Vancouver Days

Joel and I carved out a day for ourselves a few weekends ago, dropped the kids off with my parents, and then drove into the city and straight to Tacofino.

TACOOOOOOOOS.

Then we rented bikes and biked around the seawall, which never gets less beautiful.

And it's blackberry season!

Thence to Granville Island for a walkaround and some donuts

and another donut for the road.

And thence to the Richmond Night Market for a rotato

some Phnom Penh wings

some Super Good Cup Chicken

(which was, at best, regular good)

a Bao Bun (a fried bun with a slab of ice cream wedged inside)

some soft tofu with diced mango and ginger syrup

and a box of noodles from the Sauce Boss to go.

We stayed overnight in Surrey and had a quiet, child-free continental breakfast the next morning

before picking up our hooligan children. Summertiiiiiiiiiiime!

Garrison Festival

We LIVE in Garrison now! So the festival is, like, in our backyard. It feels so luxurious, after a year of driving to literally everything, to be able to walk like 500 feet to a festival.

We ran into the girls' gymnastics coach, who had set up a booth and was giving out ribbons.

We did a kicking-and-punching mini lesson.

WE MET MOANA AND ARIEL. (Moana remembered the girls from the Chilliwack festival, because we were there on a day when no one else was there so I let them just like chat with her for ENDLESS minutes.)

Geneva loves a princess so, so much.

We got pizza.

We got ice cream.

There was a bunny?

We got balloons.

And then we staggered the five minutes home, which it turns out are LONG MINUTES WHEN YOU ARE ALL SO HOT AND NOW IT IS 2PM AND YOU SHOULD BE RESTING, and Geneva put her balloon fish down for a minute so she could...I don't even know, but half of him popped, and Eleanor tried to convince her he was now a sea dragon but she wasn't having it.

Still worth it all.

Chilliwack Fair

The Chilliwack Fair is smaller, and closer, and parking is more straightforward, so AS LUCK WOULD HAVE IT I was solo that day. Just me and these kids AND MOANA.

Also Belle.

Did a karate demo.

Petted a chicken.

GOT SOME FACE PAINT

Petted a more different chicken (there are many varieties of chicken!).

Talked to a llama.

Watched some dancing, spent way more than our fair share of time in a bounce house because there was nobody in line, waited forevvvvver for the pig races (which I hate, but the kids love), ate some terrible pizza, and then got ourselves this marvelous confection to go out on.

Agrifair

Joel has maybe half a day off a week these days, so we usually try to make A Thing of it.

Luckily, we got all these agricultural fairs to go to! The Agrifair is the bigger one, and it involves DRIVING there and finding PARKING and ugh I just can't, so I'm super glad Joel was around for this. Had to fake-milk this cow!

Pet this goat!

Putt this putt!

Eat this butter chicken poutine!

Eeeeeeat it.

Jump in this pit of foam blocks!

Hang from this bar!

Go on this teensy ride!

ZOOOOM.

Eat this funnel cake topped with ice cream!

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeat it.

Saving us from ourselves

There are a lot of babies around right now.

Babies!

Babies!

It makes us all very excited for Our Baby (Baby Brussels Sprout, per the girls), but it also reminds us (me) of what a baby is. You have to HOLD THEM SO MUCH and also they need to EAT and SLEEP and they need HELP DOING THOSE THINGS omg babies are so needy. So I've really been leaning into letting my kids wake up whenever and just hang around in their rooms for an hour (some hours) before I let them out for breakfast, or taking them to the splash park in the evening and lying in the shade with a book and just sort of keeping a loose eye on them.

And then getting them pizza for dinner because they can eat pizza! With their own hands and mouths!

But so we had been doing a lot of that, and then the Smoke Monster: BC Edition descended, and now all is smoke, everything is smoke, the sun is burnt and dead like in that one world in The Magician's Nephew, where they wake up the White Witch.

We stayed inside for two whole days because SMOKE! TINY LUNGS! But Joel is working basically always, and after two days I was like, Nope, I'm gonna do a murder if we stay in here, and that is way worse for your health, so we met up with some friends at the lake.

And it was just me! With my two kids! But also my friends, and so when Eleanor wanted to swim out to the buoy with the ladies, but I had to stay behind with Geneva, there were ladies to swim with her.

And then today, we met up with some other friends at the lake and it was HOT and the children were MANY and everybody wanted to be on the DOCK AT ALL TIMES except me, please let me always be in the shade forever, so my kids went out on the dock with the other kids and the other kids' dads and Geneva jumped off the dock (unlike her) into the arms of (to her) a random dad (VERRRRY unlike her) and I was so proud! Adapt, my little munchlettes.

And right when we were in the thick of trying to stay home and stay inside and everyone was FIGHTING and it was only TEN AM, my father-in-law texted to see if he could come read to the girls for a bit, and he DID and I went to the STORE FOR MILK BY MYSELF and so we are all still alive.