It's festival season

We went to the awesome festival Mondial des cultures in Drummondville and we had such a great day with our friends! There was a really cool obstacle course in which kids (and papas!) had to climb, crawl, walk through a pool of soap bubbles (after having been sprayed with colored powder!), eat dried caterpillars (if they dared!) and more!

They said they were bored, we delivered!

 

 

There was a fascinating dance show by a troop from Mumbai, India. We even got to dance with them after the show. The kids were hypnotised! It was so awesome, because just the night before we had read the beautiful book La fille du Rajah and there was a dance about Ganesh, one of the most worshipped gods in the Hindu religion who has an elephant head.

 

 

Then, we went to see a group from Burundi perform with their traditional instruments.

 There was some free bungee trampoline jumping and the kids had a blast!

 There was a First Nations area along the river, a welcome break from the heat and the high energy of the rest of the event... We were enticed to visit by a beautiful crow.

Then, it was circus time (amazing performers from Venezuela and Chile)! We even ran into Grand-maman Claudette (JF's mom!) and Grand-papa Serge!! What a surprise encounter!

My friend Genevieve (who rented our house while we were on the road the whole year) jogged for 15 minutes to get Akim to sleep! She is such an inspiring mamma!

 After dinner, we went to see the dancers from China. They were great!

It was an awesome day and I didn't hear the word bored even once! I think it was a success!

When well-traveled kids come back home...

I got a good chuckle from Jen Miller's (The Edventure Project) post Travel is ruining my kids. It is really not far from the truth! Our girls have made similar comments as hers. Since they ate pineapples and mangoes and papayas in Costa Rica, our girls don’t even want to try them here (well, mangoes, maybe, because, you know, mangoes are just the best thing on earth and you can always try them… and make a face…). 

We sometimes wondered this year, as we visited the Carlsbald caverns, hiked The Wave in Utah and many other epic trails, did some rock climbing in some of the best spots in the US and mountain biked on slick rock in Moab and some of the best trails in Colorado, how they will ever want to join us on rock climbing and mountain biking adventures back home in Quebec… 

Turns out, we were quite right, we have the most bored little girls in town now that we are back… Nothing is good enough for them, going to the same place twice in a row is deemed the uttermost boring thing to do… Hiking in the National park in our backyard is sooo déjà vu… Biking the same trails, forget it! Oh well! We better leave again soon and never stop traveling because once you have well traveled kids, ordinary life doesn’t quite cut it!


Of course, I am half-kidding... but I have to say that one might wonder if this is a good thing or not. However, I must say that I suffer a bit from the same syndrom. I myself find going to the local beach 3 days in a row a bit boring (where the water is not as warm as Costa Rica, not as blue as the Florida keys, the sand not as white as in Tallahassee... and of course, no waves. Actually, the first time we hit the lake, after months of being by the sea, the girls exclaimed: Mama, the waves are really little today! Oh wait! That's a lake... That was funny!

We are not in exploration mode anymore, we are in filling time blocks mode... I spent my evenings searching blogs for inspiration on activities to do with them, interesting outings, etc. Aisha is the one who is having the hardest time since we have been back. Most of my ideas for things to do simply don't interest her. She wants to be on an adventure everyday. She asks for new things, new places to see... What a challenge! The other day she was bored to tears and said: I just want to be in a canyon right now!

Should we stop traveling so our girls can see what "real life" is? Because, as one might argue, "ordinary life" is not always exciting and they need to learn that... Well, really? I disagree. If we can offer our girls a fascinating life full of explorations and different activities, should we refrain from it so they don't feel bored when they come back? Who said they should settle for boring and ordinary? I didn't and I am not, that's for sure.

Working with wool in July

We have tons of bits of colored wool leftover from previous felting projects and they only seem to grow exponentially. Mathilde has rediscovered the carders and we decided to do a felted centerpiece with all those bits and pieces of wool. How I love working with wool, even during the crazy July heat wave!