Nov 3rd, 2013: Silka Loses her first tooth!

I was looking forward to an extra sleep on Sunday morning. The clocks went back an hour at 2 a.m. Alas, it was not to be. Silka ran into our bedroom at 7:30, now 6:30, and when I cracked one eyelid open, a bloody grin with a hole where a tooth once was filled my vision. She lost her first tooth and she had to share...

Rein Became a Hero to Many...

The frogs set free...

A bucketful of frogs...

Goodbye frog!

Rein looks on as they swim away.

They were rescued from our neighbour's window wells - who knew that they could be such
death traps!

Thanksgiving 2013: At the Family Cottage, Chelsea, Quebec

The table is set...

Aunt Sally is working on the final additions to the feast...

The Spennato sisters, young and older...

Another Thanksgiving upon us and we headed up to my mom's family cottage to celebrate. Over the years, the tradition has been to gather with family and friends at this magical place. We eat, we laugh, we catch up with those we have not seen for a while. We all have a few more grey hairs and the youngest among us are no longer crawling around or bouncing in our laps. All we hear now are a screech or a giggle coming from Rein, Silka or Nicholas as the trio flash by a window, autumn leaves caught up in the draft they make as they go by.
My mom once again dazzled us all with the beautiful decorations that adorned the place. Silka has taken an interest in decorating as well and she followed gramma closely to learn what she could. We extended the decorating by weaving leaves in our hair.

Silka dressed for the occasion...

The food was delicious - we wouldn't expect less. After most left, Tom and I, the kids and Gramma Aida and Len slept our last night at the cottage for the season. We woke up the next day, helped gramma Aida and Len pack up and pull the boat and dock up on shore. Aunt Sally, Jessica and Nicholas showed up - Aunt Sally made pancakes for the whole gang. Pretty soon we were saying our goodbyes and were on our way. Until next spring...

and mom as well.

September 19th - 22nd: Anniversary Bike Trip - Eastern Townships, Quebec

 For our 9th Wedding Anniversary, we headed off to the Eastern Townships to bike around the countryside with Tanya and Andrew, and Kristin and Patrick (also celebrating their anniversary) - friends that were key in bringing Tom and I together 12 years ago.
We left town on Thursday night with our kids left in our friend, Kelly's, good hands to be passed on to their grandmother, Tiiu, and Papa Peter after school on Friday. Thank you!!
We drove four and half hours and arrived in Magog around 11 p.m. where we met up with Kristin and Patrick at our first B & B of the weekend. Over the next three days, we biked a loop of over a 100 km around Lac Magog and Lac Memphramagog hitting the historic towns of North Hatley, Lennoxville, Sherbrooke, Compton, Hatley and Ayer's Cliff. We couldn't have asked for better weather as we biked from winery to fromagerie, orchard to pub. We laid down our tired bodies in Lennoxville on Friday night and Ayer's Cliff on Saturday night. After our longest day of biking with Kristin and Patrick, we met up with Tanya and Andrew at Auguste Restaurant in downtown Sherbrooke where we had the best meal of our trip. I should say they were all great but this place was the perfect spot to celebrate our and Kristin and Patrick's anniversaries. It took a while to find it and we were ready to give up - thank you for your perserverence, Kristin!
The next morning, after a home-cooked breakfast amidst a tacky  80's time-warp, we got back on the bikes and embarked on the 'Tour Gourmand' leg of our trip. We were blessed with another sunny day but soon found ourselves cycling against gusty head winds. We visited an orchard near Compton that was a hub-bub of activity and picked up some cider and donuts. We headed into Compton where we walked around Louis St. Laurent's childhood home and picked up some baguettes and wine. Then it was off to the fromagerie 5 km up the road. When we arrived at La Fromagerie La Station De Compton, we partook in some cheese tasting. We bought what we liked (which was all of it), some sausage, pate and other tasty goods. They gave us a cutting board and a knife and we went to a pond across the road and set up a fantastic picnic spread. We ate and drank while the cows responsible for the amazing cheese lined up along the other side of the fence and looked on. We eventually packed up and got back on our bikes once again feeling a little heavier than before. We biked the remaining 16 km to Ayer's Cliff - thankfully it was mostly downhill.
Auberge Ayer's Cliff was our favourite overnight stay of the trip. It was a tilted, antique-of-a-building filled with old, polished wood and each individually decorated room had antique furniture and no televisions. On the main floor was a restaurant and bar where we enjoyed another great meal and on our floor we had what we dubbed "our very own balcony" where we enjoyed a late night drink (or two) after. As we slept it rained through the night. When we woke up on Sunday morning, the sky was still grey and we walked through a misty rain as we hunted for a breakfast spot. After a breakfast at Mary Jo's, we said our goodbyes to Tanya and Andrew who had to head back home to pick up their kids, and we started peddling back to Magog. During our last 14 km of our trip, rain stayed away but the wind and a noticeably chillier air did not. We enjoyed the splashes of Autumn colours as we cycled through some bucolic and pastoral coutryside (eh, Tom?) but were relieved to see the bright blue of Kristin and Patrick's car as we cycled into the parking lot we left 2 days before. We were all soon on the road and on our way back, Tom and I stopped at the Abbaye de Saint Benoit du Lac. We walked through the impressive place of worship and after buying some monks' cheese and honey crisp apples, we were back on the highway towards home. Looking forward to the next one!

Enjoying a delicious breakfast at Au Saut Du Lit in Magog with Kristin and
Patrick before our first big day of riding 

Trying some sparkling wines at vignoble Le Cep d'Argent

 

Taking a break at a Tee Pee campground

Enjoying some French fare at a pub in North Hatley

Walking the pier in North Hatley

Stopping in Compton for baguettes, wine and beer

parked at La Fromagerie La Station De Compton

Picked up some cheese, sausage, and rabbit pate at La Fromagerie La Station
De Compton's Store

Resting outside the Fromagerie's store

Enjoying a picnic lunch with the cows at La Fromagerie La Station
De Compton's picnic area

Introducing the cheese makers!

Ahhh.....so good. How are we going to get back on those bikes?

cheese doin' their thing...

Apples aplenty...

Stopping to pick a roadside snack

Cabine au Sucre

Riding through Hatley towards Ayer's Cliff

Feeling a bit Tomophobic?

Saturday night stay at the Auberge Ayer's Cliff

On the way back home - a visit to the Abbaye de Saint Benoit du Lac

Canoe Trip 2013: Grey Owl Country (Mississagi River Provincial Park), August 9 - 24

Day 1: Silka gets comfortable

Day 2: Cat Bay, Ramsay Lake - a very
buggy campsite!

Day 2  - Cat Bay: Table set for dinner

Another fantastic canoe trip! This was Rein's 7th and Silka's 5th. We all squeezed into 'Big Bertha', our Swift Yukon, for one last year - next year we will be travelling in two canoes. The theme of this year's trip was bugs and blueberries. With one swipe of the hand you'd come up with 15 mosquitos and 20 blueberries. I remember at one point I was paddling the kids around Circle Lake - a tiny lake between a km long portage and a 200 meter portage - to keep the mosquitoes at bay while Tom went back and forth to portage our remaining gear. He was our hero that day.

Day 2  - Cat Bay: dinner prep

Like every year, the challenges we faced - the bugs, a few wet days, a really cold day and an afternoon spent drying everything out after a dump in the rapids - provided us some comical moments and made us stronger. And a 'low point' would be quickly forgotten by our awe of what surrounded us - an undetected bald eagle lifting off of the branch of a white pine just a few feet away from us, the shadow from the expansion of its wings moving across the bow of our canoe. Or by the thrill of running a rapid, the kids cheering in delight as we bounced through to the bottom. I never get bored of it.

Day 3: Silka's 1st water colour painting

Pierre Trudeau wrote in an essay titled Exhaustion and Fullfillment: The Ascetic Canoe, "What sets a canoe expedition apart is that it purifies you more rapidly and inescapably than any other. Travel a thousand miles by train and you are a brute; pedal five hundred on a bicycle and you remain basically a bourgeois; paddle a hundred in a canoe and you are already a child of nature." Maybe this is why, after our 200 km average trip every year, I always find it hard to head back to my regular life. Tom always cocks his eyebrow at me when I suggest that we start homesteading when we start driving home. Many people when they ask how long we were out there think two weeks is such a long time - for me,  I feel we are just getting started. By the second week all the noise that surrounds us at home has been drowned out by the silence, my rhomboids have stopped aching from hours of lifting and dipping my paddle in and out of the water and the four of us have become a well-oiled portaging machine pleased with how efficiently we can now get our gear to the next lake. I could stay out there for another month or two. When I get back I quickly forget the moment when I was bug-bitten, wet and cold and giving Tom the heads-up that my canoe tripping days were numbered. He would stay silent in those moments and let me figure out on my own that in less than a year we will be driving down remote highways and logging roads and once again I will be excited about the adventures that would be awaiting us.

Day 3: Spanish Lake

Next year will be a different trip with two canoes - I am excited and a bit apprehensive about what this change will bring. We will not cover the same distance as in the past - the daily distances will be shorter and the challenges will be different. We will be passing on the torch somewhat to our kids giving them the opportunity for more independence and to increasingly use the knowledge they have gained over the years. I am always pleasantly surprised that in this day and age where kids are bombarded by technology and social media, Rein and Silka never get bored on canoe trip. Rein is content to just drag a piece of driftwood in the water beside the boat imagining it to be the fastest speed boat out there while Silka paddles or paints. There are stretches of silence and idleness from them that we don't witness at home. Tom and I witness "imagination gone wild" every day.

Day 3: Preparing dinner on
Spanish Lake

Day 4: Bardney Lake 

Watches are a no-no on our trips. Without a time piece controlling our life, our natural clocks took over - we ate when we were hungry, we went to sleep when we were tired and we woke up with the morning sun.

Day 4: Gorp stop, Bardney Lake

Day 4: Rein and Silka, Bardney Lake

Day 4: Portaging to Mississagi Lake - stormy and lots of bugs!

Day 4: Portaging to Mississagi Lake- a break from the rain

Day 5: Missaugi Lake

Day 6: Shanguish Lake - checking the route for the day

Day 6: Tom runs the first rapid of the day

Day 6 - Upper Bark Lake: Drying out after big dump in rapids

Day 6: lunch break

Day 6: Silka dancing hip hop to Tom's riff

Day 6: Awesome sunset # 1

Day 7: Making faces in the morning

Day 7: Rest Day - Silka playing some guitar

Day 7: Campsite fun

Day 8: Crystal clear reflections on Upper Bark Lake

Day 7: Tending to the fire

Day 8: Upper Bark Lake just before pack-up

Day 8: Getting "mouth"-y on Middle Bark Lake 

Day 8: Camp-site set up, Middle Bark Lake

Day 9: Morning paddle

Day 9: Paddling to Bark Lake - Grey Owl country

Day 9: First set of rapids on Mississagi River

Day 9: Second set of rapids

Day 9: Silka and mom, Hell's Gate Rapids

Day 10: Silka taking down the tent

Day 9: Hell's Gate Rapids from camp-site

Day 10: Hell's Gate Rapids

Day 10: Blueberry pancakes

Day 10: scoping out some rapids

Day 10: swimming in the rapids

Day 10: Shawn and Julia arrive

Day 10: Shawn and Julia join us at our lunch/swim spot

Day 10: Tom's lasagna dinner - yum!

Day 10: playing music

Day 10: Leslie in her evening anti-mosquito attire

Day 11: 3rd day on Mississagi River

Day 11: Shawn, Julia and Silka paddling through "The Maze" ahead of us

Day 11: The Maze

Day 11: "Jumping Rock" campsite

Blueberry Bonanza!!! 

Day 11: Pumping water 

Day 11: cocktail hour and prepping for dinner

Day 11: Pre-dinner music jam

Day 11: Some post-dinner canoe frisbee

Day 12: during pack up

Day 12: Last section of Mississagi River before Rocky Island Lake

Day 12: Julia checking out possible camp-site

Day 12: Rein in Shawn and Julia's canoe

Day 12: Paddling to Rocky Island Lake

Day 12: Rocky Island camp-site

Day 12: Awesome sunset # 2

Day 13 - Rest Day: Shore-line hike

Day 13: Shoreline hike - lots of driftwood!

Day 13: Lots of cool rock formations

Day 13: Awesome sunset # 3

Day 14: kissing the "goat" 

Day 14: Kirby/Olvet, Schall/Savoie canoe trip team 2013

Day 14: S and J in the Kijik with the "goat" 

Day 14: lots more driftwood

Day 14: Lunch stop

Day 14: Old cabin structure at lunch spot

Day 14: Shawn runs to top of cliffs 

Day 14: Paddling by cliffs on Rocky Island Lake 

Day 14: End of day beach play

Day 14: relaxing after a long day of paddling

Day 14: The Kirby-Olvet Clan

Day 15: Early morning at the beach - everyone is still sleeping

Day 15: Early morning fog

Day 15: One last session of canoe frisbee

Day 15: Shawn's balancing act

Day 15: Heading towards our last portage of the trip, dam on Rocky Island Lake

Day 15: Shawn, the bald eagle

Day 15: Mirror, Mirror on the lake, is that two Shawn and Julias paddling on the lake?

Day 15: Old massive logs at last portage

Day 15: Out and enjoying our first soft drink in over two weeks