29
January
Wordless wednesday – broken bubbles
20
January
Going incognito
When our family travels, we tend to just blend into the background. If we ever get noticed, it is generally because of our super cute lils (as was often the case in India), or how unbelievably pale we, as a family, are. Almost every trip down south has us explaining that this IS a tan for any member of our family, and in my case, it most certainly counts as a tan when all of my freckles connect together. For the most part, though, we tend to be just another series of faces in the crowd.
It is almost never Willy who attracts any sort of attention. There was that one time in Jamaica, when I am sure that the airport authorities suspected that he was a drug dealer, given the looks that he was getting in the airport. In the end, I was the one that attracted the attention on that trip, as my luggage was searched three times before we were allowed to leave. I guess they just assumed that the long-haired hippie was using me as his drug mule!
He was quite surprised on our trip last week, when one of the employees at the hotel let him know that another guest was certain that he was a movie star! He laughed and denied it, then thought nothing of it. He didn’t even mention it to me; he was so sure that it was a joke. Then, on our last day at the resort, he was walking on the beach and someone came up to him and said “Hello, Mr. Movie Star.” Willy and I had a good laugh over this, and are quite stumped as to who people thought he was, looking like this:
16
January
Wordless wednesday – the rest of my favourites
7
January
It never hurts to ask
The past few weeks of this winter have been characterized by some freakish weather and storms in our region and those adjacent. Ice, snow, wind, we’ve had it all. While very little has affected our family directly, the weather has both played havoc with travel for many people that I know, and made me really appreciate the fact that we are heading to the beach this week.
At some point over the last two weeks, those two points connected in my brain and started to stress me out. Our flight is the first flight out of the airport, is routed through Toronto, and has a connection time of just over an hour. I began to play the worst case scenario game in my head, and came up with us losing every time. I knew that even the slightest delay on Friday morning, even for something simple like de-icing, could cause us to miss out connection to the south, and that the next flight on Air Canada arrived two days later after some funky, circumnavigate the globe type routing. I didn’t like the odds.
Much obsessive watching of the weather, complete with constant verbal updates must have had an impact on Willy, as he randomly offered to call the airline tonight and see what it would take to have us fly to Toronto on Thursday night. I sent him off to make the call, and finished putting the lils to bed. When I checked in with him, he’d been unsuccessful for over ninety minutes, as there was another storm working its “magic”, and Air Canada’s lines were constantly busy. We decided to call try one more time, this time to Air Canada Vacations, and happily he got through.
Once Willy was connected to an agent, he explained our fears, and the fact that we were travelling with young children, and asked if the first flight could be moved. “I’ll see what I can do”, she said, as she put Willy on hold. We fully expected to be charged for this, as was clearly stated on our agreement. While on hold, we talked about how much we were willing to pay, an amount I was mentally referring to as the value of my sanity in my head.*
When she came back, she named a price that couldn’t be beat – the change was to cost us nothing, even though there is no terrible weather forecast for the remainder of this week. We happily accepted and raced to make hotel reservations in Toronto, and plans for dinner with family. I am now super excited for a vacation that is starting one day earlier, and will last one day longer… except the part about having one less day to pack. Guess I should get started with that!
* FYI – it turns out that Willy was willing to pay more for my sanity, which is nice to know.*
3
January
Who is being fooled?
I like the fact that the lils believe in Santa Claus, and his ability to magically deliver presents to children all over the world. I know that we are essentially lying to them when we talk about him, but they are small and the Santa/Christmas myth doesn’t just have to be about commercialism and greed. I try not to lie directly, and ask them how they think it works when they ask specific questions. They come up with some pretty awesome answers, and mostly convince themselves that parts of the story are plausible.
That being said, I’ve suspected that Woo has been convincing himself that Santa exists for the last couple of years, but he tries really hard to believe. This year, I started to have my doubts about Goose. The first clue was at the Santa Claus parade. It was a magical snowy day, and the lils were having fun donating coins and getting free candy canes, but there were not terribly interested in when Santa would appear. He wasn’t really a big part of the experience for them. Then just before his sleigh appeared, we saw this guy:
“Hey!” said Goose, “There is Rudolph, or a guy in a Rudolph costume, actually.” No magic there.
Then a few weeks later, Goose came home and reported that Mr. Coombs had given their class candy canes at school that day. I remarked that that was nice, and thought nothing of it until I picked her up the next day, and the JK teacher asked if Goose has told me about Santa’s visit. I was surprised, as she had said nothing. The teacher laughed and told me that could be because her reaction when Santa walked in was to very loudly ask “What is Mr. Coombs doing in a Santa suit?!”
Then we went away for Christmas, and they got into the spirit; watching the chimney from the skylight in their room, prepping the Santa snacks and sprinkling reindeer food on the snow, and tracking Santa on NORAD’s website. It appeared that the magic was saved for one more year, until today, when they found the bag that I had stashed all the packaging from the gifts that went in their stockings, which had inadvertently been packed and brought home from Toronto. They looked through it, and it was clearly evident that this trash related to the gifts that “Santa” left in their stockings, yet no questions were asked. Is it possible that we are now the ones being fooled??
