Blogging about music, family life, the outdoors, unschooling and everything else

for more than a quarter century

Category: Day in the life

  • Spring Forward

    The time changed yesterday and today it felt like spring. Spring has been teasing us for at least a month. Yes, a month, since the beginning of February. We’ve had almost no winter this year and almost no snow since the week of Christmas. I’m grieving the missed skiing. But at some point you just […]

  • Artisanal day trip

    I had to go pick the van up. With our family shrinking, and the monthly trips to Calgary no longer happening, my desire for a more winter-worthy minivan is no longer a pressing need. We decided to put some work into the Sienna. I took it in to get the catalytic converter replaced to fix […]

  • My working parent day

    Today I felt like a working parent. I packed all three kids off to school, went to work, picked them up in time to start juggling the after-school activities and homework. Yes, all three are at school this week. Fiona is busy finishing up the series art workshops that have been offered to homeschooled students […]

  • March Break for Fiona

    March Break, the one- or two-week spring schools holiday, has never had much to do with us, other than loosening up our out-of-home activities schedule. But with Sophie in school full-time, and Noah part-time, it’s gained relevance this year. Those two headed off to Montreal to visit their big sister. And that has made Fiona […]

  • Festivus

    Erin arrived from China a week ago. She’d been there on tour with her orchestra and was on her way back to Montreal, by way of “home” in the Kootenays for a week or so. She had picked up a killer cold in China and spent the better part of the week recovering from that […]

  • Soap and teenagers

    The soap has cured! We’ve wrapped it up in salvaged tissue paper and ribbon, to keep it protected until use by us or others. While the lavender buds turned a less-than-fetching brown in the alkaline environment, the basic marbled green of the soap is nice to look at, and the mixture of lavender and rosemary […]

  • Role reversals

    Erin, normally the obsessive music-practicer of the family, is spending her days playing computer games. Noah, normally the obsessive computer-game player of the family, is spending his days baking and practicing viola. Sophie, typically one of the more social members of the family and often the baker, is spending copious time in her bedroom in […]

  • Trail running

    It’s been a lovely Nothing Day, one of those precious days with nothing scheduled. Some science bookwork got done, a lot of Harry Potter got read, bureau drawers got sanded, primed and painted, the pond got emptied and cleaned, a few loaves of bread got baked, some music got made, compost got spread on the […]

  • Car Free Day

    I wonder why we haven’t done this in forever? The Sienna gets a day off to enjoy the spring-like sunshine. Our biggest challenge in trying to reduce our environmental footprint has always been in the realm of transportation. We live miles (or depending on how you define it, hours of miles) from anything. There is […]

  • Ski Day

    It was a family ski day. Chuck had to go to Nelson but the rest of us headed to the ski hill 30 minutes north, a small family-friendly hill. It has a handful of runs (one easy, a few intermediate, a few expert), a short steep T-bar and about 500 vertical feet of drop. No […]

  • Four for four

    It was a proud mom day full of accomplishments. Fiona and Sophie spent their third day on downhill skis with the school’s field trip program. This time I went along. They’re skiing fabulously! Sophie got moved up to the intermediate group after only one day and is carving nice parallel turns. Fiona is zipping all […]

  • Bed stars

    My little one has turned 8. What an amazing person she is. So affable, curious, capable, thoughtful, resilient, incisive. Easy. And bright. Wow. I made her a couple of gifts. One was a hardcover journal modelled after the books in her favourite TV series ever, the 21st-century re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica. That was fun to […]

  • Goodbye holidays

    Erin emerged from the basement yesterday and asked “When can we go somewhere?” It takes a lot to get that introvert to the point where she’s wishing for a social outing of some sort. It’s been that kind of holiday break, though. We all needed a dose of home-bodying. We had a lot of travel […]

  • Holidays

    I slept in this morning! We were up late last night, and today had absolutely nothing scheduled. Last night was the community choir concert. Sophie is doing her first season with the ensemble. Unfortunately she was put in the middle riser so that her sense of pitch could help those in the first row. Which […]

  • This girl’s a keeper

    It was Erin & Noah’s last Corazón rehearsal of the year, and I needed to do grocery shopping, buy dog food, help Fiona with her Christmas shopping and do my own last-minute gift-garnering. Roads were slushy, and nights come early these days. It was a Tuesday I wasn’t looking forward to, especially since Chuck had […]