Finish up summer

Next year, I need to remember to spread out the trips, and plan something for Labour Day weekend.  I feel a bit like I had packed in all our adventures (and spent all our money) in July, so August dragged a bit with the kids getting on each others nerves (and mine) - sometimes, you just have to stay home to get things done.  I put the kids went into a few camps, soccer camp for the mornings and a Grouse Mountain Day camp, during which I was able to hike up the Grind then continue up to Goat Mnt.

Some of our activities: We went to Second beach for a swim day, we went to visit Cindy and Teddy and swam in her Mom's pool, we had a family picnic at Cates park, we went to the top of Grouse and watched the Lumberjack show (4 times this summer!), we met up with the Sherwin's at Lynn Canyon, we went to Go Bananas and we had playdates with friends.

I started looking into camping options for the long weekend before school started, but we were too late to reserve anywhere decent and I decided first-come-first-serve sites were too risky.  Besides, I felt like I had used up all my "planning activities" reserves and we decided to just chill.  Jeff got tix to the Richmond Oval Experience, so we checked that out, but it turned out the climbing gym was closed that day, so we went out for dinner at Earl's instead.

And that was summer 2016.  I know there are Moms that don't want the summer to end and they love all the time they can spend time with their babies and they are sad to send their kids back to school.  I confess, I am not one of those Moms.  I have stuff to do!  I can't get anything done with my kids always needing to go to the skate park and to go swimming and go biking and playdates and camping and Science World and refereeing their arguments and to playgrounds and whatever their hearts desires might be.  Yup, I was ready for school to start.  Maybe it was the heavy weight on my mind that I hadn't spent more than an hour or two all summer working on my house design and I want to get it in for building permit by November... speaking of which, gotta stop blogging and get to work!

Family Time and Alone time

Of course, while Jeff and I were off in the mountains, my boys were pawned off to generous and kind people.  My Mom had Max and Simon for 4 days, taking them to gymnastics camp a couple times and then to play with cousins.  Then for a day and night, Max and Simon joined Callum at Cindy and Teddy's, with whom he had gone to Eliza island for a night with them.  They seemed to have had a perfectly great time without their parents and Simon even managed to get over a lot of his fear of dogs while spending time at Cindys' with their dog Toby.

So, we got home on the Friday evening, chilled out Saturday, then left Sunday morning to spend some family time in Whistler for a couple days.  The weather wasn't super great, but it didn't rain enough to keep us indoors.  We spent a lot of time at the awesome BMX track, swimming in the hotel pool, and some playground time.

Simon is still fairly cautious on his bike and was mostly just observing at the BMX track, though he was getting more brave, little by little.  He did not, however, feel up to the task of riding his bike around Lost Lake.  I let Jeff go ahead with the other boys while I had the pleasure of listening to Simon express his horrifying hatred of hills and gravel and me.  We did finally get moving to the point where we met up with his brothers at the "Toad Migration" area.

The Rio Olympics had started while we were there and I thought it was funny that we were watching them in Olympic Plaza in Whistler.

And treat time at the Candy store.

The rest of the week was pretty low-key - a few playdates and I can't remember what else.  I decided to try a tour-de-Stanley-Park with the boys one day, riding our bikes around the seawall to the various stops.  We made it only as far as the waterpark before stopping for over 3.5 hrs to play.  Other than Simon having another moment of expressing his horrifying hatred of people and narrow trails and me, we eventually made it all the way around and met Jeff at Second Beach for a picnic sushi dinner.

That evening, after our picnic, I abandoned my family to catch the ferry to Lansdale.  I planned to spend the weekend at Kim's place in Gibsons, as my birthday present to myself!  Kim and Adam were there for some of it, but I did a little workout and read and slept in and swam in the ocean and had a nap in the sunshine and, well, sigh, it was lovely.

I also hiked up Mt.Elphinstone, which ended up being slightly longer than I expected, but I've been slowly working my up in distance, time and elevation gain, trying to get myself to the point where I can do Howe Sound Crest trail in a day.  This was MT.Elphinstone from the top: