- It’s official. School is out! It feels both celebratory and overwhelming. Summer always ends up being fun, but staring down all that white space in the kiddo’s schedules can seem daunting. One day at a time, I remind myself, and we’ve started things off with a bang. In the last week of June we: hosted friends for a weekend BBQ – a first since the latest restrictions eased. We enjoyed a fun day at a family-owned cottage – swimming, kayaking, and playing lots of washer toss. Levi attended a birthday pool party, one of the few we’ve had since COVID started. I love that he’s still young enough to happily attend girly birthday parties with unicorn-themed everything. He is so into lightsabers and LEGO and Transformers, but boy he loves the girls in his kindergarten class and was obsessed with picking out the sweetest presents for them both (it was a joint party for two girls; how great an idea is that!). We got caught in a torrential downpour within seconds of arriving at the beach one day and watched epic lightning (from the safety of our car).
- Yesterday we celebrated Canada Day (by doing laundry, deep-cleaning the car, and generally getting life in order). Both kids ended up having spontaneous playdates, one kiddo had a tennis lesson, and John and I fit in an at-home date night.
- Every month for the last 2 years I’ve recorded a tally of my workouts (runs + walks) and total mileage across each. Several times I’ve hit 175 km exactly. Back in January I reached 175.4 km. Reaching/surpassing the 176 km marker was a clear target, but it wasn’t important enough for me to track it through the month. End-of-day Wednesday, the final day of June, I went to do my monthly tally and clocked in with 199.55 km! It was slightly frustrating to be under the 200 km mark, but I’d blown past my goal – so I shrugged and went on with my evening routine. When I happened to mention it to John, he looked at me like I had two heads. “You’re not going for it?” he asked! So that’s how I found myself recording the world’s slowest treadmill walk at 10 PM, getting me to 200.15 km of recorded workouts in June!
- In honour of summer adventuring – and because I get asked for details about our favourite local destinations quite regularly (and it’s always easier to “sell” a destination when pictures are involved) – I thought it might be fun to highlight some local spots on the blog. Look for a few “Destination Nova Scotia” posts in the coming weeks.
Love of the Week: Canada
O…Canada. Like all entities (individual and collective), this country of mine is a constant work in progress. I believe patriotism should never trump morality; I recognize that there will be many challenges and mistakes – there will be times when major redirection is needed. Countries are – and have been – run by fallible human beings who bring their own depravities, insecurities, and biases to the table. Ultimately this country, like all others, needs Divine leadership for true love and justice to prevail.
But at the end of the day, I am immensely proud to call Canada home and consider it a major blessing in the lives of my family, especially my children, that we call ourselves Canadians.
Most years we hit the road; adventuring as a little family unit or meeting up with friends for good food and fun. We’ve done community slip-and-slides and dunk tanks; we’ve eaten lots of free slices of red-and-white pound cake. I’ve always made sure to get Canadian garb for the kids, and at least one page of the annual photobook is dedicated to Canada Day activities.
But I feel like our celebration this year – home as a family, preparing for a week of summer adventures – is the right pace for coming out of a global pandemic. I doubt pictures of vacuuming the car will make it into the photobook, but that’s okay. We Canadians tend to be pretty unassuming…and that’s part of our charm.
Wow – that car was dirty. The kids were as industrious as can be and were genuinely huge helps in the hours long process of deep-cleaning the car. At one point, after we were done, John looked out the patio door and said: “Wow, look at the Ferrari in the driveway” and I legit looked at our neighbours driveway to catch a glimpse – and then realized he was referring to our very clean, yet very practical, Hyundai.