Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Long Weekend Festivities!

Last weekend was the Canada Day long weekend. To us this is the first real weekend of the summer.

We spent the weekend doing all sorts of fun family stuff.

Friday night we all went out for a round of mini golf at the new course in town. For some reason my kids seem to think that mini golf is a race. They call out, "I'm first!" and then try to take a shot at the same time. Each kid jockeying for position by stepping in front of the previous one. By the time the last kid was in position they were halfway to the hole. It was hard to determine if they were getting the ball in the hole in 20 strokes or 1. Does it count as a new stoke if the ball never actually comes to rest? We ended up not even attempting to mark their scores. At a couple of points they ended up a good two holes ahead of Jules and myself and we had to call them back.

Mini golfing with these kids is the ultimate test of patience. In addition to the regular obstacles on each hole we are faced with six feet, three putters and three balls that are constantly moving all over the artificial grass. It never failed, you'd get past the intended obstacles just fine and be heading towards the hole, when out of nowhere comes a size 2 flip flop to block your path. Despite all odds we had a good time and nobody got hurt. All those putters flying around at head level and not a single lost tooth.

After golf we decided to head to the DQ for some ice cream. Nothing more relaxing than that! Of course it could have been more relaxing if the kids weren't yelling, "Look at the Old Lady" out the van window to the car parked about a foot away from us. #1 informed us that old ladies probably eat cold coffee and pills flavored Blizzards. Apparently those are their favorite things to eat.

Saturday I took the kids to the library. This was fairly uneventful. The best part was watching the kids trying to get on the downward escalator. If you have ever seen the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas it looked a lot like the scene where Thompson's Samoan Attorney was trying to get off the merry-go-round bar. You would think they were about to parachute out of an airplane or something.

That night we went out to the park. We were trying out a new park that we had never visited before. We pulled up and there were only two kids there. It was awesome. Lots of space and really cool stuff. We must have looked like we were having a good time because, next thing you knew there were fifty kids swinging and climbing all over the place. It looked like the monkey house at the zoo times 20. Stupid kids! We ended up going to another park before someone got kicked in the face.

Sunday Jules took #1 and #2 to see Shrek the Third. Since #3 had already seen it she stayed home with me and played some hide-and-seek.

After supper I took the kids to the Canada Day festivities at the Riverbank Discovery Center. We checked out the Reptiles exhibit, played in the sand, fooled around on the dock and listened to a live funk band. All the while the kids made sure to point out all of the "ugly" and "fat" people in a not so discrete fashion. At 11:00 the main event, the fireworks, started. They lasted for about 15 minutes and then we raced to the van to get the hell out of there before the traffic snarl started. We managed to avoid most of the traffic but still took 30 minutes to make a 5 minute trip.

Monday we went to the pool. This was my first trip to the pool this year and so my torso was still a nice milky white. We put sun screen on the kids because it was calling for an 8 on the UV index. I however, didn't feel the need for sun screen as I am a manly man. After a couple of hours at the pool we decided to drive up to the lake and have a cook out.

A couple of more hours of swimming at the lake and the sun had really taken it's toll on my fish-belly complexion. Maybe I should have used some sun screen after all. It seems that my manly manliness did nothing to block the suns damaging UV rays. My entire torso was a bright, vibrant red while my sides remained nice and white where my arms were. If I'd had a red maple leaf in the middle of my side I would have looked just like the Canadian flag. I guess it was a fitting end to the Canada Day long weekend.

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