Canada Day in Three Words

As I was driving home this morning, after a wonderful fun filled Canada day weekend I heard a call in show on the radio.  The question posed to listeners was to summarize their Canada Day weekend in 3 words.

I came up with many different variations on a theme to summarize my own weekend

like : Campfire, Watertrampoline, Neighbors

Or  : Food, Booze, Fun

Or : Relaxing, Refreshing, Reconnecting

Even : Dad’s Demented Backpain

After a fun filled weekend with a wide array of activities I had trouble selecting just THREE words.  

This weekend we took the kids out to the village for dinner one night.  The excitement of “going out for dinner” was palpable as Mia put on her pretty red dress and cardigan and Toby allowed me to actually wash the grass stains off his knees for once.  We sauntered through the Village while the kids ran ahead and marveled at the number of tourists.  We rolled our eyes while the kids sneakily placed an order for CHOCOLATE milk (reserved only for UBER special occasions such as this) and enjoyed sharing pizza and stories before heading out for ice cream in front of the live stage.

Sunday we put the Water trampoline in the lake and invited our neighbors over to celebrate with swimming, jumping, splashing and Sangria-drinking (can you guess which one of the above I partook in?!?!?) before making the kids dinner over the fire.  Toby couldn’t believe that it had taken 5 whole years of his life before he was introduced to the miraculous invention of Smores.  Mia, ever the little sweet tooth, wasn’t surprised in the least and ate them with a fervent “I always suspected something like this existed” attitude.  While the adults drank and ate separately the kids watched a movie before we all reunited later for fireworks.

Monday we took an impromptu trip to Toronto to rescue my dad from his debilitating back pain that struck suddenly in the middle of the night.  My mom almost took him to ER it was so bad.  She had her institute that week so would be gone ALL day on Monday and for the rest of the week.  So we packed everyone up and sped down to Toronto to help out.

And that’s the funny thing about Dementia.

When sweet little Mia walked in first and very earnestly asked, “Papa, is your back sore?” he smiled, patted her on the head and then confidently stated, ”Nope!  I feel great!”  He didn’t know enough to even PRETEND to have had a sore back.  And so we were forced to make the most of this unnecessary emergency trip by making ourselves feel better with an afternoon movie in a real theatre, a trip to the local splash pad and after dinner Gelatos.

And so you can see my dilemma I had, trying to summarize my weekend in THREE Words.  But I think I got it just right : I LOVE MY KIDS!!!

(OK that’s four words – but I’ve never been known at concise.   It took me the whole drive up to come up with my “three” words and I obviously didn’t get to call in and share them, but felt the need to document this on my blog for posterity)

Rob and I had SO much fun together and with our kids this weekend, I feel I can say with great confidence that I officially want to freeze time and keep my kids this age forever.

In summers past we have had fun but either one of the kids was too young or I was too pregnant to fully be able to enjoy summer activities.   I had a heads up this weekend that we are coming into a new stage, one with endless possibilities and one that lets us ALL have fun (while still attaining adequate amounts of sleep…yes, that’s right - -any ideal weekend in my world MUST still involve the necessary 8 hours sleep requirement.  Having kids has given me Post Traumatic Sleep Disorder.  I will never be able to party like I used to again…)

I don’t think my kids are likely to remember the Canada Day weekend of 2013 when they were 5 and 2.5 years old, so I just had to document it for them, and for my future self to read when the cause me to pull my hair out with frustration; this weekend they proved to not only be flexible and resilient but also a ton of fun.  Right now I can’t wait to spend every weekend this summer with them…and all the days in between.

                                                                  "Love. My. Kids."