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  • Larose Forest + Scanning photos + Chocolate salami

    Chocolate salami

    Let’s start with the funniest thing of the day.

    As a parent, I sometimes wonder if I’m doing the right thing…”Should I let my kids watch YouTube Kids all Saturday morning?”.  I equate it to my experience with Saturday morning cartoons.

    This morning I walked into the kitchen and all I hear from Ezra is “CHOCOLATE SALAMI?  WOW!”

    And that’s when I thought “Chocolate salami DOES sound cool.”.  All my fears about what they watch on a Saturday morning evaporated in that moment!

    Larose Forest

    On a typical weekend, the kids tend to watch YouTube Kids and Vero sleeps in.  At 47 years old, I feel that I have a hard time sleeping in and for the past few weekends I’ve been sitting there thinking “Why am I waiting for my family to be ready in the morning to go and do something?”.  That’s how I ended up taking a walk in Larose Forest on a crisp sunny morning.  No one was in the forest with me, I was all alone.  Visions of bears attacking me came, but I did not encounter anything out of the ordinary.

    Scanning Nanny’s Photos

    This past winter I managed to scan all of Lynn and Sue’s slides which was a fun project.  I also managed to tag a bunch of dates to Mom and Dad’s film negatives.  I had one photo album of theirs to use as a cross reference guide which was a Godsend.

    But once I finished the one photo album, I realized that I should just wait for more and so I embarked back into the quest to scan all of Nanny Sybil’s photo albums.  I encountered an interesting scenario where I’m scanning an album taken from 1981 and it has photos that are from my parents film negative collection.  I’ve seen them before.  But then I stumble upon a random photo that looks like it’s from the same time period, but I can’t find it in my parents film negatives.  Did the negatives go missing?  Possible.

    I then realized that the random photos must have actually been from Nanny’s camera!  The prints are a slightly different size than the ones from my parents.  It’s neat to find a few extra photos from an already documented moment in time.

  • Sierra doing a speech in front of the school (Grade 4)

    Audio of Sierra’s speech

    Audio of the hilarious moment where the mic stand wouldn’t adjust and two teachers were having trouble adjusting it.

    I don’t remember having to do speeches in school until Grade 7 but it seems like they start things young in the year 2026.  Sierra had to write and deliver a speech to her class.  The theme was ‘petits gestes qui change la monde’.  Speeches that were REALLY GOOD would be selected to go ahead to a competition in front of the school hosted by the Vars Optimist Club.

    She never usually has any homework to do at home (other than studying multiplication tables which she has been great at!), so when the speech arrived in the house, we had to motivate her to get working on it.  I asked her what her plan was.  “I have six days left…I will write section 1, 2 and 3 over three days and that will leave me three days to memorize the speech.”

    She found it was hard work and after she was done memorizing the speech I asked her if she would have changed her plan a bit.  “I probably could have used 2-3 days more to work on it.”

    I guess she learned through experience!

    Leading up to her presentation on a Wednesday, she said the speeches from the rest of the class were SUPER GOOD.  When I heard that, I prepared myself to not get too excited about the prospect of her doing a speech in front of the school.

    But Wednesday afternoon we received an email from her teacher saying that she was selected to do her speech again in front of the school the next day!

    Vero and I went to the school at 1PM and sat in the front row hoping we could film it.  Turns out no recording/photos were allowed but I did manage to record the audio.  We enjoyed all the speeches that the other kids from the school presented.

    She did a great job and we were super proud of her.

    Highlights:

    • After each speech, someone was helping adjust the microphone stand but it was stuck which led to a comical moment that could have made it onto America’s Funniest Videos.  I still remember the image of the poor kid stuck in front of the microphone, nervous to do his speech and there are two people trying to fix a microphone stand!
    • After the speech, I saw a gang of girls rush to Sierra and hug her and tell her how amazing her speech was.  It was heartwarming.  They also made her a #1 medal in the class afterwards even though she did not win #1.

  • Meeting with the mayor

    Kids: “Dad, you are wearing a tie today!”

    Me: “Yes, I have a presentation today.  I wanted to dress up.”

    Sierra: “Is your presentation with the mayor?”

  • Review: Jean-François Pauzé at Salle Odysée (Gatineau QC)

    Photos found on Facebook

    Before I start, it’s good to remember that Row E has great legroom if you pick the two seats on the edge (closer to the center)!  Véro and I appreciated it.

    After a few tour dates in December to shake some rust off (I’m assuming?), Jean-François Pauzé rolled into Gatineau to kick off his tour proper.

    All we knew going into this show was the following:

    • He was promoting his first solo album
    • This album consisted of songs released after the death of Karl Tremblay
    • There would be Cowboys Fringants songs played at the concert.  But how many?

    Turns out that this show was a celebration of everything we love about Les Cowboys Fringants, and more!  The room was electric.  The touring band consisted of quite a few members of the touring band of Les Cowboys Fringants so it was cool to see that continuation.

    It looks like JF will be touring quite a bit in the future so if you love Les Cowboys Fringants, then this is a ‘must-see’ show.  The new songs are great as well.

    Setlist:

    Puisqu’il faut
    Y’est 3 heures on ferme !
    Sudbury
    Un chez toi
    Joyeux calvaire !
    La manifestation
    L’hiver approche
    Shooters
    Le clash
    Simplicité involontaire
    Les amours de seconde main
    Bisous
    Bye Bye Lou
    Les maisons toutes pareilles
    Plus rien
    Emmêlé dans ses ch’veux
    Droit devant
    La Reine
    L’Amérique pleure
    Ballon-sonde
    Les étoiles filantes
    Encore:
    Fond d’pichet sale de sangria
    Marine marchande
    La route du nord

  • Scanning Lynn and Sue’s slide collection

    Last year I started scanning old slides of Lynn and Sue’s but I stopped once I realized I didn’t have all the slides and it would be best to have them all in order.

    I finally got a hold of all of them.  It took a few hours to organize them into piles according to their datestamp.

    I don’t know much about slides but I can only imagine that the datestamp on them is the date they were actually printed.

    For example, you can see that in the top right corner there is Sep 78T3.  I have to assume that this means the batch of slides were created in September 1978.  I’m not entirely sure what the T3 means.  There are other batches that have T1, T2…some others don’t have any mention of a T.  I’ll have to contact some folks who might know the answer.

    Putting them in order is an interesting puzzle.  For example, I’m organizing everything by datestamp, but in some cases I have doubles of datestamps.  There might be two slides that say 81-March001.  Now…what happened there?  Did they drop off two rolls of film and because they were processed on the same date, they come out saying it was done in March 1981 and they have the same sequence?  I’m not sure about that one yet…this just adds a bit more puzzle to decipher because now I have to figure out which photos go with which sequence.  If there is a wedding starting out on one of the slides marked Slide 1, then it stands to reason that the second slide should be a wedding photo as well.  So that will be an interesting adventure when it comes to it.

    I really enjoy digitizing old media…slides, photo albums, home movies…it gives me a glimpse into the past and I’m sure it makes folks happy that they can see photos they forgot about in the past.

  • Christmas dance recital

    Ezra’s acro class

    Sierra’s hip hop class

    Sierra’s acro class

    This fall, both kids wanted to try out dance classes.  Sierra even managed to convince us to sign her up for TWO classes which took place back to back.

    The studio was deep in Orleans so it was definitely a quick ‘get ready, get eating supper, get on the road’ Tuesday night for us during the fall.

    We typically brought Mia along for the ride which was fun.  We would always take turns requesting fun songs to play during the ride.  I do remember a particularly fun ride listening to the songs of Parry Gripp.

    All these lessons culminated in the Christmas recital at the Shenkman Arts Centre in Orleans.  What an honour to grace their stage!  We even got to see what it’s like backstage.  I’ve always wondered after seeing a lot of concerts there.

    I wonder what the story of these kisses on the backstage wall is all about?

    Ezra’s changing room!  Complete with a mirror!

    And a shower!

    Backstage

     

    The concert was super fun and while I don’t fully understand the world of dance, I do know that the kids worked really hard on learning all the moves.  They did really great.

    Even though they did great, they both decided to pursue other activities in the new year.  I have to admit that we are a bit relieved.  The world of dance is…interesting.

    We knew there would be a recital at the end, but they never bothered telling us up front that there were multiple recitals and you had to pay $30 a seat to go to each one.  Ezra was really not wanting to go to any of them…when we managed to convince him to go do it, then revised the schedule and was proposing he do two of them.  Forget about that!  It was hard enough convincing him to do one!

    Costumes cost $100 each.  As far as I know, that wasn’t advertised when signing them up.  I could be wrong.  But all that to say, parents should know what they are getting into when they sign up for things.  A lot of parents don’t have the ‘inside scoop’ to all the costs associated with an activity.

    At the end of the day, the kids know a dance routine and they did pretty good on stage for the Christmas recital.  Super proud of them!

     

  • Les Toques de Noel – Spectacle de Noel – Vars

    It’s not often in life that you get asked to grace a stage a second time in your life, but it happened for me!  I would like to think that they really, truly wanted me to sing some Christmas songs for them again but I’m pretty sure they were just really desperate.  ;-). Haha!

    Last year I had the honour of playing for the Optimist Club Christmas event in the village.  I was on the hook for a lot of work…an hour and a half worth of songs!  Both in English and French…some that I had never played or heard before in my life!  It was a large undertaking and I think I did pretty good.

    Fast forward a year and they needed someone to play again but the gig was a bit more reasonable this time around…20-30 minutes and I would have another guitarist and drummer playing with me.  Brilliant!

    Considering I had a few ideas bouncing around in my head of songs to play, I quickly assembled a setlist, shared it with the guys and we had a practice the week before and it was sounding pretty good.  It’s fun to play with other people who are pretty great musicians.

    I have to rewind a bit and tell the story of going a bit overboard as soon as I got the gig.  I was excited to give something to the kids…I decided upon little egg shakers used for percussion.  On Amazon, you could get a bag of sixty.  I sat and thought about it and thought “What if more than sixty kids show up?!  I don’t want anyone to be upset!”  I ended up ordering 120 egg shakers for the event.  Vero had a good laugh at this.  Turns out that 35 kids took a shaker.  Ah bein.

    Everything went great and it’s always a pure joy in my heart to make kids smile and laugh.  In another life, I wish I was on a show like Mr. Dressup or the Friendly Giant.  But this is the next best thing.  I didn’t mess up too much on the french songs and I was very proud that Sierra and Ezra joined in throughout the concert.

    Here is a video of the concert.  Vero was nice enough to videotape it.  There are sections where it’s audio only so I put in a few photos here and there.  Enjoy!

     

  • Instant pot: chili mac

    https://www.dadcooksdinner.com/pressure-cooker-chili-mac/

    Ingredients

    • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
    • 1 large onion, diced
    • 1 medium red bell pepper, trimmed and diced
    • 3 cloves garlic, minced (I just used chopped garlic, three spoonfuls)
    • ½ teaspoon fine sea salt
    • 1/8 cup chili powder (I tried 1/4 as the recipe asks for and the family said it was too spicy.  1/8 seemed fine)
    • 2 tablespoons ground cumin
    • 1 tablespoon oregano
    • 1 pound ground beef
    • 2 (15-ounce) cans red kidney beans, drained and rinsed (or 4 cups homemade beans)
    • 1 pound dried elbow macaroni pasta (that’s a bowlful)
    • 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes (I didn’t have crushed tomatoes on hand but I had a can of Hunt’s Thick and Rich Spicy Red Pepper & Chillies pasta sauce (680ml). That seemed to work fine.  Maybe any pasta sauce would be fine? )
    • 4 cups water (or chicken broth)
    • 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
    • ½ teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
    • I added corn niblets

    Instructions

    1. Sauté the aromatics: Heat 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil in an Instant Pot set to Sauté mode – high. (Use medium-high heat in a stovetop PC). Add the onions, bell pepper, garlic, and ½ teaspoon salt to the pressure cooker. Sauté until the onions soften, about 5 minutes.
    2. Toast the spices and cook the beef: Make a hole in the center of the onion mix and add the chili powder, cumin, and oregano. Let the spices sit for 30 seconds, then stir into the onions. Add the ground beef and stir to coat with the onions and spices, using a flat-edged wooden spoon to scrape any browned bits from the bottom of the pot. Cook the ground beef, stirring often, until the beef just loses its pink color, about 3 minutes. (Make sure nothing sticks to the bottom of the pot while cooking the beef or it will burn – stir and scrape the bottom often.)
    3. Everything in the pot: Stir the rinsed and drained beans, elbow macaroni, crushed tomatoes, and water into the pot. Sprinkle in 1 teaspoon of salt. Scrape the bottom of the pot one last time to make sure nothing is sticking. Poke down any pieces of pasta sticking up out of the water – if they’re not submerged, they might not cook.
    4. Pressure cook for 4 minutes with a 5 minute natural release: Lock the lid and cook at high pressure for 4 minutes (Use Manual, Pressure Cook, or Pressure Cook – Custom mode with an Instant Pot.) When the cooking time finishes, let the pressure come down naturally for 5 minutes, then quick release the remaining pressure in the pot. Remove the lid carefully, opening away from you – even when it’s not under pressure, the steam in the cooker is very hot.
    5. Season and serve: Stir in the black pepper, serve with your favorite chili toppings, and enjoy!

  • TFO Special – 50 years of Franco Ontarien flag

     

  • Heard on the road back from the North

    Sierra: “Can you pass me a pillow Ezra?”

    Ezra: “Here you go.”

    Sierra: “Wait, is the smelly one?”

    Ezra sniffs the pillow: “No, it’s not Daddy’s pillow.”