Birds of Canada, Lolly Pops, Ferris Wheels and other nonsequiturs

Wonderfulness

“Mom, can you digest things into your brain?” My seven year old quizzically asks.
Mom laughs and answers, “No.”
“Yes, I know you can. I digest ice cream through my brain,” chimes in my five year old, “that’s why I get brain freeze.”

Speaking of brain freeze, my five year old is more prone to it than his brothers and bangs the top of his head with his hand when it happens to “push it down” as he says. While eating ice cream as a family a couple of weeks ago, the baby started whining and touching his head. His empathetic brother came over to him and started bomping him on the head. Not figuring it out right away I stopped him and asked him what he thought he was doing and would he please stop, to which he replied, “The baby had brain freeze. I was just pushing it down for him.”

Oh, thank you dear one!

*****

Money Matters

Today the children were completing their chores and discussing the new idea of allowance. One of them decided that this would be a good time to count the money in their piggy banks. So I got stuck with the job of tabulating. I first counted the five year old’s money. He had a whopping $9.50. Wow!

Then I counted the seven year old’s money. He was crestfallen to find out that he only had $4.62 to his name and the tears began to well up. “I’m older. How can I have less money? It’s weird and it just doesn’t make sense (cents?).” I gently reminded him that he had spent $9.00 on a pack of markers about 6 months ago and once you spend money it’s pretty much gone forever. He recovered from the piggy bank induced trauma.

Next I counted the three year old’s money. I couldn’t believe when I saw that he didn’t just have small change in there but “big” change as well. You see we don’t have one dollar bills here in Canada. We have $1 coins and $2 coins. The $1 coin is referred to as the “Loonie” because it has a Loon embossed on the back. The $2 coin is lovingly named after it’s little brother, called the “Toonie.” As I counted I exclaimed, “Wow… you have a lot of money dude.” I found that my little guy had two Toonies and a Loonie and a good many quarters as well. He had $9.50. I asked him where he got all of this money and he replied, “From Grandpa.”

“Ooooohhh! See, there’s the ticket… ya gotta hang out with Grandpa more if you want to inherit his Canadian coins when he is about ready to head back home to the States!” Quickly I wanted to correct myself so that they didn’t have the idea that Grandpa was to be known hereafter as Grandpa Moneybanks or something so I said, “But Grandpa is not for money. What is Grandpa for?”

My five year old answered wonderfully, “Grandpa is for fun! He’s a fine Grandpa. He takes us to Val’s and on Grandpa walks and to camp… He’s a great Grandpa.”

*****

Heritage Park

So today we made our way through school work in the morning. Let me just say, it is not an easy transition to go from Summer holidays back into school mode. It’s hard on all of us. So we are easing our way back in until we are at full throttle. Dad went about his business and got lots of studying done, people visited with, and arrived home mid-afternoon, ready to spend some family time and rescue me as I was feeling particularly close to the edge of some evil precipice of certain doom. (Did I mention that the transition back into school can be a rough one?)

I suddenly felt that starting school in August is like rushing into winter, which I must say at approximately 6 months long is already plenty long enough. We decided to go to Heritage Park for a few hours where we enjoyed the old town general store, old fashioned rides, a paddle boat ride and a train ride. Ride ride ride. We decided to just buy a season pass as it pays for itself in only two visits and then you don’t feel so rushed about getting it all in on one day. (click on pictures to see larger version.)

Look at Mister Ride Operator. He looks rather sleepy don’t he? Some people got extra long rides today. ;^)

I took my oldest on his first ferris wheel ride too and I decided that somewhere along the line I have become an acrophobic. Perhaps it was the spinning pendulum of death ride that I went on at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk a couple of weeks ago. Anyways, I played like I liked it but when the wind blew and the cradle rocked I decided that one revolution was plenty. What a wimp I have become. Still love roller coasters though.

Mister Baby Head got to enjoy a little ride too. Swinging boats.

And then there were the horses. I love horses. I mostly love their lips and the sound they make when they are chomping. I love the sound of the chomping too. And I’ll be darned if I don’t love the smell of the chomping and the warm air that comes out of their nostrils while their chomping. **sigh**

You may consider this my ode to lolly pops. There’s nothin‘ like a good juicy lolly pop.

And now we come to those Canada birds mentioned in the title of this post. Just look at these two bathing beauties. I love Canada Geese.
Hey where are you going?! I guess they don’t so much like a paddle boat veering towards them. I love how the water curls so perfectly behind them as they begin to lift off. Birds are amazing.

And their up!

It was a short trip. They just wanted to join the gaggle of friends.

I hope you had a pleasant day. I thank my wonderful husband for rescuing me today and turning it into a nice memorable one. I felt like a damsel in distress, so rough was my morning and so rumpled my emotional state. I also thank him for not trying to climb into our second story window by hanging onto my hair. I would make a terribly picky damsel in distress I guess…