We are back from our first Family Camping trip!

We left bright and early on the morning of the 23rd of June… actually… scratch that… it was dark and early when we got up at 4am…

(Do you have a minivan? if you do, you can understand that packing a tent, sleeping bags, food and clothes for 6 people is not an easy task with all the seats in place!)

We started driving and made great time even though we stopped on the way quite a few times. We arrived at the campground in Fundy National park 12 hours after we left home with a few hours to spare as we pitched our tent and settled in. Fundy National park is on the New Brunswick side of the Bay of Fundy and boasts the highest tides in the world and we looked forward to discovering it all… our friends arrived soon after us and settled into the neighbouring camping space and the kids played in the small ravine and creek than ran between us… The black flies were horrendous, the mosquitos and noseeums were biting but it didn’t stop us from enjoying ourselves… ok, ok… we did complain a lot…

Our first night and day were beautiful and we headed to the iconic Hopewell rocks at low tide and walked on the ocean floor. The flower pot ricks were gorgeous and the thick red mud was irresistible to the kids..

(click on any pic to see it larger)

The rest of the time in Fundy made camping a bit rough, the tents were not pitched correctly because of the rocky terrain, the temperature was quite cold, the nights were rainy, the mornings foggy, but once we got down the mountain we had cloudy but reasonable weather and we were able to discover the beaches and tidal pools, enjoy the scenery and discover a beautiful waterfall…

 (foggy morning)

Village of Alma at low tide…

Dickson falls is one of the favourite trails in Fundy National park and though it is not a long trail, it is full of stairs and slippery boardwalks that go next to and over waterfalls and amazing clear and crisp waters… The humidity in the area is o high that my camera lens was fogging up each time I took it out of my bag and the colours of green from the moss and vegetation was intense, truly a different type of ecosystem that we are used to here in Quebec.

 The boys enjoyed their first sprint of camping though they too had enough of the bugs and the cold after a few days.

Colin learning to use the axe…

Telling ghost stories around the fire while roasting marshmallows with friends…

After four nights of camping the the rain, freezing nights and foggy, cold humid days that made everything damp we were happy to leave and head to our next leg of the journey.

We headed to Magnetic Hill in Moncton before parting with out friends and heading to Prince Edward Island.  Magnetic Hill is tourist attraction and a strange one at that…you park your car at the bottom of the hill, put it in Neutral and the let it do its work… slowly you start moving backwards and then as you gain momentum you car heads uphill backwards without power. Of course, it has nothing to do with magnets but it is a very cool illusion 🙂

We parted with our friends and then headed to PEI… Prince Edward Island is an Island just off of the coast of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and is the smallest Canadian province. It used to be accesible only by boat but in 1997 the longest bridge in the world was completed and was opened to the public. It is a pretty majestic structure that spans over the ocean for 12.9 KM (8 miles) and takes about 10 minutes to cross… the boys were excited!

I will be covering the PEI part of our trip in the next post…

Places we stayed: Chignecto Camp ground in Fundy National Park

Places we went: Fundy National Park, Diskson Falls, Village of Alma, Hopewell Rocks, Magnetic Hill, Cape Jourimain Nature Centre, Confederation Bridge

My period is back…

So is the bloating, cramping and lack of energy and the overall feeling of Blah….

For 10 years now, on and off, I have been following my cycle, charting days and taking temps, or I have been pregnant or  in the limbo of the post partum phase…. this next phase feels like the close to all of that.

We knew that Wilhelmina would be our last child and last year decided to finalize that decision with Simon getting the big V… I went through the slight tang of wondering if we were doing the right thing but having my period back now makes me realize that it is done. I am now out of my last limbo phase after the birth of my last child and I am now leaving the “maternity” phase completely.

There will be no more pregnancies, no more babies, no more little kick and sweet smelling newborn heads… Each phase that Wilhelmina is going through will be the last time I see one one my own children pass though the same. There will be no more breaks until my body decides to stop on its own.

There are no regrets in these words… just realization…

My family is done expanding, now the focus is on maturing.