We go to stuff.

Sometimes you go to stuff, and it's dumb! My parents and my sister and I went to this German cultural festival one time in Saskatoon that ended up being a handful of Germans and some sauerkraut in a school gymnasium. But 'you never know until you go,' as Eleanor says.

I'm trying to teach my kids to be goers, to show up for things and not worry about whether others will show up. I ESPECIALLY am doing this when I've spent all week thinking Saturday is my mom's birthday, and Sunday is the BBQ and Corn Festival, when both those things are actually next weekend and it's not until Friday that I realize that tomorrow, when Joel is on call two days running, we have no plans.

So we ended up at a 'Super Hero and Princess Party' at the downtown market. LOLOLOL there was nobody there. Like, no princesses, no super heroes, and like five vendors. 'Is it like this because of the rain, or?' 'Oh, we usually have around eleven vendors.' Ok so I'm not driving downtown again to hit this one up.

But we were already downtown, and dressed to kill, and it was DRIZZLY, so we went to The Bookman to read their Geronimo Stilton collection and play with all their toys and stroke their extremely tolerant cat.

You should always go to stuff. But you should know that you can always bail.

The out and aboutest

We are at peak summer over here. We are figuring out stuff to do! Chilliwack is no Saskatoon, and you have to pay for so many more things and DRIVE to so many more things, but there are things, and now we have all these people being like, Come do a thing with us! So there's that.

So we went to the water slides with my sister and her husband and her kids. I would never have taken my kids to the water slides alone. It's so expensive! And how much stuff is there really for littles to do.

SOOOOOO much stuff, apparently. My sister was like, How long do you think we'll be there, and I'm like, I don't see us lasting more than two hours. It was after 1pm and we still had to drag them away by their scruffs.

Last night we went to Abby to meet up with some old, old friends (the friends who landlorded us when we were first married!) who are in town, and some other friends who actually live in Abby! Where I never go! Because I hate driving! And it was GREAT and nourishing and the kids played until it was like 8:30 and we had to drag them home.

And then today! We went to the zoo! With cousins! What larks!

We took the train!

We saw some animals!

The girls rode their bikes!

Geneva you're not riding, good thing I brought this wagon.

Look at this baby I am twin-shirted with! Ughhhhh she makes me so excited to have a baby.

LOOK AT THIS FALCON OR SIMILAR I RECEIVED ONTO A GLOVE AND THEN LAUNCHED INTO THE AIR.

Look at this disgusting zoo-foot.

And then this happened

and the whole drive home I was thinking to myself about how I could get away with not cooking and also I was SO HUNGRY because it was like 4:30, and then Joel texted should he come home for a bit over dinner, should he grab Whoppers, and it was a burger king miracle.

I am normally super opposed to blowing through nap time, or getting home from stuff late, because I like being alone and at home and quiet! I like locking my kids in their rooms and then getting shit done, OR ALTERNATELY just reading a book! But sometimes (oftentimes! Lately!) things are just so good that you can't seem to leave.

Canada Day

Did I tell you about Canada Day! It appears I did not. Canada Day holds a special place in my heart as a festival day, because the Canada Day festival in Saskatoon is the first festival we attended, like minutes after we moved, and Saskatoon is where we realized that we are Festival People.

Anyway. So we were gonna go to this thing across town but apparently the mosquitoes are bad over there, and the shenanigans up at Harrison had a pet parade and also Harrison is just, like, lovely and beachy.

So we watched the pet parade

and then just, you know, hung out on the beach for some hours.

And got hot dogs.

And got ice cream.

And then just rolled back to the car! (The car is always so far away.)

OH HELLO

HELLO YES WE ARE VERY BUSY AND IMPORTANT.

I kind of panicked about having the kids home at all times and signed us up for the first swim lessons slot of the summer, which gave us a week of luxurious berry picking and me sending the kids to hang out with my mom or my mother-in-law for the day while I kept unpacking this never-ending barrage of boxes, and then we were in it.

WE HAVE BEEN IN IT. The squirrels have swim lessons every morning, Geneva is in her first class 'wif no mum!'

and was so proud, and for the first class, so stoic (she gets this small-mouth, eyebrows-up concentration face), and in the second class she took a dunking because she's so small

and then would not go back in. So scared! Alas! The water is up to her teensy chin! But we had a good long talk about it, and another good long talk the next morning when she was not going to swim wessons and she braved it and she has been absolutely killing it ever since. Laughing in class! Volunteering to go first for stuff! Sticking her ENTIRE HEAD under water on PURPOSE.

This salamander I don't need to worry about.

Except when she's drawing other students off to do flips with her instead of paying attention to her teacher.

Ok and THEN. Early last week, my sister-in-law forwarded me info about some free dance classes, except they were nearly upon us! And had been posted ages ago! So we both emailed them all like, Heyyyyyy can we just have whatever you have left for 3- and 5-year-olds? Which is how we ended up with our littles in Baby Jazz and our bigs in Kinder Jazz and then Kinder Acro on Wednesday, and then the littles in Baby Hip Hop (eeeeeeeee!) and the bigs in Kinder Hip Hop and Kinder Break Dance on Thursday!

And THEN on Friday, we left straight from swimming lessons to go spend the day in Langley so we could finally meet this charming creature, my first nephew of my blood.

And we hung out for THE DAY and drove home in the evening, forgetting entirely that the entire world wants to go to Cultus on Friday night, so we were stuck in traffic for AN HOUR AND A HALF I regret not putting this one in jams before we left, I regret it so much.

The weekend was a waterworld, we went to the lake Saturday morning (after Eleanor went to the walk-in because HA HA HA we all have chesty coughs and she has croup) and the splash park Saturday evening

and then Sunday I took these bitches grocery shopping because we have no food ever, we are subsisting entirely on pepperoni sticks and things we can buy from the fruit stand, and that only because we pass it on our way home. I have spent $7 on milk TWICE this week because I've been grabbing it from the corner store as I'm like waiting for our sushi to be ready or some shit.

BECAUSE AND THEN, this week we had signed up for a 3-day dance camp, which started an hour after swimming lessons ended, so we'd go to swim lessons, scamper home for a snack (HAVE I mentioned that we can walk to swim lessons, it is like five minutes, we go through a magical forest

), and then head to Geneva and Frankie's Intro to Like Movement or Similar, I Forget

and then Eleanor and Hazel have Hip Hop and then we go home and have lunch and collapse, except today we did all that and then blew through nap time, stopped off for some bagels, and then tore out to Harrison for Children's Day at the festival.

Ilu, wagon.

Did some story-watching.

Did some rock climbing.

Did some beading. Her little concentration mouf.

Went down to the water to cool off because it was hot as balls.

Tomorrow we have swim lessons, and then nothing. NOTHING. We will maybe just boop out to the splash park, conveniently adjacent to swim lessons, and maybe get some pizza for lunch from the place that is conveniently adjacent to THAT, and otherwise move as little as possible.

Hooray for everything.

Strawberry day

We went strawberry-picking! Summer COMMENCETH!

'Wook at dis berry good one.'

Eleanor is a proper useful picker.

Geneva's bucket is empty because she is just putting them straight into her gullet.

Yes, that's what your dress is for.

Heavy buckets! Much berries!

'I wuv dis scaycrow.'

And then we picked up sushi for the park because we were full of fruits and needed to put some benign starches on top of it all.

Come at me, winter (not yet though because I don't have any peaches or anything).