This weekend, team Gong Show took our act to Montreal. It was chaotic, chronically behind schedule (as much as we ever schedule anything), and lots of fun. We came home feeling like a team that just won the big trophy.
We'd been meaning to visit Aunt Olive in Lachine for a while; she's not too far away and apparently a load of fun. She's also pushing 90, so we figured we'd better take the kids to meet her sooner than later.
So we concocted a plan to pop over to Montreal, see "Tante Oh-Leev", stay in a hotel WITH A POOL, and visit the Biodome. Good clean, kidlet-friendly fun.
We aimed to leave on Saturday around noon or so. In true form, we hit the road at 2 PM. (Thanks to McPie for doing all the prep so I could go on a big 18 km run.) We had to stop on the way to buy a bathing suit for Constance who is constantly growing out of them. (She's grown AN INCH since February.) The whole way, we battled "kids in the back seat together" (if you have siblings, you know what I'm talking about) and potential car sickness. We arrived at Aunt Olive's two hours late, and C had to go straight to bed with a nervous stomach (she's not one for car trips, and planes are even worse. We think is psychosomatic, but that remains to be seen.)
Aunt Olive is awesome. She plied us with cocktails and delicious tortière, patiently humoured Ben on his need to watch TV because there was nothing to play with. She worried over poor Constance, and in a classic move, she slipped both kids fivers on the way out. She also assured us that 90 year olds still talk about sex (usually over drinks at the Legion), but generally can't be bothered to have it. Now we know. I had seriously been wondering about that.
Sunday was breakfast in the hotel restaurant, swimming in the pool, watching Teletoons, and the Biodome. We even ate lunch at the cafeteria there, AND got to pick out souvenirs from the gift shop. How's that for adventure?!
(I'd never been to the Biodome before - it was pretty cool. Ben was pretty much swinging from the trees with the monkeys with energy, so we kind of whizzed through the place. We did enjoy a satisfying tête-à-tête with a beaver - I'm convinced that the beaver has to be the largest rodent ever. At least, the well-fed buddy at Biodome was bigger than the capybara we saw...)
Towards the end of drive home (during which there was much napping), we heard a little Ben voice pipe up from the back seat:
"It was a big day, huh, Dad?"
Go team!
8 comments:
sounds all so accomplished and fun. well done!
Accomplished? At least we managed to keep everyone from starving and/or peeing their pants (barely). ;-)
did you know that Lachine was named by the voyaguers that left from there every spring to paddle more than half way to frikkin Edmonton and back again. As a kick in the pants ha-ha to the explorers who were so convinced the North West Passage was just around the corner.
With that sense of humour, those voyageurs sound like they could be ancestors or Aunt Olive. Like, maybe, great grandparents.
Hey, if you had your own blog, you wouldn't have to leave comments as "anonymous".
I'm so sorry I hogged the conversation the other day and I didn't get to hear all about your trip en famille.
if I had a blog, I would say:
"ironically, Hummers are good in snow."
Anonymous, is your boss on your ass again?
gnaw, gnaw.
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