Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, / Which we ascribe to Sainte-Adèle,

Didn't we just get back from being away? Halifax, Prince Edward Island, and all of that? Well, yes, but we also managed a long weekend at mother-in-law's cottage, a space we barely seem to get to, anymore. Christine had long-ago planned a weekend there with friends of hers (her school-pal Christine, along with husband Matt and daughter, just between our wee two in age). We'd done a prior weekend with them a couple of years ago as well (although I don't seem to have posted about it, so can't recall exactly when that might have been). We landed Friday and remained until Monday morning, so perhaps the longest we've been up there in some time. I spent a great deal of time reading and making notes around new poetry and non-fiction titles, and the children childrened. There was an afternoon that Matt and I took the young ladies to an amusement park, which did amuse, at least. They ran around and caught rides and ate ice cream and got along with each other, which was good. They don't see this Toronto-area friend that often, although I do think Aoife is in semi-regular contact via text message, at least. 

Odd to think how long I've been coming up here, back since that first post from 2008 (and we're probably up here for Thanksgiving again; see my post from two years ago, same). Why is this the first I'm hearing of this amusement park? We should have taken the kids here moons ago. Did you know there's a waterpark here as well? And here I thought this whole region was cute little shops, bistros and skiing, so that just shows what I know. Most of our weekends hiding out in the cottage, but this weekend wandering a bit further, even taking the young ladies thrifting, which Rose and Aoife went a bit mad, for (Matt said he hadn't taken his daughter to such, prior, so this was a completely new experience). There were board games, long stretches of quiet reading, chaos involving "movie night" (a whole day the two smaller ones prepared tickets and snacks to watch their choice of film, Jurassic Park III, and turning it off after five minutes because they both found it far too scary; but at least there were snacks).