Palmer's World

On Sunday it was looking like it was going to be a beautiful day so we all headed to Mont Rigaud to do some skiing.  Sierra and Maman had already had a lesson earlier in the winter and now Ezra wanted to try it out for the FIRST time in his life!

Here is a little video montage of the day.  For future reference, his instructor’s name was Lucie B.

Best part of the day was when the lesson was over.

Me: “Alright Ezra, it’s already been an hour,”

Ezra: “AN HOUR!  It felt like ten minutes!  I want it to be two hours!”

It’s been -20 for the past couple of weeks so when the weather creeps up to -5, everyone wants to play outside!

We snowshoed over to the neighbours to spend some time around the campfire.  Much appreciated good neighbours!

Then we finished off the afternoon in the hot tub.  I have become a wimp over the years and if it’s -20 out, I’m not venturing into the hot tub!  Luckily when I opened it, it was still in good shape and not a block of ice.  That happened once and I wasn’t happy!

I am the polar opposite of my dad when it comes to home repairs.  If something is wrong, I determine how urgent it is and then figure out how long I have to repair it.

Case in point, I was noticing for the past couple of months that when the shower was running there was water near the top of the drain….as in, it wasn’t draining properly.

Saturday morning I finally got around to unscrewing the cover and seeing what is up.  I think sometimes I just don’t want to bother with something because I’ve had bad times where you think a job will take five minutes and then it takes five days.

Luckily, this job only took five minutes and produced some great “Ewwwwwww” sounds from the kids and Vero!  That’s quite the hairball that was hanging from the drain cover.  Three feet long.

A month ago I picked up the Cats Lair playset but it’s way too big for the house (OR IS IT?!  Maybe I should just get rid of other stuff!) so I am planning on selling it.  I took it out of the box to take some photos and there’s the dent in the box.  Bummer!  Hopefully I can still make a sale with the box in this kind of shape.

I pulled together a boxful of comics for Max this past weekend.  Supposedly it’s his new passion in life and he wants to make a business of making comics.  Can’t deny a kid wanting to read some comic books.  Nothing wrong with a boxful of inspiration!  I took photos of every comic I was parting with so I can adjust my huge spreadsheet.

For a few years now Vero has been on me to get back into swimming.  I mean, I’m the one who says “Maybe I should get back into swimming” and she follows up once in awhile.

Last night I bit the bullet and headed out to the Francois Dupuis recreation center.  I had never been there and I heard it has a heated pool. Gamechanger!

I showed up and instead of doing my typical “I’ll figure this out as I go along.” I asked a bunch of questions at the front desk.  The lane swim is a shared lane swim (booo!  I sure miss that hotel pool I used to swim in every day after work and I was the only person in it!) and the lanes are labelled slow to fast.  You choose which lane you think you can manage in and hop in.

Seemed simple enough!    I watched everyone get in at 8:15pm and figured out what folks were doing when they share a lane.  I also spoke to a lifeguard and she explained that generally one person starts and then when they reach the flag (they are hanging overhead), the second person starts.

It’s a bit of organized chaos where some folks are stuck behind the other, or I’m out of breath hanging on for dear life at one end of the pool and folks show up at the end and wonder if I’m going to continue.  There seems to be an unwritten rule that if you see a guy taking a break, you just head back and don’t bother them.  A sensible unwritten rule!  In other cases, I asked the person who was taking a break if they were taking a break or if they were waiting for the person in front of them to reach a safe distance.

My first time back swimming was a bit intense.  My shoulders were screaming after 30 minutes in the pool and there were a few times where I was huffing and puffing a bit too much and figured I would be taking in water if I didn’t slow down!  Haha.  I was sensible and took a break for a minute before doing another couple of laps.

All in all, it wasn’t a disaster and I’ll give it a try again.  Do I like shared lane swim?  No one does.  But that’s all I got at the moment.

At night I woke up at 4am and my shoulders and wrists were screaming in pain.  I don’t remember this feeling!  It was really bad and I ended up sleeping downstairs.  Or attempting to.  My body was too much in pain to go back to sleep.  Around 5am I snuck back upstairs and got some ibuprofen, settled on the couch and watched some Star Trek before realizing my body was still super tired and wanted to sleep!  Let’s just say this morning, I’m a slow moving unit who is already looking forward to a nap!

Another note about my swimming experience…I bought some bone conductive headphones to listen to music.  The experience kind of sucked for the price I paid ($130).  I could barely hear the music with all the noise in the swimming area.  They already have music blasting (Beatles!  Sweet.) and with everyone else splashing around, it was practically useless.  I did notice another person with those headphones and they also had earplugs in so maybe that’s the trick?  I’ll give that a try next time and also load in some music which isn’t a Smashing Pumpkins bootleg.

I can only imagine the shenanigans that would happen with five Ezra’s in the house!

Embrun usually has some great family day activities going on.  We headed over to the hockey arena to go do some bowling.  The information said that bowling started at 11am so we arrived around 10:45 to get a spot.  Turns out that they had been open since 10am where you could sign up on the waitlist.  Oh man!  When we put our names on the list they figured it would be sometime in the afternoon before we got a game.

While we waited we went up stairs to see Junkyard Symphony.  We didn’t end up getting any free popcorn.  Maybe they only make it once an hour and we missed out.

But Junkyard Symphony was great!  The lead singer said they had been around for 32 years.  Their thing is that they have drum sets and robots and other instruments on stage all made out recycled items (think buckets for drums, etc.).

They were great at interacting with the crowd and they were quite hilarious.  I would see this group again if I had the chance.

They had started at 11am and around 11:45 we got the call that bowling had a spot for us!  So we left the show early and got our shoes and…hit the lanes?  What’s the term for bowling?

Ezra says bowling is his favourite sport.  Who doesn’t love bowling?  I’ll tell you who doesn’t like it…the three of us when we got a bunch of gutter balls!

Ezra pointing out that he had the lead!

I had to post the final score just for historical purposes, not bragging rights.  😉

It’s super nice of Embrun to organize free family friendly activities for the community.  Always fun to drop by there and then stop over to A&W for some lunch afterwards.

 

Vero did a lot of great work on this video for Ezra’s kindergarten presentation.  He had to choose a favourite game and explain how to play it.

He was NOT a happy camper on the Saturday when we tried to film it.  We abandoned filming and tried again on the Sunday and he seemed to be a bit more agreeable.  When he doesn’t get his way, he shuts down and you can’t please him, even if we’re trying to help him do a presentation.

Anyhow, Vero put a lot of work finishing up this video and it worked out great!  I had a good laugh when Ezra said all the kids in the class watched it and were horrified with the opening bit where the pieces go across the floor.  “Oh no, they will lose the pieces!”  “Why weren’t they more careful with the pieces!  They shouldn’t do that!”

A lesson in ‘know your audience’!