Photo of the Day March 24th

As mentioned in an earlier post, we took a family trip to the Fanshawe sugar bush over March Break, which set Sophie up quite nicely for today's school field trip to a different sugar bush north of London. She was so excited to ride the big yellow school bus with her friends, and I was regretting that I couldn't go with the group as a parent chaperone - watching the bus pull away without me made me a bit sad! She returned home with a critique of the trip (she didn't like the Jaffa sugar bush as much as Fanshawe), a maple sucker, and a new colouring book that tells the story of how maple sap is gathered and turned into maple syrup. Here she is, doing some mapley colouring shortly before her pancake lunch, which was another issue she had with the trip. Apparently she got one very small, very unsatisfying pancake at the end of the tour, so between that and the fact that this sugar bush did not offer a horse-drawn wagon ride she was most unimpressed. Thank goodness mommy has maple syrup in the fridge and can whip up pancakes on a moments notice!

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Photo of the Day March 23rd

I was a warrior this morning - a viking - a samurai. I may be playing it up a bit - the truth is that after going to the gym yesterday for a rather unsatisfying water aerobics class I motivated myself through one heck of a workout this morning. There have been some major renovations at my gym lately, which have resulted in a lot of new weight machines being added, and I decided to push myself by doing each and every one of them today. I'm sick of being intimidated by machines that other people seem to know how to use while I hang back contemplating how much they look like devices found at a local S&M shop... so today: no fear. I climbed on and twisted myself around about 20 weight machines, working biceps, triceps, glutes, roots and shoots - even getting over my intimidation and hopping on the new assisted pull-up machine for two sets of reps. I was exhausted by the end, but felt really good having both made up for yesterday and overcome my intimidation. Following the gym theme, I took Sophie to The Little Gym this evening for her gymnastics class, where she did her own version of climbing and twisting... here's to a healthy and active day!

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Photo of the Day March 22nd

Mary Jane helps adjust my little Jedi's helmet during after-lunch play time

Bouncing around, running left and right today... in the midst of the chaos I enjoyed lunch at my School Council Co-Chairs home so we could prepare for tonight's Council meeting - it was a great opportunity for us to connect face to face while our children entertained each other. We got done what we needed to and enjoyed some uninterrupted conversation as well - it was a nice quiet pocket in the otherwise busy day. School Council meeting, coffee with my friend Valeeta, grocery shopping and more rounded out my day, and a good solid night of sleep followed. I think part of the reason the day felt so busy was that we had settled into the lovely lack of routine that March Break offered, and today was the first day back at school... I'm sure in a few days we'll be back to the old routines without any problem, but for now I'm just glad the day is done.

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Photo(s) of the Day March 21st

Hay ride, here we come!

Sophie contemplating nature

We finished off March Break in truly Canadian fashion today with a trip to the Sugar Bush. I have many memories of trouping through the sugar maples as a child, and excitedly making our way to the rustic pancake house for a treat after some educational fun. We chose the Fanshawe Sugar Bush as our destination because while there are several of them close to London we're most familiar with it and knew for sure they would have a horse-drawn buggy ride, which is a huge draw for Sophie. Since it was our only real event planned for the day we took our time and did much of the official tour twice... we enjoyed the buggy ride four times actually, twice before hitting the pancake house and twice after. It was a great little trip, delicious and educational... it was so nice to be outside walking through the woods as a family that we were inspired to continue our walk out at the Fanshawe Conservation Area. It's a beautiful day to be outdoors - we even fired up the barbecue and grilled burgers for dinner to really complete our outside-inspired day. Perfect.

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Photo of the Day March 20th

Georgie inspects our take from the Farmer's Market

It looks like our warm weather is behind us... we had such a lovely few days there, breaking temperature records and everything. I wore my flip flops outside when I took Sophie to the park - life was good. Today we're back in our winter coats and boots and we'll be lucky if it cracks 2 degrees in the sunshine... the cruel reality of springtime in Canada. As usual we went to the market this morning for fresh veggies, meats and our favourite tortillas - I'm disappointed that we're not seeing our preferred veggie farmers there lately though. We've been shopping for veggies from the Joyce family since we first began going to the Western Fair Farmer's Market, and they've not been there since shortly after Christmas. We knew they were going away on an extended family vacation somewhere warm (three generations, it was going to be lovely) but thought certainly they'd be back by now. Perhaps they loved the tropical weather so much they decided to leave tomato growing behind and start a new life as beach bums? I don't know, but we miss them... perhaps I could be persuaded to buy tropical fruit from them instead of tomatoes, if we could afford the flights!

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Photo of the Day March 19th

Sophie's suit hanging on the wardrobe is her cue that it's a swimming day

Today was a perfect March Break day for us... beautiful weather and a day full of fun events. I had promised Sophie I would take her swimming today, so after a nice pancake breakfast we headed to Goodlife to use the pool. We were treated to a surprise when we ran into one of the other moms from our neighbourhood, who's son is in Sophie's class - she was at the pool with her youngest son and we enjoyed a swim and a chat together. Sophie's doing ever better with her swimming - she's not to the point that she can swim on her own yet, but is relying less and less on flotation devices all the time - she can maneuver around the pool quite well with just a pool noodle for guidance. After swimming we whipped home for lunch and then Nanny and Aunt Laura came by to pick Sophie up for a drive to see a huge flock of swans that's landed just outside London... their road trip progressed somehow to a trip to the beach in Port Stanley and dinner at McDonalds, so Sophie got to enjoy just about all her favourite things in one day. She was also thrilled because by going out with Nanny and Aunt Laura Sophie missed grocery shopping day, which she wasn't looking forward to... going to the Farmer's Market on Saturdays is great fun, but spending an afternoon going from grocery store to grocery store isn't her idea of a good time (gee, wonder why?). So while she was off on her road trip I got us all stocked up on groceries without having to answer "Are we done yet? Can we just go home?" about four hundred times. Win win!

Photo of the Day March 18th

Rowan was with us today and we had several bouts of creativity throughout the afternoon. Sophie's big on drawing - loves to use her markers so much in fact that they're all pretty much worn out. Today I discovered that I have some vibrant and still-juicy flip chart markers tucked away in one of my craft boxes, probably from my previous job as a Corporate Trainer where flip chars were a large part of my daily life. A celebration by the kids ensued - they can colour with markers again instead of being relegated to those boring crayons and pencil crayons! Now that art time is done however, I'm reminded that flip chart markers are not washable... which means that my dining room table will wear the evidence of their colouring for a while, and Rowan may return home with much more festive looking hands than when he arrived today!

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