Labour Day Weekend

Another long weekend … the one that signified the end of the summer holidays and the beginning of another school year.  It’s one of those happy/sad weekends.

We survived the July long weekend with almost no rain, but we went into this long weekend excepting rain and unfortunately we did receive it too.  We hum-hawed on Saturday whether to pack up before the rain and call it a weekend or weather to stick it out.  The decision was to stick it out …. without grumping (that comment was especially pointed at me)!!   It actually didn’t put too huge of a damper on the weekend, but it did bring in colder weather and that meant swimming was out and sweaters and long pants were in.  We had a cold end of August and so we arrived with our sweaters and pants and warm sleeping gear expecting to be cold and snuggled under the blankets at night …. wrong!  Wow, it was hot and humid at nights and the cold didn’t really come until Monday when we packed up to go home.

All smiles … we’re finally on our way!!

The kids were very excited when they received visitors on Friday.  We did not say anything to them since Dave and Ange did not know for sure if they were coming or not.  And then we figured we would just surprise them.  The kids were off at the park when they arrived and even though Brent, Mitchell and Slater said hi on the walkie-talkies the girls did not clue in until we showed up at the park. 

After a walk and some lunch it was off to the beach for the afternoon …. we had a lovely afternoon for hanging out at the beach.

 

Mmmmmmm ….. sandchips

Protective and helper Matthew helping Vivian put on a bike helment

      

“I think your hair is in the way” … something he’s certainly not used to

Supper time

   

Each night we had a rainbow fire for a little bit.  This is made by putting a piece of nylon garden hose in a copper tube and throwing it in the fire.  It would make a lovely array of colours for about 15 minutes.

   

And of course, what’s a fire with spiders and marshmallows.

We ended the evening with sparklers.  Unfortunately it was a bad ending to the evening when Vivian grabbed the wrong end of the sparkler and burned herself.  But she was a brave little girl who still wanted to enjoy a sparkler and so she tried …

but needed some ice and mom’s help to finish the sparkler

Matthew loved camping and now still months afterwards he asks if we will go camping again in the summer.  He loved being able to ride his bike on paved roads and was so proud of how fast he could go.  At home he doesn’t even touch his bike … gravel is to much of a challenge in his opinion, he rather just wait until the next camping trip.

 

Rob is the morning chef when we are camping, he loves cooking on the hotplate over the fire … that is when he can get a fire going … wet firewood is a pretty common thing when camping, so here he resorted to using the air mattress pump to blow air and get the flames going so the wood would finally get hot enough to catch.

Okay, so not really sure what Rob’s doing here, but we’re enjoyed the chef’s cooking

Fun at the park.  The girls are getting bigger, so the park does not hold as much interest for them anymore.  It’s fun when they have a group of kids to play with, but not so fun when it’s just our kids, although sometimes they can have lots of fun with Matthew.

 

Our bitter sweet weekend ended off cool, a sure sign that fall was on it’s way and it was time to get back to the book.  It’s always sad to see the summer go, but yet the kids do enjoy school and it’s nice to have routine back in one’s life … it’s a nice balance.  We had a busy and enjoyable summer which flew by unbelievably fast … but then, so does the school years, as here we are already two and a half months into another year and listening to talks of Christmas and what we’ll be doing for the Christmas holidays (just a big sign that I’m way to far behind on my blog).