Fall Fun

Photo ops around every corner!

There is no better place to be on a sunny October day than driving through the Valley on route to a country farm. This was not just any farm, but Noggin's Family Farm, and after reading the website I had high hopes. Noggin's promises a giant corn maze, play area, wagon rides and U-pick apples, pumpkins and flowers. Wow. The farm happens to be exactly half way between Annapolis Royal and Halifax, so I invited a few friends and their kids to meet us there. Noggin's did not disappoint! The play area alone was worth the trip - giant hay bale and tire structures, water games, tunnel slides made from old pipes, and several different mini-mazes. The giant corn maze was actually enormous - apparently it can take well over an hour to get through it all. We opted for the mini-corn maze which was perfect for the kids. It even had mailboxes along the way with stamps inside they could  collect and fill up a special card they'd been given. 

 The U-pick was also a huge success. I loved the 'all you can eat while picking' policy and somehow, despite the place being packed for weeks on end, there were tons of perfect apples to be picked that were just the right height for the kids! I already can't wait for next year...although I just might end up going back next weekend!

Duck races!

Truly cornmazing!

What's inside the mail box??

Time for a quick breather

Success!

Valley life

Trucking our way to the playground.

After the last post about my spell of bad luck, it's time to write about something positive - my love of the Annapolis Valley. It seems like we are constantly discovering new gems - local peaches and pears (grown only minutes away from our door), little roadside stands where you drop money into a jar and pick up a dozen eggs, a jar of honey or a bouquet of flowers, and wonderful trails and parks. Our current favourite park is Mickey Hill Provincial Park, a small but beautiful area with private picnic tables beside a perfect stream, a 1 km trail to a gorgeous lake with a sandy beach - the perfect hike for a 3 year old.

And we are just getting started, there is so much more to discover - corn mazes, u-picks, Keji national park, the King's Theatre, restaurants, shops, galleries...it will make for a fall full of amily adventures!

Mickey Hill - our private sandy beach. Can't wait to swim here in the summer.

Dogsitting our pal Kye 

Hooray for fall!

A Series of Unfortunate Events

I haven't written a post for a while, but I do have not one, but several good reasons why. They say bad things come in threes. Well, my 'third' just happened, so I think I am now in the clear.
First off, I lost my wallet. This happens to people from time to time, but it had never happened to me and it sucks! It was my own fault, I was rushing to do a long list of errands in Halifax and I left my wallet on the roof of my car after filling up with gas. After searching along roadside ditches to no avail, I gave up and started the long process of bringing my life back together in id form.

Then another unfortunate incident happened - driving to visit Teresa in the deep wilderness of NB last weekeend- I hit a deer. It could have been worse. The deer could have come flying in through my windshield or it could have been a moose. Thankfully, Caleb didn't see a thing because it was not a pleasant thing to witness and the damage to my car wasn't too bad (I managed to drive it back to NS). So, now I'm dealing with appraisals, insurance claims and trying to sort that aspect of my life out.

Then this weekend came the real kicker. Alan had just returned home from 2.5 weeks on tour and we both happened to be in Halifax for a night without Caleb. We came home after a nice evening out to 5 missed calls from our brand new tenant in our Bayside home. He hasn't even moved in yet, so we were a bit concerned that he was calling 5 times to report something to us...did we have a crazy-high maintenance tenant on our hands who was going to make unreasonable demands before he had even moved in? Well, it turns out that was not the case - I spoke to him first thing in the morning, and I could never had imagined in my entire life what I was about to hear. In our basement, another tenant had moved in - actually several tenants - a whole friggin nest of newly hatched snakes, complete with a 2-3ft mama snake - yes, you read that correctly - in our BASEMENT!!!  Holy smokes. That is definitely worth 5 missed calls.  So it appears that a pregnant snake found a way inside and thought our basement would be a nice warm place to lay her eggs and perhaps spend the winter. I personally would have died if I had been the one to discover this. DIED. Our tenant was actually ok with this, surprised, not overly excited about the situation, but he was calm and cool  (and not crazy!) and we now have someone coming to solve the problem (and I will not be going to inspect the situation, thank you very much).

So there it is. My big 3. I've been trying to figure out what the upside to all of this  is - surely there is something to reflect on, or some lesson to be learned. All I can think of is that we need to take time to enjoy the times of calm in our lives. It is only when things become difficult and challenging that we really appreciate how wonderful it is when the little things in life run smoothly. Before all of this I certainly wasn't thinking how great it was to have a car that worked, a wallet full of id and no wild animals running loose in the house I was about to rent! And in a month from now, when everything in my life is back in order and all of this is (almost) forgotten, I may forget to take a minute to just breathe and appreciate it. I certainly hope I remember to do so (and quickly forget the image of snakes hatching in my basement).

And now a quick note from Caleb, who is sitting patiently beside me waiting to write something. Here it goes - xxoooooooxoxoxooxoxxooooc

Mom, we can only go up from here!

Notable quotables!

 

Canoe concert!

 Here are a few of my favourite Calebisms from the last few months. Enjoy!

We had been admiring the lupins all spring and early summer -Cale even threw them in when we were rhyming one day - poopin' lupin - hard not to laugh or encourage that one! when one day in late July he was looking out the window when he suddenly shouted 'Mom! Come quick! The lupins are all gone!'. He had a horrified look on his face as if someone had come and stolen every lupin in sight. What followed was one of our first ever talks about life and death. He was ok with it, for flowers anyway, which was all we really covered. 

Having trouble sleeping one night, Cale ended up in my bed. He was squirming and half-crying and I couldn't fall back to sleep. It was 3:30 in the morning and I had had enough. I sternly told him, 'You have two choices - either lay still and fall asleep right now beside me, or go back to your own room and fall asleep by yourself.' This really upset him and he started to cry harder. Finally, through his tears he said, 'Mom, just tell me again, what are my options?'

Eating a snack one day he says 'Look mom, one bite of cheese, one drink of juice, one bite of cheese, one drink of juice - I made a pattern!'

Talking about an upcoming trip to a bluegrass festival he asks, 'Who made the rule that there are no drums in bluegrass?'

And my absolute favorite - we had been talking about the tooth ferry and one day while playing lego with Greg he says, 'Look, I made the tooth ferry!' and yes, it was a little boat and yes, all this time he had been imagining a ferry boat coming into his room to take away any teeth that would one day fall out!

Oh my little coastal boy!

Whales!

Family photo - Tiverton, Long Island.

For the past two weekends, Cale and I have been on our own, without a vehicle. Don’t get me wrong, of all the places to be stuck, Annapolis Royal is a pretty great place to be, and for a 3 year old, Caleb is quite a wonderful companion, however, I was very excited to have some visitors over the long weekend.

Not only did my parents come to town for a few nights, a good friend from Halifax also visited for a night with her husband and 4 year old daughter. This meant Caleb had his first ever friend sleepover. The company was great and the kids were adorable.

Buddies!

 On Monday, Alan came home in time to join us for the ultimate Bay of Fundy adventure –whale watching! We boarded a fishing boat in Tiverton, Long Island and hit the open water. Three hours later we had encountered 7 humpback whales and several dolphins. Watching the whales slowly breach the surface beside the boat then flash their giant tails before diving below again…it was breathtaking.  I’m not sure if Caleb could grasp just how enormous the animals were, but he loved the experience and stayed interested for the whole journey. Driving back home, it was fun to look in the backseat and see Cale, snuggled between Greg and Linda, all three of them sound asleep.

Fake whale spotting!

Real whale spotting!

Paint the town

Artists abound!

Well, it's happened already. I've officially fallen in love with Annapolis Royal. This weekend the town hosted their annual 'Paint the Town' event where 70 artists are invited to spend the weekend capturing the local scenery.  Cale and I spent our Saturday wandering the streets of town, and around every corner we'd see someone painting something wonderful - the shoreline, boats on the wharf, the bustling farmer's market, downtown storefronts, the fort, crows sitting on a telephone wire - it was amazing to see these incredible works coming to life before your eyes. But the real fun happened this evening. Every piece created today was brought to the 'Paint the Town gallery' where it was displayed and put up for sale in a silent auction. Better yet, the gallery was in the Legion which just so happens to be in our backyard. So, Cale and I set out to see if we could purchase something special.

 The opening bid prices were amazing, but with so many tourists in town for the event, we quickly started to realize that our top picks were likely not going to be coming home with us. Caleb was not impressed. He was determined to take home every single piece in the gallery. I took him outside for a quick 'team meeting' to run through again how silent auctions work and to talk about our budget (which I set at $20, since all the fun is happening again tomorrow when Alan will be home and we can decide together which pieces we might want to buy). As the final minutes wound down, we watched all of our pieces go to other bidders. All except one. We kept a very close eye on what was Caleb's number one choice from early on in the day. And I'm happy to announce that tonight we are the proud owners of 'Fundy the Snail'. It's not quite what I had imagined walking away with, but it came in under our budget and Caleb couldn't be happier. He was walking around the place like a king at the end of the night, smiling at other people's purchases, but you could see on his face that he knew we had won the grand prize. And tomorrow we get to do it all over again!

Our snail.  Caleb first named her Suzy, but since we already have a Suzy the caterpillar and a Suzy the snake at home, I was glad to be able to convince him to try a different name this time around! Fundy it is. 

We thought we should do our own painting of the town this afternoon. Caleb really wanted to bring his piece to the gallery, but in the end we decided someone might outbid us so it would be best to put it on the fridge right away.

Whirlwind

That's what our lives have been over the past month. A complete whirlwind! Packing, moving, unpacking, finishing up my job, starting a new job, finishing up daycare, starting a new daycare....but now, here we are, one week into our new lives. And so far, so good. I've definitely had my moments of wondering if this whole upheaval is going to be worth it, but I must say, I'm pleasantly surprised with how things are turning out.

Exploring Fort Royal, overlooking the Annapolis Basin

Annapolis Royal is beautiful. It is a picture perfect town, with a tiny (but thriving) downtown, incredibly friendly people (there are only 500 of them, but they have all chosen to live here for a reason), and it is located right on the amazing Bay of Fundy, one of my absolute favourite places in the world.  We've rented an old heritage home downtown and we are starting to settle in. Being in a 'city' is very different  for us. For the first time in years we can walk everywhere. Literally! To the playground, grocery stores, pub, post office, restaurants, farmer's market, daycare...And, I can carpool to work. Alan happens to be away right now and I don't need a car while he is gone. It feels truly amazing.

My 'First Day of Work' Party. Mom and Colleen came to visit and help us get settled (and celebrate!)

Caleb hasn't missed a beat. He is so amazingly adaptable, he had no qualms about saying goodbye to his friends at daycare, packing up his toys and leaving the house we promised him he'd stay in for years. He was up for the adventure and he is embracing it every step of the way. He loves his new town, loves his new school, loves making trips to the store in his wagon, loves counting the boats from the wharf and especially loves walking over to play in the 'pirate ship playground'. He'll happily tell you he lives in Annapolis Royal as if he's never lived anywhere else in his entire life. It makes me really proud.

 It still feels surreal to think that we now live in the Valley,  and it feels even crazier to think that there is a real potential that we'll be here for many, many years to come. This little town might be the place where Caleb grows up and always calls home. After all these changes I'm not going to place bets on what our future holds, but for now we are happy and excited to discover what else this little town has to offer.

5 Moms, 5 Babies!

2nd Annual Moms and Babies camping trip!

What a fun past few days Caleb and I have had. We started our weekend with an evening of babysitting Lydia's little boy, Kai. Caleb was a wonderful helper, who did most of the entertaining and kept insisting that we 'check on the baby' after Kai had gone to bed. Lyd and Nick have helped me many times with Caleb so it felt great to give them the precious gift of a date night. 

Holding wiggly Kai

We then hit the road for our 2nd Annual Moms and Babies camping trip. We had a great group consisting of 5 moms and 5 babies - Lyd and Kai, Nina and Maria, Cate and Elias, Rae and Gus. We wanted to stay close to town so we headed to Porter's Lake Provincial Park for the night. The weather was perfect, the campsite was great and the kids were wonderful. They even managed to fall asleep in their tents so the moms could have some quality girl time by the campfire.

The happy campers - Cale, Gus, Elias, Maria and Kai

It happened to be 'Canada Parks Day' so there were some activities set up in the afternoon, including Potty Toss. Must be a Nova Scotia thing??!

Of course, curious Caleb needed to check to see if their were any pipes under potty!

Our adventurous weekend didn't leave much time for packing or finishing up work related things, so I was ready to hit the office on Monday morning with a full 'to do' list. I was on a roll when I received a call at 10 am from Caleb's daycare - he had fallen from a play structure and landed on his arm. From the amount of crying he was doing, his teachers thought I should get him checked out. So, we headed off to the IWK Emergency Room. Caleb was an extremely tough little guy, staying very brave while doctors looked him over and took x-rays, and 5 hours later we left with Caleb's fractured arm wrapped up in a plaster splint. He's feeling fine now, and we should be able to take the splint off in a few weeks. Phew, what a day!

Showing off his injury

Happy about the signatures, much less happy about the news that he can't go swimming for awhile!

On the road again

Well, I have some news. The Sprague/Jeffries family is on the move...again. Only 3 months after moving into our beautiful dream home, we are once again packing up and starting a new (unexpected) adventure. I've accepted a job with the provincial government as Coastal Coordinator - and my new office will be in Cornwallis, NS. So we are moving to the Annapolis Valley, and we just found a house to rent in downtown Annapolis Royal. We are going to rent our Bayside home because we just can't quite bear to part with it so soon. Annapolis Royal was voted 'The Most Liveable Small Town in the World' by the United Nations in 2008, so that can only be a good sign. We are feeling good about our decision and although we will miss our friends/life in Halifax, we think Annapolis Royal will be a great place to raise Caleb and actually settle down. For real this time.....I hope! In the past 11 months we have spent 4 months in Jamaica, 4 months in Duncan's Cove, 3 months in our new house in Bayside and now, another new place to call home.

Here are some amazing photos taken by Grampie John while Caleb was in Fredericton last week. I'm sooooo glad to have him home, but from the looks of things, I don't think he missed me quite as much as I missed him!

I love this photo! Cale and Monica enjoying a laugh over snacks. 

Jeffries family meal - 5 cousins reunited!

Home alone

Caleb is spending a full week in Fredericton. He's 3 and a half now, and it turns out that big kids can go on vacations without their parents! He's been with Greg and Linda for the past few nights and will move to John and Maureen's tonight. I know he is having action-packed days filled with swims at the 'waving' pool, parks, popsicles and visits with friends. Alan and I have been having fun, too, but I must say that the excitement of having an empty nest wore off very quickly. I miss my little sidekick and absolutely can not wait to have him back home.

At first I was excited to make an efficient trip to the grocery store without having Caleb push the cart, or to drive to work without listening to the same 3 David Myles songs on repeat, or to sleep in until my alarm goes off. But I can tell you that I can not wait to for him to come home on Sunday, and I especially can't wait  for Monday morning when I hear his little feet running into our bedroom and I help him up into our bed for some early morning cuddles, even if it is an hour or two before my alarm goes off.

Here are some photos of our grown up boy.

Learning a new trick

Aly and Ava came to visit last week

Stretching during his first ever soccer practice

First crush

Well, hello there!

This past weekend, Caleb fell in love. She was a bandana-wearing, gypsy accordion  player, and she stole Caleb's heart at a music festival. Cale had been looking forward all week to our trip to the Full Circle Festival in the Annapolis Valley. He packed his bag full of instruments (uke, guitar, microphone) and was feeling ready to dance and play along to the live bands. He didn't know what to think when Kate and Rich hit the stage (they are described as a jazzy blend of American folk and Balkan classics). He had never seen an accordion in action before, and he stood completely still, absolutely transfixed, for the first 5 songs. Then he decided it was time to dance. As he stared up at Kate longingly, he let loose - dancing and playing for the rest of the set. At one point the band even gave him a 'ukelele solo'! When the show was over, he was the first one in line to talk to her. When she stayed for his dad's set, and started dancing, Cale was overjoyed. He kept talking to her, pointing up to his dad on stage, and closely following her every single dance move. It was quite hilarious and, thankfully, she was a good sport and didn't seem to mind the young boy who had suddenly latched onto her side!

My favorite quote from Cale this weekend was after he asked what a sign said on a roped off area for musicians - I said 'It says Musicians Only'. With an apologetic look on his face, he glanced up at me and said, 'Sorry mom, it's for only me and dad!' Because obviously our 3 year old son is a musician!

Front row centre, for dad's show

Last weekend was just as great. Greg and Linda came for three whole sleepovers, Tyvonn came for one sleepover, AND we spent one day at the Shubie Wildlife Park. Such an amazing day trip near Stewiacke - highly recommended!

Gardens and Oceans

Green thumb

We are making GREAT progress on our yard and garden. It has been so nice to move into a house that literally needed no repairs, so we've been able to put lots of our time and energy into making our yard a wonderful space to play, relax and grow our own food. I have never had a garden before, so this is all new to me and since the first day we moved in, I've had my seeds ready to plant. I have garden fever - I've seriously been itching to get out there and start making things grow! However, the very first thing I'm learning about gardening is that you need to be patient. But now, finally, the soil has warmed up, the risk of frost is gone and we just finished constructing our two 6x6 ft raised beds. Tomorrow we finally plant - cucumbers, tomatos, potatoes, peas, beans, carrots, lettuce and spinach!

I think Cale has caught of touch of the garden fever as well. We've been talking a lot about where food comes from and what we'll plant this year. I told him we could grow anything he wants to put into his salads - without hesitation he said 'Let's grow croutons!'....I guess we still have lots of learning to do!

We spray painted an old garbage can to make a nice rain barrel!

This week is World Oceans Week, and the marine team at my work have so many great activities planned that I decided I should get in on the fun. And, what better way to celebrate Oceans Week than by bringing a giant blue shark into Caleb's daycare!? Yes, I had a colleague dress up in a shark costume and visit Caleb's class. His teachers did a great job of planning activities for Earth Day (which has led to Cale's recent obsession of pointing out and picking up garbage), that I knew they'd be up for the fun. It was a huge success. The kids were so adorable and Cale is now so proud that his mom has a friend who is a 'real shark'. And, to make oceans week even better, I saw my very first wild otter last night  splashing in the water in front of our house. Amazing.

Cale hugging Hector the Blue Shark