Wonderful Canada Day Memories...

Yesterday was a wonderful day of celebration on our Nation’s birthday. We took our picnic lunch and headed out on the back roads to Hatley for the Canada Day celebrations. Everyone making a donation to the town’s events got one of the special yearly wooden nickels, a Canada Flag and a little pin. We got there in plenty of time to get a fairly decent parking spot in one of the hayfields and then staked out our spot along the edge of the main road to the parade at 11 am. Once we had our groundsheets, lawn chairs and sit-upons to reserve our spots, we took turns exploring the many booths and tables of everything from homemade goodies to wonderful craft items. Nick found the lady who makes such wonderful fabric ties and we expanded his collection again. We found an adorable dress on sale for only 8 dollars that looked as if someone had made it by hand for a wedding. It was just the right size for Bethany to grow into this summer, but I think Erin was a bit jealous, despite the fact we’d helped her pick out new earrings the day before to replace the ones that broke on vacation!

The parade’s theme this year was celebrating Canada’s Multi-cultural Heritage... and the floats were certainly creative!! Everyone from individuals to service groups entered floats. There were horses of all sizes from Shetland Ponies to Belgians and you should have seen the look on my two “city girls” faces when one of the big Belgian horses had a dump right on the road in front of us!! They spent the rest of the parade waiting to see if any of the marchers or float vehicles would get all “poopy”!

Right after we sang “O Canada” at high noon, my step-father John played and sang with one of his friends on the keyboard. The girls were very proud to see Grrr up on stage. (He got the nickname when Erin was little and could only say that part of Grrrrrandad)

After our picnic lunch and dessert of fresh strawberries over ice cream (or the cotton candy that Erin opted for) the grownups all needed to escape the heat and head home for a nap, much to the dismay of our girls who wanted to stay for all the races and games. We coaxed them home with the promise that we would do our own races and games after nap time.

Sure enough, by the time I woke up, Erin had set up the most elaborate combination of Scavenger/Treasure Hunt imaginable and we did some egg races with plastic eggs on spoons, bean bag tosses and races... but then the heavens opened and the lightning drove us inside for supper.

We all played a board game called the Enchanted Forest after supper (which regretfully didn’t have a dragon in it) and then got them tucked into bed. The day ended with the storms clearing off enough for Nick, Grr and I to walk to the end of the street and look out at the Fireworks in the sky over the park beneath a full orange moon. Happy 137th Birthday Canada!!