We’ve just come home from our summer road trip to Montreal. It was a wonderful time, and now I’m plunged into a week of unpacking/ school prep/ union negotiations/ baby’s first day (ever!) of daycare. I have trip recaps coming from our road trip…and I have to finish the Shenandoah recaps too. Whew. It feels like there was a lot of travel there, but I think we’ve just packed two trips into the end of the summer because the 10 year old’s swim team schedule took up much of June and July.
The weeks before we went to Montreal felt really packed. I had the two little kids with me for one week and then all three with me the next week. I had all sorts of fun plans for the week with the three kids, but then I got sick. Not COVID sick, thankfully, but aches, pains, sore throat, persistent cough, and low energy. And then at the end of the week, I got pink eye. I felt so sad to have to cancel the fun family plans that we had, but I think the kids were just as happy to hunker on the couch with me and binge watch Ugly Betty. (A show that I never watched when it was on air, because I didn’t have a tv then, but is really delightful.) Also, I discovered that HBO co-produced a Chinese version of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries called Miss S. It is set in 1930s Shanghai, so I also watched that to brush up on my Chinese and scratch the Miss Fisher itch. Miss S, was better at the brushing up than at the scratching of the itch. I think there are some cultural differences that make the Chinese version feel a little more superficial and melodramatic than the original. The costumes and the people, however, are just as gorgeous.
At any rate, before I got sick, we still managed to squeeze in some fun adventures with the kids. I knew we were going on a big trip, so I didn’t feel like I had to get too ambitious, and at the same time, I knew that getting the kids out of the house was going to be important to everyone’s well being. It turns out there are so many little adventures to have near home that require very little prep. Either they fit in a morning and we can be home for a late lunch, or I throw together a simple lunch (PB&J sandwiches, cucumbers, fruit, and some trail mix or cookies) and take it with.
Patapscoe State Park and A Day playing in the River then stop at Spicknall’s Farm Stand – I think this is one of my favorite day trips during the weekday. The river is always shady and quiet, there aren’t a lot of people. There is a fun bridge to cross over to get to the river, and the river is nice and shallow and cool. We were dog sitting the day we went, and I think we all had a very relaxing day. We spent a few hours at the river and then stopped at the playground at the park before heading home. On the way home we picked up some produce from Spicknall’s farm stand – peaches, melons, squash, eggplant, corn, and tomatoes. I’m always so surprised by how inexpensive the summer produce is when you get out of the city/suburbs.
Library for morning story time then books and a park – There is a children’s library near us that has the best story times. The librarian always does some songs and fingerplay activities as well as reads the funniest books in the funniest voices. This library is just for children so inside is all picture books and toys. It makes for an easy outing – 9:30am story time, then inside the library for an hour or so, then we walk to the park ten minutes away to play for a while. Typically there is little bakery nearby that we will walk to to get a treat, but it was closed the day we were at the library. So the kids immediately decided that we would just have to come back for storytime/library/park again. The baby has taken to saying, “I want to go back there tomorrow!” anytime we do something she likes and then have to leave.
Glen Echo Park for Carousel Rides and the Aquarium – We got wristbands to ride the carousel all day, but turns out the five year old was not as enamored of carousels as the baby. The baby would probably be happy to ride it all day. The five year old could only be convinced to ride three times. We also got tickets to to go to the aquarium. It’s a small affair – just one room of tanks, mostly focusing on the sea life of the Chesapeake Bay. Even still, we spent about an hour there. There was also a touch tank with horseshoe crabs and other creatures. And then outside the aquarium, a big sand pit to play in. We only did a half day at Glen Echo, but next time, I might also get tickets for the puppet show and stay longer.
The National Building Museum – With so many free museums in DC, it is easy for this one to fall off my radar because it does charge admission, but it is worth it. It is actually a really great museum for kids, though, and there are some really neat exhibits about architecture and building. Every summer they do a huge installation exhibit in their great hall – one year they converted the space into a huge lawn with fake grass and hammocks, one year it was a beach. This year, in a joint venture with a theatre company, they installed a theatre – Playhouse, they call it. During the evening the theatre company has been performing A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I thought it would be fun to go see the space and this theatre. We missed the tour so couldn’t go backstage, but we could look at the space from the audience and from above. The Building Museum also has a great Play/Work/Build room where kids can build with big and little foam blocks. There was also an interactive/ Virtual reality Notre Dame exhibit where you got a tablet and walked into a room with pictures of Notre Dame, and you could point the tablet at the QR code on the pictures and get at 360 degree view of what it was like when Notre Dame was being built. Pretty cool, and very high tech. There were a couple other exhibits that we didn’t get to see, so I do want to go back. We took the metro down, which always makes things seem like an even bigger adventure.
Two Dollar Tuesdays at the Regal Movie Theatre – This was one of the outings I took the kids on when I was still feeling run down, but not so run down that I wanted to stay home since we had been home for two days straight already. Regal Theatres does $2 Tuesday matinees during the summer of older movies, so I took the kids to see the third How to Train Your Dragon movie. (It was either that or Trolls.) After parking, popcorn, and soda it really wasn’t as frugal an adventure as I had thought it would be, to be honest. Yet, the movie was pretty good, and it was the baby’s first time at a movie theatre. The theatre was a little more crowded than I had thought – when I reserved my tickets the theatre only had a handful of seats occupied, but when we got there there were several summer camp groups. Oh well… I feel like it still felt like a classic summer adventure – popcorn and Sprite and a movie in an chilly air conditioned theatre on a hot hot day. I had a good time.
And of course – parks, playgrounds, and playdates.
Some other thoughts that came into my life in that past little while:
-I love Carolyn Hax’s advice column, and there were two things she wrote recently that really struck me – so much so that I screen shot them and saved them to my phone:
I think I’ve been struggling lately with expectations – of myself, of my kids, of my husband, of my work. Hax also had one column where she said that “All anger and resentment lie in the gap between expectation and reality.” It may sound defeatist to stop expecting change, yet I think there is a fine line between giving up your expectation that someone/something will change and being realistic about the future and acting accordingly. There are so many things, I think “Oh if only it were this way or that way, it would be better!” And perhaps I need to shift to accepting these things and seeing them for what they are and work with that.
– Perhaps in that same vein of expectations and adjusting, this quote via swissmiss, is so very true, I think:
-I thought this Wordle especially ironic as I solved it at the park while getting eaten alive by mosquitoes:
On that note – I’ve been shifting my Wordle strategy lately. When I started, I would try to build off the previous word I played and try to solve in as few steps as possible, but lately I’ve been trying to fully suss out all the letters before guessing the word – so I try to play as many letters as possible in the first three lines. Sometimes this method is more efficient, but it always pains me a little to play a word that I know will be wrong in the hopes of discovering more letters. There’s something a little poignantly sacrificial about that tactic. Well… any other Wordle tactics I should try?
-One day, when I was sick and hunkering on the couch in the basement, the Husband brought home take out for dinner. In anticipation of his arrival, I sent the kids upstairs to set the table. They were soon back, claiming to have accomplished the task. Skeptical, I sent the five year old up with my phone. “Take a picture for me!” I said. And he did:
I don’t know why this picture delights me so much, but it does.
-The picture at the top of this post is just a picture of the sky. It’s been such a beautiful shade of blue these first few weeks of August. It’s not quite captured in the picture, but I wanted to remember that such a blue exists.
What We Ate, the pre-vacation, minimal shopping version:
Monday: Happy Hour with my mom’s group so I had nachos at the local brewery.
Tuesday: Tomato and Corn Tart and Salad. The tart is loosely based on this recipe. I had picked up tomatoes and corn from the market and wanted to make the full recipe, but the way the day went, I didn’t have time to make the cornmeal crust, so I used puff pastry. I’ve decided frozen puff pastry is a freezer staple that allows me to instantly pull off a fancy-ish dinner. Throw some sauteed veggies in a pastry crust with some cheese and egg. Bake. An easy elegant dinner in less than 45 mins.
Wednesday: eggplant snow peas stir fry – kitchen sink kind of dinner to use up some veggies in the fridge.
Thursday: Grilled sausage, corn and hotdogs with bagged Caesar Salad and cut up melon. We had a friend over for dinner and grilling is always the perfect easy meal for impromptu casual dinner with friends.
Friday: Pizza and Thor
Saturday: Farro and Snap Pea Salad from Dinner Illustrated. I was trying to use up some veggies and happened to have everything to make this salad.
Sunday: Dumplings and green beans. One of our go-to simple weekend dinners.
Monday: Spaghetti and Meatballs. A request from the kids. I used the InstantPot meatball recipe from Bare Minimum Dinners – so easy.
Tuesday: Take out Burgers and fries.
Wednesday: Chilaquiles, sort of. Another kitchen sink meal (can you tell I was trying to eat down the fridge before we left on vacation?). I wanted to do something to use up the package of corn tortillas in the fridge and the Husband had grown some corn in the garden that he wanted us to eat. There was a recipe from Bare Minimum Dinners for chilaquiles which was pretty much just salsa and tortilla chips and eggs. So I fried up all the corn tortillas – they turned out really really tasty and we almost ate them all on their own. Then I looked in the fridge and turns out we were out of salsa, so I dumped canned tomatoes, onion, and peppers in a skillet, added a can of black beans and the corn and cracked some eggs into the whole concoction to poach. It was kind of a combination of chilaquiles and shakshuka.
Thursday: Tortellini and red sauce and Alfredo sauce. I was trying to use up some cream, hence the Alfredo sauce. But then I realized I could actually just freeze the cream and use it when I got back. The Alfredo sauce was pretty tasty, though.
“All anger and resentment lie in the gap between expectation and reality.” – Amen to this. Couldn’t agree more.
Also, we’ve only done movie theatres a few times with the kids, but I really love the experience. I’m not sure why (I never went to the movies as a kid, so maybe I’m excited to share that adventure with them since I didn’t have it as a kid, myself?). It feels so much more exciting than watching a movie at home. I wish we had Toonie movies around here?!
Montreal is such a great city; I lived there for the summer after my first year of college and have such great memories of my time. I HATED my job and lived for the weekends, but got to do so many fun adventures. It’s beautiful and so rich with history and culture.
LOVED Montreal! I feel like living in a great city even with a job you hate is one of those quintessential post-college things you do. When I was young, I always thought that New York was the place to do it, but now I feel like it’s too big of a city for me. Montreal seems the perfect size for a big city living experience.