In the end, a rather excellent day

Although it started rough. Lillian rolled me out of bed at 6am after I had been up a touch too late the night before. Whatever. Coffee for me, porridge for her. Eventually Thomas joined us and then Jane not long after. Let the whinging begin.

To put it bluntly, Lillian has been a poo for the last week or so. A whinging, crying temperamental, argumentative poo. And yes, I know she is two years old, I mean all this relative to her typical whinging, crying temperamental, argumentative two year old behavior. Bring on the 1st day of school says I. Anyway, Lillian being painful is hard on Jane (Lillian is all about mummy these days), which puts her into a mood, which harshes my mellow and Thomas hates to be left out of anything. Thus the house becomes a big self-reinforcing cycle of grumpy.

At about 10:30am Thomas and I abandoned ship, getting some father/son time by walking down to the waterfalls. It was a nice day and a pleasant walk. On the way back we ran into some of our neighbors, an extraordinarily nice family with a little girl Lillian’s age and a boy that is a year older and bolder than Thomas. They were planning to take the boat (more than a tinny, less than a gin-palace) out onto the river today and asked if we would like to come along. Yes. Yes please.

It was a lovely summer day (tho clearly a fading summer) out on the water. They took us for a run up and down the river, showed us the waterfalls from a whole new angle and eventually we pulled up to a small island so they kids could have a drink and snack before splashing about like loons. The kids all had a wonderful time and the day’s previous grump was well and truly dispersed. The cherry on top was that the nearby space and aviation museum – located right on the edge of the river - was hosting an air show. While out on the water we were able to watch vintage WWI and WWII aircraft pooteling, or roaring depending on the vintage, directly overhead. Very cool.

We forgot the camera at home, of course. So no pictures :(

Iowa: I Almost Forgot to Post This

Seriously, this is about the trip to Iowa back in October last year. It has been languishing in draft form since early November. Between gearing up for another visit to the farm next month and the appearance of Halloween gear in the shops I have been prompted to finish it off.

As an aside, I was very chuffed by Thomas and Lillian’s reactions to seeing the Halloween gear at the local shops. The both got very excited and immediately started planning their costumes. Currently, ‘funny pumpkins’ (by which they mean ‘jack o lanterns’) are the planned costume.

Anyway, on the flashback...

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Anybody that has known me for long knows that my family is awesome. Everybody likes everybody else and coming back to the old family farm has been something to look forward to in a very big way. We play games (pepper, cribbage and carroms), we eat a lot of yummy food, we fly kites, we fish, we blow things up (fireworks) and we (by which I mean everybody but me) sings and plays music. It is awesome, and has been for the whole of my life. No matter where I have roamed, the farm has always been the focal point of family and home. It is where I proposed to Jane after her first week of meeting my family. And since she said ‘yes’ the farm has retained its unblemished record as a place of happiness.

This particular trip has been planned since we found about Jane’s posting to Ottawa. The idea was simple, everybody come back over Halloween so that nobody has to travel during the full madness of the Thanksgiving/Christmas ‘holiday season’ and the weather is still nice. Plus, it means I can take Thomas trick or treating in the postage stamp sized mid-western town of Garwin where my parents grew up. That day, dad carved a couple of pumpkins with Thomas and Lillian. That evening Thomas learned his two lines, dutifully repeated at every house.

“Trick or treat” and “Thank You”

I am pretty sure that many of the houses we visited were impressed with the very polite giraffe. We went around a couple of blocks and by the end of it Tom asked me to carry is candy bucket because it had become too heavy. It was, however, considerably lighter the next morning after Jane had gone through it with a mother’s careful eye, and her own rather voracious sweet-tooth.


Ready to go...


Added a couple days later for Barnes...