Silly Fun

We kicked off the second half of the boys’ summer vacation by taking advantage of some of the free clowning around going on in Ottawa this August long weekend. On Sunday, Gatineau hosted the Red Bull Flugtag competition, billed this way: “32 wild and wacky teams from across the country will be strapping themselves to their totally outrageous flying machines and launching them off a 30-foot ramp into the wild blue yonder, and ultimately, straight into the Ottawa River.” Now that’s entertainment!

We figured there’d be a sizeable crowd, so we crossed the bridge a few hours before show time. Jeremy used beach towels to stake out a section of lawn next to the judging platform, while Trace and I took the kids to the nearby Children’s Museum to play for a few hours. The event kicked off with four skydivers spilling out of a Cessna overhead and then twirling through the air to land one right after the other on the launch platform—a few of them zipped low over the riverside crowds. Carter’s already asked where we can go to see that again (a tough question!).

We endured the hot summer sun for two hours, watching teams put on short comedy skits and then fling themselves off the end of the two-story high platform in a bid to fly. Sam had his money on anything shaped like a bird or a plane, but most of those machines flipped over and fell straight into the river. We did catch the winning team— Surf and the City—whose fashionistas used a cardboard taxicab to launch a pink handglider-type contraption 82 feet. The whole thing was hilarious! When I tucked Sam in that night, he enthused, “I loved the flugtag: if I didn’t get the chance to go, I would have cried my whole house down!” High praise…

The next day we headed downtown again, this time to the Sparks Street Busker Festival. We spent a couple of hours in the Kid Zone, alternating our attention between a pair of street performers and the large slide ride set up in the shadow of the Parliament buildings. Skateboard tricks, firey batons, sword swallowing, cotton candy and a slide ride? What’s not to love here? We spotted Nick & Debbie on the street and so added Michael to our little party: it was cute to see the three boys cross-legged in the front row chatting about the performers. “He didn’t actually swallow the sword … He just stuck it in and pulled it back out.”

I read later that 50,000 people flocked to the Flugtag and 250,000 people took in the 4-day Busker Festival, but somehow I still felt a little best-parent-in-the-world satisfied when we called it a day on the holiday Monday afternoon and tumbled the happy and tired group back into the car to head home. Sure, we made the same plans as hundreds of other families, but it still feels good to design a whole weekend around making the kids laugh.