He would have been thrilled

I picked up my morning paper to find a hunky photo of my grandfather in his youth and a headline on the front page, "Olympian Bert Oldershaw of Burlington dies at 84 page A3". This article was on page 3:
Beach-loving Bert spawned a canoeing dynasty

Bert Oldershaw 1921 - 2006

Last night my Granbert passed away. Today, I'm just remembering him. He was an athlete, a salesman, a gardener and an artist.

Canadian Olympic Committee

Bert Oldershaw

Born in Toronto in 1921, Bert Oldershaw has demonstrated an unparalleled passion for the sport of canoeing that began during a childhood spent paddling around Toronto Island where he lived for 35 years. Oldershaw won national titles in canoe and kayak from 1939 to 1956, and competed in the Olympic Games in 1948, 1952, and 1956. He holds the distinction of being the only Canadian to reach three successive finals in Olympic paddling competitions before retiring from racing at the age of 38.

Oldershaw founded the Mississauga Canoe Club in 1957, a paddling powerhouse that sits along the banks of the Credit River. 'Missy' paddlers have long dominated the Canadian canoe/kayak scene with countless athletes representing Canada in international competitions thanks in large part to Oldershaw's numerous contributions as a coach. In 1976 Oldershaw cemented his dedication to sport by building a training facility at his home, which included an indoor pool, adapted with weights and pulleys to simulate outdoor water conditions, and used by national team members to train.

Oldershaw's community contributions include 12 years as a member of the Board for the COC representing canoeing. He created Canamtur Ltd. to assist in amateur-sport fundraising and development, and in the process raised more than $1.25 million from the private sector. These days Oldershaw is working to restore Native canoe culture, by re-establishing canoe and canoe-building in Six Nations' communities.

Oldershaw's most important legacy in building the sport of canoeing, however, is evidenced through his family. He is the father of five children, Dean, Reed, Scott, Lee, and Lynn - all of whom have competed in canoe competitions, and three of whom have represented Canada at the Olympic Games. Two of his grandsons continue the family sport tradition, and are currently strong hopefuls for Athens 2004. Should this happen, the Oldershaw family will have sent three generations of canoe-kayak athletes to the Olympic Games.

The Curse has been broken!

The not-making-it-to-Super-Saturday Curse.  In the 8 seasons we have had a child playing house league hockey, this year is the first time that any of them have made it to Super Saturday.  Campbell's team made it, just barely.  There was a 3 way tie for second place, they were tied for wins, tied for goals against.  It came down to goals for and Campbell's team was ahead by 2 after Sunday's game.  Here he is in the center, warming up with his team.

We are amazed at how much he has improved this season.  Sometimes when we are watching a game, we don't recognize him because he is skating so well.

Damon's team did not make it to Super Saturday, but at least they went out with a 5-1 win.  Damon plans to try out for a rep team next year.

Kira is better now.  Last night as she was going to bed, she told me "I all done with my sick now."

The kids are back in school today!  Now I have to clean up the messes that were created in the past week.

Oh, something else I'm doing for the March Break, cleaning up Kira's vomit, washing all of her bedding and mine and bringing her drinks in bed. I think I'll save the really fun part (renting a carpet cleaner to clean up some "didn't make it to the bathroom" spots) for next week.

March Break happenings

It is "March Break" for us. While our friends from the school go to Disneyworld, or Myrtle Beach, Matt is installing a slate floor in our kitchen, Campbell's hockey team is in a tournament here and I'm enjoying the while early pregnancy nausea thing. If Campbell's team is eliminated early we can get away to go see Grandma and Grandpa for a day or two, but we need to be back for Thursday because Matt and Patrick have tickets to an NHL hockey game in Buffalo.

Don't be too jealous.

My grandfather is in hospital again. He was released from hospital about 2 weeks ago after recovering from bacterial pneumonia. Last week he started having problems with hemmorhaging in his colon and was diagnosed with "Septic Colitis". His prognosis depends one which of his doctors you ask. I am going to visit him tomorrow.

Thanking my lucky stars

I let Puck out a few minutes ago. He ran out into the yard and went on point. I figured there was a cat in the bushes and I picked up the broom, prepared for some hissing. Instead, I could make out a creature darting away, as it passed under a bit of moonlight I saw it, a SKUNK! Thankfully it beat Puck to the fence, rushed through the neighbour's yard and off into the night without spraying anything. PHEW! Then it took me 10 minutes to entice Puck to come back in after all of his excitement. He was oblivious to the misery that could have been.

Going Squirrelly

The view from my laundry room.

This brazen guy is one tough nut!  Note all the bald patches.  He/she has been living in and around our property for many years and has tried to have many "stand offs" with Matt.  And he/she loves to watch Puck go bonkers trying to climb a tree to get him/her.

Two for one

Last week, when Matt told all of the kids that we were having another baby, he showed Patrick the card that I made for him. Patrick immediately said, "why does Daddy have to do that? That's not fair." Matt said it was no big deal, and joked that maybe he would go with Puck to the vet and get a "two-for-one deal" on neutering. Yesterday on the way home from school, Patrick told me that it was just wrong for Daddy to be neutered. I explained neutering to him and told him that was what Puck was going to have done, not Daddy. He said, "No, Daddy said he was going to get neutered too." I told him that Daddy was only joking and explained what a vasectomy was, he was still skeptical though.

Poor guy, for 5 days he's been worried that his father was going to be castrated.

Damon is just ecstatic about having another baby. When Daddy told him, he turned to me and said, "Did Daddy tell you about the new baby?" Later that night he woke up and came and told me how happy he was and he hopes it is a girl "so that Kira has somebody". This morning he said,
"It's really weird, you don't even look pregnant at all." hee hee.
"Give me some time and I will look pregnant" I said, "right now the baby is the size of a piece of rice."
"Seven weeks?"
"Yeah about that."

Campbell is coming around. It just takes that old man time to get used to change. 34 more weeks will probably do it.

Kira's baby

Recently Kira has really shown an interest in playing with baby dolls. After her daddy shared the news of our pregnancy, Kira has developed her own concept of what it all means. If somebody asks her if mommy is going to have a new baby, she says, "no, my baby". When asked where the baby is, half of the time she says the baby is in mommy, the other half she tells you that the baby is "asleep now in my room. Shhhhh" In the past 4 days, she has obsessed about this Pooh doll. She takes him all over the place, she tucks him into bed, when I took this picture, she had to show him the picture on the camera's display. "Look baby, that's you baby, so cute baby." I am starting to think that she thinks that THIS is our baby that everybody keeps asking her about. (I love that his pram is a pink pillow on top of a dump truck.)

Matt,

You've probably guessed what I'm trying to tell.
I'm in shock, and I'll bet you are as well.
"5 kids? are you crazy!" others will say.
But crazy or not, a baby is on the way.
Phone the doctor by November, make it fast,
So that this little baby can be our last.

I love you.

This is Damon the night of his first reconciliation.  He was so happy to confess all of his sins to Father.  He stood up there with his laundry list of nasty deeds.  He told us that one of the things he confessed to Father was that he sometimes beats up his brothers.  Father told him that he used to beat up his brothers too until his mother caught him doing it and hit him over the head with a frying pan.  That made Damon smile, probably because he was thinking about how lucky he was to have been absolved of his sin before a frying pan connected with his skull.

Happy Birthday Charlie!

Charlie is such a sweet-natured old cat.  He has always been a bit shy, especially around kids and dogs, but once caught, he tolerates so much torture with nothing more than a call for "MMMMMMOMMMM".  He is 14 now, although I don't know his exact birthdate.  I got him as a 5 month old kitten, when the Humane Society brought him to the hospital I was working for after he had "fallen" more than 6 floors from an apartment building.  He had a bad break in his hind leg and a broken nose.  He wore a cast for months, and was left with a significant limp.  But he still likes to play with mice.

a glitch in my system

Being sick and being a mom don't mix.

I was feeling really nauseous on Friday afternoon, and could feel something worse coming on, so I pushed ahead to try to FINALLY get Damon's birthday planned and invitations sent. I think the oncoming headache and nausea was creating an additional sense of urgency, but apparently not an urge to pay attention to details. Damon wanted to take his friends to an AHL hockey game. It has been a month since his birthday, but we have had conflicts between the AHL schedule and Patrick's schedule. But Patrick has a relatively light schedule over the next week, I was trying to take advantage of that and emailed the team to book a birthday party for next Friday night. I printed up my own "tickets" that actually looked quite real and handed them out to the chosen guests at the end of the school day. All I had to do was go to the ticket booth to pay for the package and pick up our tickets. Great, right?

I got an email this morning from the nice lady from the hockey team telling me "That wouldn't be a problem, except, the 24th is an away game. We do not play at home again until March 10th. If this date would be alright for you, please let me know." So now I'm going around frantically trying UNINVITE people and trying to convince Damon that a July birthday party would be a GREAT thing.

Patrick's team was eliminated from the playdowns in a sweep (eliminating the need for games #5-7) and now they are waiting to see who wins a series. That meant that the game times they had previously scheduled would become practice times. The team manager emailed the parents to say this was her assumption until further notice. Well she emailed all the parents later giving them a list of this week's ice times. I quickly scanned the list of 5 practices and noticed that they now had a Friday practice and wrote it down on our calendar. What I didn't notice was that the time and location of the Monday practice had changed. It is totally my fault, but sometimes when the manager puts out a new schedule with any changes, the changes are highlighted with asterisks. This time there was nothing jumping out at me. So tonight when Matt and Patrick were getting ready to go to practice, Matt asked Patrick where and when the practice was, he told him the original time which was on our calendar and the calendar that the manager prints out for us each month. Obviously neither of them looked at the email that I had read over. Matt called me from the original arena and asked me to check the schedule. Well the computer was closest, so I just opened the email and there it was, the practice was about a 15 minute drive away and it was already underway.

Now, I'm waiting for them to come home so they can tease me.

Under the weather

Well it turns out that the calamari was fine, that Damon really had a stomach virus. Matt came home on Valentine's day and tossed me my card and chocolates as he ran upstairs to be sick. He spent the whole night in his bed and even contemplated staying home from work the next morning. He dragged his sick-self in late, but only because he didn't want to ruin his perfect attendance record. No sooner had his truck pulled out of the driveway, than Kira started vomiting. When I was getting the boys ready, I started to feel woozy too. So we took the boys to school and came home and slept it off.

Yesterday morning we awoke to an ice storm and all of the schools were closed. By the time school would have started it had all melted and turned to rain. But the boys enjoyed their day off of school. This morning, the weather was bad again with blowing snow and terrible winds. The front window of the local Canadian Tire store even blew right onto a major street. But the schools were open.

So this morning it came as no surprise when Patrick started feeling sick. Kira is better now, but I'm still feeling sluggish.

Happy Belated Valentine's Day

Shhhhh

Kira was playing in her room while I finished sewing. I could hear her singing and talking to herself as she played. There was suddenly silence. I (as in me and my shadow Puck) went to make sure she was okay. She has been sleeping that way for an hour now. Moving a sleeping Kira is an impossible task, so we have learned not to bother. If you want her to stay asleep, don't touch her.

Princess Kira and her loyal subject

Note the new (well old) princess bed.

Around the house this weekend

Something we learned when we moved our laundry room to the second floor was just how much old top-loading washing machines shake. No adjustment seemed to help. Twice a day, the earth seemed. We had gotten used to the "ding ding ding" of the pot rack in the kitchen and our wrought iron bed. Then the thermostat stopped working and for the past year I've been washing in cold only. We don't even have the benefit of using "Cold Water Tide" as Matt, Patrick and Kira are all allergic to Tide. So, I have been soaking my whites in buckets of hot water before washing them. Our dishwasher quit last week and we decided to pick up a washing machine at the same time. After it's arrival, Matt eagerly waited for our first load with our NEW washing machine. When the spin cycle started, Matt grinned as he said, "Quiet kids, I'm trying to listen to the washing machine."

While watching part of Titannic, I heard Campbell turn to Matt and say, "Okay, that's it, I'm NEVER going on a boat again." Damon was quite impressed by that movie and for 2 days straight he has talked about Rose and Jack as if they were members of our family.

Let's see, what else did we do? Hockey, hockey, playoff hockey. Oh, Patrick had another trip to the ER for a hockey head injury. He was fine.

While Matt was out with him, Kira bonked Campbell on the nose and I've never seen a nose bleed like that. It was like a scene from Monty Python and I had a big clean up after. (The new washing machine did a fabulous job on my white towels.) Luckily the nose wasn't broken. "I soy Cambo."

Damon, the human crayon-maker!

Damon went for his annual check-up. He is healthy and growing well, but has been having a problem with his ear ever since last summer when he had swimmer's ear. I knew he had a problem with wax and dried up blood in there ever since, and he had started rubbing his ear in his sleep. I looked in it the day before his appointment and it was clogged. I asked the doctor to flush it. Damon was very brave as she stuck the tube into his ear. In an instant we heard a "CLUNK" as something fell into the bowl. The doctor blurted out, "What did you put in your ear?" Damon looks confused and just shrugs. I looked into the bowl and it looked like a 1 inch piece of a brown crayon. The doctor examined it a bit more and declared that it was impacted wax. The boy really couldn't hear me half the time! But now he has no excuse.

Happy 8th Birthday Damon!

You are a wonderful little boy.  You are so smart and analytical, strong and athletic.   And you have the singing voice of an angel.  You are always eager to share with your family, friends and unfortunate strangers, you are the most generous child I've ever seen.  I just hope that you always know how important and special you are to everybody.

Hamming it up with his cake.

He was thrilled with his new guitar.  He'll be starting lessons soon.

And here he is teaching Kira how to cheer for him.