september 2013

september 29

aly at rotary beach

two weekends ago we figured [correctly] that it was probably the last beach weekend of the season so we dashed off to rotary beach where aly burried half of zoe in the sand, sascha and toby kicked a ball around, zoe, aly and sascha went for a swim in the lake and i had a blissful afternoon with a book!

zoe up to her knees in sand at rotary beach

on the way home from the beach we noticed a sign for a duck race so we decided to take a look. it was in a lovely neighbourhood we'd never been to before. we were just in time to sponsor some ducks before the race started. there were thousands of ducks and, needless to say, none of ours won, but what a lovely end to the day.

zoe, aly and toby all had a dentist appointment at the exact same time this week. for some reason not everyone can usually make one appointment and our old dentist certainly didn't have the staff to take more than one child at once so this seemed like such a luxury. they even managed to bribe zoe into cooperation with cookie dough flavoured ice cream! she had xrays taken for the first time. there were complaints when we had to leave because they were each so into the tv shows they were watching on the ceiling!

zoe started sparks and aly [who is now a pathfinder] is volunteering at her group. they look pretty cute together in their uniforms

despite all the other mayhem, zoe and i managed to squeeze in a playdate with our friends alex, max and carrie at mission creen park where we got to see the salmon spawning.

mission creek

kelowna's a pretty great place to live :-)

september 15

meeting the prime minister

it's been an exciting week! sasch got invited to an event with the prime minster [steven harper] so we all got to gate crash [i use the term gate crash loosely since there was a criminal record check 2 days prior and passports at the door!]. it was a bit of a hot wait for him to show up since it was around 34 degrees that day, but quail's gate winery is a pretty nice place to hang out if you have to wait around. they pulled the children over to some benches so they go the best views and seemingly ended up in every newspaper and news report! in fact, i've just seen aly on the front page of canada's huffington post next to the headline 'harper cracks marijuana joke' [it wasn't a good joke by the way]

quail's gate

steven harper

even zoe enjoyed herself because after we had all stood to sing o'canada. she turned to me and said 'you know - that's a really great song' but as sascha pointed out, she is the only genuine canadian of the children! it's still strange to me to have an anthem that some people sing in english and some sing in french. i wonder if zoe will be one of the ones singing it in french this time next year. after the pm's speech we lined up and had the chance to meet him [or schmooze him, in sascha's case].

the children with the prime minister

who's the kid sitting on the prime minister's foot?

on our way home, sascha bumped into the mayor of kelowna in the parking lot and he was lovely with the children so for all my whining about having to get everyone dressed up, i've very glad we went.

we're just about getting into the swing of things with school being back. although zoe's school is on the way to both sascha's and my offices, it's much further from the house than we're used to so it's been a bit of a rush to get there. in fact zoe commented to sascha that she 'didn't know a car that is so small could go so fast' earlier this week. i'm sure we'll get our act together any day now. toby and zoe still seem to be enjoying their new schools.

yesterday after dropping aly off at her horse riding lesson, we went to the lovely pioneer market in kelowna for lunch and then picked her up and explored father pandosy's mission next door. the mission was the first white settlement in BC.

at father pandosy's mission

september 1

fairy zoe at the playground

september is a beautiful month in the okanagan. temperatures are forecast to be around 30 all week, it has the lowest rainfall of the entire year, it's suddenly much quieter, the mosquitoes and wasps are dying out, the leaves are slowly changing color, the chipmunks are out in force and, as always, the dragonflies are bigger than the birds!

i'm not looking forward to the start of the school year. toby is a little worried about moving the middle school, but he seemed to get on OK at the orientation day last week. maybe he’ll be more confident once aly is back. she’s doesn’t fly in from Victoria until half way through the first morning so i guess he’s walking in by himself on the first day.

crazy toby and zoe with their back to school hair cuts

fortunately zoe is very excited about going to 'french kindergarten'. UNFORTUNATELY gradual entry to kindergarten is the usual nightmare - no school the first day, 1.25 hours the next afternoon, 1.25 hours the next morning, no school the next day but that's the day they tell you whether they'll be going mornings or afternoons for the first 2 days of the following week. finally they're allowed to go full days [which is at least something since kindergarten was only half days when aly and toby went]. it's a nice idea that they get used to being there for a longer and longer amount of time but exhausting/disruptive for the families [and sascha and i are fortunate enough to have flexible jobs].

once i’ve got Zoe settled in school the plan is for me to go to full-time which will be a bit of a shock to the whole family's system! i'm not sure the kids know what they're in for on the chore-front!

i think i may have overdone it on the activity front. i try very hard to make sure our lives are not too chaotic and the children are not overscheduled. my rule of thumb has always been one activity per child at a time [although i've added in girl guides as well since that doesn't usually involve a lot of exercise]. unfortunately, now that i’ve got zoe registered to start sparks [little girl guides], we suddenly have 5 activities between the 3 of them - zoe’s doing ballet, toby’s back in soccer [twice a week] and aly’s doing horseback riding as well as pathfinders. now that there are 3 of them, i think my rule of thumb might need to be one activity each, plus taking turns to have one extra activity.

anyway wish me luck. hopefully i can enjoy the sun of september rather than be swamped in mayhem!

snokeling zoe

back home