vero.

These are the two gentlemen responsible for my hangover the following morning after a night out watching Royal Canoe and Dana out at the Highlander Pub.

It’s super exciting times when we get to see the train!

After nine years of living here, we decided to see how life was under the trees in our front yard.  It definitely sheltered us from the wind that day!

One of the last gasps of winter.  It’s been a long but fun one.

The days are getting warmer as evident by no mittens on Sierra’s hands.

Mom and Dad came back from their trip down south to find this in their front yard in the middle of March!  I remember as a kid having snow hills like this.  I could have a faulty memory though.

Sierra insisted we find her a pair of sunglasses.

We’re pretty proud that she puts a pair of earmuffs on before the drums!

I can only imagine we were watching another enthralling episode of Dora and Boo.

Sierra helping me chop up ice in front of the garage.

One week at daycare they had a focus on lemons.  I had a good laugh when I saw what Sierra did when they had smell the lemon.

Here’s the thing.  If you know me, you know I am a procrastinator.  To the point of dire consequences some times.  Case in point…I lost my spare set of keys for the Pontiac last year.  Then in the past few months my key fob wasn’t locking the door so I have been manually locking the door.  Tie that together with me not paying attention one more and you have the scenario where I lock my keys in my car!  Doh!

Luckily I had a few things going for me.  1) The keys were still in the ignition so I’m assuming that’s why the alarm didn’t go off when we were trying to break in.  2) I had some colleagues (aka Chanelle) who had experience in breaking into cars (no questions asked!) 3) I had Etienne who had not left for work yet so I managed to contact him and bring some assorted tools.  A trusty chisel and a coat hanger were our friends that day.

I tell everyone that this photo was taken DURING the operation.  Nothing like a good foreman on the job!

The happiest man in the world!  Etienne managed to finally get the coat hanger to push the unlock button down.

The running joke currently is that every time we meet at my parking spot, someone’s car needs some assistance.

I went to John’s retirement party at the local watering hole.  There were a lot of people and a lot of great stories.  You can’t ask for more at your retirement.

The Vars gang went out to Ferme Drouin for some sugar shack action!

OF COURSE the fun part of the day is hanging out under the coffee table.

Checking out the farm.

Look at how large this horse is!  It needs all the food it can get!

We probably could have stayed here all day.

There was a hill with some tubes that Sierra preferred to roll down.

Great turnout from the neighbourhood!

This might be the last time we head out in the Larose Forest this year.  It was another beautiful day.  We ended up seeing the gentleman that we helped out when his truck got stuck a month ago!  Turns out that the tow truck took an hour to get the truck out of that snowbank.  Sidenote: This might be the photo of Vero and Sierra ever!

Taking a granola bar break.

I’m pretty sure Sierra wanted us to include the sled in our photo.  It’s definitely part of our family.

Whoa whoa!  Looks who’s learning a few tricks!

 

Baby showers are always a good time.

Doug at work introduced me to the New Yorker caption contest.  I try and submit something each week.  Here was one of my submissions which I thought was quite clever.

 

 

 

 

Last year we had a flood in the basement so now that the spring has arrived and the sump pit is filling up quickly, we decided it was time to test out our pumps.

We have an extreme setup installed after the flood.  We have a primary pump, a secondary pump that triggers if the water level is higher than the primary float (that would essentially mean that the primary has failed) and we also have a battery backup pump which is set higher than the secondary.

Our first test was to see what happens when the primary is unplugged.  We started this test Saturday night at 8PM.  I chuckled as I realized no good ever comes from us doing tests on the sump pump during the night.

Sure enough, by midnight the water level was near the top of the drain inlet and the secondary pump had not triggered yet.  It does work, we checked it.  But I wanted to make sure the system works as it should without us being there.

I put a mattress down near the sump pit and slept until 3:30am when an alarm from the battery backup started blaring.  So somehow the secondary never triggered at all which eventually had the battery backup turn on!  Hmm…what to do there.  For hi

storical reference, this means that it took a full 7.5 hours to get to six inches from the top of the sump pit.  This is in the spring where the temperature outside was -5.

At 3:30am in the morning, there’s not much to do.  It was like waking up to a crying baby all over again.  I plugged the primary pump back in, watched all the water get out, and tried to figure out how to turn off this dang alarm that was blaring in my ear on a Sunday morning.  Maybe I should have consulted the manual BEFORE this experiment?

The weird thing is…after a few minutes, I heard this gushing of water coming back INTO the discharge pipe!  What the heck is going on there?  I decided that the pumps were working fine so it was time to go outside to see if there was something wrong with the other end of teh discharge pipe.  Visions of ice forming and blocking the front of pipe haunted me as I walked out in the crisp winter night.

No ice was found but there was a LOT of water in the ditch.  I think there was so much that a lot of it just crept back up the pipe.  After I spent ten minutes outside analyzing the situation, everything fixed itself by the time I got back inside.

As I write this, I have performed a few more tests on the secondary pump on Sunday but no matter where I position the float, it does not trigger on within a reasonable amount of time.  I don’t really like the idea of having water accumulate around my house for four hours.  At this point, I have stumbled upon the thought of taking the float switch off of the actual pump and clamping it to a pipe at a lower level and perhaps that will trigger it.  It’s not a bad idea.  I need to find a clamp with a clip on it.

Let this be a lesson to those out there with sump pumps…test your emergency system.  I had a secondary that didn’t even trigger on and that was installed by a plumber a year ago.  Imagine if the primary went on me?  I suppose the battery backup would have come in handy then.