Before we ever left for Quebec, Malachi decided that he wanted to go home to Utah halfway through, to go to a debate tournament. He was talking about driving (what??? as if we would have let him drive alone across the entire country…in our car) and when I said no way to that, said he would buy his own plane ticket. Well. Sam and I finally agreed since it was his own money. And when he found a pretty good deal to Salt Lake from the Montreal Airport (about a three hour drive from Quebec City), we decided we would go down and stay in Montreal surrounding the days Malachi would be gone, so we could take him to the airport and pick him up without making the whole trip twice.
We wanted to visit Montreal at some point anyway, so it was a good excuse to do it! We found a house in Saint-Calixte, about forty minutes from Montreal (which sounds like it wasn't such a great efficiency after all, but it was forty minutes out in a different direction, not towards Quebec City, and everywhere is far from the actual city of Montreal because traffic is so bad!). After we had booked the rental house, I realized that Saint-Calixte is very near to Sainte-Julienne, where we stayed with the older boys (and baby Teddy!) years ago when Sam did a workshop at the Schoolism House! So that was a fun coincidence. We never got into Montreal proper on that trip at all, but we remember the countryside as being so beautiful and were excited to see it again!
The house we ended up staying at was so cool. It was on the tiniest little island, just big enough for the house and a little yard. You drove in on a small driveway and then were completely surrounded by water! It was beautiful! There were some boats we could use, and I wasn't sure how much we would get to use them, but the kids ended up loving them and getting pretty good with them, so they spent hours rowing around the little lake! So fun.
This post is just going to be a thousand pictures of the lake and the house in different lights and at different times of day, so feel free to skip on by if you wish! I didn't want to stop taking pictures because it was just all so beautiful!
Ziggy is our boy who always wants to be outside at home, and at our Quebec City house it was weird because he didn't actually spend that much time in the yard. He did play on the balconies all the time, but rarely in the yard itself, I'm not sure why. Anyway, it was fun to see him revert to his usual outdoors-loving self here in Montreal! I woke up to a beautiful sunrise one morning, and as I walked around our tiny island taking pictures and listening to the beautiful quiet nature sounds, I suddenly heard the very un-natural, and unmistakeable, sound of a Man. A Boat Man, to be precise. Luckily the Boat Man was not going out in the boats, but just working on them on land!
A sleepy Gus appears!
When we left Quebec City the Fall leaves were still in their full glory. We were surprised that here in Saint-Calixte (south of Quebec City), they were almost gone! They must have been stunning a couple weeks before. They were still pretty when we arrived, just a little more sparse! I loved how they looked with the sun just starting to hit them.
One side of the little island was covered with such thick moss. It bounced when you stepped on it! I love moss (as I believe I have said on this blog about a hundred times).
Malachi demonstrates the sponginess of the moss
Junie bounces on the moss
Mushroom!
This is the little driveway to get to the island.
We were so surprised to see some trees that seemed like evergreens—but with brilliant yellow needles. They didn't look like they were dying, but they were definitely not evergreen! I looked it up and learned there are such thing as deciduous conifers! I never knew that! I think this one is a larch tree. Its "leaves" (which are really needles) turn yellow and fall off each year!
The first few days we were in Saint-Calixte, it was SO warm. Unseasonably warm. We had temperatures in the low 60s and it felt like late summer! Perfect weather for rowing on the lake.
I was impressed with all the kids' rowing skills, but especially Teddy who has only ever been kayaking once before, but somehow has got the knack of maneuvering a boat quite well! He was even able to row himself and his little brothers in the rowboat!
Junie
Daisy, Junie, and Gus
The tiny island
Daisy bravely took all the little kids out in the rowboat. They loved it so much!
Daisy encountered a marshy area and got stuck, so Teddy and Goldie came to rescue her in the pedal boat and got stuck too! Ha! Junie got in the kayak to try to get them out, then Malachi tried to get them out, and finally Sam did get them out! The little kids thought it was a grand adventure.
There's one of those pretty yellow larches behind Junie!
We had to be a little vigilant watching Clementine and Gus, but they weren't really drawn to get close to the water like some kids are, so it was fine. It is interesting not to have any really little kids anymore that I have to worry about around the water!
The pedal boat was hard to control! The girls tried using their arms as well as their feet to help it along. :)
Ziggy helping Gus "waterski"
Clementine waterskiing (or is she surfing?)
Full moon above the lake!
Later in the week it got colder, but the kids still wanted to go in the boats
I loved this yellow view from our window
Elephant cloud!
Looking back off the island toward the main road
On Sunday after church, we decided to drive through Sainte-Julienne and see if we could find anything we recognized from our former trip. It was a little disappointing, because the nature park we remembered so fondly was now closed or privately owned or something and the unyielding lady in the parking lot wouldn't even let us walk in and have a look! Then, we had called, emailed, texted, looked up on Facebook, and everything else we could think of to get in touch with our friend Thierry who had hosted us before. We weren't able to track him down. As a last resort we thought we'd just drive to his house and knock on the door. But no one answered, and there was a "À vendre" sign on the driveway. I guess it is really true that you can't go back!
But we did see the beautiful lake, Lac McGill, through the bare trees. Is the frog pond still there? The little treehouse? The fire ring by the little stand of trees? I remember it all so well.
And we saw another nice lake filled with ducks!
Sunday night—talking to Sebastian on FaceTime
The house had a funny layout inside, with an interesting glass-walled bedroom and loft space…very different from our house in Quebec City!
Clementine drew a page full of gnomes
Smoked meat from Snowden Deli and Montreal bagels…the best!
I tried so hard to get a picture of how it felt to be on that little tiny island, surrounded by water. But I couldn't really get a good vantage point from which to take it. Finally Teddy took my phone out in the kayak and got some pictures from the lake. I like this view!
It got much colder as our week went on, and the morning we were packing up to leave, we saw ice on the lake! It looked very thin and irregular, almost like the frost you find on the grass in the morning which disappears a few hours later in the sunlight.
Even here, it seems like there are patches of ice floating on water. But on closer examination (i.e. the kids throwing rocks out into the water)…it was all ice! And fairly thick ice, at that! We couldn't break it no matter how hard we threw the rocks! It made the strangest, most unearthly sound:
Look how thick this piece was that Teddy managed to pry up!
The ground was all frosty too, and very beautiful!
And we loved the mist that rose from the lake as the sun came out.
No comments