Mother's Day Breakfast: Montreal

 I got to spend a small part of the day with Catherine and Hebe. Hebe got to chose her favourite breakfast cereal and Catherine decided to indulge as well.  But in the back of her head, her "stay healthy" voice was still active and convinced her to mix the party breakfast with the healthwise breakfast.

I opted for a trip to my favourite patisserie in Cathy's neighbourhood...  Premiere Moisson. They make all their pastries and bread for wheat grown in Quebec.  I love that.

An almondine for me and a cheese croissant for Axel.

What did you have for breakfast?

Birds Part Two: Waxwings at the Pond

The other day when I was watching the waxwings in the tree, I got too close in my attempts to take photos and they all flew off.  I went up to the deck with my laptop to write up my blog post about them. I was thrilled when they came back to a different tree -- in my neighbour's yard, but up against my fence. Suddenly I realized they were coming down in groups to drink out the pond Naomi and I have been creating in the backyard over the last 2 years. I couldn't have been more thrilled.  First critters of the season spotted using the pond.

Volleyball provincials

 

I'm exhausted. Silver medal was great, but we are wanted gold. 

This weekend was so exciting that I'm not even sure that I can report on it. 

I'll link to some of the video as well once I recuperate. 

Birds

I have been doing my first real yard work of the spring this morning.  I came out of my garage to the sudden sound of a flock of birds I didn't immediately recognize.  I looked up at the neighbours trees and saw a the flock of birds perched up high -- I knew I knew this bird but could not bring the name to mind.  "It's one Arta has pointed out to you at often the lake" a voice in my head told me. The name was just out of reach...  "they eat berries, you know this bird... you took one with a broken wing into your house in Lethbridge.  You drove it all the way to a vet outside Calgary hoping they could save it, when you knew a wild bird with a broken wing doesn't have good chances. When you called back 2 days later, sure enough, they had put it down. What as is that word...  bohemian!  A bohemian waxwing.  Or perhaps these ones are cedar waxwings." 

I stood there a long time, just listening.  Thrilled.  I kept thinking to myself, "go inside and get Axel." But what if my movement scared them away.  I decided just to stand there and watch and enjoy the sound, even though it was hurting my neck to look up so steeply.

Of course Arta was on my mind. I knew it wasn't actually her visiting me.  If she had a choice she would never choose to come back and inhabit an animal body.  

Suddenly something hit my chest.  I looked down and it was bird poop.  I was so close under the tree, that a bird poop hit me.  I laughed out loud.  Perhaps it was Arta visiting me afterall.

Can you spot the birds?

Update:  here is a video with their chirping sound

Can I interview you, you handsome lad!

 Ok. Ill explain. 

Text to audio. 

So, what happened is this.  I took Betty and Michael to watch Alice's tournament because Alice had an end of Season tournament. Um, only a small thing in the building in the club. She's not on one of the bigger teams. She played against groups of other players with different jerseys showing teams, so she had to play five or 10 little games over the course of 3 hours. While sitting there, I was trying to Yelp and holler and. Give her as much positive feedback as possible. Michael Betty and I were sitting. Near a walkway.

As we were watching the game a small voice from behind us, said. Can I interview you? I turned around and it was five little girls. Purple jerseys, one holding her phone towards Michael. She repeated. Can I interview you? I looked at Michael and he said, huh?

01:34

I said can they? Can they interview you? He said, oh, oh, oh, okay.

01:43

The girls proceeded to say In small little voices. Boyfriend or brother?

He looked at them, confused. They said it again, boyfriend or brother? I looked at him and said, is Alice, your sister or your girlfriend? Michael said, oh, oh.

Oh, brother.

After Michael Had answered that question. There were no more words exchanged and the girls ran down the hallway giggling. Hehehehehehehehe

After this all happened. Half an hour later, Grandma Joan came in to watch some of Alice's volleyball games. To which I? Told the whole wonderful story trying to embarrass Michael and make him smile. And then half an hour after that Grandpa Chris came into the gym. To watch Alice's volleyball, and I told him the whole story trying to make Michael blush.

03:11

And that's the end of the story.

This is a small clip of talking to him right after it happened. I love that he leaned his head over onto my shoulder. 

Everyone Loves Mary - 50th Birthday Celebration

 On Saturday, February 8th, 2025, Mary's Ottawa area friends held a EVERYONE LOVES MARY 50th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION. There was no way I was missing that.  Best part was that it was a surprise party.  Naomi, Axel and Nadie organized a dinner and pottery party at one of the local studios where Mary works.  

Here are some photos of Hebe and I after our surprise arrival. It's hard to surprise Mary, but I think we did.  She might have sprung a leak in her eyes, briefly.

Hebe and I brought a few treats from Montreal.  First, Arta's birthday placements. Second lemon squares and Arta's famous Mrs Field's Cookies.  Life just isn't a party without the table setting and cracking out the best dishes. Sugary treats don't hurt.

As each person arrived at the studio, they got a similar greeting to the one we had when we arrived. "I can't believe you are here.  What a surprise.  It's so great to see you."   Someone finally noted, "I thought I was Mary's best friend", to a full room of Mary's best friends.

Here are a few photos of all the EVERYONE LOVES MARY best friends.

Everyone who attended got to make a pottery heart for Mary to hang on a stand in her garden.  Check out some of the creations below.

Of course there was also some "feting" that went on.  I didn't get photos of everyone who gave a roast/toast.  But here are a few images.

I learned a lot of amazing things about Mary from her friends.  Things I already knew about her character, but in story form.  Stories of how Mary's empathy, kindness, perceptiveness, openness, friendliness and joy had touched and changed them.  Wow. EVERYONE REALLY DOES LOVE MARY, with good reason.

Here was my addition to the fete.  5 Haikus for Mary on her 50th Birthday.

Feel free to leave your own Haiku to Mary in the comments.

Welcome to the antique club Mary.  50th is fabulous.

Love Catherine

Sing-a-long

I'm not sure if this should be the 'miranda broke her arm' post, or the sing-a-long post.  Take note, miranda broke her arm.  Terribly.  She's been laying in the bed healing for a week, and it'll be a couple of weeks before I think that she'll be self sustaining in terms of self care.  Cleaning, opening jars, pulling power cables out of the wall, picking up anything over 1lb.

Ok, I'm doing a quick post on last night.  I've been in a deep survival mode for this past week or ten days.  The community is supporting us even when I have a difficult time accepting help.

Last night, I had "Wonka" with Timothée Chalamet playing in the kitchen as children came home from their activities.  I had it playing, but in french.   

Rejoins-moi

Et tu seras

Dans un monde de pure imagination

It was really uplifting for me, and I was forcing the kids to hear french.  So double fun on my end... probably +1 and -1 for them.  A wash.

As we were starting to get ready for bed at 9:00, Betty pulled out this karaoke microphone stand that she was gifted last christmas.  When you plug it in, it has disco lights that flash to the ceiling, and a little microphone to give that 'rock star' feeling.

She started this thing, and started with 'popular' from wicked.  That drew in Alice to sing beside her.  So of course I start trying to catch some of this on a phone.  I recorded as many of the songs as I could.  Alice knew, and would try to move out of frame most of the time.  Then she came to declare to me "That is only for you and mom.  Nobody else gets to see it!!!".  Ok, I say.  Ok....  

It was the most uplifting time that I've had in months or longer.  Hearing their little voices do 'Suddenly Seymore' from little shop of horrors does especially wonderful things to my heart.  I had to shut it down at 10:00.  We'd been singing for an hour and there is school tomorrow.  I'll share photos as well.  These photos are of the sunset as I was driving home last night.  Also of the drive to school this morning.  If I drive them I usually require one selfie and one group selfie before I'll let them out of the car to go into school.

As I'm uploading these videos I see that youtube is calling them 'restricted' based on copyright.  So I'm not sure how long they'll stay up.  I don't think that Beyonce needs to get paid for my kids singing 'I'm a survivor'.  We'll see if the videos of us doing karaoke stay up.