Stratford

Today we went to Stratford to meet up with Tom's friend Scott and his family.  Stratford, Ontario is lovely, it is very much styled on Stratford in England, with a quaint down town, parkland along the River Avon that runs through its centre (complete with swans) galleries, eateries and 3 theatres.  The only thing that slightly blurs the Shakespearian illusion is the big sign on the highway on the way in that says 'Stratford, Home of the Ontario Pork Congress'.

It was a lovely day and we had 5 kids between us so we gave culture a miss and went for a tour of playgrounds, washrooms and ice cream shops.  Here are Rose and Scott's youngest running their own rather extortionate ice cream shop, at $23 a cone I won't be visiting again.

Here they all are at some sort of important and complicated strategy in a break from running about.

And here's Rose trying to shoot them out of a canon, shortly before falling off it herself.

On the way back to the car we saw a black swan, it wouldn't stop preening so I couldn't get a great photo but I've never seen one before so here it is.

Woo-hoo, Spring

I think spring must finally be here, there were 16 turtles basking on logs today and our the first daffodils have come out in the garden.

So we celebrated Spring with 'Smores'.  This isn't an ancient Canadian custom, it's just that I found a Smore making kit in the grocery store yesterday and it seemed like a good idea.  Bear with me Canadians, the Brits will not understand so explanation is required.

Smores are a dessert that is supposed to be made and consumed while camping, they consist of chocolate and toasted/melted marshmallow sandwiched between 2 Graham crackers (kind of like digestive biscuits but different).  In the absence of a camp fire we made ours in the microwave which is less fun but much cleaner.  Rose wasn't keen which was surprising because all the melted chocolate and white gunk made the sort of mess she usually revels in but they got a thumbs up from Jacob.

Who left that there?

Rose has school on Tuesdays so after I put the kids on the bus I often go for a walk.  This morning I moseyed off down to our neighbourhood beach.  What a mess its in, there were bits of tree and dead fish where ever you looked.  This way

and this way.

I hope it self cleans before swimming weather or its going to be a nightmare getting the kids clean before we set off home and I don't fancy all that tree debris in my trainers, sand is bad enough.  It was remarkable that in amongst all this stuff there was very little in the way of man made rubbish, just a couple of bottles and cans and a few pairs of shorts?  Next time I might be a good citizen and take a rubbish bag.  This was the obvious exception

I think it is an escaped boat dock, I hope the boat wasn't fastened to it when it broke free.  Also I wonder where it came from, Lake Huron has a shoreline length of 3,827 miles (just less than the coastline of Ireland) so it would be very disappointing to find that it floated up 5 miles from Port Franks.

The Weekend in Pictures

Well, it did snow overnight on Friday and here's the proof.

Yesterday Rose went to her friend Jasmin's house for a play date, she informed me that they would be putting nail polish on all of her nails and so they did, she had one silver hand and foot, one purple hand and one pink foot.  Its all gone now ready for school but here is a picture of them.  She was very pleased with herself.

This afternoon we went into Grand Bend for a wander and a play.  The pack ice is finally all gone and I belatedly realised that it had been oddly quiet down there before without the constant sound of  waves breaking on the shore.  The lake was a weird set of colours, presumably because it is all different depths right now from all the dunes and debris that is still hanging around just below the surface.  My picture doesn't show it too well but it looked really neat so here it is anyway.

Finally, here are Tom and the kids on the playground.

Penance for Past Wrongdoing

Here are the kids after school 'Oppan-ing Gangnam style' in the kitchen.

Oh how I loath that song, I'm sorry Psy but its been so long and it drives me mad.  I'm not sure what is worse, the crazy dance, the repetitive lyrics (because the kids only know the first 2 words of the chorus and sing them over and over again) or the way that they try to put on a Korean accent which sounds like they are choking on their own phlegm.

It's one of those times when I feel great empathy for the 'inexplicable' way that my parents got so cross during such stages as the 'Hold a Chicken in the Air' song and 'what's a matter you - Hey' which had no crazy dance but on reflection the accent must have been excruciatingly annoying when impersonated by Northern English children.  All I can say is I'm sorry, I feel like I have now done due penance (although I will probably have to do it again when the next thing comes along) and thank Heaven Psy's new song is not as catchy.

If in Doubt, More Weather

Today was actually hot, properly hot, it was 24 degrees with a humid X of 28 and I was slightly uncomfortable in my usual uniform of jeans and hoodie.  It was warm enough that the painted turtles in the Old Ausauble channel thought it was summer and 9 of them were basking on logs when I passed on my walk this afternoon.

The temperature changed so rapidly today that I experienced a really weird condensation phenomenon in the car.  I drove out of the garage, stopped to close the door and the car steamed up.  So I tried to do my usual half baked job of clearing a space on the wind screen with an old Kleenex and got very confused because it made no difference.  I got out of the car and discovered that the condensation was on the outside and the car looked like a coke can when you take it out of the fridge on a hot day.  I can only assume that it was much hotter outside the garage than inside.

This lovely weather is not set to last, on Friday it is supposed to snow and on Saturday if the
Weather Network is correct it will be -2.  Won't get my shorts out yet I don't think.

Two Ways to Cope with Fatigue

Yesterday we were all tired.  The children dealt with it in their own distinct ways.  Rose watched TV in a laundry basket.

And Jacob played his DS while clinging chimp like to the side of his bed.

Today was cold but fairish so we went for (another) walk in the Pinery, I know we do it a lot but there's usually something new to see.  Today we found a neat fallen tree that looked like a very large, spiky centipede.

Gary came over for dinner so I tried out a new recipe, Veggie Runner's Sweet Potato and Leek Pie.  I thought I'd mention it because it was delicious and also I got to try out the link function on here that I've not used yet.  I used a mix of sweet potato and butter-nut squash so it wouldn't be so starchy and the end result was great.

Quilts

Today I treated myself to a trip to Exeter, sans children, to visit a heritage quilt exhibition.  It was great and not least because I was the youngest person there by about 20 years.  There were an astonishing number of very beautiful and well preserved quilts (insert obvious comment here about quilters) and if I had been allowed to take pictures this would have been a very colourful blog.  I spent about 45 minutes wandering about and was introduced to some useful quilting contacts in the area so when Rose goes to school full time I might join a group.

One of the things I found remarkable was how colourful the pieces were, by that I don't just mean the colours themselves but the way they were put together, a lot were very stylish and would not have been out of place in a design magazine.  There was one brilliant, bold green and pink piece from about 1890 that strongly reminded me of pictures of this years kitchen trends.  It certainly gives our sepia picture of the past a kick in the teeth.

To celebrate I went to the fabric shop down the road and bought this bargain bundle of off cuts in 'heritage' colours.  Actually, blogging this is probably a mistake as there is a good probability that it will feature in gifts over the next year, pretend you didn't see it.

Canadian Monsoon Season

The monsoon season has arrived.  In the past couple of days we have had some very impressive rain and some cracking thunder storms.  I unsuccessfully attempted to photograph some rain.  It looks like I was standing behind wet glass, I think it must be actual rain drops caught in the act of falling.  It was supposed to demonstrate the stair rods of rain coming down so hard that they bounced about 2 feet back up again when they hit the driveway.

Not much else is new, Rose is experimenting with a psychedelic/pastel gypsy look right now and Jacob is mostly wearing blue and grey (the same clothes for as long as he can before I notice and make him put them in the laundry).  I wonder if Rose's wardrobe is having the same effect on Jacob as it has on me.

Signs of Spring

Over the weekend it was warm enough to play outside although not warm enough to do it without suitable warm gear.  Although the snow fort has well and truly disappeared Jacob has decided that it still makes a good den.  There is a generator, a super-laser and a craft table in it.  Last week he and Marissa spent a long time collecting moss and sprinkling it around the perimeter, I asked them what it was, assuming it was some sort of enemy deterrent or alarm system and they looked at me like I'd just escaped from the funny farm and said "It's moss".  That told me.  Here is Jacob pointing at the generator.

At the weekend our property manager came and spent a couple of hours raking up leaves and mending the front lawn, he says that the alien marks under the snow may have been made by a skunk!  Underneath the leaves are our first little signs of spring, we put up twig barricades to try to protect them from trampling little feet.  If you can tear your eyes from the vision in puce and look really carefully below Rose's feet you can see the beginning of some daffodils.

More Weather

I seem to write about the weather a lot but it really is a bit nuts out here.  On Wednesday Rose and I drove to Exeter to get the snow tires taken off the Cruze.  We set off from Grand Bend in mediocre weather that was cloudy and a bit so so and by the time we got to Crediton Road (the long, straight one that I blogged in the summer) we were driving through a blizzard with visibility down to 100m and no visible road markings.  We arrived in Exeter in sunshine.  Its only a 25 minute drive, actually it took significantly longer as the white knuckle blizzard ride through Shipka slowed me down a bit.

Yesterday it was so warm that Jacob and his friend played outside in Tshirts after school and today the sun was out but there is a wind chill of -8.  Rose was taking no chances of getting ear ache.

I braved the cold to run down to the beach this evening.  It was very quiet, there weren't even any footprints down the path so nobody had been there for a while.  The sunset wasn't too dramatic but being on your own on the vast empty shoreline listening to the water birds is very calming.

No, Apparently Not

Happy April.  It snowed yesterday and this morning at bus stop time it was -4, brrrr, won't be putting my winter hat and gloves away yet.

On Saturday we went to Cambridge where Tom grew up and caught up with Aunt Pat and Tom's cousins.  while we were there we wandered around down town Galt and looked at the 'ancient' mill ruins dating back to 1890 (I think, the sign was rather ambiguous), that is 11 years older than the house we lived in in Arnside!  Apparently it was a knitting mill, neat, I have visions of lines of hundreds of grannies sitting in water powered rocking chairs knitting fiendishly fast.  Here are Jacob and Rose arguing over a sign.

On Sunday we finally got to the Paint Ontario and Tundra Swans exhibits at the local museum.  The art was very good and the swans were feeble, the exhibition consisted of a video, a stuffed swan and some craft activities for the kids.  Still, the activities took a good half hour and the only trauma was stopping Rose stroking the taxidermy.