Happy Canada Day!

Happy Canada Day yesterday!

Yesterday, July 1, was Canada Day. All you Canadians know that, of course, but maybe not all you Yankees? Being in a different country, we were alone in our celebrations, but donned our red and white and made the day a special one anyway. We headed to the park and Ethan got some practice riding his bike, we picked up lunch at Subway and ate it at the park, and then played at the playground. We ended the excursion with ice cream. It sounds like it should have been an idealic day. Why do my plans always go awry?

First of all, we got a slow start to the day. My fault, mostly, because I should have gotten up at a decent time instead of waiting for the kids to wake up first. After we managed to squander a good part of the morning, we finally made it to Subway. Lunch was uneventful, thankfully. The second problem was that Ethan was afraid of his bike. Every time we went over 2 seconds an hour, he thought he was going too fast and jumped off his bike. Our "short" walk took us over an hour. Kaitlyn was making loud protests from her perch in the stroller because we were going too slow. By the time we finally made it to the playground, we didn't have all that much time left to play. The next wrench in the works was that Ethan kept needing to go number 2 while we were at the park, but everytime we made it to the sweltering outhouses, he didn't have to go anymore. That made for a lot of running back and forth to the portapotties. Not exactly the kind of exercise I was planning for us to get. We headed back for the LONG bike ride back to the car. Kaitlyn fell asleep. Now I had another dilema. Do I wake her up to put her in the carseat to go home and hope she falls back to sleep? I decided against this option and chose to reward Ethan with ice cream for staying on his bike the whole way back. The ice cream shop was within walking distance, so we ditched the bike at the car and walked over. We had ice cream cones. Delicious looking and sounding wonderful on a hot day. Except that it was a hot day. And ice cream melts. And the 4 year old had ice cream dripping all over him and down his arms and he started to throw a fit. Then he needed to go the bathroom again. Then Kaitlyn woke up. Ethan was still throwing a fit. Kaitlyn was crying because she hasn't slept long enough. I threw in the towel. We ditched the ice cream, I hauled the screaming kids back to the car, and we went home. I tried vainly to get them both to have another nap. No such luck. Tom came home to two crabby kids and crabby wife. Ahh, another wonderful day! Happy Canada Day!