December 8, 2009
We hope this letter finds you healthy, wealthy, and wise. Mike and I still both work 4 days a week while the kids are in kindergarten half days. Our lives revolve around how many sleeps until the next major event. With the kids’ 5th birthday behind us it is now 17 sleeps until Christmas, but only 3 more sleeps until our next game night, and 4 more sleeps until and Chocolaterie Henders starts its 2009 production run.
We celebrated our 12th anniversary in March with an overnight trip to Canmore and a beautiful morning of cross country skiing at the Canmore Nordic Centre. Angela fell and badly sprained her thumb. An injury we found out later is aptly named “skiier’s thumb”. In March we also went to Nanaimo with Mike’s mom, stepdad and sister to visit his grandparents. The weather favoured us with good winter driving conditions in the mountain passes we hope our luck continues with another trip planned next March. Two highlights from the trip included snow tubing at Mt. Washington ski resort and going to Jumping Jiminy’s, an indoor playground. Sad to say the kids are now much faster than us crawling through tunnels, going down slides, and climbing rope ladders.
In April Mike and I spent a 'just us' weekend in California with mornings running at Rancho San Antonio and evenings eating at our favourite restaurants La Fondue in Saratoga and Chez Panisse in Berkeley.
In early July Mike’s colleague Nigel and his girlfriend visited us from Edinburgh, Scotland. We treated them to all of the Calgary area’s tourist traps including the Calgary Stampede (rodeo and grandstand show), the zoo, Calaway Park, the Royal Tyrell Museum, and Glenbow Museum. Nigel also paid good money to go rolling down the local ski hill in a giant hamster ball. Then we gave them some camping gear and sent them to Lake Louise for some alone tie camping and hiking in Banff National Park. Mike, Nicole and I joined them for a day of – dare I say awesome - white water rafting down the Kicking Horse river. Even in July that water is freezing cold.
In late July we went to the Shushwap in BC, renting a beautiful house with Peter, Elvira and Nicole. Temperatures near 40degC and a lot of smoke from forest fires discouraged outdoor play, but we went to two water slides and out boating and swimming on the lake with Peter's brother and his wife. Mike took the portable piano and I made cards. We planned and executed wonderful menus in both Nanaimo and the Shushwap - we love to cook and one of the joys of vacation is the time to do extravagant cooking when you don't have to be somewhere. Hence why having a hobby like running is so important <grin>.
In November, Grandma took the kids (thank you Grandma!) while Mike and I went on a cruise in Mexico for 7 days, and a day at Disneyland. We only got off the boat once in Cabo San Lucas to go sailing and snorkeling on the Talofa, North America’s oldest operating tall ship. The remainder of the time spent relaxing, eating, and exercising.
We have made great progress in managing our weight using eating journals in the kitchen and posting our weight every day on the calendar, and running 5 days a week. We eat very healthy, so it’s a strange world that has us feeding Calvin donuts and pizza every day in our desperation to have him gain weight. We ran in several races this year, Mike being my running buddy – Calgary’s Police half marathon, Cochrane’s Footstock half marathon, and I ran Calgary’s Corporate Challenge 10 k race in my best time ever 52:40.
For kids activities, Mike coached Matthew and Calvin’s soccer team this year in the local community league. It was eerily like herding cats, or at best a big knot of kittens chasing the same ball of yarn, but Mike demonstrated great patience as part coach and part counselor with the chaos of kids visiting others on the sidelines, picking dandelions, looking for snacks, or crying because they didn’t get the ball. We had the soccer parents and kids over for brunch at our house - a great event - punctuated memorably while the adults chatted and the kids played on the trampoline by 'um, excuse me, but I don't think Matt has his pants on, he's on the trampoline'. In the rush to get back outside he’d forgotten to put his pants or his underwear back on. We had the kids in swimming lessons a couple times this year - Matthew is a fearless little fish who will jump off the diving board at the wave pool as many times as you'll let him. Calvin finds it a little too scary. We went to several wave pools and water slides this year - the kids love it that they have Mom and Dad to play with on the slides all day. The kids enjoyed one on one Mommy and Daddy time day trips to Calaway Park, and family and friend trips to the zoo. We’re getting old – going on the spinny rides takes some recovery time now. ‘We’ve got to wait Matt, Mommy’s feeling dizzy’.
Mike and his sister Nicole made a couple of batches of truffles for fun this year. We’re gearing up for another monster batch (at Christmas we produce something like 1200 pieces - using about 50 lbs of chocolate). Even as new-to-walking toddlers the kids had an appreciation for good chocolate, as we’d see a little disembodied hand reach high above his head to feel around on the table for a sample, then you'd find a grinning chocolately faced kid once you realized what was going on.
We continue to enjoy hobbies to relax - Mike continues to play piano, and make great progress, with bi-weekly in-home lessons. I made cards and clothes, and right now the focus is on depleting my crafting supplies – picture 1000 meters of fabric stuffed in a basement. We read books, and I still dabble at reading novels in Spanish.
We still host game night on Fridays, a potluck affair that turns to board games and Rock Band as soon as the kids are in bed. It's so well established that our die-hard gamers have a key to our place to have game night when we're on vacation. We're so grateful that our friends will tramp across the city, even in a winter blizzard, to come have fun with us. And no, the term “winter blizzard” is not redundant. In Calgary we get spring, summer, and autumn storms too.
Calvin has allergies to cats, dogs, and grasses, but *loves* everything to do with the farm, including driving the truck with Grandpa doing chores and riding in the tractor. This year he's started playing Super Mario brothers games on Mike's Nintendo DS, but not any of those educational games, thank you very much. Matthew loves singing, especially to the movie Mama Mia - good music is good music regardless of age of the singer or listener. He'll play the songs from any movie over and over to get the tune, and make up the words he can't make out. He loves Lego, particularly putting together Lego houses with Mommy and Daddy.
We hope you have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. By and large, we have great kids, great families, and great friends. I'll leave you with a few of my favourite moments with the kids from my journal as a peek into our world:
Waking a sleeping brother: "Matt wake up! tickle tickle tickle"
Negotiating: "Mommy I'm sleeping (in big bed). You want to come to bed mommy?" followed by a big grin as he curls an arm around my neck to drag me in. How can a Mommy resist?
Giving in: "yeah, yeah, you're right"
Extreme sports: Calvin piles all the cushions from all the couches on a single couch and climbs to the top; "what are they for?" says Mommy; "I made a new game", "what's it called?"; "Jet flier"
Finding a mouse at the farm: "Look gramma I found a raccoon - he's so cute!"
Learning fair play: A water fight with a hose - Matt soaks Calvin, which makes Calvin cry. Grandma says - ok, it's Calvin's turn now - Calvin grins and says "Run, Matthew."
Grandma falling asleep while reading a bedtime story: Calvin pries her eye open with his fingers - 'It's ok grandma, I'll hold it open!"
Calvin and Mommy playing Nintendo DS: "Mommy, this is pretty tricky. I don't think you're smart enough, we need to get Daddy"
Playing house with Lego house: The characters are 'aunt nicole' or 'uncle cory'. “You have to wear a helmet to be safe”; “let's put the barbecue in the house”; “push him down the stairs!”; “oh no, he's hurt, let's go to sleep”; “ they're all dead, they fell down the stairs.”
Enunciation and diction: Mommy, can we play together? How about a bath? You can read your book. Won't that be lov-e-ly?
Frustation: "Mom, you're ruining me!"
Motivation: "Can we jump on the trampoline? Come on grandma, you can do it!"
Someone/thing else’s fault: on slipping on the stairs "I'm sorry Mommy. My feet were being silly".
Common sense: "Why don't we just open the door for Santa so he doesn't have to come down the chimney, Dad?"
Probability: "How do you spell bird, Matthew?" ; "S-C-A-D-A" then "Mom, I just make up a silly answer when I don't know." A one in seven million chance of randomly spelling the abbreviation for the technology that Angela works with.