A Day at the Faire

Oh, my poor, poor neglected blog. And my poor, poor neglected readers.

September has been kicking my butt. Totally. We've been slowly getting into the homework/piano practice/cello practice routine. The soccer/football one-two punch has totally hijacked our weekends. The Husband's been travelling three weeks out of four (glamour trips - Nebraska and Kansas - whoop!).

And then I found myself flat on my back in bed all day Saturday with the stomach flu. Argh!

But I do feel like I'm coming up for air. We've said "no" to a couple of commitments and that's freed up some weekday evenings. The Boy is getting used to his homework chart (heh heh - we have him reading Harry Potter in both English and French so we get required reading minutes for both languages pretty painlessly). The Girl is plucking herself some solid Good King Wenceslas action on her cello. And now that it's finally cool again, I'm able to pull out the ol' breadmaker and crockpot more often.

But, since you've been so patient, a treat: pictures from our trip to the Renaissance Festival a couple of weeks ago. The Girl heard about it from a friend and begged to go. We figured it was a bunch of people dressed up and the odd minstrel.

After spending half an hour in bumper-to-bumper traffic and seeing this, we realized that this thing is actually on a fairly grand scale:

This is actually only halfway between our parking spot waaaaaay out in a field and the fairgrounds.

The kids got their Renaissance totally on.

Best part of the day - agonizing over and finally choosing his very own wand. With his initials carved into it! I've been Expelliarmus!-ed about 18 times a day since then.

Putting his chess club skills to use. Poor kid - that guy in the booth is a total grand master. We should have realized that the prize (that Shrek chess set) was likely out of reach given that it was covered in dust an inch thick.

A meltdown or two later and we were on our way back to the twenty-first century, period-specific icy treat in hand. Also pretty new headdress! I'm pushing for a repeat costume performance for Hallowe'en!

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Guess Who Just Saved Herself $59?

Or: Who needs a big ol' truck when you've got a Jetta?

(The scene: IKEA, last night)

The Husband: You gonna help? Or just take pictures?

PM: Sorry. Totally helping.

(Yep - totally helping.)

And totally getting that bad boy home. Of course, it took us almost half an hour to drive since we were going verrrrry slowly, haunted by the memory of the last time we tried to transport an armchair, which started with "oh, I don't think we need to tie it down...it's heavy enough" and ended with a chair in multiple pieces with road-rashed leather on the side of the 59 highway....

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Here We Go Again!

Back to school today!

Someone was excited:

Actually, they both were excited. Nervous, but still glad to be heading back.

It feels a bit like the beginning of a golden year. This is the last year both kids will be at the same school (at least for awhile), and it's a school that I get after spending three years figuring out its twists and turns. We're finally starting to feel settled in our house, and we're loving being back in this neighbourhood more and more all the time.

Also, please note where they are standing - at the end of the driveway. Know why? Because the bus picks them up AND drops them off right by our house.

Of course, back to school is bittersweet. I'm definitely not ready for summer to end, much less for the craziness that is soccer/football/piano lessons/cello/homework/church worship band/small group to begin (and this list is intentionally short given that we don't want to over-program anyone).

Plus, it's product show season for The Husband, and that means racking up a fair number of frequent flier miles over the next while. (He's in Quebec right now - je suis tres jalouse!)

Still, it's kind of nice to be starting back into the swing of things. The nights are cool but the days are burnished gold. The kids are at such fun ages and I'm really looking forward to this last year of elementary innocence.

As, clearly, are they:

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