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: