Educating Risa

 

We had a lovely weekend. Friday night I took the boys swimming at VRRI, where the pool is wonderfully warm. They do lots of rehab stuff there, so I am not kidding when I say the pool is kept at the temperature of a warm bath. Ahhhh! The boys had lots of fun splashing, playing with all kinds of pools toys made available—pool noodles, flutter boards, diving rings, balls, little watering cans, etc.—and sliding down the little slide. (There’s another bigger slide at the deep end, but we didn’t go in that end of the pool as I had the boys on my own as Jim stayed home to catch up on some desperately needed sleep.) And Daegan swam without a lifejacket the whole time (he told me not to bring it) and the boy can now swim! Gareth clung to me in his lifejacket at first, but gradually gained confidence and by the end was floating and splashing about without me. (I was ‘in arm’s reach’ of course). We’ll definitely go back again for the Friday night swim; there was a nice amount of people there and the boys found the other kids friendly and wanting to play.

Saturday afternoon we headed off to Storybook Theatre to check out Seymour the Stegosaurus, tickets for which the boys had received as a Christmas present. There was a little table set up in the lobby with someone from a reptile organization; she had an iguana (named Uba; rhymes with tuba), a bearded dragon, and a few others. Certainly was a great way to pass the time while waiting to go in to our seats. The boys very much enjoyed the play, and talking with the actors and getting them to sign our programs after the show. The play is about a stegosaurus named Seymour who gets lost in 2010 in Calgary after chomping on a magical bulrush. He befriends a girl named Lily, who lives with her mean aunt and uncle; the uncle is a crazy palaeontologist who is consumed by the desire to become “president of the fossil society”—so much so that he fakes a dino skeleton with popsicle sticks, tinker toys, paint and glue. (The boys found this hilarious). He tries to trap Seymour, but with Lily’s help, Seymour gets the magic bulrush back and chomps on it again, transporting him back to his own time. The boys were so inspired by the play that when we arrived home they immediately started creating their own version of Seymour the Stegosaurus. The argued over who’d play Seymour (the both wanted to), cast Jim and I as the mean aunt and uncle (sigh), and felt their friend Aurora would make a great Lily. Daegan started writing the script and Gareth started constructing the set and props.

Here’s a pic of Daegan checking out the set before she show started:

On Sunday Jim took the boys to their skating lessons in the morning. We had a not-so-lazy around-the-house afternoon of laundry, cleaning, cooking, etc. Gareth helped me make an apple crisp, which was a lovely finish to our raspberry-pineapple wheatball (faux meatball), scalloped potato and peas dinner. So nice to have a leisurely sit-down meal once in a while, as weekdays seems so grab-and-go right now. After dinner Jim did a simple science experiment with the boys showing that carbon dioxide is heavier than air; I’ll be writing it up in tomorrow’s blogpost. The boys LOVED the experiment, and I loved seeing Jim in this role, being his zany, charming, geeky self. Here he is at one point during the experiment:

 

Like I said, it was a great weekend.