We all just got back from our Canada trip and it was a good time. It was very nice to get away from work and the stresses of the project.
I arrived a bit late in Toronto, since our plane was more than 1 hour delayed. Not sure why it was delayed, but I think it was technical reasons, or because a connecting plane was late. Anyways, I think I heard that we were using a different plane, which was good because it meant I was still able to go to Canada – I had fears the flight would be cancelled and restarted the next day!
I headed right to St. Catharines to spend some time with the kids and Nicole and her Mum. I got right back on schedule with the jet lag, which was good. The kids had changed so much since I had seen them off 5 weeks ago. Evan had changed slightly – he seemed bigger in general to me. Lauren on the other hand had big changes in those 5 weeks. Her hair was longer and perhaps lighter than I remembered. But she was speaking so much!!! She could pretty well re-iterate everything we said to her, and was coming up with sentences of her own, like “Dinner time, go home” or “how are you?”. Simply amazing. When she had left, she could really only say “Mumma, Dada, Bubba, ta”. Now she had a full vocabulary!
On the first day back, Nicole and the kids went off to visit some friends in Toronto, so I stayed back and did some shopping. It’s very difficult finding shoes of my size (13) in Japan, and in general trousers are difficult to find as well, so I stocked up on shoes (I left my pair behind that I was wearing because they were pretty well dead, and the day before my work shoes died as well) and a few trousers and dress shirts. That meant I was pretty well good to go for clothes and didn’t have to do any more shopping on the trip.
On Wednesday morning, we went to Luba’s for the family photo session. It was pretty good and in general was over very quickly. Both Lauren and Evan did really well in front of the camera, but Lauren particularly enjoyed herself. All the pictures were pretty good, with some of them being our favourites.
On Thursday we drove to Sherway gardens, where we met up with my parents and drove up to Midland. On Friday Fumio arrived from Japan and we had dinner and drinks afterwards. On Saturday, Bim, Vas and Maya came up to see me, and Nicole, Fumio and Evan went to Parry Sound to take a boat ride. It was great seeing Bim and the family again, and Maya has completely grown up! Neither Bim nor Vas had changed at all! Fozzie and family were in BC, otherwise it would have been good to catch up with them as well.
The next day, Evan, Fumio, Dad and myself (the boys!) went out saying for an overnight. I wanted Nicole, Lauren and Mum to come too, but none of the girls thought it was a good idea (Lauren wasn’t fussed). Nevertheless, we went and had a great time. Evan did very well with the sailing and wasn’t too fussed when we were healing. He didn’t like to come out of the cockpit too much when sailing, but he seemed to enjoy things. He wore his lifejacket the whole time and didn’t fuss once! Amazing!
We brought our fishing rod with us and Evan loved playing with it. We put it into the water while we were sailing, hoping to catch something, but we never did.
We had two mishaps in the sailing. The first was a sheet knot had gotten loose, and when we pulled in the line, it pressed against the dodger and broke 2 of the cleats, but Dad was able to fix those later. The second was that a sheet had gotten loose on the jib, and I ran up to hold the remaining one while we pulled in the sail, but I guess a loose sheet hit me in the face and knocked my glasses into the water so the next thing I knew was that I couldn’t see anything! Bugger. Evan cried when he heard that I lost my glasses (probably from Dad’s expression of “oh no!”), but I rationalised it with him and he soon stopped. He was just concerned for me.
We arrived in Pointe au Barrille in Georgian bay around 5pm or so and had enough time to go for a swim, do some fishing, cook dinner (steak) and then have some drinks. Evan still loved to fish, so we put the line in a for a bit. We didn’t catch anything, but we had some little fish nibble on our line for a bit, so that provided a bit of excitement!
Evan did very well with swimming. He had his lifejacket on and he swam all on his own from the stern of the boat, to the bow of the boat where the anchor was. The water was very warm and it was very nice to swim in. The water was quite dark though, and someone told us afterward we must have been swimming in soup, but that’s ok, we had fun! We also had enough time to go out in the dinghy and hoon around some islands.
The next morning when we woke up, there was a fine mist over the water. The air was quite cool, so that’s probably what created all the mist, but it was quite magical. We were up before the sun reached over the trees, so there were streaks of light shining through the trees and mist, it was quite impressive.
We made bacon and eggs (the bacon was almost all fat, so we didn’t get much meat unfortunately) but I think Fumio and the family liked it.
We sailed back and Evan had a good time on the way home. Unfortunately he fell asleep inside the cabin around 1/2 hour before we were to land, so he was a bit grumpy when he got up. He was really glad to see Mummy, Oma and Lauren and he seemed really proud of his sailing, fishing and overnight trip.
The next day, Nicole and Fumio drove back to St. Catharines where they did fun tourist things for the next few days and I took care of the kids. We had lots of fun in Midland though and went to the beach every day. The kids loved the beach and spent a lot of time in and out of the water. Lauren had her water wings (and a lifejacket one day) and she did so well all on her own. She didn’t want me to hold on to her and she kicked vigorously and did so well. Evan enjoyed having the lifejacket on, or going with out it. I had to take them out when I noticed they were cold, because they would have stayed in there the whole time! During this time, the kids and I got a lot of sun and the kids got a nice tan, while I got a good sunburn. Nothing too bad though.
Nicole’s Mum met us at the airport on the way out. The check-in guy mucked our tickets about and delayed us from getting our proper seats, which was a drag. He wasn’t very nice about the whole thing, so that put a bit of a damper on the last bit, but we had a nice time anyways. It was sad saying goodbye to the family and Nicole’s Mum but we’re planning on seeing each other in the next few months anyways, so we had a target to look forward to.
The flight home was uneventful and I got a fair amount of sleep with Evan next to me, but Lauren didn’t want to sleep, so she lost out a bit. We swapped places and for some reason, Lauren fell asleep on me, so Nicole got to sleep when Evan was sleeping.
It was nice getting back to our home in Yokohama after quite a trip. We had a good time, but it’s always nice coming home.