Last night we had quite the treat in the house. Sierra made us supper, all by herself.
She made some tacos. We were very impressed. I especially enjoyed how she thought that she could put a cucumber through a garlic press and it would come out in little strings.
They did not.
It came out as a mush type concoction. She added some soya sauce and said it was kind of like wasabi so use it sparingly. I proceeded to try and get a little bit and the entire thing fell into my taco!
All in all, I would consider the entire supper a big success. Bravo Sierra! We even let her in on the secret that whoever prepares supper gets to relax for a few minutes while everyone else cleans up afterwards.
Us: “So, what did you think of your experience making supper?”
When I got back home, Sierra convinced Maman to watch the Descendents: Wicked Wonderland movie. I then realized it was the last night of summer before we would have to have ‘normal’ bedtimes again, so I suggested we made it a full movie night with chips and pop.
It has been a great summer, even though Vero and I didn’t have the full summer off. It will be hard to go back to the ‘routine’!
All good things come to pass, and unfortunately, the news came that Bruce Losier had passed away.
Bruce and Louise welcomed me (and others) into their home like they were members of the family and it really hurts to see him gone.
Here is a note I wrote for Bruce:
I wanted to say that I have appreciated everything you have done for me over the years. Whether it was helping me navigate questions about music, helping me perform in front of a crowd, or the perfect timing of a groaner of a joke.
I have always appreciated that every member of the family welcomed myself and my family with open arms and made me feel at home. I strive to do the same with my children as every home should feel as welcoming as a visit to the Losiers.
I know that you are incredibly proud of the family Louise and you have raised.
Thank you. Thank you. THANK YOU.
I headed up to Kapuskasing for his celebration of life, armed with a bag of protein bars, the Smashing Pumpkins Machina box set to listen to (80 tracks!) and a CD player which turned out to be quite handy when my phone acted up and wouldn’t play music from time to time along the trip. It’s a long trip when you’re driving alone, but I made it in one piece.
Thursday night, I went over to the Losier garage to pay my respects.
At one point, I was handed a bag and it turned out to be Bruce’s ashes! I was surprised by how warm they still were considering he was cremated four hours before. It was an interesting experience. Carol took this photo of me.
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Friday morning, I went for a walk with Mom and then we all headed over to Bruce’s celebration of life. It was raining on and off again so that moved us in and out from the comfort of tents and inside the Nordic Ski Club.
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They had his ashes and some mementos (pipe wrench), in a corner, along with a digital photo frame cycling through some photos. There was also some food and plenty of drinks to go around. I always am happy when I see a packed house for a celebration of life.
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I even had a surprise visit from Anne-Marie as she works with Samantha and dropped by to pay her respects!
I have to admit that gatherings like this are hard sometimes when I’m staring across a room at someone and I’m thinking “I know I recognize that face, but I don’t know from where and I don’t know their name.” That happens when you leave a town for 25 years.
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That evening, Tyler came over for pizza supper and then he and I headed over to the Losier garage on a rainy night to share some laughs. It was a good celebration. Folks looked exhausted afterwards, but that’s what happens when you have so many people coming to pay their respects and you’ve have had a hard week leading up to it. Hopefully folks can get some rest in the coming days.
The next day, Mom and I went for another walk in the morning. John came over for a couple of hours so he and I could go through his setlist for a Pigroast in September, which was fun. We didn’t play many full songs, but it was good to try out a few new ones.
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After supper, I introduced Abbey to ‘Star Fluxx’ and I think everyone enjoyed it!
The next day, I hit the lonely road with plenty of rain. It was even torrential downpours and lightning for a few hours after North Bay!
Before I forget, Danny told me this amazing story about how his dad told him he would come back as an eagle. The day after he passed away, Danny was out fishing and threw a small perch back into the lake. A bald eagle swooped down and caught the perch and flew away with it. Incredible!
We made 11 jars of pickles this year and gave one to Mia who came and helped out. Quite a few of them didn’t pop, even though we wiped down the jar tops after pouring in the brine. Not sure what went wrong there.
Vero and the kids got a sweet deal and got a whole lot of cucumbers for the task. Unsure of how many baskets there were, as it was in a large cardboard box.
It was a nice hot day on Tuesday so we set up a lemonade stand. It was open for 3 hours and the kids said they got around 40 dollars. Not bad! They said they made sixty the year before, but I remember Ted Sullivan sending 20 dollars their way, so they made about the same. I tried to explain to them that they owed us money for the frozen lemonade they used but they seemed pretty upset by it. I ended up charging them $2.25 for one can and said that next year they will need to pay for all three cans that they used.
Soccer season ended this Tuesday. Vero volunteered as a coach/assistant coach for the second year in a row. It’s fun seeing her out there wrangling young kids together to try and achieve a goal! This year she was the coach for Ezra’s team and assistant coach for Sierra’s team. It’s weird to think that soon enough, the kids will be too old to join the Vars soccer league.
A few years ago, I got Vero a gift to go to a ‘tea on the lawn’ event and she brought Sierra. Every year since then, Sierra asks to return so it’s become a bit of a tradition. Ezra went one year, as well, but declined this year.
Considering he had a gift card from Poppa and Grandma for his birthday, we decided to head to the Lego store while the girls went to tea on the lawn. Look at that massive lego figure in the photo! Ezra asked if he could buy that with his $50 gift card. “Maybe it was $50,000!” I replied.
We perused a few things in the store, but he honed in on a fun fry truck and said “Oh, this is what I probably want.” We continued on through the store and I pointed out a few other sets, but he kept saying “No, it’s not as a good as the fry truck.” We then put the last fry truck in the store into our hands and walked around the store looking for other options, but nothing could beat this awesome french fry truck! Success!
Ezra and I went to the food court and he showed me this neat trick of opening the ketchup pack horizontally and you could use it to dip your fries in. Genius!
This morning, while waking up, I was thinking about our wedding anniversary and a flash of brilliance came over me. I could use Logic Pro’s artificial intelligence stem splitter to save some audio from my wedding!
Background
At our wedding, there were a bunch of people playing songs and we plugged into a soundboard and PA system. Unfortunately, the beginning of the set never had my mic recorded properly, so it was really unusable as a capture of the moment.
We did have some video of the moment, but the audio on one video was distorted, and the other video was decent, but not soundboard quality.
For years, I was thinking of ways to salvage it, but my tests didn’t work.
Until now!
Now
I have been using the Stem Splitter for a year now to help out some of my live concert recordings and it works quite well! I tried it on the audio from the wedding and BAM! It worked! I managed to boost my vocals, reduce Vero’s vocals, and add some reverb to the guitar. I think it turned out pretty darn good!
I somehow forgot to get some photos of Ben and Krista’s family when they were visiting. I blame the lack of daylight after 9PM!
It was a fun night filled with a lot of s’mores, some popcorn over the fire, a verbal introduction to Magic Commander, the projector set up at a decent hour, and the sounds of kids screaming at each other while they chased each other around the yard.
A great summer night! I even got to play a couple of rounds of ‘Let’s get to know you better’ from Once We Were Spacemen. I found out that Ethan really doesn’t like the veiny parts of an orange and Krista can play the clarinet and the alto and tenor saxophones. So interesting!
Ezra was NOT impressed that he had to go to bed at 11:30pm while the others got to stay up and play. I assured him that everyone else was going to bed soon enough.
“I have SO much to write about when the teacher asks me what I did this summer!” – Sierra, walking home from Cirque du Soleil in Montreal.
This encapsulates exactly what we’re in this for. We want life to be full of memories for our kids to look back on with a smile.
I have always wanted to stop near this sign when entering Quebec.
Vero is the queen of booking Airbnb’s. When she found a Friends themed apartment in Vieux-Montreal, we knew it was an instant acquisition. It was the highlight of my trip.
It even came with a chick and a duck!
For all the years I have been to Montreal, I cannot recall ever going near the waterfront. It felt like a different city.
A ride up in La Grande Roue
A photo for my cousins.
From the top of La Grande Roue, Ezra spied some bumper cars below. We tried them out and it was great fun! My bumper car wasn’t working all too well at the beginning and it turned out that the batteries needed changing, so we got some extra bumping time because of that!
At the end of our trip, Ezra said that this was his favourite thing he did in Montreal. It was also on Sierra’s list. This is an important point to remember for the future. Sometimes the fun things are things that can exist in any city in the world.
Night view
The kids thought this looked like PacMan
Having a chat with Gladys before bedtime
Showing the kids an episode of Friends, as they have never seen it before. Various objects in the apartment had little papers next to them explaining what they were, and what episodes they were from.
Early Wednesday morning.
Ezra and I walked around to find some food for breakfast. The kids mentioned that we were going to get some crepes so we picked up a few cinnamon buns from Olive + Gourmande. Ezra and I waited 20+ minutes to get them. Popular spot!
I thought we were going to get crepes fairly soon after arriving with the buns, so I suggested we just split one of them. This turned out to be a mistake as we didn’t leave until closer to 11am and then I was getting too hangry to be a nice guy. Mental note: always eat, especially on a trip!
We headed to an aerial park, but found out that there were no spots until the afternoon (because of summer camps?). We ended up at SOS Labyrinthe which was a super fun experience going through a labyrinth trying to find four treasures. I thought we would be done in 20 minutes but I was surprised when we came out of there 1.5 hours later! I was also surprised to see that they change the labyrinth up every week, which is cool.
I had left my phone at home because they said not to bring it to the aerial park. No pictures from SOS Labyrinthe exist, but we will always have fond memories of Sierra telling us “I told you so” when she found the right path through the labyrinth. I will also remember a whole lot of dead ends, and the funny circus type mirrors to look into.
We took this photo a day later while walking to Cirque du Soleil because I wanted at least one photo of the place.
After SOS Labyrinthe, my feet were sore so we walked back 15 minutes to the apartment. I loved being that close, but it was a bit too much to expect the kids to walk back and forth multiple times a day.
We then headed back to the old Port to check out the aerial park which was part of a pirate ship! It was very cool. I felt like I was on the set of Pirates of the Caribbean with kids flying overhead and underneath me.
The four of us all started out together on the ‘green’ path. You start on green, then can advance to higher levels if you wish. Ezra’s shoulder was hurting from a fall at Shannon’s cottage a few days earlier, and he was also having a hard time reaching some of the wires so after going through the green path, he didn’t want to take part in the activity any longer. It allowed me time to hang out with him, eat some popcorn and take some videos of Sierra and Vero going through other obstacles. Let’s not kid ourselves, I’m not the most adventurous person, so I didn’t really mind hanging out with Ezra on the ground. However, I wish I would have known this would happen before spending a lot of money for us to hang out on the ground! We could have just paid $5 if we knew we were hanging out on the ground from the beginning. Ah well.
After the aerial park, the kids wanted a treat. Ezra bought some candy called Toxic Waste which was supposedly very sour. It was. Vero’s reaction is captured here on video.
We had some supper at a nice patio in the main tourist area of Vieux-Montreal (Comptoir 400)
With an hour before closing time, we went to the Musée des illusions which was a ton of fun!
I saw this on the sidewalk near our apartment. I thought it was thought provoking.
On Thursday, we took a trip on the metro as the kids were excited to try it out. It is quite the marvelous way to travel across a city. We ended up at the biodome!
The kids were extremely excited to see a capybara
I thought these jellyfish were extremely cool.
A quick lunch before heading over to the planetarium. Passport holders, don’t forget you get 15% off for lunch! We ended up buying a yearly passport because it was cheaper to buy a family passport than individual tickets for the biodome, planetarium and insectarium. Plus, we can go back sometime this year!
The planetarium had some really cool movies about black holes and the cosmos. The screen envelops the entire room and I felt like I was in space.
Check out this story about a meterorite from Penouille!
The city was celebrating 50 years since Olympics 1976
It’s incredible to see these ants at work at the insectarium.
The butterfly garden was incredible. I had never seen so many butterflies.
After an afternoon visiting the biodome, planetarium and insectarium, it was time to dress up and go out for a nice supper at some Mediterrean restaurant that we walked by. I quite enjoyed the chicken. The kids found that the lemonade was too sour to drink!
I enjoy the fact that when we asked Ezra to dress up nice for supper, he brought his Angine de Poitrine shirt along with some ‘Live Fast, Pickle Hard’ socks! I know my bud Clive would appreciate that.
The kids pointed out this hilarious sign.
Going to see Echo, a Cirque du Soleil production.
The show was quite incredible. I always get a bit overwhelmed seeing a Cirque du Soleil experience. I just can’t get over how magical it feels. But it’s just some humans pulling off some incredible super-human feats. The family really enjoyed the circus. It’s important to point out that Ezra said that if he had to choose between the ‘infinite cube’ toy he got after the show, or the show itself, we can get him the toy in the future. Duly noted!
The walk back after the show. Final night in Montreal!
I went to pick up an assortment of baked goods for breakfast. Ezra really wanted a breakfast sandwich, but I found a hotdog wrapped in some dough and he said that was even better!
The Friends-themed apartment on Rue de la Moyne
One last shot before we packed up and left the apartment
Before leaving the city, we checked out a Quick Room which was an hour long game show type experience for the entire family to enjoy! It was quite fun and I enjoyed the fact that you had access to ‘jokers’, which were limited superpowers like blocking someone from answering a question, or stealing someone’s points. Ezra won the first round, Sierra won the second round and she was also the gold medal winner. Ezra came in second and I came in dead last.
After the Quiz Room experience, we knew we had to try some smoked meat from Reuben’s before leaving town. I had never been in the original Reuben’s which is a diner down in a basement. I quite enjoyed the experience compared to the other Reuben’s down the street. The kids said that the lemonade was life changing.
The final photo is of Ezra trying on his night vision goggles he bought at Indigo while Maman went shopping at Simon’s. We hit the road at rush hour and were back home in 2.5 hours. It was an incredible trip. I personally felt that we were living in an entirely different city that I am used to. I have spent time in Montreal going to concerts, or visiting Philipp in the Plateau and Mont Royal. But I haven’t spent a whole lot of time in Vieux-Montreal. I really enjoyed just having a little corner of the city to spend time in. A day into the trip, I kind of had a sense of where we were in the neighbourhood and how to navigate to the waterfront and back.
I also really enjoyed the vibe of the port area. I wish Ottawa had something like that going on. Maybe that’s what they are attempting to do over in Hull near the water.
I also enjoyed how it gave us a taste of what to expect if we wanted to go on longer trips with the kids, and have them walk around a lot. I can say that the next time, we might want to have them walk a bit more to get their leg muscles ready before the trip, as they said their legs were hurting the first couple of days. Mine were too!
The weather was great, the activities were fun, and everyone emerged happy from the experience.
Ezra’s seventh birthday turned into a week long celebration.
Navan Fair
It’s not often that we are in town for the Navan Fair so we headed there for opening night. We told Sierra and Ezra that they each had $20 to spend. None of them chose rides and we mostly stuck around the game section which was fun. I also appreciate that every game has a winner. I don’t remember growing up with that, but perhaps I’m wrong?
We also managed to find a great spot to check out the demolition derby! We stayed there for the first heat and it was loads of fun. There was a fellow by the name of Dr. John who was 77 years old who won the heat. Sounds like he is a bit of a local legend.
Shannon and Maureen’s Cottage
Next up, we ventured out to Shannon and Maureen’s cottage which is on Jim’s Lake in the Pontiac Region. I don’t believe I have ever driven up through the Pontiac. It’s a nice area and I feel it’s a mix of English and French communities considering the names I saw.
It’s been years that I have been out of cellphone range so I had to think about things like saving photos of directions to my phone. Turns out that if I load up Google Maps before leaving the cellphone area, it just keeps the map loaded with directions. I had forgotten about that.
After unpacking, we hit the lake and went tubing. The kids didn’t seem interested at first. But once we heard mention of heading back to the dock, I jumped into the water to get a taste of the lake and the kids quickly jumped in after me. They had a great time on the tub, even though it had popped and held half the air. They were having a fun time trying to stay afloat.
Shannon and Maureen live in Petawawa which is a little over and hour away. The property they bought years ago had a cottage further from the lake, and an unfinished one near the lake which they have been working on over the years. It’s pretty neat considering it has solar and propane as well as Starlink internet. I could get used to the place!
That night we had a great feast, and I played guitar while getting eaten alive by the black flies and mosquitoes. I also had a bit of a scare when I connected to the internet and noticed that my sump pump alarm had sent me a notification. I had a neighbour check it out and the crisis was averted as it was just a small leak in the cut off valve.
The next day we went fishing in the afternoon. The first time we went out, a massive thunderstorm pushed us off the lake so we raced back home. The afternoon, it got sunny again and we got to experience some amazing bass fishing. You don’t even need live bait to tempt these fish to eat your lure! We caught nine fish in an hour and headed back home. Sierra caught quite a few of those. That reminds me…I owe her $3 for catching the first fish, the biggest fish and the most fish!
A fish must have tried to escape the bucket!
A nice fish fry was had before a massive thunderstorm forced us inside for the rest of the night.
The next day we had a great breakfast and hit the road. Thank you to the Gramann family for hosting us!
Mini putt
On Monday, Ezra woke up to a Minecraft themed decorated living room full of balloons and creepers. Sierra also made a scavenger hunt full of clues leading him to various birthday gifts.
In the afternoon, we headed to an indoor mini putt course that he was excited to try out. It was pretty neat with the glow in the dark paint!
That evening we had some shepperd’s pie and a lemon pie with whipped cream, as requested. It was yummy!
