Ok. I think I've recovered enough to tell you about our Canada Day celebration. Maybe. It being a Friday, I was pretty excited to sleep in, but M had to work early in the morning. When I had to pee about 1/2 an hour before his alarm went off, I felt pretty bad about disturbing him, so I decided to stay up until he woke up and look up the times for all the events planned before I went back to bed. Of course X somehow got the telepathic message that one of his parents was up before him and this is just not right anymore, so he woke up. I convinced him to go back to bed since it was so early, but he took the DS with him and played in bed.
I discovered online that the fireworks had been held the night before while we were all sleeping. They didn't start until midnight...as that's when it gets almost dark here now...and we were all in bed by 10 the night before. Yes, that's how party animal-ish we are. So we missed the fireworks. The parade was to start at 10 in the morning and then there would be a kids fun-zone at the local community center until 4 pm. Having garnished all this information I kissed M goodbye and went back to bed. I slept through the parade. Go me.
Bright and early at noon X and I left to pick up my mother, we grabbed a quick lunch, did an errand or two and headed downtown to the fun zone. Now I'll explain, the community center is on a sort of peninsula surrounded by rivers, that means it has a super long driveway/road that gives access to nothing else, and it's the only way in and out. Upon approach we discover two bylaw officers stopping traffic and most traffic is turning around and going back. When it got to be out turn Officer Helpful tells us that parking is closed and we can walk (2 kms one way), get a taxi ($$), or here's a helpful flyer. The flyer lists some park and ride locations for a shuttle service that is free after 5pm. Yes. The children's event is over at 4pm, but if you're going to the concerts at night you can get there for free.
But wait! The flyer was retarded. Not only is the shuttle service free after 5pm, it doesn't START until 5pm. We go to one of the park and ride locations, there is no indication of where the shuttle service would be, the people who work at the business have seen no buses, nor do they know anything about the shuttle service. So we wander across the road to a bus stop where there are many other people waiting with their children. 15 minutes later a bus comes, I ask him if he's going to Mac Island, he says to get on, get a transfer, he will take us to a place that we can catch the Mac Island bus. Good times.
Eventually we got there. Then it hailed. I kid you not. Hail. X and I are waiting in line for one of the bouncy castle things, my mom had run for cover from the rain, and then the "rain" starts bouncing off the grass! Of course they close the bouncy castles. So there I am, 6 months pregnant with twins, 3 kms away from my car, disappointed 5 year old, standing in the hail. WOOT!
But really, it was a good day. Events Wood Buffalo may have dropped the ball in a ROYAL manner, but you can't keep a determined-to-be-happy 5 year old down. We took a turn around the tents and discovered some sandboxes! Huzzah! X shed his shoes and socks and dove into the sand with wild abandon! Digging, filling the bucket, trying to make a sand castle, talking to other kids near him. He was pretty happy in there! I couldn't figure out why the volunteer kept sprinkling red sparkles in the sand, but I guess that's how they were making it a patriotic event! The rain stopped and we did get a couple more bouncy castle turns in before things were closed down for the afternoon.
The funniest thing about it all was the World Stage that was set up. For the afternoon there were displays of cultural dance and song. When we first arrived there were some adult belly dancers on the stage. X cocked one eyebrow and said "that's weird. You're not going to watch that are you mom?" He was actually disturbed! He blushed and avoided looking at the stage until we were leaving and had to walk by again. When we were leaving it was a completely different story! There was a little girl, about 4, doing a Bolly-wood type dance. He was entranced! Completely under her spell. When she was done we started walking away again, but then another little girl, about 6 or 7, came out. "We can leave after this one last show ok mom?" Rrrright. My mother made a comment that at least he was age-appropriate!
Getting back to our car was another adventure, and we did end up having to walk 8 or 9 blocks because I wasn't going to fool with transfers again, but we got there. And I didn't go into labour. Bonus.
Long blog, sorry, but I had to tell somebody about my disaster day! :) Thanks for making it to the end here!
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