Oh, we had some fun

Last week we went on a little trip around the Province of Québec to see my siblings that I don't get to see much. My sister has a 16 month old son that I saw for the second time this weekend, last time he was 4 mo (and I was very pregnant!) and we got to do fun stuff for Mariann - because frankly, the babies didn't care much...

We went in a (free!) park that has a little farm. Mariann loved every bit of it, and you should have seen her eyes when my sister paid her a pony ride. She was enchanted by the goats, too.

We went in Québec city (some 300 km away) and toured the gorgeous Orléan Island, and went into a mall that has attractions in it. You can be sure Mariann didn't want to leave the Mary-go-round. The day after we walked with my brother (he was seeing Merrick for the first time) in the Old Québec city, which I hadn't done for ages. It's beautiful and much to Mariann's delight, full of horses carrying tourists around. It was nice to spend the evening with my brother. His roommate even made us BBQ club sandwich for souper. Imagine, they are all musicians. And by that I mean it's all their life. One makes guitar for a living, the other has his own studio, and my brother record his own CDs. Mariann was very impressed by the number of guitars there was in there (erm, me too) and she was even allowed to play of the piano.

Then we headed to Montréal (some 300km more) We didn't get into the island, which we didn't felt like... We're so not the city type! Just to get to my sister's suburb house was tricky enough... How come the traffic can be jammed on a Thursday mid-after-noon? Anyway, I'm glad we went. My sister needed some help... I think it did her great to see that I, too, was tired of the kids sometimes, that me and Papa can loose our patience also. That our babies practically never get to sleep without a bit of fuss, and that is not such a big deal. She lives far from her mom (we have different ones) and on her husband's side lives in France. It's so easy to feel isolated with a baby! I've listened to her the best I could, but our realities, and our personalities are very dissimilar and I didn't know how to council her. A lot of her issues resolve on the fact that they are both nurses, she work the day shift and he, the night, which leave a very small window were they actually get to be a family, together. Sadly, everything is more of a question of money, which I can't really understand thus talk about without feeling awkward, because we choose that I'd stay home. I didn't want to sound judgemental ...

Oh well. We did the 600ish km back home in one shoot, in the night so the babies were fast asleep. We were away for 5 days and it felt great, and it was enough and I was happy to be back in our mess.