Long Weekend Day 1 - Murphy Arrives

On one hand, I love, love, love the May long weekend - for Canadians, at least in this part of the country, it heralds the arrival of summer. Regardless of the weather, people:

-go to the cottage

-spent horrific amounts of time on highways

-stay up late and sit outside

-go to garden centres and buy plants

It's an institution and regardless of whether it is warm or cold, rainy or sunny, all these things get done because what we call "May 2-4" weekend means that summer is here.

Another aspect of May 2-4 that is not so much fun is that we have a long history of Murphy's Law arriving. Usually, it's either in the form of a sick child (meaning a visit to the hospital since everything is closed) or a sick dog (and emergency vets cost triple what the regular vet would cost). I don't like to think negatively, but there does always seem to be something. This year is no exception.

The weather forecast is for sun today (Saturday) and rain the rest of the weekend so when I got up, I decided that we needed to get out table and chairs out on one of our decks to eat outside. It ended up being a bigger hassle that I imagined. The deck faces west so the umbrella is a must later in the day. It didn't want to fit at all. We did eventually get it set up and had a lovely breakfast outside.


That's when things got a big strange. When I was making breakfast, I noticed that the fridge was making a rather odd noise. I didn't think too much of it until I went to get out my frozen strawberries for my smoothie and realised that, while they were cold, they were starting to melt. I got dh to look at the fridge and it didn't take us long to determine that we had a big problem. Luckily, we have a super repair man who works all the time, including long weekends. Sadly, the news was not good so, after taking the kids to the library for music, it was off to the furniture place to buy a new refridgerator. Not an expense that we needed right now.

Of course, being that it is a long weekend, nobody would deliver. It was 1:45 by the time we got home and, given that there had not been lunch yet, the kids weren't exactly feeling chipper. We had our lunch outside (as much as anything to avoid the mess in the kitchen - take my advice, it really is worth it to pull out the fridge and clean once-in-a-while and spare yourself the embarassment of what we got to see today).
Pk requested a peanut butter and jam sandwich and I decided I would let Baby Bean have a few bites (he has had pb before). We have discovered the one thing that he does not like. I wish I had been taking photos with his first bite - the face was wonderful. He stared at it in wonder that anyone would want to eat such a thing. He got to have chicken instead.

Then, there was the issue of getting the fridge into the house. We had managed to get it into our van (nobody would deliver before Tuesday and we needed a fridge) but getting it up into the house was another story. Dh was sure that he and I could do it - fortunately, our wonderful next-door neighbour saw what we were trying to do and came over to help.
Eventually, Pk and Baby Bean and I went to visit friends who had invited us for a visit. They have a perfect yard with great climbing equipment for kids so we had a nice time. It's great because both their kids are about 3 months older than Pk and Baby Bean so they both have a friend. Watching the two littler guys together is quite a lot of fun.




Our final destination today was the garden centre. We decided that we weren't up to getting everything today but we would get our veg bought for our veg bed. We got our tomatoes, peppers and some herbs - lettuce will have to be bought soon. It's an annual tradition to to all garden buying this weekend - every garden centre has extended hours and it seems like everyone who is not at a cottage is buying plants.

Sadly, the clouds appear to be moving in. I don't imagine we will enjoy so much outdoor time tomorrow.

Sorry these posts are kind of boring and news-y. I'll try to find something to rant about one of these days. I'm just really enjoying my weekends with my family and it's what I feel like talking about.

Have a super May 2-4!