Monday, July 21, 2014

Canada Day 2014 --- Wallace Island with the Warringtons, Part II

We decided to throwing ourselves fully into summer at the Point. A great idea, but an organizational achievement...and anyone who knows me, knows that organizational feats are not exactly my forte. Nevertheless, I found myself packing up everything we had so recently unpacked, separating everything into piles for the summer, for the boat trip and for storage. Phew. 

We got a late start on our Canada Day trip with Eric's mom, shooting off to meet the Warringtons a full 24 hours later than we thought. Better late than never, though. A true axiom in this case, since any amount of time we can snatch out on the boat with great friends, sunshine and the wilderness is time well spent. 

We weren't even finished rafting up with PAWS before the kids had pried the dinghy off the back of the boat and Finny was swimming. 


Finny and I are born on opposite sides of the calendar...she's a summer solstice baby and I am a winter solstice baby. That puts us naturally on opposite sides of lots of things and one of the most stark is Finny's love of cold water and my natural abhorrence of chilly swimming. This little girl hops into all water. I watch and shiver.


Not to be outdone, most of the kids ended up taking up the challenge and going for a sunset dip. Brrr is all I have to say about that.


Molly is smiling in this picture, but she said it was freezing!


Her mouth is smiling, but her eyes are begging to get out of the water. That's my girl!


The only cold liquid I participated in was a chilled beer.


The kids all have so much fun together. It is literally the easiest way to pass the time. One might be forgiven for thinking that eight kids increases the workload, but it really doesn't. They break off into clumps and disappear.


Finny performed her first flips of the season, first with a lifejacket, then without. She is fearless. I am not. I hold my breath each and every time.


And, just like last year, Canada was spent in and out of the water with flags and without.


And, again, just like last year, I was shamed/pressured into swimming. I remembered it as freezing cold. It didn't disappoint. Maybe even colder than I remembered.


It actually knocks the breath right out of you. I look mad in that picture below:


But you can't stay mad for long when you have great company and great weather. It's just about the best way to start the summer.


Interesting side note to the picture below. We wanted to get a nice picture of our whole family, so we gathered the troops around the Canada flag. Except, one troop went AWOL. We could not convince Lukey to get in the picture. Period. We tried calling, cajoling and good old shouting, but the little guy went down below in the boat and wouldn't come out. Who knows why. So, ALMOST the whole family with the flag.


Is there anything more Canadian, more summer or more fun than jumping into the ocean with a flag? No. There isn't.



We flipped for Canada Day (haha).


And a final sidenote: we managed to go through Active Pass at the worst possible time on our way to Wallace. We were in such a rush to leave and we didn't check the tide tables. We were mid-way through the pass when we noticed that we weren't moving. Or, if we were moving, it was backwards... So we gunned the engine a bit and managed to get going again. We had a bit of fun watching a much more powerful boat get stuck going up the middle of the pass. When we got to Wallace, Simon checked the tides and we went through at the absolute height of going against the tide. The good news is: on the way back we were with the tide. We hit a record 11.4 knots/hr. What a difference it makes going WITH the flow instead of AGAINST it. There's your metaphor for life for the day...

We stopped in at Miner's Bay on the way home for ice cream. It was a quick 24 hour trip, but there was lots of fun to be had...


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