Left Coast Mama » Family Time

Vancouver International Children’s Festival

Gwen — Mon, 14 May 2012 20:48:23 +0000

There are lots of things that Anthony and I agree on when it comes to parenting, and at the top of the list is making sure our children have a love and appreciation for culture. We love music and our boys have been to many concerts especially our favourites Fred Penner, Bobs and Lolo, Will Stroet and The Kerplunks. I am pretty sure that we have seen all of them either at the Surrey Children’s Festival or the Vancouver International Children’s Festival as well as at MusicFest Vancouver. We love plays and have been subscribers to Carousel Theatre’s last few seasons. We even have date nights planned for next year as Arts Club subscribers so the boys can see that we get to go to plays as well.

Aidan and Quinlan dancing at the Grey Cup to the sounds of Bobs and Lolo

This year I am even more excited for the Vancouver Children’s festival because of all the content in French, and or bilingually presented. I love that I can share something fun with my eldest who is in French immersion. I love that we are exposing his younger brother to French culture and language as well. Since we have not had any field trips as a part of my eldest’s school year I have no problems taking him out on a weekday to see some of these performances.we are especially looking forward to seeing A la belle etoile.

I am also really excited to be going to see the reading of Pete the Cat in one of the first pajama series. Starting at 6:30 pm and running typically until 7 or 7:30 pm you can bring the kids in their pajamas, in fact it is encouraged. This is a great way to see a show and then head home to bed only to have to brush the teeth. I also hope that there will be some silliness of the likes of Pete’s shoes. I love my pajamas, I love my pajamas, I love my pajamas! I can’t wait for my sons to meet Eric Litwin because it is always amazing to be able to hear an author reading/presenting their work.

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Related: Aidan, children, family, Family Time, My Boys, outings, Quinlan, Theatre, Vancouver.

Carousel Theatre Presents: Aesop’s Fables

Gwen — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 03:25:59 +0000

This afternoon (well yesterday now) we went to see the opening of Carousel Theatre’s production of Aesop’s Fables. Directed by Carole Higgins and starring Mishelle Cuttler, Kayvon Kelly, Melissa Oei and Mike Stack, Aesop’s Fables is a brilliant short play. From the moment the stage lights went up to the question and answer period at the end the audience was actively engaged in this lovely piece of work.

Mike Stack, Mishelle Cutter,Melissa Oei, Kayvon Kelly

In Aesop’s Fables we meet Harriet, Wolfie, “and I’m Syd” and Barry, the newcomer to the group, a rag tag bunch of players who travel by caravan and stop to make music and tell stories to audiences all over the place. Using their magic transforming caravan, they play musical instruments and imagination to tell stories and teach lessons to their young audiences. Adapting four of Aesop’s animal tales; The Tortoise and the Hare, The Boy Who cried Wolf, The Lion and the Mouse and The Wolf and the Jackdaw, the four use song, dance and the audience’s imagination to entertain and learn important life lessons.

Yay! Carousel Theatre has done it again. Aesop’s Fables is another fabulous production from all accounts. The sets are bold and beautiful with a bright red and gold caravan that converts to a small stage and lanterns hanging everywhere. The lights enchant the forest surrounding the caravan and set the stage for the stories.The costumes are colourful and imaginative and the head pieces bring the characters in the stories to life while still giving us a clear view of the actors underneath. The actors have awesome chemistry with each other and bring the audience in as the fifth player, or maybe even as a flock.

Mishelle Cutter, Kayvon Kelly, Melissa Oei

Aesop was the perfect first live theatre experience for Quinlan. While he was a little apprehensive when the house light went down, as soon as the stage lights were on he was fully immersed in the play. Quinlan was happy to be part of the action when asked and transfixed the rest of the time. Aidan has seen a lot of plays over the last few years and this was one of his favourites. When the play ended he was shocked because it seemed so short as he was so engaged in the action and story ark. Aidan would have been thrilled to see these players do as many more stories as they cared to tell. If you asked him I am sure he would have been happy to jump up on the stage and help them. As it was it was hard enough to keep in his seat as he was so engrossed in the play.

As Aidan says in his soon to be released video review, go see Aesop’s Fables, it is awesome! It runs from February 17-26 at Waterfront Theatre on Granville Island. This is the first of Carousel Theatre’s productions that has opened up the weekday matinees usually reserved for school groups. Tickets are $15 for ages 3-17, $25 for students and seniors and $29 for adults. Call the Carousel box office at 604-685-6217 for more information.

All photographs are provided by Carousel Theatre and are taken by Tim Matheson.

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Related: Aidan, Family Time, Firsts, imagination, outings, Quinlan, Theatre, Vancouver.

The Cat Came Back: Anticipation and Tickets Giveaway!

Gwen — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 19:10:14 +0000

Update: Congratulations to Heather!

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We here at the Floyd household are big fans of Fred Penner and the Cat Came Back. The marriage of the two is one of our favourite songs. I was happy to have Fred singing as we had kids. His songs are fun and not too preachy and the melodies and harmonies are interesting. He is a children’s entertainer that takes the adults into consideration. This is why we were thrilled to find out that Fred Penner has written a musical play based on his enduring “The Cat Came Back.”

The Vancouver Playhouse Theatre Company welcomes the story of Winnipeg’s most famous Cat to the Playhouse stage, in its first theatrical incarnation – The Cat Came Back, co-created by the formidable trio of Fred Penner, Jay Brazeau, and Kim Selody.

In this brand new, fanciful tale, inspired by the song Fred made famous, we meet a merry band of musicians who must deal with their grumpy neighbor Mr. Johnson and his mysterious cat. Together, they learn about the joys and challenges of friendship, and how we can take care of each other. Outstanding feline puppetry and masterful music make this a show you and your family won’t want to miss! As Jay Brazeau so eloquently puts it, “The Cat Came Back is like Kraft Dinner: I grew up with it; it makes me feel good inside, and every time I have it I feel like I am home again.”

From Vancouver Playhouse

Tickets, from $10, can be reserved online at vancouverplayhouse.com, by calling the Playhouse Box Office at 604 873 3311, or in person at the theatre box office Monday – Friday, 9:30am-5pm.

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As many of you know we are big theatre buffs in this family. Even though Anthony and I have been mainly to children’s theatre in the last few years we are thrilled to pass on our love of live theatre to our children. Knowing that this play was commisioned for Manitoba Theatre For Young People makes me even more happy to be able to offer two tickets to one of my readers for the March 31st, opening night performance at the Vancouver Playhouse. Leave a comment on this post letting me know what your favourite Fred Penner song is and you will be entered. Comments will be accepted until 26 February. The winner will be notified by email and will have 48 hours to send me their mailing information before I choose another winner. Good Luck!

January (So Far) in Photographs

Gwen — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 05:37:40 +0000

I have been playing with both my iPhone camera and my T2i a lot in the last couple of weeks. I have especially been playing with Instagram (my user name is Gwen Floyd) and with my macro lens on the T2i. I got a new camera strap and I am amazed at how much of a difference it makes on my photo walks with my boys. I also love that Aidan is getting so excited about walking around with his dad and I taking pictures.

This picture of Quinlan was captured by Aidan.

Quinlan and Anthony at the Aquarium.

Wonder

Watching the sea turtle.

Playing with my macro and the water drops.

Neon

Unintentional heart bokeh.

Wrought Iron, peeling.

First Family Photo Walk of the year.

Hail

Industrial

I am so happy with the photo and I am not sure why. It just works.

Playing with focusing through a frame.

My companions on the Floyd Family Photo Walk.

I think this may be one of my new headers.

Farewell 2011, Hello 2012

Gwen — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 07:14:30 +0000

Like the last few years December has gotten away from me. I was so busy writing Advent letters and planning for surprises and trying to get something that might actually be a surprise for Anthony that it left me with little other time to write. Of course we have also had two bouts of intestinal illness go through the family as well.

Christmas was wonderful in many different ways. The best was Quinlan’s reaction to Christmas morning. He got up pretty early but we managed to keep him in our room for a few minutes so we could get upstairs with him and give the surprise guest a few seconds to get up as well. When the boys saw Grandpa sitting at the dining room table they were thrilled. When Quinlan saw the cookie that Santa took a big bit out of he was absolutely flabbergasted. I tell you I wish I had been awake enough to have my camera set up for his reaction as it was classic. He had the biggest round eyes and open mouth, and the hand to the cheek as he exclaimed “Santa ate the cookie!” Once Quinlan saw the presents under the tree there was absolutely no turning back. It was all we could do to open our own presents. I have never seen anyone open presents so fast in all my life. He was so excited that he even “helped” Aidan with the opening of Aidan’s presents.

Having Grandpa John come to stay for 5 days was fun, but went really quickly. We were able to have a small family get together on the 27th, and I am so glad we decided to have the turkey then and not on Christmas day.

There have been a lot of great things about 2011. The start of preschool for Quinlan has been a highlight. He loves school, and ballet and swimming. Aidan is growing up so very much. He is getting so grown up and he is so interested in learning about everything. It was especially acute during our road trip. Aidan was so interested in figuring out about everything. He found out about so many of the parks and their geological features. He got to look at the night sky and actually see stars.

This new year I am hoping to keep up with all the boys activities including theatre, swimming, skating, piano and ballet. I am also hoping to keep up with writing and photography for me. We want to keep up with our geocaching and keep going to events like the few that we took in this year. The Geo-monster ball and the best of the bad events were fantastic and really helped to give us the best caching year ever.

In 2012 I am going to try to get to Blogher in NY again. I won a conference ticket and as soon as I get the confirmation I plan to figure out the rest like hotel and airfare. I also want us to take the boys camping this year, it is about time we used the tent.

Those are my goals, simple and easy. No worries about losing weight or being a better person. I like who I am and I think that I will be much happier if I stop trying to change myself. All I want is to be happy.

© 2011 Left Coast Mama | Permalink | One comment
Related: Aidan, family, Family Time, goals, Gwen, Holidays, hope, My Boys, New Year, Quinlan.

Best Day Ever According to the Boys

Gwen — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 05:15:55 +0000

Today we had the best breakfast ever, french toast and fruit smoothies. Then we got dressed and headed out into the chill air and sunshine to the Grey Cup festival. So much fun to see the Olympic Cauldron lit, and Bobs and Lolo. Two footballs and a microphone each and some tap dancing and you have just about the perfect day.

Seconds after the Olymic cauldron was lit.

Having lots of fun . . .

You are never alone . . .

Jump in, Action packed!

Muscles, Muscles you're the best . . .

Bobs and Lolo

Cindy Seahorse

Aidan and Quinlan with Bobs and Lolo

Touchdown!

Aidan Floyd here reporting for Global BC . . .

© 2011 Left Coast Mama | Permalink | One comment
Related: Aidan, Family Time, My Boys, outings, Photography, Pictures, Quinlan, Vancouver.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

Gwen — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 06:15:29 +0000

As some of you may have guessed we are big fans of Carousel Theatre here in the Floyd household. They have not only given Aidan an outlet for his imagination and creativity but they foster the child within all of us. Last year was the first year we had season tickets and all the productions were fantastic. Aidan and whichever grownup was privileged enough to go with him were entranced and thoroughly entertained.

This season we have season tickets again, but this time we also have tickets for Quinlan for a few of the performances. I can’t wait for Frog and Toad as this will be the first time that all four of us will get to go to a play together. Aidan and I are going to the opening of The Wizard of Oz on the 3rd of December and we can’t wait, especially after having seen some of the wardrobe and the rehearsals when we have theatre classes.

Now for the exciting part for my local readers, I have 2 sets of 2 tickets for the December 10th performance at 7pm, of The Wizard of Oz. If you have a child 4+ and would like a chance to go all you need to do is comment on this post and let me know who is your favourite character in The Wizard of Oz. You must be able to come to the December 10th performance at Waterfront Theatre on Granville Island. Leave a comment by next Friday the 25th and I will email the winners. The winners will have 48 hours to contact me, if not I will draw another winner.

If you want to hedge your bets you can get your very own tickets by calling 604.685.6217.

Photo by Tim Matheson

Disclosure: The season tickets we purchased ourselves. They are well worth it.

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UPDATE: The winners chosen at Random.org are Zoe and Leah! Congratulations!

Trains, Trains, Trains

Gwen — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 00:28:01 +0000

I am pretty sure the boy get their love of trains from me. That is not to say that Anthony doesn’t like trains, but I think he was more into other things growing up. A big part of the reason the boys have so much wooden train track and trains is because I love them. When Aidan was too small to make his own track layouts I took the time to make intricate layouts for him. Aidan loves trains and his track layouts are extensive and intricate and beautiful. Quinlan’s eyes light up when he is playing with trains. Both boys were excited when we walked into the gymnasium filled with elaborate tracks, scenery and moving trains at the Model Train exhibition in Burnaby.

I think my favourite were the Lego trains, but there were a lot of cool models there as well.

Although it may just be the elaborate minifig presentations that won me over.

The details in the other models and backgrounds were pretty fabulous as well.

Our boys had a great time and it was nice to see the looks of joy on their faces and that of the grown ups running the trains. Everybody needs a place to play.

Happy Hallowe’en or Halloween, however it is spelled now.

Gwen — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 16:50:48 +0000

My boys love Halloween. I love Halloween. Anthony likes Halloween except when we get a parking ticket. Our love of Halloween and the relative closeness of Quinlan’s birthday gives us a week or so of Halloween celebrations.

Ghost train theme this year: Circus of Disaster.

We have Quinlan’s Halloween themed birthday party, other Halloween activities like the festival at Aidan’s school and the Stanley Park Ghost train and of course trick or treating. We also added a Halloween themed geocaching weekend in the mix.

Quinlan picks up a geocache on our Geo Monster Ball weekend.

Aidan and some of his friends at the Halloween Howl at his school.

On the weekend we had Quinlan’s birthday party at the pumpkin patch and came home with four pumpkins.

Four Muddy Friends

Aidan already had a pumpkin from his school the week before so we had a total of five. The upside to the plethora of pumpkins is that everyone got to carve or plan the carving of a pumpkin. We had Quinlan’s scary faced pumpkin. (I wish you could see the face and hands to go with the pumpkin, but alas we did not get a picture of Q describing what he wanted Anthony to carve for him.)

Quinlan's scary pumpkin.

We had Aidan’s self carved (mostly) ghost pumpkin. We had my double duty robot and owl pumpkin, and a quickly carved Frankenstein’s monster pumpkin. Last but not least was Anthony’s adrino powered pumpkin complete with fading lights and sound.

Halloween dawned bright and dry but cold. Aidan was happy to be able to wear his wizarding cloak and hat to school, and Quinlan was happy to be a robot on our way to swimming lessons.

Boys ready for some trick or treating fun!

I love how many people smiled and let Quinlan know that they thought he had the best costume. Mostly because he was making so many people smile and he was happy, but also because except for the head, I made the whole costume and it was a lot of work. Once we had a decent supper in the boys we headed down and parked near the coop and started our trick or treating about 6:30 pm. The coop went all out again this year and by the time we were finishing about an hour later lots of houses were running out of candy. After we finished we headed back to the car where a shiny parking ticket was waiting for us. It looked like Easy Park was not being charitable this year and all the cars had parking tickets. Happy Halloween to us.

© 2011 Left Coast Mama | Permalink | No comments
Related: Aidan, Anthony, Family Time, Gwen, Halloween, Quinlan, Vancouver.

Halloween, Pumpkins and Candy, Oh and a Birthday

Gwen — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 15:11:45 +0000

Halloween, next to Christmas, is my favourite time of year. I love to dress up, trick or treat with the kids and decorate. I have always loved carving pumpkins and decorating the house even before we had kids. The few years that the smell of raw pumpkin gave me a migraine were the saddest few years of my life and I resorted to carving up green and red peppers. Aside; the green peppers were very cute and the littlest trick or treaters at my mom’s house were enchanted with them.

When Anthony and I moved to Vancouver we lived in a condo for the first few years an didn’t get any trick or treaters, but we still carved a pumpkin. When we lived in an apartment we decorated and got a few kids. When we moved to the townhouse in Vancouver we really expected some trick or treaters. Now seven years later we don’t expect any. We do however get the place decorated, the kids costumed up and leave candy out for whomever decides to come while we go out trick or treating with our two boys. Halloween, though fun before the boys, is so much more fun now.

Since Aidan was a baby we have taken time before Halloween to take pictures of the boys in their costumes. I love this tradition and I really hope they don’t grow out of it. We also have gone to the Richmond Country Farms Pumpkin Patch for the last 4 years. It is a little expensive but the boys have a wonderful time. This year, like last year, we are having Quinlan’s birthday party at the Pumpkin Patch. It is a lot of fun and has music, a maze and of course tonnes of pumpkins. This year we are adding the Stanley Park Ghost Train to our traditions.

The best of our traditions is our trick or treating ritual. We go down to a housing co-op near our place that is right next door to an elementary school. We usually drop off candy to some of our friends living in the co-op and then go around. We take lots of pictures and let the kids stay out a little bit later than usual bedtime. This is the best place near us to trick or treat because the co-op goes all out. They decorate to the nines and all the kids in the co-op and nearby elementary school are there. We come home with a tonne of candy and have hot chocolate by candle light and jack o lantern light before bed. Once the boys are in bed it is chocolate o’clock for the grownups, just like it should be.

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Disclosure: I am participating in the Allan Candy Company program by Mom Central Canada. I received compensation for my participation in this campaign. The opinions on this blog are my own.

Allan Candy Halloween treats are all made in Canada and are peanut free and their line-up includes: Allan Intense Jubes & Jellies, Allan Chewy Rascalz and Allan Fruit Buddies.

© 2011 Left Coast Mama | Permalink | No comments
Related: Aidan, cute, Family Time, Halloween, Quinlan, Trick-or-treating.