We were enjoying unseasonably warm weather this past weekend and Sunday was like one would expect on a late summer’s day. Reid and I started out at Eddie’s for breakfast (of course) and while we were there we read a fire safety booklet I’d picked up at [1] McDonalds. At the end, the character in the book says that she wants to be a fire fighter when she grows up. Reid announced, “I’m going to be a police officer when I grow up.” I heard a deep voice say, “They’re over-rated” and turned to see a burly firefighter standing next to our table.

After breakfast, Reid and I went to the [2] Byward Market after breakfast. We had apples, pumpkins and a hat for Reid on our list but there were so beautiful vegetables on offer that we had to buy more. Reid chose some tomatoes, broccoli and cauliflower. She stopped dead in her tracks as we walked by a stall with mini carrots (not the pre-peeled, shaped to look mini kind that I have to confess to buying). We simply couldn’t leave without those, could we? Nor without asparagus. When we were almost to the car Reid spotted purple cauliflower and some others that were orange. I finally had to put my foot down and told her that she had to choose between them. We couldn’t fit everything we’d purchased at the [2] Byward Market into the fridge until I’d cut much of it up. It was a good thing to be forced to do and made packing lunches so much easier this week.

We went to the [4] Real Canadian Superstore out by Melissa’s to have Reid’s picture taken. We’re still (yes, still!) getting monthly portraits taken and Reid wore her Halloween costume for this one. She was so cute and didn’t shed a tear. The last time I’d tried for a Halloween picture at this store Reid cried and we have pictures of one of the sadder caterpillars you’ll ever have occasion to see. 3 year olds are so much better at the picture taking thing than 1 or 2 year olds.

Do you have a place that you go to every once and a while, often enough that you should be able to find your way there, but that you just seem to have trouble locating? For us, that place is the [5] Mackenzie King Estate in the [6] Gatineau Park. We spent about 45 minutes driving around the park, looking for our preferred parking lot. From my place in the backseat, I wasn’t of particularly great use in looking for signs but I was able to enjoy the sun shining through the trees and the parts of the park that we don’t generally see. The biggest downside, other than us driving instead of walking around, was Reid’s oft-repeated, “Are we almost there yet?” So as not to be accused of being a broken record, she sometimes asked, “Is this our parking lot?” when we slowed down or turned a corner. Sometimes she also asked, “Is it close?” Poor Ken, who was looking for the signs and not enjoying the scenery found it a bit frustrating. Okay, so did I but I wasn’t going to go telling everyone about it.

Once we found our parking lot, we were back on our “late summer” Sunday track. At the one end of the parking lot (not paved) was an area with lots of leaves. We kicked leaves into a pile so that Reid could jump into it. There was a man with a hockey stick making a pile for his child to jump in next to us. How Canadian is that?  I took some videos and Ken was in charge of the [7] Digital Rebel. I borrowed it because I was feeling artsy and wanted to take some pictures of the leaves. That’s when I noticed the “No CF” message. Ken is a shoot and look later guy while I am too much of a type-A personality to wait to see them. We might have had a little spat over who left the card at home. The preponderance of evidence may have suggested it was my fault but we got over it. Cameras are leading to so many fights in our family lately. Bad cameras!

Reid played in the first leaf pile as long as we’d let her and then we went for our walk. There were many people on the path and many, many people taking photos on Mackenzie King’s “ruins”. The light was fabulous and leaves and sky provided just the right background. A couple of people even had tripods and one group had brought changes of clothes. And Ken thinks that I am a little camera obsessessed! Ken and I reminisced about how we had gone to the [5] Mackenzie King Estate on our first real date more than 10 years ago. (I don’t think that we got lost that day or maybe we did but the glow of new love masked it.) Reid ran ahead and rolled into leaves and burned off some of her city girl energy.  I did some rolling in leaves myself. The leaves were so vibrant this year. My favourite are the one that are yellow turning to red - they remind me of Royal Gala apples. I don’t recall seeing the combination before. These are the ones that I picked to roll in. We had to leave before Reid was ready but not before she started asking at ever shorter intervals to be carried. Maybe she was ready to leave after all. We stopped for a bit in the parking lot leaves and waited for the people who backed their cars into each other and then came home. 

Edited to add the bits I meant to write before I published but then I hit “publish” instead of “save”.