A visit from Grandma

After Mothers Day, we were delighted to have Max's and Leo's Grandma visit from Winnipeg for a week. Upon arriving at the house, Grandma was promptly whisked away by Max to help with some building he had to do in his bedroom.


The rest of the evening was spent exploring Max's other favourite toys and books while Holly was off at a bachelorette party. Whoopee!

The next day, we all set out to catch the remainder of the tulips - remember, this is now a week after Mothers Day (see previous photos of toques and empty flower beds), so we figured the tulip gardens were going to be on their last legs. Surprisingly, there were still a few left standing. In fact, some of the beds were still gorgeous and the weather had done an absolute about face so we were joined by the rest of Ottawa. Definitely a good call to hit them ASAP. Here are some photos:


See? Some tulips WERE still alive on the 16th!

This picture kills me. It looks so pretty at first glance. What is it Max is looking at? A bug? A pretty flower? I can't tell...all I can see is that dead dandelion in the foreground. And is that a hot dog in his hand? Yup. (Max had the best hot dog lunch that day: 1 dog, 1 bun, 25 olives, 9 pickles. Sweet.)

I remember when I took this picture how stunned I was to catch a Leo smile on celluloidigital. Not to give away future post spoilers, but Leo is a different kid now.

We tried so many times to get everyone looking at the camera...no dice. It devolved into Max trying to sit on Leo and I think that's when we called it a day on family portraits.
I had to work most of the week so I missed out on some of the adventures, but on Monday there was an awesome visit to the Experimental Farm with the Bee Exhibit and awesome display of tractors.



On Tuesday, Max's wildest dream came true. Check it.


Your eyes do not deceive you - Max is in the cab of the backhoe. A pipe under our neighbours' lawn blew up and so there was construction equipment all over the place for a couple of days. Some sketchy-looking but actually very cool construction dude (see below for a close-up of his belly) decided that it would be OK if Max were to operate the backhoe loader and do some digging. On our neighbours' lawn. They don't know yet. Holly jokes that Max's life is going to be pretty sad now that his lifelong dream has been realized at age 2.7.


The next couple of days featured a playgroup rendez-vous at our place and an epic visit to Toys-R-Us (to that point, Max believed that the local consignment store was the toy store...SURPRISE!!), where Grandma immortalized herself by buying Max a big ride-on excavator with sounds and lights. Max loves his digger and even Leo is using it for climbing practice now. Here's Leo's friend Grace modeling the digger:


On Grandma's last full day in town, we went out for a belated Mothers Day sushi lunch. Leo picked at a few things, Max gorged on udon noodles (as per usual) and the rest of us also pigged out (possibly because I overshot on the ordering).


We retired to a nearby park to digest and Leo provided us with a high and a low:


HIGH: he posed for this great picture, taken by Grandma.


LOW: Leo ate sand. Quite a bit in fact. Even after a handful like this left a bad taste in his mouth, he continues to go back for more...

We had a wonderful visit, front to back. Thanks a bunch for making the trip, Mom!

Here are a couple of other cute pictures, just for you readers.



One day, Leo actually fell asleep in his Jumperoo. Isn't that supposed to be the opposite of what happens in the Jumperoo??


Another day, we had a yummy family lunch at the Works and Max conked himself on a table. Our favourite server promptly whipped together this stylish ice pack for him.