One of the great things about British Columbia is that every month has at least one long weekend. I only found out on Friday that this weekend is another 3-day weekend (Monday is British Columbia day, whatever that means), so a lot of extra time to spend with the family.

Today we went to Granville Island for lunch and to do some shopping. There is a great public market with tons of fresh local products, and we bought a lot of fruit and salads for the next days. After a quick stop in the marina where I wanted to show Grace a boat that I like (and where we saw a family of sea lions playing together!), we drove over to Mountain Equipment Corporation. MEC is the place where I buy most of my outdoor gear, they have everything I need and their service is great. I had promised Scott to teach him how to kayak during this holiday, so I got him a small kids kayak with a paddle and a life jacket.

After we arrived home he wanted to go kayaking right away. My original plan had been to start tomorrow, but he was so excited that I eventually gave in. I carried both our kayaks down to the beach, and while Grace and Elaine watched I tried to teach him the basics. Although it was not a big success right away, Scott loved it so much. He was not afraid at all, even when we went a bit farther out to sea. Most of the time he held onto my kayak instead of paddling himself (I put his paddle in my boat), and even when he unintentionally let go he was laughing hard instead of being afraid. Happy to see that.

We spent about 30 minutes on the water but if had been up to Scott we would have stayed a lot longer, so I am sure we’ll be back at the beach tomorrow. When I put Scott to bed and talked about the day with him (we do that almost every night) kayaking was the main thing he wanted to talk about, and he had all kinds of questions about boats and the behavior of waves. Glad he likes it so much, it’s nice to have a new sport I can do together with him!