Our day home .... Summer preview!

It really does feel like summer is here already....school and work are just annoyances that interrupt it!

This picture is taken on Isaacs first bike ride to wild side.  Elliot and I met him at wild side....Man, this kid is growing up.

Brothers on the water.

One of the highlights of today was spending some time with this girl.....when you find somebody where nothing is off the table in your conversations, you hold on tight (even if they are much younger than you!)  I just love her candid, honest, no filtered opinions ..... 

That afternoon, the Fitzpatricks joined us for Steve's 32nd birthday!  I decided to include him some family traditions!  Including Rollkuchen and rabuse! (Thank you barbecue for letting me do this outside)

I think my grandma would have been proud!

and I think my dad would have been proud that I made somebody an angel food cake for their birthday!

oh this girl ... she just brightens up my life.

Day home ....

Elliot is reaping the rewards of his brother staying home today.  Isaac class is heading to Victoria for their class overnight and he opted to stay home. I was fine with that as that trip was super pricey for a place we go often .... So he is happily sleeping in, I am happily reading a great story, chris is (happily??) out working.... And this guy is enjoying breakfast. 

Waiting for piano lessons ....

I stayed during the boys lessons yesturday and helped malea wrap up some year end prizes for her (200!) students (she's recently purchased the music school and doing a fantastic job)....I had to snap a shot of this cute boy enjoying his Garfield book.  

Where has the time gone?? Whoosh!

Another wedding to look forward to!!!

I was relaxing in the sunshine when they came into the yard .... It took me a few minutes to realize they had news!!!

We've known and loved Daniel and Marika for years ..... It was fun to listen to Daniel tell the story of how he proposed, see the ring and just giggle with them. It brings you back to the giddiness of your own engagement. They've always been a great match and we knew it was just a matter of time.

Looks like we have some Thanksgiving plans now!!

 

Loving this summer weather ...

Sucks to head to work after beautiful weekends like this last one!  So grateful to ditch the fluorescent lights at 2pm!  I feel bad for the other ladies stuck in there til 4:30 ... But I take comfort in knowing they are making double the amount of money than me!! 

We all got home and quickly stripped off our work/school clothes for bathing suits and Chris met us for a swim .... He wakes up at 5:30am every morning now and often works til it gets dark (oh, and he worked all weekend, sigh, but anyways) so swimming at 3 isn't totally uncalled for! He needs a break and to see his family by then!

After dinner I took some alone time at the back of the property. I forget there is more to this place than just my back yard!!

Piano Recital ....

So the piano recital this year was over an hour away in Shawnigan Lake.  Since it had been a rough morning for me, my brain was not at top capacity, turns out there is a difference between Shawnigan Lake Road and Shawnigan Millbay Road!  We were 15 minutes late ... Turns out we missed the first 10 kids and arrived a kid before Elliot's turn.  Such a difference between last year and this year with Elliot. Last year we were unsure whether he would even go up and do it but this year he just grabbed his books went up played his song and then he was done.  And he has been practicing like an animal this last week 10 times a day roughly!! 

Isaac had to wait til almost the end!  Both boys did a great job.....I had to laugh and cringe that morning as Isaac asks ME what his recital song was going to be!!  Wha???  You don't know!!!??  Once he got to the church, he saw that it was a song he knows well and breathed a sigh of relief....

this was us at about kid 50 ..... Isaac had read a book on the way up through those windy roads so his stomach was feeling a little bit nauseous and I still wasn't fully recovered, so the idea of staying for another hour wasn't too appealing

this lady seem to be enjoying herself though!! :-) very supportive grandma and grandpa - it was nice to have them there....

The clincher was when this kid took off his shoes and the stench from his feet covered us like the worst stinky blanket ever .... Had I not retched that morning I probably would have retched at this moment!  

Freedom!!!! Oh man I felt so guilty leaving before the end of the recital but Brett and Megan were waiting for us at camp.  They had already been there for an hour and it was a Saturday afternoon going on 5 o'clock!  Even leaving early we still didn't get home till almost 5:45!

The rest of the evening was spent with friends in the sun eating, playing blaster ball, going for a swim (Chris's first official swim of the season), hot tubbing and sitting around the fire.  Megan had just gotten home from Russia with a volleyball team where she was a trainer, their physiotherapist and a player .... it was so fun listening to her stories.  

It was a great ending to a very questionable day ....

Over exerted ....

So Paul has decided to turn the woodshed into a playhouse/drumming room for his kids so he dumped a lot of the wood in our yard to cut up for ourselves.  Sweet Little Jaxon is such a good helper...

I was having a good time with the wood splitter chopping and getting everything ready to be stacked. I didn't think that it was too much exertion but it was pretty hot.  

I was pretty impressed, to say the least to turn around, to see Rachel Zalinko standing there in her tights and tank top with her gloves on ready to help me.  We don't really see much of each other these days as her kids really ask for a lot of her attention ....so it was a pleasant surprise.

That being said though, she help me for about five minutes before Max came to ask her something and she left with him....I appreciated the effort!!

So Max ended up coming out and wanting to help me with the wood splitter, so he and I worked for probably only 5 to 10 minutes before I just started really not feeling very well.  I had been fighting a headache all morning, but I started feeling a little shaky and a little sweaty so I shut the machine down and went inside.  Once inside it all hit me at once.  I was sweaty and hot and nauseous with a headache it was brutal.....Chris had been watching a movie in bed and relaxing so he was there.  Once he saw me though he launched up pretty quick and grabbed a whole bunch of cold cloths and put them all over my head and my arms.  

I ended up puking my guts out .... Not much has been in my stomach since I had a really intense hydrotherapy cleanse on Thursday that I still haven't recovered from.  I hadn't been eating too much since then either and I was also probably dehydrated .... So Chris says I just over exerted myself?  I have never over exerted myself or been accused of that!! Lol   So up came my nutritious smoothie from the morning and I was back to square one but I did feel better after.

By 2 o'clock I was feeling better enough to get the boys dressed and off to their piano recital.

The boy turns 11 ....

One thing that Isaac wanted for his birthday was to not go to school!! We did him one better and got Chris the day off and we both took him up to wild play for the afternoon!! 

We weren't sure if he would like it, but it turns out he's just like his dad and took to the trees like a pro!!!

He takes to the trees much better than I do .... I still am freaked out but did it for him.  It was actually hard to keep up with him once he asked to lead!

THIS freaked me out.... Here he is leaning completely back in his harness over the edge of a super high ledge! He loves scaring me.

Dad joins him in the ploy ....(it looks like they are standing on the ground but they are very high above it!!)

Can you see the itty-bitty staff member at the bottom of the picture?

There he goes zip lining all the way down one of the biggest zip lines of the morning!  Poor kid is so light that he didn't make it all the way to the next platform!  His speed slowed down and but instead of landing on the platform, his harness crept back almost to the middle of the line!! Chris and I were laughing but we felt bad as we watched him figure it out.  I love that he stayed calm and listened to the staff member who was on the ground telling him the instructions on how to get back.   He had to sort of cliffhanger it back to the platform, like pull himself along.   

After we got home we had family come for a nice dinner....it was such a beautiful night.

All he wanted was a vanilla cake with vanilla icing and sprinkles so he got it!

Some of the staff came by to say happy birthday and have some cake with him too.

This is one lucky 11-year-old to be surrounded with so much love!!

Happy birthday....

Day off? Sleep in? Nope.

One of my favorites is when my neighbor slams his back door leaving the house, (it shakes my bed), and then gets on his new golf cart that really has no muffler, but then he forgets something and leaves his golf cart running and stomps back up and slams the door again ... Have I mentioned it's my first day off?

He drives away on monster cart, rumbling subsides, I deep breathe and try to fall back asleep. Almost back asleep and he comes back, jumps off and runs back into the house. 

It's still idling outside my window .... Even still, as I write this. Oh my goodness.... I am struggling.  Deep breath.... Guess I'll get up. 

Summer is here ...

Really struggling today with our lack of privacy.  All I want is a haven to come home to where I don't have to wade through others to get to my home or have time on our dock.  Some days that privacy is so elusive in this environment.  

Last night as a 10 year old ....

Wearing his baby cap and holding his "going home" outfit .... Last night as a 10 year old .... I've been a mom for almost 1/4 of my life ....

It's been, hands down, the best 1/4!!

I've missed a few letters sporadically through the early years ... But on the eve of the birthdays of my boys, I've written them a letter and included the birthday cards they've gotten that year.

Can't believe I just wrote to an 11 year old!! We're all so crazy about him. 

New schedules and new outlooks ...

We were both in bed by 9:30 last night .... And now it's 5:15am and chris is up and almost out the door.  And because he's up, I'm kindof up too ....

No wonder I'm needing a nap by 4pm ....  How does he do it??  

I just asked him what was his motivation to launch out of bed every morning.  His response was awesome:

"well I know that if I don't do it, nobody else will, and also I love my job.  I love that what I'm doing is creating opportunities for others."

I have always loved his disposition but I have a renewed outlook after yesturdays work day. When I first started my work,  I worked with a lovely girl named Jill, who was the HSCL nurse for Duncan.  Her husband was in a horrific accident on Highway 18 and she's been off for two years walking that road with him.

He was on hwy 18 when another truck crossed the centerline and hit him head-on.  Jill told me yesterday that they had to amputate a leg and he has a severe brain injury which has changed his personality.  She says his brain is the age of a teenager; very volatile and moody.  But that he also has short-term memory loss so when he loses his temper,  the next moment he's fine and he's looking around at his family wondering why they're mad at him?  She said she came home from work yesterday and he was in his wheelchair going after his teenagers, trying to grab at them to get their attention for something, he was mad at them and try to hurt them.  But then he looks around and asks 'what's for dinner?' 

You never know what incredible battles people are fighting!!  Yesturday was a really emotionally hard day at work.  Jill and I are going to trying to move somebody out of a staffed house who is hurting the other guys in the house (all wheelchair bound except for him), as well as targeting the staff. (in January a staff went, by ambulance, due to a concussion caused by his headbutting her so hard!)  I had only received three critical incident reports, since January, describing any upset in the house but I've been pushing to look at their internal critical's, the ones they don't show anybody because the behaviours are in the persons safety plan (so they are known and thus not 'unusual').  When I was finally able to get my hands on those yesterday, I was floored to see that there were 54 of them since January!! All of them of in-house incidents of him headbutting, biting and pinching so hard blood is drawn.... The final straw for me was reading that one of the other guys in the house, wheelchair bound, closed his eyes in fear and waited for an attack to be over.  It's beyond me why the agency hasn't pulled him out or done something.  I wonder if I'm over my head.  Glad Jill is back.  Her personality has changed as well.  She still is the sweet and kind woman I remember, but now she has a hard edge to her. She knows life is fragile and she's not going to take a lot of crap.  I think she's going to be a great partner to help find a solution for this. 

Family Dinner ...

It was a really long day and it ended with a lot of people over for dinner.....

Everyone seemed to like the fresh tostadas for dinner.... Thankfully Lisa and Sarah were the ones doing the phases of melting the cheese on the tostadas ... I wish I had taken a picture of those pans full of them .... It was quite the sight and they all got eaten.

This was Elliot for much of the evening ....

I think he's practicing for the concert this weekend he's been practicing alot...it's interesting how much he's been playing and I love that there's crowds of people around but he doesn't care....he just plays his Zelda song happily.

My mom is hilarious.....

She's always up to something!!!

But in all seriousness, this is one the funniest pictures ever!!

Just showing up ....

There is a saying that 80% of life is just showing up. 

Tonight, I didn't want to show up. Lately I am just feeling so busy and running that I just want to hermit when I can.  Along with the desire to hermit also comes the feelings, funny enough, of isolation.  It's a fine balance!!!  

JL put together a beautiful wedding shower for Lisa tonight. But just before the shower, I got to spend 30 glorious uninterrupted minutes with one of my favorite people. 

The shower was beautiful. From the decorative touches throughout the main floor to the good food to the thoughtful gift that we all just had to pitch in for (high end crock pot and we all had to include our favorite crock pot recipes).....

She did a ton of work and Lisa felt pretty loved.  I hope she felt so loved. 

It's interesting that I think we can all feel alone and isolated at times ... But if we just keep showing up, great things can happen and you can find yourself looking around in a room filled with pretty incredible women, all who often feel isolated and alone too and who are all on different paths in their own journey.  

Here is lovely Lisa 'showing up' to her surprise shower!  JL said it best that there is a sisterhood among camp women and that we are blessed to have her among us. 

So I will keep working to show up ... Even when it's hard. Because tonight was a great reminder that we should all be showing up for eachother. 

***

Update; ok ... So I had trouble getting out of bed this morning. Unlike chirpy husband who bounces out at 6:30am, showers, gets an iced Capp, works in the office for an hour and then gets back to the house to help us out the door!

I struggle .... And today I didn't want to show up anywhere.  But I also didn't want to be a hypocrite ... So I showed up ..and now I can't wait to get home again ....