Friday Adventures: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Decorative Art and Design Wing)

You will notice we missed this post last week. That's because we didn't do it. I got lost heading to a park on the other side of the Mountain (not really a mountain for those of you on the West Coast, but its still called "the mountain" in Montreal) and got a parking ticket all in one day on Tuesday, so I decided that was our excursion for last week - I didn't have it in me to do a second one.

So, this week, on the only cool-ish day (as in not over 40 degrees celcius with the humidity) of the week, we ventured to the MMFA. I love this museum because it is free, they have a bunch of varied permanent collections and lots of visiting exhibits. The visiting exhibits usually cost money, but if there is something cool we can go and pay for that and just see it without feeling bad.

Here we are after getting off a hot bus with a toddler who I foolishly took off my back. He then did not understand why he couldn't walk around the bus and screamed for half the trip. I'm sure everyone was happy to get us off the bus.

Once we had all had a sit and a drink, we went into the gallery and promptly got lost. There is only one entrance to the three (four?) buildings that make up the Museum. They are connected by tunnels, but there are two sets of staircases leading down from the main floor. One goes to the tunnels - the other, of course, does not. We took the wrong stairs. Here is a picture from those stairs to the stairs we should have taken.

This main entrance building has a fun Modern design, although the steps are a bit of an adventure - they are half as deep and twice as wide as normal stairs. Its hard to decide how to walk down them - take two at a time with extra big steps, or one at a time with really tiny steps. Ah, Modernism, do we really need to think this much about steps?

We opted to briefly visit the Contemporary collection and then move on to the Decorative Art and Design Wing. I thought it would be fun for the kids to look at real objects, and it proved to be a big hit. They had fun looking at all the crazy designer furniture and objects. Among our favorites was this nest couch:

A set of dining plates covered in etiquitte instructions that were very clever was my favorite item. The boys also liked a display of miniature guns, and the anthropomorphized people - furniture.

We then decided to go to the sculpture garden, because everyone was getting restless and I didn't want to cause mayhem and get us escorted out by security. After once more getting lost, we finally found it. They have this fun art piece blocking the street that goes between the other two buildings of the Museum right now. These are temporary road markers that sort of look like a field of poppies in the middle of the city.

Right around the corner there is some more public art and sitting space, including that crazy yellow installation that is part of an exhibition we didn't go and see. I'll get to that in a moment, after

a gratuitous shot of my adorable children.

I must say, when you go traipsing through Montreal with these four active, adorable blue eyed children you get comments. A LOT of comments. Montrealers are not shy about telling you what they think, and people regularly stop to talk to us. I don't know how many times I hear - "You are a brave woman!" or (presumably from lapsed Catholics) "Four children? Bless you." One day, if anyone is interested, I'll do a post about how to do urban trekking with four small children.

Okay, so onto this. This is made entirely of blown glass by an artist named Chihuly.

It is over 10 feet tall and really stunning. We thought it was made of balloons at first, and the kids were fascinated by it. I might take them to this exhibit if I can enlist Dave's help. It looks pretty stunning. Or I might sneak off myself to see it.

After the art gallery, it was necessary to refuel. We got some takeout - fries and a Pop Shoppe pop (eek!) and Gyoza. The carrots, as well as some grapes and goldfish, we had brought with us. All the kids tried the Gyoza, and a few even liked them. I was pretty happy no one loved them, because that meant that I got to eat most of them.

Then we headed down the street to the subway, past one of my favorite buildings. This building is part of Concordia Univserity campus. I love that it looks just like a quilt. My kids roll my eyes when I say this, but I still think its a pretty fun building.

So that was our adventure for this week. What summer fun have you been up to?

Friday Adventures in Montreal - The Biodome

One of the things I promised my kids this summer was that we would finally explore Montreal. We have been here for three years in August, but it has been a very busy time full of babies and job changes and studies. My oldest son loves exploring and adventures, including the traffic jams and getting lost and ending up somewhere different than you intended. This is good, because when you go places with me, this happens a lot.

In any case, in our weekly schedule (I might do a post about that too later) we have made Friday "Adventure Day". I will try to keep up with them on this blog as best I can.

This weekend is the Jazz Festival in Montreal, but I didn't feel up to taking four kids by myself to such an open area, so we opted for the Biodome. (Tip for Montrealers: if you go down to the basement and buy a year family pass, its only a little more than one regular family admission and you get full year access, plus free entrance to the Planetarium in November.) The Biodome is part of Olympic Park, which is across town from us, so we started the day with a big adventure on the bus, then the metro (the subway).

The three older kids loved the metro. Owen was not happy with riding on my back for 30 min. of underground.

Here is the Biodome - I love the Modernist concrete architecture around here (plus a Silvercity, of course). Is it just me, or is there something really Canadian about random, optimistic concrete structures? Two out of the three universities I attended were also full on Modernist concrete. I think it must have just been that everything was booming in the 70s.

But I digress. Here we are getting off the subway. The photo below is a great photo of me but not so good of Owen - have I mentioned that I got a haircut? I did. And I finally found a good hairdresser. Hooray!

In typical toddler style, Owen's favorite part of the Biodome was the puddles outside.

I love the colours and design in this poster (La Presse is the French Language daily newspaper in Quebec). I know, I'm such a quilt nerd.

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When we got there, we had to wait in a giant line up, as it was Friday and the week of the Jazz festival and there were tourists everywhere. It was real fun with four small children. Fortunately banana bread came to my rescue - I had a whole loaf in my bag and we nibbled away at it while we waited.

In typical Jill fashion, we got all the way to the end of the line only to discover that you buy the year long passes down by the coat check - where there is abseloutely no line.

The Biodome is pretty cool. They have reconstructed a tropical rainforest, a maple forest, the Saint Laurence salt water coastline and the arctic. You can walk through and watch all the animals in their semi-natural environment.  My favorite feature is that under the habitats they have water tanks, so you can see the fish and beavers and things as well as the above ground action. There is also a beaver cam and a lynx cam, so you can still see them if they are in their dens. Things like that always amuse me.

 Of course at this point my camera ran out of batteries, but I did get a shot of the turtles in the rainforest.

And at the very end, my kids' favorites - penguins. When Emma saw these she yelled, "Wow! Penguins really DO exist!". Again you can see in the water, too, so you can watch the penguins swim by.

In the lobby there is presently a display of cool birdhouses - this mosaic-ed one was my favorite.

After our tour of the Biodome we went to the Naturarium, a kids' room full of hands on nature props, microscopes with things to look at under them, and old stuffed animals. It was well worth the visit, and  I'm happy we have the year long pass, as some of the animals were sleeping or had just had babies.

We then did the whole metro / bus trip again, which went just fine. All in all, a successful first adventure. It really is nice to have kids at an age where these sorts of things are actually fun - not just a huge headache for me. I really do enjoy older kids.

So, hopefully I'll keep you updated on our summer adventures.

Oh, and my husband is mending up fine. I'm still on duty for most of the house / kids stuff, but at least he can do things for himself now.

No Longer a Lone Wolf

I am super excited that tomorrow is the first sew-in that I'm going to attend with the Montreal Modern Quilt Guild! I don't think I've ever done anything like this before. In case you're wondering, the white plastic bit in the middle of my photo is the removable front plate / hidden drawer / bobbin cover on my sewing machine. Due to some rough treatment, it no longer stays on my machine, and had to be packed with the presser foot and power bar.

This is my bag before I put in the flannel backed table cloth and rulers, plus my mini ironing board and my sewing machine (recently "decorated" with stickers again. sigh). It was super fun to swap out the diapers and spare pants and underwear (for one baby and one potty training girl) and sketch books and mini dinosoars (for distractions in check outs / line ups / church / meetings) for all my sewing and quilting stuff. I was impressed because all of the things in the above photo including my iron are tucked away in there.

I didn't say I would bring an iron / ironing board, but I'm going to be free piecing, and when I'm free piecing I use my iron about every 5 minutes, so I thought I would bring my own rather than hog the communal iron.

As I said on Flikr, when I'm free piecing its cut, sew, iron, cut, sew, iron, rip apart, repeat.

Hopefully I'll actually remember to do a post-meeting update this time. The last time I went it was great to meet everyone and see all their fantastic creativity, but I had Owen with me and he insisted on talking the whole time, so I was a little embarrassed. It was super fun, none the less. This time I'm going baby free (Dave is valiantly taking on all four kids for a few hours by himself) so I should be a little more relaxed.

Halloween!

 Well, we had another fun, costume-sewing filled Halloween around here! When I was studying Theatre in university, I loved working in costumes and make-up. These days, I'm happy to translate a tiny bit of what I learned into fun Halloween costumes. The funny thing about this is that my kids think I can whip up any kind of costume or imagined item at a moment's notice.

In any case,this year I had two costume successes and one failure (but awesome make-up and hair to make up for it) . Andrew's vampire cape and vest were awesome, and turned out just how I had pictured them. The vampire cape was made out of my head (not complicated other than figuring out how to get the collar to stay standing up), while the vest was cut out courtesy of the Oliver + S explorer vest pattern.

Emma's costume was this kitty shirt and hat. The hat is also from the Oliver + S Little things to Sew book, and it was both simple and adorable. The sweater was copied off of a Japanese kids' blouse pattern, which I lengthened. I cut it out of fleece, then appliqued on the tummy with a simple zig-zag, and added a tail to the back. 

It was pretty simple and a big hit. Emma wore it with leggings and her own socks and shoes. She only trick or treated for about 25 minutes, but I think this costume will get lots of dress up use, and it will fit for another year, so its okay.

I had a plan to make a Darth Maul costume, but it didn't work. I was going to dye one of the Jedi robes I made last year black. However, the discount fabric was made out of "unknown fibers" and they were not fibers that took well to dye. Instead of black I just got a slightly browner robe. With two days left and no time to go back to the fabric store and finish sewing another costume, I opted to see what was available at the grocery store just down the road. They had this Darth Maul costume for 50% off.

 While the costume was perfect, the boys were not allowed to wear masks to school. That is okay, thought, because I'd been planning to paint Aaron's face and spike his hair. I initially tried to mix gel and Kool aid so his hair would match his costume, but the Kool aid was too itchy, so we washed it out (leaving his hair red-ish) and re-spiked it into these little horns. I had tons of fun doing this make up, and Aaron was happy with it too.

After Emma was finished trick or treating, the boys kept on for another 45 min. or so, right until they couldn't lift their bags anymore. We let them have a little bit of candy last night, but most of the haul was sorted this morning

All in all, the kids costumes were all satisfactory, and a fun Halloween was had by all.

A Camping We Will Go

Last week we decided to go camping for three days. Due to the upheaval and the new baby this summer, we haven't had much of a holiday. We wanted to do a little something, though, so the boys could feel like we'd been on a "real" holiday over the summer.  We went to Ottawa area, as we had friends we wanted to visit. It was kind of a last minute thing, but we hoped they could fit us in anyway.

 After all the sorting and packing we finally got on our way mid-afternoon on Sunday. Although it is not a super far drive to the Rideau River Provincial park, it is sort of a strange drive. The park is on the south west of Ottawa, and we were driving to Ottawa from the south east. While the main highway route drive into Ottawa and then back out again, there are a lot of side roads that cut across directly to the campsite. We thought we would be clever and take one of these, but it wasn't as clear of a road as we initially thought, and so we had to turn around and go back to the highway. This, combined with a sudden torrential downpour, meant that at supper time we were doing this:

instead of camping. That ended up being a good thing, as we could have been setting up the tent during the downpour otherwise.

The downpour and almost getting lost was a harbinger of other small, non-major disasters - no plugs for the air mattresses (last packed away during our hurried, flu induced early departure from Family Camp last summer), no matches, no ropes to cover our picnic table with a tarp, and very hungry mosquitos attacking my feet before I could get bug repellent on myself. I was pretty proud of Dave and I, because while we could have started arguing and blaming one another and generally being grumpy, instead we just made the best of our situation. The kids didn't know any better, and this trip was for them, after all. As you can see, Owen was happy to be there. We went to sleep (on the ground) and hoped for a better day.

After a quick trip next morning into the nearest town for coffee, bagels and matches, we were good to go.

Since we had missed out on the evening hot dog roast, we had hot dogs for breakfast, and then set out to explore. One of the major treasures we found at this park were pine (fir?) cones:

Lots and lots of fir cones.

After a morning well spent, it looked like rain was coming our way. So we headed into Ottawa to the Children's museum - a small part of the Museum of Civilization. Since it was now lunch time, and the museum was across the river in Hull, Quebec, we had some poutine and a smoked meat sandwich at a little chip resteraunt, and then headed off to the museum. We had been reading Red Racham's treasure, a Tintin book that mostly happens on board a ship, so the kids were most fascinated by the boat part of the exhibit. Hello, Captain Haddock.

That night we had a swim and met some new neighboring campers who had kids the same age as Andrew and Aaron. Their friends were staying the next day, so Andrew and Aaron got to spend a good portion of time playing with their neighbors around their campsite (which was a much cooler set up than ours) and on the beach.

In between, Dave had fun teaching them how to build proper fires and roasting and burning things like fir cones, corn, marshmallows and (sigh) a pop can. The boys had a blast,

and I had a little rest. I napped with Owen while Emma coloured, and then coloured with Emma while Owen napped. Here, Emma is miffed that I'm trying to make her look at the camera while she is so clearly busy.

Dave meanwhile got to prepare his favorite camping / traveling meal. We call it "the Irish Meal" - not because it is intrinsically Irish (although it does contain potatoes) but because we made it a lot a hostels when we were staying in Ireland, as potatoes were cheap and the cheese was excellent.

The boys played at the beach all afternoon with their new friends

while Emma played in the sand and the water

and I hung out with Owen (and washed up after lunch)

Owen did really well on this trip, enjoying watching the world go by, and miraculously not getting a single mosquito bite. I think it must be because he was next to me, and I'm a mosquito magnet.

He got to have lots of Mom and Dad time while the other kids were playing, so that made it all good for him, too.

After our busy afternoon, we all piled into the car and went to visit my sister-in-law and my neice (who is the next youngest cousin at 18). She introduced us to her cool musician friends and Andrew was introduced to Angry Birds on the iPad. We got to talk to my brother on the cell phone, which was great, too.

The next day Andrew and Aaron had a final play with their friends, we packed up the van and headed out to visit our friends Brian and Jean. They have 6 kids, and Brian recently finished his PhD in religious studies, so we have a lot in common. It was lovely to see them settled in Ottawa, to enjoy food from Brian's garden and to watch Jean so effortlessly manage her 6 children (ages 6 - 14).

After a lovely, long visit we all climbed back into the van and headed back to Montreal, glad to see our city, our house, and our soft cozy beds.

Montreal Jazz Festival

Well, our summer plans suddenly changed, and July was freed up for some much needed holiday time. Between visitors, insulating the basement and renting out our upstairs and downstairs, we didn't actually have time for a holiday last summer, and the year before our vacation time was used moving to Montreal, so its been a long time since we've had time to just relax and do nothing.

We always go to a music festival in the summer - its a long running tradition. Usually we try to hit a folk music festival because they are kid and family friendly, and we like the variety of world music and singer songwriters and indy Canadian bands. The vibe is fun and cheerful, and at night the music all happens in once place, so we can just lay down a tarp, set up a small tent and let the kids draw or play or sleep while we listen to music. Since we have a new baby this year, and the closest really good festival we could find that was English was 7 hours drive away, we decided to skip the folk fest for this year. Instead, we realized that there was free music all week right in our own town.

How does one take four young children to the Montreal Jazz festival? Like this:

Set up your tent and tarp anyway, close to the edge of one of the stages that has grass. Make sure it is close to the edge of the festival grounds, so you can easily carry sleeping children back to the vehicle afterwords. Bring a lock to keep your lawn chairs, snacks, toys, and quilts in while you wander around the festival.

Only go to the children's play area when there are no children there - not mid-afternoon on Canada Day:

Stay and watch the surrealist mime / acrobat show, even if you don't understand it (you are in Quebec, after all):

Take turns letting the kids run around the park where your tent is set up (when there's no music playing) and roaming around catching other shows. Divide and conquer the children, so you only have one or two children to keep track of when you are away from the tent / colouring supplies / snacks by yourself.

And finally, enjoy the festival vibe, ignore the university students smoking a hooka 5 feet away from you (true story), catch as much music as you can, and let your kids stay up late, play in the steam and lights dancing area, and eat hot dogs.