daily bread

Ladies and Gentlemen, the boxes are packed.

For by a bit more packing tape and slapping a few stickers on all 23 boxes, they are ready to take to the skies.I’d like to say publicly, that the majority of our cargo is not clothing, kitchen equipment, not even kids toys, no. It is Jayber’s many, many books. 13 boxes worth. There will be a serious amount of bookshelf carpentry when we get home.

This is the third year in a row that I have packed up the entire contents of a house and I am packing-weary. The up shot is that it is done and the next 2 months will be much, much easier with this worst bit out of the way.

Our children slept in til 9am this morning.

So very thankful.

I swore I would never ever ever, not even if they put a gun to me head, never EVER go on another daytrip across the border.

Which is why I spent yesterday morning in a hot sticky car, with hot sticky grumpy children, waiting 2 hours so that the US border guards could work out the probability of my being a terrorist. There was some hesitation over Elijah, him being the lunatic of the family, but we finally got through and I think I almost caught one of the guards smile. Could have been wind though….

Anyway, the purpose for our trip is due to a coincidence of our single stroller dying a slow and painful death and our finding some money tucked away somewhere that we didn’t know we had. So we did what any good christians at bible college do: smuggled a new stroller across the border.

We got our (much cheaper in america) stroller delivered to some friends in Seattle and then drove down to pick it up. It is quite sad that I have reached a point in my life when a new stroller can make me so very happy, but hey, a full time mum needs all the help she can get.

I’m off to poke Elijah awake so we can test drive it…

Inspired by the recent trip to the fair, we toddled off to Playland, a bigger version of Barry’s on the Eastside of Vancouver. We went with our neighbours and had a very fun time with all the kids, screaming our way through mini rollercoasters and laughing at the husbands indulging their testosterone on the big roller coasters. As promised I steered well clear off the Ferris Wheel and had a lots of fun on the waltzers instead, clinging on to Caleb til he begged for mercy.

Larabars.

Just pissed I didn’t discover them sooner.

An intense day of packing with the reward of a lovely wine-fueled evening with neighbours.

I have just finished reading a fantastic book called ‘The Hundred Mile Diet’. I don’t know if this publishing phenomena has reached the UK yet, but it is essential reading here in Vancouver. The 2 authors, a couple of native Vancouverites decided to commit to eating only that which was grown within a hundred mile radius of their home, which is only a few blocks from where we live on the West side.

A fascinating and very challenging experiment made all the more difficult by the fact that they live in an apartment with only a balcony and a small allotment in which to grow their own veggies. As they chronicle their year of living without wheat, rice, olive oil, chocolate (to name a few), eating a lot of potatoes and exploring the lower mainland they set out the importance of eating locally and how totally messed up our current way of getting food is.

While I doubt that, in practice, with all my other food restrictions, it is something that we could actually do in a strict sense it definitely added to the new way of thinking about food that has slowly been evolving while we have been living here. However unfeasible, I have dreams now of owning some land, becoming more self-sustaining, maybe a few chickens and all beautifully organic. I am convinced more than ever that what we choose in the supermarket has massive implications for how we care for our world and I’m trying to think how this will play out once we go home.

In the meantime, off we went this morning to UBC Farm for their first Saturday market of the year. Everything is organic and if not actually grown on their land then sourced locally. It opened at 9am and by 905 all the eggs were sold, 906 the spinach and 929 the strawberries and mizuna. I bagged some mushrooms, kale and radishes which all looked absolutely gorgeous (although i have yet to work out a tasty way to eat Kale -any suggestions?).

Vancouver makes all this sustainable-living-organic-healthy-love-the-earth stuff pretty easy with amazing markets and stores and a West coast hippy mindset. I am thankful again for another gift from our time here that has left me changed, I hope, for the better.

The fair came to our corner of Vancouver today. Caleb’s never been before and that was excuse enough for my own excitement.

The first thing he saw was the Ferris Wheel.I foolishly thought this would be a good time for me to set a good example by facing my fears of anything high and airborne. The queue was long and gave ample time for me to regret my courage under the hulking mass of elderly metal. Crap. We were 5 from the front when I started to feel physically sick.

And up we went. Only we didn’t keep moving, that would have made it bearable. Instead we were left dangling at increasing altitudes as he kept stopping and starting the bloody thing to let people off and on. Man, I hated it. Out loud I was trying not to let Cabes see how much I was actually shitting myself, with “oooh, isn’t this fuuun’, ‘ Wow we really are high’ and quietly saying some Hail Mary’s and choice words under my breath. Jayber, having worked out from the white face and lip-reading the swear words that I was NOT having a good time, found it all very hilarious.

Needless to say I will not be doing the stoic parent thing any time soon. I’m sticking to the waltzers.

Today was Caleb’s very last day of Preschool.

There was a party,a sports day-esque event and a super healthy knees-up. (God forbid these children should ever encounter sugar in their young lives). I mortified myself by blubbing all over Mrs Lisa, Caleb’s slightly stern-but-fair teacher. The thought of 4 more mornings to entertain Caleb each week is enough to send anyone into a quiet corner with a bottle of whiskey, but that wasn’t what made me cry. This preschool has been a total gift to us in our time here and we couldn’t have asked for a better place for Cabes to begin his education. They are christian with a small ‘c’, meaning they want my child to know God loves him without brainwashing him. I have watched them really enjoy who Caleb is and provide great boundaries for his exuberance which likes to tiptoe across the line. They have loved my child well and this has been a haven for him and for us.

Yet another era ended today. Next year my wee man will be in Big Boy school, back in Ireland. He will have forgotten Mrs Lisa and Miss Alison, his stand-offs with Cole, the clean up song and which number he liked to sit on at circle time. Soon he will become too cool for kissing his mum or climbing in my lap for stories. Time marches on and I am catching today’s memories and tucking them into my heart.

A perfect moment down at the stony beach near our house.

Sun glistening, waves gently lapping at the shore, Cabes picking stones to throw into the water and Elijah, momentarily still and snuggled into my lap.

My heart is beginning to work out it is leaving this place and everything seems better, more beautiful, memorable.