Grantham Family Happenings

Camping in (near) Kluane

2010-07-07T13:46:00.000-07:00

This summer, we have set aside one week a month for camping trips. Our June trip was scheduled for Kathleen Lake, in Kluane National Park. We have always wanted to camp there, it is a beautiful location with a lake full of record size trout. We travelled to Haines Junction to meet up with our friends who were coming with us, and T.J went to the Visitor Centre to buy our federal fishing and camping permits.

Camping in the Yukon is cheap. We buy a $50.00 camping permit every year that allows up to camp in any territorial campground all summer. The campgrounds are generally well kept, clean, with stocked wood piles and majestic views. Because Kathleen Lake is in Kluane National Park, though, we can't go there with our Territorial camping permit. We can't fish there, either, with our Territorial licenses. So off to the visitor centre T.J went, to buy our weekend permits. A season federal fishing license is $10 per day or $35.00 for the season per person. Kids under 14 can fish for free in the Yukon, but not at Kathleen Lake. They had to buy permits, too. Camping was $17 per night. We couldn't believe it! It was going to cost us about $140.00 in fishing licenses and almost $100 to camp for 5 nights.

Across and up the road a bit from Kathleen Lake is Desdeash (sp?) Lake. There is a territorial campsite there, and great fishing for Lake Trout and Northern Pike. It sits out on a point, and tends to be pretty windy, but at least that keeps the bugs away. We spent 4 nights there, and then travelled back to Haines Junction to camp for 2 nights at Pine Lake, because the kids really wanted to go tubing and Desdeash was too rough. Pine Lake has a nice sandy beach and a great dock for launching oneself into the water.

We had a great time catching up with great friends, and look forward to July's camping week at Congdon Creek Campground on Kluane Lake. Its also a Territorial Campground, just outside the park, so it won't cost us an arm and a leg to spend some time there.

Federal Government, Yukoners should be able to enjoy our National Park with our Territorial camping and fishing permits!!

Hornet Horror

2010-07-07T13:08:00.000-07:00

Today we went down to the school park to play. They have one of those old big toy climbing structures with all the holes in the wood that make great places for hornets and wasps to build nests.

I have always had a deeply rooted, irrational fear of flying insects. I have never even been bitten or stung by a wasp, deerfly, or spruce beetle, but I imagine that it would be such excruciating pain that I might not live through it.

This fear is totally misunderstood and mocked by T.J, and he gets extremely annoyed when we sit around our nice outdoor patio set for barbecued chicken and a murderous bee swoops in. I am up screaming, madly waving my arms while I make a quick exit off the deck into the safety of the dining room. T.J believes I am a poor influence on our children, as they are usually up as fast as I am, grabbing their dinner plates to seek refuge with me indoors, leaving him to eat alone with the bugs. T.J loves to play with this fear of mine, it must have a name, like flyingbugaphobia or something, and he occasionally will pick up a spruce beetle by it's antennae or a deer fly off the window pane and pretend to fling it at me. He knows that if he actually flung it at me, he would be sleeping in a tent on the lawn.

So today, at the park with the kids, I went above and beyond, I truly put my children before myself without a thought for my own safety. Lydia was climbing up the big toy, and put her fingers right into a nest of wasps. I was in the field picking wild strawberries, and heard her start to yell. I looked up and saw her waving her arms, getting more frantic by the second. She was really freaking now, as the first wasp stuck her with his torturous weapon, and I contemplated just for a second about running in the other direction.

But then my mommy instinct kicked in, and I hurried over, ran up the slide, grabbed her by the arms and took a flying leap onto the ground. I picked her up, at arms length, of course, in case there were any wasps stuck to her that would then climb over onto me, and ran like hell across the field to safety. I had 4 other children with me, who watched these proceedings with mouths gaped open until they heard me screaming at them "RUN!! RUN TO HEATHER!" They all came as fast as their legs would carry them, starting to cry at their caregivers breathless soothing, "Its OK, kids, its OK." Lydia was stung 3 times, she was brave and amazingly alive. I resisted the urge to rush her into the ER.

Sneaky Marker Girl

2010-06-08T15:38:00.000-07:00

This is what happens when June gets into the markers.

Happy Birthday Lydia!

2010-05-31T15:16:00.000-07:00

On May 31st, 2005 at 6:02am Lydia Thora Jayne was born to us in Whitehorse. She had lots of black hair, so different from Emily and Dustin who are red heads!

Today is Lydia's 5th birthday, here she is waiting for Mommy to bring her gifts into the living room:

She was a little excited!

Blowing out 5 candles:

And showing us that she is now "a whole hand old"!

Lydia has been asking for her own pet for a few years now, and yesterday I had a lapse in judgement and bought her a guinea pig from a family that had baby ones. She named him Stripes and he actually has made a great little pet for her! His is very tame and is used to kids (the family we got him from has 4) and he makes cute noises and likes to run around on the grass. He eats lots of veggies, too, so Liddie likes to collect carrot and beet tops from the garden and picks dandelion greens to give him, too. Welcome to the family, Stripes!

Frances May Long

2010-05-27T19:59:00.000-07:00

One of our very favorite camping spots is Frances Lake. This gem in the wilderness lies between Watson Lake and Ross River on the Robert Campbell Highway. On some maps, you will find a marker labelled, "Hudson Bay Trading Post", because there once was one there. There isn't much of it left, and it is off the lake so you would have to hunt around and have some GPS coordinates to find it. This was our view from our camper for 4 whole days:

Could it get better than this?

We absolutly love it here. The ice melts here about 3 days before May long weekend, and the fish are hungry!

Lydia caught a lake trout!

And die hard Dustin was up at first light and up till it got dark (which is about midnight this time of year) with his rod in the lake.

Thank goodness the Ristau family joined us, because they brought June's best bud, Emma, and the girls played together all weekend. They spent hours throwing rocks into the water. June calls the rocks her money. Too bad that couldn't come true!

I bought these strollers in the sale bin at Walmart for 5 bucks each, best deal by far this year. The girls walked their babies all around the campground.

Our Auntie Yo Yo came camping with us too, and she's so smart, she brought bubbles!

The second morning, we were sitting around the campfire with our morning coffee's and watched this caribou swim across the lake.

June had fun throwing sticks for the dog.

Emily liked throwing rocks, too. The rocks were a hit!

Our girls relaxed in the hammock.

And Lydia barely took her favorite "cap" off the whole time. I like that she calls it her cap.

I think I'm going to put this picture on our wall. When Dustin was younger, he loved those "Where's Waldo" books.

When we go to Francis Lake, something always goes wrong. Once the bearings went on the trailer, once we forgot diapers, once we got so close to a head on collision that our side mirror hit the oncoming truck. This time, TJ was obsessed with the tires. I guess he had reason to worry, because 2 hours into the drive on our way there, the rear tire blew. So on our way home when the other rear tire went flat, his eyeballs just about popped right out! Lydia asked, "Mommy, why is Daddy kicking that tree?"

Thank goodness for Sat phones. We were able to contact the Conservation Officer in Ross, and she brought several tires that she scavenged from around town for us to try. After 6 hours sitting on the side of the road with 4 kids and 2 dogs we were ready to be rescued. I wonder what disaster awaits us when we go back for Labour Day weekend?!

Happy 2nd Birthday June!

2010-05-06T14:59:00.001-07:00

O.K so this post is late, it has been sitting in my draft folder since the 6th of May. I have been having problems with my photo uploader and my computer and so have been mentally boycotting my blog posts because I'm frusterated. Why can't things be easier?

My sweet little June bug turned two years old, and just like every mother, I go back to the hours of her birth on this day, the 6th of May, to recount every delicious detail that was hers.

Two years ago today I got up at 6am so that I could shower and shave my legs and paint my toenails and make sure I looked fabulous in front of the doctor and nurses who would see me at both my best and my worst. Maybe looking fabulous would make things less painful, or more glamorous, or maybe it would make it look like I had things together. I had been in Whitehorse waiting to deliver this baby for 5 weeks and my patience ran out, my determination to wait things out the natural way was traded in for cervadil.

T.J had requalifications this day, the 6th of May, that he really couldn't skip out on, he was instructing and people were counting on him to be there. So the plan took shape - he was going to get me settled in at the hospital, then he was going to leave to teach his course with his cell phone turned up loud strapped onto his belt. Cell phones work on Grey Mountain don't they?! Cervadil doesn't kick in right away, does it?

I did get settled into my bed on the maternity ward at about 9am, the straps of the monitor across my belly and the cervadil working its magic. I was reading "The Birth House". Things started slowly kicking into gear after lunch. I spent the afternoon breathing, staying peaceful, sitting on the excercise ball, reading some more. After 3 babies, 3 births, I was O.K with being alone, I was sure of myself, I was calm. I quietly prepared for what was to come. It was a powerful feeling, being there in the quiet of the room with my soon to be born baby.

At about 4 T.J returned, and helped me into the shower. The excersise ball I was sitting on sat right on top of the drain and the nurse came in to let us know the hospital room was flooding.

At 5 Gramma, my sister Megan and our kids showed up and decided they had enough time to go for supper. We had decided to let our kids participate in the birth of their newest sibling, and they all wanted to be there. Also around this time the nurse came in and told us there was a photographer in the maternity ward that was doing some kind of promotional thing for the hospital and she thought it would be so great to get some real footage of a woman in labour. The nurse took one look at me moaning and groaning with my still wet hair and my makeup from the morning long worn off and said she would tell the photographer not a chance!

At 6:30 Gramma and the crew came back and I was almost ready to push. Lydia took one look at me and had to wait out in the hall with Auntie Megan. She must have got over her fear pretty quickly, because I could hear her chanting, "go mommy go, go mommy go!" Emily really wanted to be in the room but fear and uncertainty won over and she settled for still in the room, but behind the curtain so that all I could see of her were her legs from the knee down. Dustin wanted to be there,too, he came right up by my head but then promptly turned around and stared at the wall. As June's head was crowning and I gave one last wail he ran from the room. June was born at 7:02 delivered into her Gramma's hands. She was blue all over and pooped right into my hand as I held her. It was special to have everyone there, as soon as she cried everyone came in, all the kids wanted to hold her right away. The day afterwards, the photographer pursued, and I let her in to take some pictures of our new family of six. They are up in the entrance of the hospital, and also in some brochures and on the website. And that's June's story.

GNO

2010-05-02T13:06:00.001-07:00

I coordinate a girls only youth group in Faro called Girls Night Out. (GNO)
We meet every week on Wednesday nights. There are 27 past and present members of GNO, and we have a lot of fun together. Working with these incredible young women brings me great satisfaction and joy. They are amazing individuals who have passionate, funny, thoughtful, brilliant personalities. These girls have potential that reaches as far as the eye can see, they can do anything and make real, palatable change to our world. I am so proud to be their friend and confidant, to be a person in their lives that believes in them.

Sleep Talk

2010-04-01T09:47:00.000-07:00

T.J has always been a bit of a sleep talker. When we were younger (I recently turned 33, so now I think I feel I'm justified to say "when I was younger") he would have whole hilarious conversations with me while he was sleeping. I won't embarrass him too much by telling all his sleeptalking stories on blogger, but this mornings conversation with Lydia is exempt! Somewhere around 4am, Lydia came into our room and made her way around to TJ's side of the bed. Her father is much more sympathetic to her middle of the night needs than her Mom. The conversation went like this:

Lydia: "Daddy, I'm thirsty, I need a drink of water."
Daddy: "Well you can go to hell".
Lydia: "What? Daddy, I want a drink".
Daddy: "It's way too bright outside".
Lydia: "Daddy? Daddy? DADDY I need a drink!"

Lydia as they are walking out of the room: "Daddy, you're silly".

2610 Randle Road

2010-03-27T09:52:00.000-07:00

This morning, I woke at 5:30am, with tears soaking my pillow. I had been dreaming, and the choked sound of my sobs woke me up. In my dream, my parents were trying to drag me out of my grandparents house so that the new family could move in. They had called the police.

Last night, I received the phone call that I knew was coming, but was still not prepared for. My father sold my late grandparents home, the home he grew up in, the beach house, my Departure Bay. The papers were signed, there is no going back, the finality of it all is sinking in, sinking down into my toes with heart wrenching, hand wringing, head shaking disbelief.

Part of me is telling myself to get a hold of it, to be reasonable, to be realistic, after all it is just a house, four walls, a building, nothing that really matters in the end.

But the soul of me, the heart of me, the real me, knows that 2610 Randle Road is not just a house, not just a place, it lives and breathes and is a part of me that is dying. My family moved around as I was growing up, so my grandparents home on the waterfront of Vancouver Island where I spent my summers is where I put my roots down. There is something about sleeping in the same bedroom your father slept in as a boy, something about opening a dresser drawer and finding treasures he placed there years ago. There is a deep attachment that develops to a home with your history inside it, with the knowing that you are in the same rooms that held family conversations and events going back 50 years. There is something about watching your children running down the sand bars just as their grandfather did as a little boy.

My Papa took his final breath last August, just after he shook his finger at my father, saying with his eyes, "You take care of my Departure Bay!" Things are always more complicated, though, when faced with financial and family realities, with worldly responsibilities and commitments. Unfortunately, there is no one in our family who has stepped up with a million dollars to save our beach house from being sold to strangers, to the stealer's of my special place. Playing the Lotto Super Max every Friday for the past 6 months hasn't payed off. When I think of money playing the vital role in this unbearable outcome, I am angry and ashamed and embarrassed that we didn't find a way, that we didn't fight harder, that someone didn't find a solution and a way to keep the house. Because it isn't worth a million dollars, it is worth so much more. There is no price tag high enough. Papa, I am so, so sorry.

What I want to do is to get on the plane tomorrow, pull into the driveway, walk up the steps and feed the fish in the pond. I want to step into the hall and inhale the sweet essence that makes memories dance in my head. I want to walk through the kitchen of apple pies and out through the screen covered with butterfly stickers to keep us from walking smack into it. Into the sunroom onto the deck, I want to calm myself with the sea and the gulls and the boats, letting the salty breeze engulf me. Then I want to chain myself to the railing. I want to scream and yell and let my parents call the police to take me away. Dreams are sometimes, after all, premonitions of things to come.

Icefishing

2010-02-20T21:09:00.000-08:00

Today we packed up the truck and went out to the lake for some icefishing. It was warm and sunny, and we all returned home with suntanned faces. We skidooed down the lake to find a good spot, and T.J got busy drilling holes. He likes to drill lots of holes, because he says then there is a greater chance of actually catching a fish.

Lydia helped to set up her and June's camp chairs. Except she likes to sit in one and use the other one to store all her food in.

June was O.K with that, she spent her time laying on her tummy on the ice, licking snow.

Of course, no icefishing trip would be complete without hotdogs! Someone left an old washer drum out there for a firepit, so we started our fire in there.

Dustin had fun, and we all had a good laugh, while he tried out the snowshoes!

The kids had a blast on the freedom of the lake on the skidoos. They could go around and around all day!

I was trying out the "action shot" settings on my camera, and got this shot of T.J's dumb dog, Scout, trying to pounce on me.

We had a great day hanging out as a family, until June fell into one of the holes and got soaking wet! T.J and I piled on a skidoo and quickly whizzed back to the truck to get her wet snowsuit and boots off. Good thing we weren't too far away!

Warning: Major Gross Factor

2010-01-25T15:20:00.000-08:00

Early this morning, around 3am, Dustin barfed. Once downstairs all over the bathroom floor, and once upstairs. He tried to catch it in his hands. I wanted to be sympathetic, I wanted to be a comforting, nurturing mother, but isn't 13 old enough to clean up your own vomit? Shouldn't a 13 year old be able to make it to the toilet bowl? I can handle grossness, believe me, after 4 children I've had to deal with stuff a lot of kidless people couldn't even imagine. I can handle poop and snot and blood and pee and spit and curdled milk even, but I don't do barf. Just a hint of the smell, and I start to lose it. So this morning I kicked T.J out of bed to go see to his son. Later as I bleached away, I remembered a pretty great barf story back when Dustin was about 3 years old.

One night he woke up crying and I burst into his room and was hit by that terrible smell that stopped me dead in my tracks. My little guy was hollering and reaching out for me, and I had to turn, gagging and pulling my shirt over my nose, back out of the room to wake T.J. He went in and discoverd a pool of vomit smack in the middle of Dustin's bedspread. He picked up our little boy, held him at arm's reach, and headed for the bathroom where he stuck him in the bathtub and turned the shower on. He couldn't just stuff the comforter in the washing machine, as there were chunks of partly digested food floating around the rest of my son's stomach contents. T.J hatched a plan, and he found me hiding under my covers and convinced me to help him carry it out.

We had a second floor deck off our bedroom, and he wanted me to grab 2 corners of Dustin's comforter while he grabbed the other 2 sides. We were going to carry the puke this way, without spilling, to the door and throw the whole thing off the deck. Lovely.

Well, because I was holding 2 sides of the comforter, I couldn't let go to cover my nose because it would spill all over the floor. That smell was wafting up, I swear I could see it steaming. I lost it. Half way from Dustin's bedroom to the deck door, I couldn't hold it back anymore and I vomited right into the middle of the comforter, on top of what was already there. T.J was yelling, "GO GO GO GO GO!", and we burst onto the deck and hurled the whole disgusting thing out into the front yard where it landed with a splat onto the snow. T.J went to Dustin, who was still standing in the shower with all his jammies on, hollering. I went back to bed. The next day, we looked out the window and the birds were enjoying breakfast out on the comforter, which was now frozen into the snow. Disgusting.

Skidoo fun

2010-01-16T17:25:00.000-08:00

Today the Granthams went skidooing. We had a great time, it was nice to get out into the crisp air and roar down the trail. There's nothing like the smell of skidoo fumes. Yummy. June fell fast asleep in T.J's lap. Or maybe it was the fumes!

We skidooed out to one of the sheep viewing cabins, where we stopped to take some pictures.

Lydia was travelling with me on the back of the skidoo, and we went over a bump and she flew right off into the snowbank! She was spread out face first, I thought she was going to freak out but she sat up, mouth full of snow, laughing. She exclaimed, "That was fun, Mommy!" as she climbed back on. She made snow angels...

Junie finally woke up, and explored around the cabin.

We had a fabulous day, and want to do it again tomorrow! Next time we'll bring some hotdogs and hot chocolate.

When we got home and parked the skidoos, I looked up and noticed something strange. On the willow that grows beside the side of the house were a bunch of pussy willows! Who says global warming is a farce? January 16th has got to be the earliest emergence of pussywillows in the north. Weird.

Is there a better way to end a day in our great outdoors than a hot soak in the tub?

The Grantham Family Vacation

2010-01-13T21:57:00.000-08:00

I've been reflecting a little on the anniversary of our little daughter, Lydia's, seizure that occurred on the airplane on January 9th, 2009. We were heading to Mexico for a 2 month break from reality. Following is a letter I wrote to my father's church, as we had requested prayer and I wanted to provide an update before we left the country:

To Our Riverdale Church Family,

Well, yesterday we were feeling like turning around and coming right back home! I was feeling like maybe God was trying to send us a message.
We started our holiday with the death of our cat, Peanut the day before we left. Then we drove out in -40 to Lillooet to spend Christmas with T.J's family. Christmas Eve the power went out and the turkey was ruined. Christmas Day the sewer backed up and we had to use an outhouse and go to town for showers and laundry. There was record snow in Vancouver, and we had a treacherous drive through Whistler to get to the ferry to take us to the island, where there was freezing rain. The ferry that was going to take us from Victoria to Seattle to catch our plane was taking a week off for maintenance so we scrambled to find another way there. Seattle warmed up and there was major flooding everywhere. Rivers overflowed. Then our precious little girl had a fluke seizure on the plane and we had to go to the hospital. And the airline broke our stroller. So I was feeling like God was saying, "What do I have to do to get you to turn around already?!"
Then today when my babies were sleeping and I was watching Dustin and Emily play in the pool, God revealed a different take on things to me. Our cat was 14, and I am glad she died while we were able to say goodbye, instead of by herself while we were away. He kept us safe as we drove in the freezing cold, our van was warm and our hotels comfortable. Christmas Eve we salvaged the dinner by candlelight, and we enjoyed each other's company while we all caught up. The outhouse wasn't really a big deal, it was like we were camping. What could we expect with 14 people in the house? All the cousins got along beautifully, and had a blast playing in the enormous snowfall in -10 temperatures. God was with us while we drove to the island, we never ended up like the family who's SUV was upside down in the middle of the road. The freezing rain eventually washed all the snow away. My aunt drove us over to Seattle in our van, and we had a nice time visiting and shopping with her. She drove us to the mall! Seattle flooded almost everywhere but where we were. Lydia's seizure traumatized all of us, we are still recovering, but as far as seizures are concerned it was a fairly mild one. The doctors thought it would be unlikely for her to have another one. We had excellent medical care at a state of the art children's hospital, the airline put us up in a luxury hotel and rescheduled our flights. The hotel staff gave us warm chocolate chip cookies. While we were in hospital an angel visited us named Uncle John. He took T.J, Dustin and all our luggage from the hospital to the hotel. Then he came back and took Dustin and Emily back to his house with him. Him and his wife, Kathy took them out to Chucky Cheese, and they came and picked us all up when we were done at the hospital and took us to our hotel. God gave me the forethought to purchase travel insurance, the enhanced package. So they paid for the ambulance transfer and Lydia's stay in the hospital. They will reimburse us for a $360 prescription and all our meals, phone calls, and hotel costs. They will buy us a new stroller.
Lydia is happy and acting totally normal. Today she even got a time out for hitting her sister! So I don't think God is telling us to turn around anymore. We are focusing on the incredible way he has put his arms around our family, and there is no doubt in our minds that he will continue to do so. Our family has been so blessed, we are looking forward to a beautiful, restful time together as a family in Mexico. Please continue to pray that our Lydia stays healthy, and that she doesn't have any more seizures on any more planes. Pray that we will have a wonderful time on our holiday, and that God will continue to watch over us while we are far from our country and our home and loved ones. Thank you for all your prayers so far, we felt them raining down on us as we took care of our little daughter. May God bless all of you as he as blessed us.

Love, T.J and Heather

We continued to have many challenges on our holiday. When we arrived in Cancun, January 13th, one year ago today, my sweet husband left his jacket on the plane. With his wallet in the pocket. We waited in a gloomy hallway between the plane and customs while TJ frantically begged for an airport staff member to go get his coat. The guy returned proudly a few minutes later with the coat in tow - but no wallet. After T.J explained (pretty calmly, even) that he was not leaving without any money, the guy went back into the plane and we waited for a horribly excruciating 45 minutes for the guy to re-emerge. He very sheepishly handed over the wallet, with the visa card intact. Then we headed to Walmart to pick up some groceries and then to our condo, where the property manager was supposed to meet us. You guessed it, we stood on the side of the road in a foreign country with our 4 kids, a mountain of luggage and about 15 bags of groceries for 2 hours until we determined the property manager wasn't going to make an appearance. We loaded back into the van (thank you so much for waiting with us, Enrico!) and went to search for a hotel room. Some advice, don't appear desperate in Mexico. We went to about 10 hotels, and the cheapest price we could find for a room for 1 night with a fridge was $500.00 US. ARGGGG! Finally, we found a room for $165US, I think because our van driver had it out with the hotel manager. We packed all the kids and luggage and food into a tiny room and had a sleepless night because it was hot and sweaty and we were worried about Lydia and we were right on a main street and the motorcycles roared. The next day we got the condo manager on the phone and arranged to meet. We got a taxi to take us there, and started settling in. The kids jumped in the pool, I unpacked groceries and clothing, things were looking up. Until T.J went out to get us a disposable cell phone, and he discovered his visa was missing from his wallet. He left it at the hotel when he paid for our room. We had absolutely no idea where the hotel was located, and were even unsure of the name. T.J and Dustin flagged down a taxi, and went out in search of the hotel and our visa card. If we aren't divorced after that, we will get through anything! Thankfully, they found it and the guy behind the counter had the card there in an envelope with our name on it. Whew. Things went well for the next couple weeks, we rested and recovered and spent lovely hot times on the beach. Until the day Lydia got hold of a bottle of grape flavored Benadryl and proceeded to drink the whole thing down.......I love my daughter but I was ready to send her right back home to her grandparents. I think the next vacation will be to somewhere similar, hot sandy beaches, mojitos in pool chairs and palms blowing in the breeze, but there will be no kids to be found! :)

Catching up

2010-01-06T09:31:00.000-08:00

My list of things to do today is occupied with catching up. I have fallen behind this holiday season, opting to bask in family time rather than keep up with my pink jobs. I have yet to send out my Christmas family update, the cards are ready, the envelopes are even addressed, but I am determined to include the family letter of 2009 that I have yet to write. So they will be New Year cards. The list of household chores is long, like cleaning out the fridge, which still has leftover turkey hiding in a container somewhere in the back. Leftovers have never been my thing. There are business chores, like paying bills and sorting mail and examining the long avoided VISA statement. There are chores outside, like refilling bird feeders and scooping dog doo and adding water to the hot tub. There is recycling, ugg, the recycling. A mountain of cardboard and wrapping paper and the evidence of too much alcohol consumed. Good thing recycling is pretty much a blue job.

On Monday was our anniversary. 13 years are behind us, 13 years of raising babies and creating a family and riding the waves of ups and downs. My parents took the kids for the weekend and T.J and I checked into a hotel for a vacation from the world. It was a sweet reminder of what we are together, of a renewed sense of appreciation and passion and love. For 2 whole nights we focused just on us and it was wonderful. On Saturday morning T.J rolled over to check the time and he said, "Holy crap, it's 2:30!" I haven't slept like that since I was a teenager! We returned to our kids rested and revived, ready to take on this new year. So here's to one item crossed off my list, an entry on my neglected blog. Now onto Christmas letters!

One of those weeks

2009-12-17T20:00:00.000-08:00

This has been one of those weeks. One of those weeks when you feel like you're forgetting to breathe, and your brain is buzzing so loudly it wakes you in the middle of the night. It started on Saturday with the Faro Children's Christmas Party. After packing bags for Whitehorse, getting the girls in their Christmas dresses, doing everyone's hair, cleaning up dried on cheerios off the table, remembering to clothe myself we hurried out the door after recieving an urgent phone call, "The party started at 10, you know, and Santa is already here and asking for Lydia, GET DOWN HERE!" So we rushed down to the Recreation Centre, ran in leaving a wake of coats, hats, boots, and mitts trailing behind us. After the party, we came home, I loaded the van with bags for me and Emily, and I proceeded to travel around town filling my van with girls for our trip to Whitehorse to see the Nutcracker. We had a wonderful time, the girls were awesome as always, and I returned home Sunday with the back bumper of the van barely clearing the road. Monday and Tuesday were spent dealing (or not) with an issue at our school, which resulted in our kids taking an early Christmas vacation. I'll not eloborate here, as in a small town eyes and ears are on you everywhere, you cannot hide! Wednesday T.J went to Whitehorse. And today is only Thursday. Also in there, I held a girls night, made 10 Christmas presents for mommies and daddies with 5 preschoolers, went to several meetings and 2 playgroups. I'm heading into Whitehorse on the weekend for a couple of days without kids to get pampered at my Mom's - if I can find someone to cook a turkey for the Community Potluck on Sunday. Any takers??

TJ vs Fireplace

2009-12-08T09:55:00.000-08:00

I have to take a wee break from the Blind Creek stories to tell the tale of yesterday's adventure. Well, not an adventure really, more like a battle. Between T.J and our propane fireplace. T.J has an obsession with heat. He constantly worries about our heat source crapping out during the winter, and has worked tirelessly to find solutions. He believes a woodstove would solve all his problems, but has yet to just go ahead and install one. He procrastinates because the woodstove really should go into our garage, which we eventually want to convert into a room. And the garage is a mess. T.J is not the most organized guy, and junk is constantly accumulating. I have no idea where it all comes from, because every year we clean it out, take a load to the dump and a load to the free store, and every year the piles mount until there are little paths woven through to get to the freezers. The organization of the garage is most definitely a blue job, and I refuse to touch it. Kind of like how T.J doesn't touch the laundry room. Anyway, because he hasn't cleaned and organized the garage to make room for a woodstove, T.J has invested in alternate heat sources for our home. Besides our forced air furnace, we have a oil monitor and a propane stove.

O.K, I have to admit that the propane stove was my idea, in my opinion the next best thing to a woodstove. It looks like a woodstove, it feels like a woodstove, but it creates no mess and no work collecting wood. The guy who sold it to me also proclaimed an additional bonus - low maintenance. Economical, too, about $400.00 for the whole winter. So it seemed like fate when I was scanning the Yukon News one day and in the classifieds I found a Napoleon Propane Stove - just what I was looking for! I called the guy and he explained that when he and his wife divorced, he had gone over to the house while she was out and stolen it out of her living room. He seemed quite satisfied with himself as he told me all about it, he said he was moving and needed to sell it ASAP. Of course there were a few other people calling about it - it wasn't going to last long. So I bought it. For $1100.00. Not a smart decision, T.J said, without even looking at it or knowing if it even worked. As these things usually work out, we brought the stove home, T.J hooked it all up, and it has been nothing but trouble since. And T.J has no problem rubbing it in, either. After calling around in Whitehorse to all the propane dealers, there apparently are no people who fix these things. Except Superior Propane who will come to Faro for $150.00 an hour plus gas plus hotel plus food.

One unfortunate day I returned home from somewhere and found T.J ripping the stove away from the wall, swearing and sweating as he threw it outside in the snowbank. I got on the phone and arranged to bring the stove in to Griffiths, where someone would take a look at it for us. The repair guy called me one day while TJ was gone and explained that he suspected it was a venting issue, and that he couldn't know for sure without testing it in our home. Which wasn't going to happen, at $150 an hour. So a few days ago, T.J picked it up in Whitehorse and returned home, determined to try again. Yesterday he brought it in and hooked it up once more. He purchased a new thermocouple, and successfully installed it. Things were looking up. It lit up perfectly.

Then we noticed a smell. Thinking it was just because it had been turned off for awhile, we opted to give it an hour to see if it needed to warm up. But the smell persisted. Then our eyes started to water, we started to cough. We felt sleepy. Well the guy said it was a venting issue. T.J climbed up on the roof. I guess the chimney cap was plugged up with ice and snow, so he cleared it and came back in. The house was still filling with fumes. Thinking there was possibly ice build up down the chimney, T.J tied a rope around a broom handle, climbed back up on the roof and lowered the handle down. All clear. T.J started losing it again, kicking and swearing and stomping around. He came in and turned the "stupid" stove off. We opened all the windows. He was getting ready to throw it back in the snow bank. In one last ditch effort, we thought that maybe the problem was the stovepipe wasn't sealed to the stove - T.J broke the seal when he had ripped it off the wall. So I held the stove pipe up while T.J squirted silicone around the base. Just before he gave me the go ahead to lower the pipe back down, he spotted a little corner of red poking out of the bottom of the pipe. He reached up and pulled out a balled up dish towel. One of the new ones, of course, that I had purchased during our last trip to Whitehorse and then lost. Which was now pitch black with soot. He sheepishly grinned at me and said, "Oops, I forgot that I had shoved that up there". Well. HA.

The air started to clear right away and the stove has been running perfectly since. June had an especially good nap, also. I'm sure this is not the end of the propane stove saga, but our house is toasty and my husband is happy he conquered for now. We (T.J) are so fortunate that he saw that towel before we sealed the pipe. That small thing could have easily burned our house down, or poisoned us all in our sleep. A word of advice for everyone out there - DON'T buy a second hand propane stove - no matter what a good deal you found!

Eli

2009-12-05T20:58:00.000-08:00

We shared Blind Creek with about 20 horses, 15 pigs, (the wild looking ones with the tusks, not the cute pink ones) 400 chickens,(the smell made your eyes water) 3 dogs, 3 cats and 4 goats, one of which was named Eli. Eli hated me right from the beginning. I don't know why, I have always loved animals, and animals generally love me back. Eli was big for a goat, he had big horns sprouting from the top of his head that he could scratch his back with. Eli had yellow eyes that bore right through you, and a big white bell hanging from his chin that swung back and forth as he walked. Maybe he sensed my disgust, when we first pulled up in our blue 2 door Sundance, when I caught him urinating into his own mouth. Don't ask me how he did it, but he did. I had never seen an animal do this before, and I stared, wrinkling my nose and he stared back with those yellow eyes.

Later, as we were packing our meager belongings into the cabin we were to call home, Eli strolled over to our Sundance and proceded to tear the mirrors off it. I chased him off, yelling and waving Dustin's baby blanket at him. From here on in, the feeling of hatred was mutual.

Eli would wait for me in the morning, when I had to walk from our cabin to the main house to help with breakfast. He would hide behind our wood pile, and when I got to where he could get behind me and block my escape back inside the cabin, he would come out. Almost every day spent on that farm, I ran from Eli. The first time he went to charge me as I went out to get a load of wood, I thought he was bluffing as he reared up on his hind legs and pawed the dirt up on the ground, and I laughed because he looked funny. Then when he came at me at a full gallop, I ran and climbed up on top of the wood pile. I yelled for T.J who came out of the cabin. The goat immediatly backed away and became submissive and T.J looked at me like I was the crazy one. He told me that I just had to let the goat know who was boss, after all, it was only a goat, nothing to be scared of.

I started carrying around an axe. The next time Eli charged, I let him come and when he reared up to butt me, I hit him right in the head with the axe. That didn't even stun him, he just got madder and continued to rear up and paw at me with his hoofs. I held him off (sort of) with the axe as I retreated back to the top of the woodpile. Next I tried throwing a bucket of cold water at him, then I tried an air horn. His hate for me grew.

My battles with Eli greatly amused TJ, who thought I was imagining things until one day he saw me tearing across the yard, Dustin in one arm and an axe in the other, Eli hot on our heels. He gave me a thick leather whip. From then on, I cracked the whip as soon as I stepped outside, just to let Eli know I was ready for him. He would slink out from behind the wood pile, and follow to the main house, bleating at me the whole way. He stayed just out of the whips reach, and believe me, I tried to get him with it. I started chasing him - it felt great.

I also found that I could ride horses everywhere, Eli would chase the horse around but at least he couldn't get at me way up there. I would stand on a log, prop Dustin up there on the horse and hang onto him as I swung myself up. We rode to the outhouse, to the henhouse to collect the eggs, to the main house to do our chores there. When I left Blind Creek in the summer, our car had no mirrors, one headlight was punched out and there were long gouges along both sides. I smiled when, a couple years later when we were chatting with our employer on the phone and he told us that he caught Eli ripping the mirror off HIS truck. He shot him dead on the spot. Stupid goat.

Humble Beginning

2009-12-04T14:11:00.000-08:00

When TJ and I were first married, we moved from an apartment in Whitehorse to a one room cabin at a farm outside of Faro. TJ was working at the sawmill they operated during the winter months, and guided hunts for them during the summer months. He was to be paid $500/month, including room and board, and this goes to show how young we were, because at the time that sounded like a heap of money. I thought it would be an adventure, and pictured our little family, TJ, 5 month old Dustin and I, cozy inside our cabin like the Little House on the Prairie books I read as a child. I always dreamed of living on a farm, and pictured us feeding the horses together and collecting eggs from the henhouse for our breakfast. Dustin and I moved there in January, in 30 below zero, me trusting that my new husbands description of our snug cabin was accurate.

It was a shed, 12X14, uninsulated with a huge double barrel woodstove taking up 1/4 of the room. It had no electricity and no running water and no outhouse.

We stuffed our things into it, a table and chairs, a hide a bed that doubled as our couch, a TV to watch movies, and Dustins crib. We had candles for light, (not to mention the light coming right through the walls from outside)a bucket for our washroom, and a blue water jug and plastic tub for the kitchen sink. I hid my horror from my new husband, after all we were still getting to know each other and still getting used to being new parents.

We were 19 years old.

Because the shed was uninsulated, heat from the woodstove went right out of it. The stove didn't come equipped with modern day conveniences like a damper, so we couldn't shut it down to burn slowly. The fire raged, the heat inside went to about 100 degrees, (hot enough to melt both the candles and the television into puddles)and then went out just as quickly. One frigid night, I woke up freezing, and used the headlamp to read the thermometer by our bed. I placed it there to keep track of the extreme temperature fluctuations, so I could kick TJ out of bed to restart the fire. Which he did about 5 times throughout the night. That night, we must have been exhausted, him from working 14-16 hours a day on the sawmill and me from cooking and cleaning at our employers home. Which had running water, and propane lights, and a proper woodstove, and a outhouse just outside the back door.

The thermometer read -26 degrees.

I remembered the wee baby boy in the crib beside us. I jumped up, headlamp and all, and peered into my baby's bed, where he was fast asleep, with all his blankets piled up in the corner because he liked to kick them off. His nose was red as a cherry. I gathered him up and brought him into bed with me, curled myself around him while TJ started the fire again.

My next few posts will tell the stories about our time down at Blind Creek Farm, that first winter together as husband and wife. Our experiences there taught us both alot about perseverance, about patience, about the satisfaction of a job well done, about the bare bone basics of simple love. Living in that shed taught us that it doesn't matter where you are, it is who you are with. Blind Creek Farm provided us a solid foundation for our marriage and our family to build a life on. I wouldn't change a thing about it. Well, maybe the bathroom bucket, I might change that.

picture pains

2009-12-01T13:49:00.000-08:00

Taking the annual Grantham Family Picture for our christmas mailout has not been an easy task this year. TJ has been away alot, and I have not figured out as of yet how to just paste his head amongst ours. We arrived home safe and sound on Saturday night, we spent a quiet family day together Sunday, and he has left us again for meetings in Whitehorse until Friday. I figured out on Sunday afternoon that we had better get out and get that picture taken, or our Christmas mailout would have to turn into a New Years mailout. So outdoors we headed, Dustin complaining that we were wasting his time, Emily indignant because she had left her mitts and hat behind after being told she'd better bring them, (she did her very best to cover up her coldness, but her shaking knees and purple ears did her in) Lydia hollering because June got to sit in the front of the sled, and June falling asleep with snot freezing to the side of her face because she had skipped her nap. One big happy family. We ventured out on top of a hill, where the view of the mountains served as a backdrop, and TJ got the camera and tripod set up. We got about three shots in before everyone started falling apart. Upon returning home, we discovered that 3 in the afternoon on a late November day is too late to be taking pictures, they turned out way too dark. The camera wasn't on "night" setting, so it's blurry, too. So the picture will have to wait. It's really too bad that on our last day on the beach in Mexico last spring, we gathered by the water and TJ waved down some random guy with a margarita in each hand to take our one and only family picture on our holiday. We were only there 2 months, you'd think we could have got it together before the last day. Anyway, I look brown and happy,the kids looked right at the camera and grinned,(except for June who couldn't keep her eyes off the pelican who landed on the sand right beside us) the waves crashed on the sand, and the margarita guy proudly looked at the picture, and said "great family!" as he stumbled down the beach. Later, going through the pictures, I discovered that he totally cut TJ's head clean off. So that one won't work, either. Oh, well, a New Year's update wouldn't be so bad. I need to hire a photographer.

Six once more

2009-11-26T14:03:00.000-08:00

I can't help but feeling a small bit triumphant today, as I pack suitcases and dog food and coolers and plastic totes into the van to head to Whitehorse. T.J flies home on Saturday afternoon, and even though it's a huge job to get everything packed and it's a long, lonely ride in the dark, it will be worth it when he emerges from the plane and his children run into his arms. We had a pretty good time on our own for a couple weeks, me and the kids kept the decks and the driveway clear of snow, we ate suppers in the living room watching movies, we had hot tubs and sleepovers with their friends. We kicked off the hockey season at the rink and went to sports night and storytime and tai chi and playgroup and soccer. We had french toast for dinner. My friend Kara even "payed it forward" and knocked on the door with cake and something she called "crap in a pan." I had Dustin and Emily call it "Bleep" in a pan, so we didn't have Lydia and June running around saying "crap!" There were times when I wanted to scream, like when Dustin forgot to close the gate upstairs before leaving for floor hockey and the dog came upstairs and peed all over June's potty. Or when Emily and Liddie were playing tag around the island in the kitchen and Emily knocked my great grandmother's cuckoo clock off the wall. Or when June decided it was great fun to wash her hair with her food, in one day she had cheerios, applesauce, macaroni and spaghetti in there all at once. Her hair stood straight up stiff from her head. There were times I had to seek the quiet of my room for a moment, to close my eyes and count my blessings, instead of roaring, "YOU STUPID KIDS, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?" We are on our way to the big city, to play in the pool and go to the movies and stock up on groceries and ingredients for Christmas baking. Our trips are always action packed and we never get everything done on the list, but by the time we leave to travel the 4 hours home, the van is stuffed to the roof. There are usually things tied on top of the roof, too. We are happy and mommy is relieved that we will walk in our door Saturday night as 6.

Once a wee boy

2009-11-20T21:40:00.000-08:00

I want to use this space once in a while to record special memories. Today is little Dustin's turn. My first born is an inconceivable 13 years old, but once he was a sweet little guy who could melt his mommy's heart. Dustin was a super easy baby, he was quiet and cuddly and happy to go along with most any situation. He was never a fighter, never took to wrestling or armpit farts or getting filthy in the mud puddles. We were over at a friends house one day and Dustin was playing with her little boy in the living room while we visited in the kitchen. While our conversation paused we overheard the boys cooking up plans to re-enact a WWF match that was on the television. My friends kid was right into WWF and watched it with his father religiously. Dustin was innocently going along and followed his friends instructions to lay down on the floor and pretend he was knocked out. I jumped up and ran into the room just as his friend leaped off the arm of the couch yelling, "BODY SLAM!" TJ came home from work that evening and gave Dustin a wrestling lesson. Our little boy was a lover, not a fighter. Things changed a little when his sister Emily made her appearance when Dustin was 3. One day about a week after bringing Emily home I was changing her on our bed and just happened to glance out the front window. There was Dustin, running down the driveway with his PJ's on in his daddy's boots. He had a backpack on that was stuffed to the brim with apples, and they were falling out as he was making his getaway. I yelled out the door, "Dustin, come back here, where are you going?" and he hollered back, "I'm moving to Grammas!" Another day shortly after we had company for dinner. Dustin went through a (short lived) phase when he was stoked about setting the table for meal times. He was running back and forth between the kitchen and dining room with dishes, salt and pepper, napkins and the butter dish and when he was done he stood back to examine his handiwork. All of a sudden his eyes lit up and he ran back into the kitchen to retrieve whatever he'd forgotten. He walked proudly out holding 2 hotpads, and exclaimed, "Look, Mommy, I forgot the breast pads!" TJ was horrified and scolded me for using those "kinds of words" in front of his kid. I don't remember Dustin being disobedient on purpose until he was at least 7 or 8. He crumpled if I looked at him with a frown, he was innocently naughty. Like the time at the swimming pool when he was around 2 years old. TJ has only been swimming with us a handful of times, and this was one of them. We were on holidays and after much nagging and laying the guilt on about how much it would mean to little Dustin for his Daddy to see him practice all the things he learned in swimming lessons, TJ gave in and came with us. Only because we were on holidays and the chance of him running into someone he knew with his shorts on were slim to none. Dustin followed his Daddy into the men's changeroom for the first time. After swimming, we went to get changed and when I got out to the lobby red-faced TJ gave me one hot look and I knew we weren't going to head to the "Shark Shack" for onion rings and icecream. Once we were safe out in the car, he came unglued and I laughed so hard tears rolled and my stomach hurt. TJ had plunked Dustin down on the bench in the changeroom while he retrieved the towels from his locker. A big naked fat guy emerged from the shower, his locker was on the bottom row right beside where Dustin was sitting. He bent right over to get his things, and out of the corner of TJ's eye, he saw Dustin poke his finger right into the guy's butt hole! I guess TJ shoved his head right inside his locker and hid there until he thought it safe, then he got the hell out of there as quick as he could. A very long time passed before TJ got back into the pool with us, and when he did, I had to take the kids with me. Dustin is not so innocently naughty these days, but he is still a pretty quiet soul, content to be himself and not too worried about whatever is "cool" on any given day. He is passionate about planes and flight and we won't be surprised at all if his plans to be a pilot are realized during the next few years. He is still a lover, and TJ and I swell with pride as we witness him growing into the honorable, kind man we know he will be.

Sweet Satisfaction

2009-11-17T20:24:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I have pretty unproductive days, not the laying on the couch all day channel surfing days of my adolescence, those are long gone, but the kind of days where I go round and round with no real enthusiasm for the monotony of housewife life. Then there are days like today, when I finally have a chance to sit down and breathe while I listen to June sing herself to sleep, I marvel at all the things I got done. It probably had something to do with the good sleep I had last night, as June only woke up once and was back asleep with a quick "shhhhhhhhhh", Lydia did not wake up screaming that someone ate all the yogurt, and Emily didn't have a tummy ache. (Or an eye ache or knee ache or neck ache, Emily seems to like to ache these days.) This morning when the alarm went off I was up out of bed, I didn't hit the sleep button even once. I made myself some coffee, turned on Alan Jackson and made french toast and eggs and smoothies for breakfast. I got the kids off to school on time and welcomed the 3 preschoolers I care for all by the stroke of 9. We made playdoh and played playdoh, put together a snack for playgroup at the Recreation Center, and I got everyone's coats, hats, mitts and boots on and everyone into their carseats by 10:30. I then swung by my friends house to pick up her kid, because as I was sipping my morning coffee I read her blog that she posted at 4 in the morning while up with her crazy wide awake-way-too-early children, and I could literally see the tears rolling down the screen of my computer. I thought to myself, "what could be the difference between 5 and 6?, besides, now she owes ME a favor!" After playgroup we cruised by the school (actually I just had to back up the van and move it about 3 meters into the school parking lot) to pick up Dustin and Emily, the former of who had to ride in the back hatch as there were no more seats left. After dropping the friends kid off, we headed home for soup and sandwiches. I organize a program in Faro I've dubbed Friendship Feasts, kind of lame but totally awesome. It's kind of like a meals on wheels. After lunch as I was reading "If you give a pig a party" for the upteemth time, I realized that it was my day to cook 2 families meals. Instead of letting things unravel, as they so easily could have, I ran down to the freezer and grabbed a few packs of ground moose meat. I put down my sleepers for their naps, which left me 3, and I explained to them that today for craft we were making Shepherds Pie. They seemed O.K with that and we got started peeling potatoes and chopping carrots and onions. Lydia eyes even watered, and she laughed like crazy when I teased her, "Liddie, STOP crying!" They really liked whipping the potatoes with the Kitchen Aid, especially on the highest speed so potatoes splattered all over the wall. I got out the casseroles, everyone of course wanted their own, so that made four. Two for Friendship Feasts, one for us and one for my friend who is struggling with "my kids are turning me into a zombie" syndrome. The kids were a little irked at me when I told them they couldn't take their Shepherd's Pie's home to their mommies, but when I told them they could lick the potato bowl, strangely it made it all better. After a couple dreaded runs down the sledding hill again, everyone got picked up at 5, Lydia and Dustin headed out on the snowmobile and June and I loaded the van and started deliveries. This was the best part of the day, seeing everyone's grateful smiles as they cradled their warm casserole dishes, and the sweet satisfaction of knowing that today I made a difference. We went home to the quiet, June played while I cleaned the potato off the wall, we had a delicious supper and I started to get ready for aerobics class. Then exhaustion started to set in, and I totally caved to the call of my hot tub on my back deck. Oh well, I'll get fit on Thursday.

Pink and Blue

2009-11-13T20:58:00.000-08:00

In our house, jobs are categorized into two colors, blue and pink. TJ would argue that pink doesn't really exist, he would say he gets stuck doing all jobs, but I can prove that isn't the case. Take breast feeding, for example, there is no way he is ever up at 4 in the morning with someone attached to HIS nipple. Or giving birth, he never had to endure that. Or packing kids suitcases for a trip to town, I take care of this or no one would have any underwear or toothbrushes. Most of the time the laundry and the cooking and the cleaning of toilets and the grocery shopping (no easy task for a family of 6 when you are only loading up every 6 weeks or so) falls under the pink category. I do these jobs day after day, usually with a minimal amount of moaning, because taking care of my family fills me with joy and deep satisfaction, especially because T.J is around to do the blue jobs. Today T.J left us for a couple of weeks, Alberta bound for work - and a little deer hunting on the side. Blue jobs suck. Especially when you have to do all the pink jobs on top of all the blue jobs. These occasions when I am left to manage our house on my own, I find new appreciation for my husband. I miss him when I have to be the first one up in the morning to make my own cup of coffee. I miss him when I find it snowed 3 feet overnight (OK, exaggerating a little) and I have to go outside in the dark to shovel off the front porch so we can open the door and I have to shovel a path off the back porch so the dog can get out for her morning pee. Note to self : never again in my housecoat. I miss him when I have to take the garbage out and as I scrape the ice off the windshield of the van. I miss him when one of the kids decides they need to use a whole roll of toilet paper after taking the biggest dump ever and they plug the toilet. I miss him when the gas light comes on and I have to heave the jerry can up on my shoulder to fill the tank and I miss and spill gasoline all over myself. I miss him when I find a mouse in the trap in the garage, and when a fox scares the crap out of me with his nose pressed up against our back window. I miss him when June decides that sleep is not actually necessary, as I pull the pillow over my ears to block out her hollering. I miss him when I burn the supper because I'm trying to do too many things at once, when he would save the day with scrambled eggs and grilled cheese. I miss him when I find the dog thinks its amusing to piss all over the toboggans outside, as I clean it off in the bathroom tub. Blue jobs are gross. I would take my pink jobs over the blue ones any day. Hurry home to me, husband, it's only day one and I've already had enough. Hats off to all the single moms out there, you are strong and inspiring and you encourage me to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Sledding Joys

2009-11-12T18:22:00.000-08:00

Isn't it sad how everything that is fun and exciting and hilarious as a child changes when you grow up? Like sledding. When we were kids, I loved getting all bundled up and fighting my way through the snow to the top of the hill behind our house. We used to build jumps, we used the big boulder planted in the middle of the hill and just piled and packed snow over it so we would hit it with the sled and sail through the air. Whoever got the most air won. Whoever got the most snow down the front of their snowsuit got extra points. Usually, if the snow was right, we would whiz down that hill at about 50km an hour and end up in the willows and the rose bushes at the end. Sometimes we would see how many of us could pile up in a single toboggan and how many of us would still be in it after hurling over the boulder. We would squeal in delight when we would land head first in the snow bank to emerge with only our eyes showing. The best part was getting home to the warmth of the kitchen, peeling off our soaking coats and snowpants to sip hot chocolate and marshmallows in front of the woodstove. Today I was feeling adventurous, I was feeling brave and I took the kids, Lydia and 3 preschoolers I take care of, sledding on the hill beside our house. After explaining to them that they had to bail off the sled before they hit the metal garbage can at the end of the hill, we headed up. At first they piled in the sled and joyously shouted, "MUSH!" at me as I lugged it up, but then I came to my senses and kicked them out. At the top we piled in and away we went. At 32, snow down the coat and snow down the snowpants and snow on my face so the only thing you can see are my eyes is just not the same. The kids thought it was the funniest sight ever. "Again, again!" they screamed as they ran back up the hillside. After several more runs, one of which we hit the neighbors fence and one of which we hit the willows and rose bushes and one of which we narrowly missed the garbage can, I declared our fun over and lured the kids back in the house with the promise of hot chocolate and marshmallows. At least this will never change, the warmth of my kitchen and the sounds of the children still laughing at the sight of me with my head in the snow, and the smell of hot chocolate on the stove are still the best parts. Even though my bones and my head and my butt are aching.

Only 44 more shopping days till Christmas.....

2009-11-10T14:40:00.000-08:00

The Christmas crazyness has begun. We were in Whitehorse on our grocery/fuel run this past weekend and I found myself in the midst of decorations, twinkling Christmas trees, toffifee and Frosty the Snowman blaring out of the PA system. As I watched Lydia run from aisle to aisle checking out this year's toy selection, as Dustin checked out laptops and Emily played with the latest ipod, I felt a little disgusted at the annual spending spree for either a gift that costs so much you need to make payments on it or a gift that is played with for a day and then lies under a bed or at the back of a closet the rest of the year. So I came up with something different for the Grantham Christmas this year. We drew names. The gift has to be homemade. And no, my sweet children, it doesn't HAVE to suck. I overheard the kids wishing out loud that they hoped June didn't draw their name. I wonder what I got myself into. In my effort to avoid the chaos, did I just create more? Now I'm going to have to spend the next six weeks making, sorry, "helping" 4 kids make gifts. I'm also going to have to nag T.J everyday about his gift until he panics on Christmas Eve and spends all night in the garage, conjuring up something. So I will have to have a back-up gift just in case his doesn't "work out." And I'm going to have to make my own gift. So now I have to make 6 gifts. This better be worth it. It better be meaningful, we better remember how great the homemade Christmas was for years to come. Maybe I will finally learn how to knit.

The power of a girl

2009-11-03T19:27:00.000-08:00

This morning I woke up to the sound of the shower running. I knew it wasn't TJ, because he jumped out of bed hours earlier (4am actually) to drive 21/2 hours to the "exclusion zone" to try to tag one of the ultimate trophy's according to him - a Yukon Elk. It was 7:35, just after my alarm went off and I heard the water come on somewhere in the depths of our house. I lay there wondering if someone forgot to jiggle the toilet handle again, or if it was the sound of the bleeder that was recently turned on, because, yes, winter is here to stay. But no, I also heard some faint humming or music, maybe it was Dustin's radio downstairs? I dragged myself from the cozy layers of my bed and stumbled down the hallway to investigate. Holy crap, it was Dustin in the shower! This is a first, people, the first time ever Dustin has without nagging or yelling or holding our noses as we pass by him to give him the hint, that he has on his own had the urge to get clean. He was singing a tune, enjoying himself even! Then later, as I was sitting in the dining room cradling my cup of coffee, something even crazier happened. There was a smell. It was wafting up the stairs, the delicious scent of TJ's AXE colonge. The kind on the commercials where all the girls attack the guy wearing it, because he smells so good they can't help themselves. I'm sure that's why my husband bought that brand, because he thinks there could be a chance of a hundred girls running towards him to give him a smell. My son had somehow got hold of it and had put it on. Not a little dab, either, I think he might of washed himself in it. Crazy things kept happening today with Dustin, he came home at lunch and reapplied, then he came home after school and did his laundry. Then he went outside and shovelled the deck. I am so not prepared for a teenager. It must be a girl. But who? There are only like 4 in Faro that it could be. Some girl has possesed my son into a showering, cologne wearing, laundry doing, snow shovelling, get his homework done early so he can go to sports night lunatic. The girl must be at sports night, I'm going down to pick him up and I will be sure to check her out.

Happy Halloween!

2009-11-01T10:50:00.000-08:00

I remember Halloween being my favorite holiday, maybe even surpassing Christmas. The goal was to get the ultimate load, running from house to house, block to block, making absolute sure that you accumulated more loot than your siblings. Now Halloween is greeted by me with a groan, as I battle pumpkin guts and stuff plastic ghost bags with newspaper to hang from the trees. This halloween, I did the holiday proud. We made ghost candles and egg carton spiders, we took off our socks to stamp white footprint ghosts on black paper, we learned halloween songs, fingerplays and poems, we told ghost stories. We bought 6 pumpkins (never again) and carved all of them, not just a typical triangle face, either, we had a puking pumpkin guts one and a pumpkin eating a child's leg one. Dustin won a bowling ball sized Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory pumpkin at the pumpkin carving contest. We sprinkled red food coloring and ketchup on the snow for blood. We played scary music. Lydia got up at 6 am asking if it was time yet to go trick or treating, and I when I explained to her our rule about waiting until until it was dark outside, she said, " But Mommy, it IS dark outside!" We got up and make witch finger cookies for the Halloween party. At the party there was a goblin dance, a red jello eating contest, a pumpkin pinata and a costume contest. June won "funniest costume" for her depiction of a chicken. After staring out the window for an hour and a half, Lydia declared it dark and we put her in her snowsuit and stuffed her into her puppy dog costume. Emily and Dustin are now too cool to trick or treat with us, and they joined up with friends to tear around house to house just as I did. June went to one house, got her treat and was done. She saw the little bag full of treats in her bucket and all she could focus on was to get them into her mouth, wrappers and all. We took her home to daddy and carried on. Lydia ran house to house, I got to stand at the end of the driveways this year and wave. She ran out of steam at about house number 17 and plunked herself into the sled, eyes wide at the pillowcase full of junk. She was ready to go home and dump it on the floor. We all met back at our house and I warmed up the truck to take Dustin and Emily to the dance. I chaperoned till 11:30 when the kids declared it "lame" and wanted to get home to their candy. I fell asleep on the couch. Today T.J let me sleep in till 9:30, when I woke up and discovered it was only 8:30. I love fall back! Now I have an extra hour in the day to scrape the pumpkin guts off the deck, take down all the decorations and referee 4 kids on a sugar high. The dog already ate the ketchup off the snow.

Brand New Blogger

2009-10-30T11:12:00.000-07:00

I'm checking off "start a family blog" off my list of to do's, this is somthing I've wanted to get to for awhile. For me, this is a space that can record the day to day happenings of our family life, a journal we can look back on in our later days when the pitter patter (or thundering) of little feet is just an echo in our hallways. It can be a reminder of the sweet days of raising our children, of the chaos of bathtub toys floating in the toilet, a pumpkin thrown down the stairs to smash open against the wall, of KY Jelly used as body lotion. In the midst of the day to day grind sometimes its easy to lose sight of the joy, the humor and the absolute delight I have in all the moments that make up a day. One day our house will be filled with quiet, I hope this can be a space for me to look back upon to bring a smile to my day, a space of memories that might otherwise be forgotten. I should have started this 14 years ago when I was newly married and pregnant with our Dustin. 14 years of daily happenings are stored somewhere in my brain, maybe I will add them as I remember, so they won't all be lost. My family, my marriage, my children are my greatest gift, my reason for being here, my comfort and my refuge. I am so very blessed. I dedicate this blog to all our family and friends, you all help make us who we are and what we are about. You contribute to our family to make it full and great and more than we could have imagined.