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Feel The Rope
Apr. 5th, 2010 09:16 pmEaster Monday is a bit of a pain, because I can never tell whether I get it off or not. It seems to vary from workplace to workplace, and, apparently, from year to year. I started working here a year ago, and I got a copy of the 2008 Employee Handbook. In there, it lists Easter Monday as a statutory holiday. But this year, apparently, it doesn't. I found this out on Thursday, having already kind of planned a four-day weekend. But Thursday was a little late for me to ask for the day off, so we had to hastily replan our weekend for a three-day weekend instead.
We sort of alternate holidays between my relatives and my wife's, though over the years, as her parents and then my dad moved closer to Edmonton, this has turned into "my mom", who still lives up in northern Alberta, vs. "all our other relatives". Which is okay, because Mom tends to get shortchanged the rest of the year, though they do come through town a few times a year as well. This Easter it was Mom's turn again, but it's more fun to drive for six hours to visit someone if you get more than one day before you have to turn around and drive back. We discussed maybe driving partway on Thursday night and staying overnight in a hotel, but decided that would be too much of a pain in other ways. And plane tickets up to Grande Prairie are too expensive for all of us. I suggested that I could fly back by myself on Monday and the rest of the family could stay an extra day, but Nicole, quite reasonably, did not want to have to drive back with three kids in the back of the car and no other adult backup.
We did manage to get out of the house a little after 8:00 on Friday morning, which is impressive for us. We lunched in Fox Creek and made it to my mom's place (which we refer to in shorthand as, variously, Beaverlodge (nearest town) or Kamisak, after their business name, Kamisak Apiary) by about 2:30. They still have a fair amount of snow there, and where it isn't, it's mostly mud, but it was still reasonably warm while we were there. Though there was that brief burst of hail or sleet on Saturday afternoon...
The visit itself was fairly relaxing, if only because of two more adults to share the child-watching duties with. My stepfather Elmer played soccer outside with Luke, Jinian played with crayons and "paint with water" colouring books, I did a lot of acrostics and read, Simon played some computer games (Wizardry on the laptop we brought, and Freddie Fish 3 on their computer), Nicole did some writing and some reading. We played Wizard, cribbage, and Apples to Apples (the adult version, so Luke and Simon didn't know as many of the red cards, especially the celebrities). I logged Mom out of Facebook so I could check on Farmville, and then she had trouble logging back in (she hadn't had to in a while), which turned out be because she had signed up using a different email than she (and her browser) thought.
Sunday, after the Easter egg hunt and a big brunch of French toast and bacon, we drove back, stopping at the Fox Creek Tourist Information Centre for a snack (mostly consisting of Easter chocolates). Why is it that those Tourist Centres are always closed on holidays, when one might actually want to avail oneself of, say, the bathrooms inside? Not clever. Well, maybe it's just Fox Creek, not the greatest metropolis in Alberta. We also made a brief stop (to switch drivers, mostly) in the even less sprawling town of Cherhill. We had some fun using Sabrina (our GPS) to keep track of how long it would take us to reach our next stop, though we discovered some holes in her knowledge. Do only the businesses that actually pay for it get into the database? There were no Valleyview restaurants in her database, no Fox Creek schools, nor the East Side Mario's in Spruce Grove (where we wanted to stop for an early supper on Sunday, but we settled for Boston Pizza instead). Also, doing a search for "Grande Prairie" under cities turned up nothing closer than Haiti, but when we got close enough it showed up on the "cities near" list.
Well, now we don't have to drive up there again until Christmas. Though we're thinking of sending Simon up to stay with them for part of the summer.
We sort of alternate holidays between my relatives and my wife's, though over the years, as her parents and then my dad moved closer to Edmonton, this has turned into "my mom", who still lives up in northern Alberta, vs. "all our other relatives". Which is okay, because Mom tends to get shortchanged the rest of the year, though they do come through town a few times a year as well. This Easter it was Mom's turn again, but it's more fun to drive for six hours to visit someone if you get more than one day before you have to turn around and drive back. We discussed maybe driving partway on Thursday night and staying overnight in a hotel, but decided that would be too much of a pain in other ways. And plane tickets up to Grande Prairie are too expensive for all of us. I suggested that I could fly back by myself on Monday and the rest of the family could stay an extra day, but Nicole, quite reasonably, did not want to have to drive back with three kids in the back of the car and no other adult backup.
We did manage to get out of the house a little after 8:00 on Friday morning, which is impressive for us. We lunched in Fox Creek and made it to my mom's place (which we refer to in shorthand as, variously, Beaverlodge (nearest town) or Kamisak, after their business name, Kamisak Apiary) by about 2:30. They still have a fair amount of snow there, and where it isn't, it's mostly mud, but it was still reasonably warm while we were there. Though there was that brief burst of hail or sleet on Saturday afternoon...
The visit itself was fairly relaxing, if only because of two more adults to share the child-watching duties with. My stepfather Elmer played soccer outside with Luke, Jinian played with crayons and "paint with water" colouring books, I did a lot of acrostics and read, Simon played some computer games (Wizardry on the laptop we brought, and Freddie Fish 3 on their computer), Nicole did some writing and some reading. We played Wizard, cribbage, and Apples to Apples (the adult version, so Luke and Simon didn't know as many of the red cards, especially the celebrities). I logged Mom out of Facebook so I could check on Farmville, and then she had trouble logging back in (she hadn't had to in a while), which turned out be because she had signed up using a different email than she (and her browser) thought.
Sunday, after the Easter egg hunt and a big brunch of French toast and bacon, we drove back, stopping at the Fox Creek Tourist Information Centre for a snack (mostly consisting of Easter chocolates). Why is it that those Tourist Centres are always closed on holidays, when one might actually want to avail oneself of, say, the bathrooms inside? Not clever. Well, maybe it's just Fox Creek, not the greatest metropolis in Alberta. We also made a brief stop (to switch drivers, mostly) in the even less sprawling town of Cherhill. We had some fun using Sabrina (our GPS) to keep track of how long it would take us to reach our next stop, though we discovered some holes in her knowledge. Do only the businesses that actually pay for it get into the database? There were no Valleyview restaurants in her database, no Fox Creek schools, nor the East Side Mario's in Spruce Grove (where we wanted to stop for an early supper on Sunday, but we settled for Boston Pizza instead). Also, doing a search for "Grande Prairie" under cities turned up nothing closer than Haiti, but when we got close enough it showed up on the "cities near" list.
Well, now we don't have to drive up there again until Christmas. Though we're thinking of sending Simon up to stay with them for part of the summer.
