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Sing-along Café Thursday, February 12th, 2026

Our theme was Home and Family, as we're looking ahead to the Family Day weekend, and also keeping in mind that Saturday is Valentine's Day. 

While Valentine's Day often looks like a romantic thing, it's really a love thing. In my experience, it's been about Family and Friends more than for Lovers. All the Moms and Grandmas get special cards and maybe flowers, handmade gifts, chocolates. There's a special family dinner, maybe in a restaurant or maybe it's Dad's favourite dish. Every kid in your class, your teams, your teacher, coach, the bus driver, all the people you love get a message of love from you on a card that you made or picked out. Valentines Day changed as I went through the changes of the different seasons of life, but mother, mine or myself, and family have been constant. Family is the thing I love most; my family are the people I love most. Home is where we are together.  

My Home and Family playlist starts off with 5 different songs called "Home". This time, we didn't sing those, but started with John Denver's Take Me Home Country Roads. We talked about how good it feels when we've been in the city, (I had just been in the city with Soraya to the opera last night) and returning, driving north, somewhere around King City, we can start breathing easier, whether we're on a highway or on Bathurst or Dufferin. There are fields, and trees, and fewer buildings, better air even. And, sometimes we leave Newmarket and after a bit we drive along country roads and maybe end up at a lake. Deep breath. Trees, rocks, a horse, a field of cows, cornfields. And, we agreed that a vacation isn't a vacation unless we're on a body of water, a lake, river, or ocean. And, home is also Canada. Canada is home. Just as we were leaving I played Rocks and Trees by the Arrogant Worms. We laughed and laughed just like we might laugh at a funny family story. We love our rocks and trees and trees and rocks, and water. 

I baked some blueberry muffins to share at the Café. It was a lovely afternoon, time well spent; I loved my time with my beloved Sing-along Café friends. We went way off theme and I loved that so much. Happy Valentine's Day and Galentine's Day! Happy Family Day!

Here's some of the stuff we sang and listened to:  

  • Take Me Home Country Roads by John Denver
  • Take the Long Way Home by Supertramp
  • The Long Way Home by Walk Off the Earth and Lindsey Stirling
  • Radioactive by Lindsey Stirling and Pentatonix (YouTubeVideo)
  • Somebody that I Used to Know by Walk Off the Earth (YouTubeVideo)
  • Loves Me Like a Rock by Paul Simon 
  • We Are Family by Sister Sledge 
  • Mamma Mia by ABBA by the original cast of the musical
  • Does Your Mother Know by ABBA (We were a little disturbed. It hits differently with powerful pedophiles in the news.)
  • Does Your Mother Know by ABBA from the Mama Mia movie soundtrack (different but not much better)
  • Somewhere Out There by Linda Ronstadt & James Ingram
  • Rocks and Trees by Arrogant Worms 

Happy Valentine's Day

 

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