I find that when I want to have a great time with my family, sometimes I have to just leave the giant, heavy, Canon Mark II camera at home. Sacrifice beautiful photos for a genuinely beautiful time. Experience it instead of trying to capture it in high resolution.
That's where the iPhone comes in. It takes two seconds to snap a quick photo of something that's going on, and then you can carry on. No worrying about white balance, ISO, or proper exposure. Just a quick snap, no sweat about the low quality. It's captured, it's done, and I can carry on having a great time with my boys.
That isn't to say that I don't cringe when I get home and review the extremely low resolution poor quality photos. But I have to remind myself what that means. It means I had an awesome time. Worth it.
On Friday, my boys took me out for a super low budget family date night, and I had more fun than I've had in a really long time. No expectations, no giant grocery shopping trip thrown in. Just a casual night out on the town with my two favourite men.
Our first stop was Toys R Us, for some Christmas "window shopping" and basically to let Oliver just run around and go crazy.
While we were there, we saw some great Christmas gift options for our guy, and some excellent sales, too! Oliver grabbed a little plastic shopping cart from the first section of the store (not actually intended for children to push around the store) and decided he was adopting it for the remainder of the trip. I couldn't get a good shot with the cart in it, since he was so fast with that little plastic thing, but here you can really tell he's having fun.
And as any other mother of a little boy knows, the back of the store with the giant riding toys is always a favourite stop. Here's an instagram of Oliver waving goodbye to us, because he is certain he's driving this thing away, and will probably never see us again. Worth it, he figures though, since it's a car, and it's tractor coloured. Win-win. Who needs parents?
He also got to hop into a Lightning McQueen model from Disney's Cars. Although he couldn't quite grasp the concept of using his feet to propel himself. Kids these days - spoiled.
Our next stop was Chapters, where we just perused books, looking for some new options for Oliver for Christmas, and some graphic novel options for Matt. He's kind of a nerd that way. There was also a Thomas train set there for Oliver, and he was basically in heaven. Not a very good sharer, though, unfortunately. The other kids trying to play with the trains kept looking at me, like "Hey, are you going to let him hoard all of the train cars like that?" All I could do was give them a shrug and a look back that said "Well, to be fair, he's doing a pretty bang-on job of that choo choo train noise, so..."
Somewhere en route to Toys R Us we also stopped off to pick up some Tim Hortons coffee and hot chocolate, but unfortunately mine was absolutely repulsive. Like, tap water repulsive. So while we were at Chapters I got to have my very first Starbucks ever. I know what you're thinking - you've never had Starbucks?? But alas, it's true. A penny saver like myself just can't justify spending that much on a cup of coffee.
So I got hot chocolate. :)
Salted Caramel hot chocolate, to be exact. It was divine.
Oliver also took his first ride on an escalator there. Initially he was pretty terrified. Didn't even want to go near it for fear of certain death, but we helped him on, and within seconds his face turned from terror to sheer wonder. "What is this magical contraption??" He liked going down better, since he could really see the movement of where he was going, as opposed to just the steps in front of him. Unfortunately we also kind of created a monster, so we had to do the round, about 10 times. It was love.
On my way out I snapped a photo of this gorgeous little mug sitting in the non-book section of the store. I am exactly the kind of person they are marketing to in mega bookstores like this one. Pretty little knitted throws and hot water bottle covers, bird houses and erasers, and pretty little white ceramic mugs that look like tree bark. Only $8! Christmas list!
Our final stop was the Polo Park shopping mall. Just because it's fun to be in that environment when you're feeling Christmassy. We just walked through the halls, let Oliver run wild (under careful supervision) and I popped in to David's Tea to pick up some Banana Dream Pie loose-leaf tea. I also grabbed the Cookie Dough flavor while I was there. Yeah, that's a real thing.
Here's an overpriced Tea Pot I saw while browsing, and I snapped a photo. I love it, it's very pretty. But I couldn't justify spending that much on it, especially since I don't get too many guests up where I live, and could never drink 2 litres of tea by myself. However, it's going on the Christmas list too. Because I like to pretend that one day people will come visit me.
And that concludes family date night! It was absolutely marvelously splendid, and super low budget. We didn't even eat out (which is quite a feat for us when we're in the city!) I got home feeling just completely warm and fuzzy inside, and definitely kind of Christmassy. But it just goes to show that it is absolutely possible to go out and have a great time with your family without spending too much, or worrying too much.
I intend to have a lot more evenings just like that one.
No comments:
Post a Comment