I love everything about weekends. I love when they are lazy and quiet and we end up staying in jammies until 2 in the afternoon and I get to eat cold Chinese food straight from the carton before even making it to the kitchen table. I love when they are loud and busy and jam-packed full of productivity and people.

And when they are a combination of the two? Well, it just doesn’t get any better than that.

This weekend, for example, involved two days of sleep-ins, a novel read cover to cover (The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane—it was quite good, for the record, if you like fiction about Colonial America, especially the Salem witches. And I do, so this was a wise choice.), dinner with friends, finally watching Argo after having a triple latte—that’s three espresso shots, if you are counting at home—which I quite enjoyed, despite the many heart palpitations. There were playdates, park trips, two social studies projects done, and, of course, Chinese straight out of the containers.

And a red carpet movie premiere at TIFF Kids. For the kids.

Thanks to my amazing friends at both TIFF and GAP, I surprised the kids with a trip downtown.

(Are we in downtown yet, Mama?)

(Oh, suburban kids)

They got to have snow cones and have their pictures taken and somehow they ended up, uh, IN Harry Potter.

And then they got to see The Legend of Sarila, Canada’s first full-length 3D animated feature film. The movie was mostly adorable—about three friends who attempt to save their entire starving Inuit clan by visiting a place with food aplenty and only heard of in legends—Sarila. Sarila, once the friends do reach ii, is something not dissimilar to Willy Wonka’s chocolate room, without the chocolate river and little German boy. Of course, their journey is not an easy one, and is much disrupted by an angry old Shaman, voiced by Christopher Plummer.

Perhaps the highlight for me and for my oldest daughter was getting to see our old friend Dustin Milligan, who we once interviewed and who I once sat on at the Hazelton Hotel.

No. Scratch that.

This was the highlight for me.

After the movie was over, they opened the floor to about ten kids, to ask some questions about the movie. Josh’s hand shot up. “I have something I need to know,” he whispered to me.

“Is is much harder or different to be an animated character than shooting in a regular studio?”

And then they answered it.

For him.

And just like that…his night was made.

And so was mine.

My entire weekend, even.