Memories of Florida Part I

At the end of March, Mom and Dad came with us on a once-in-a-lifetime vacation in Florida.  We hopped on a plane in Buffalo and flew to Cleveland to pick up Mom and Dad.  From there we flew to Orlando and started our wonderful vacation together!  One day at the Magic Kingdom, a day at our hotel, and then a day at Epcot and another morning in the hotel pool ... great way to begin that memorable time together!

Let the Memories Begin ... and they did!

First sight of Cinderella's Castle was amazing!  The boys were in awe, as were the rest of us!

Grandma and Christopher were partners in the Buzz Lightyear adventure.

Splash Mountain!
What can I say?  We LOVED it - at least most of us did.  Stephen wanted me to sit in the front seat with him because that was the one that would get drenched!  We sure did, and it was worth every moment of going on my son's first roller coaster ride sitting next to him!

Our hotel pool was fantastically warm!  We loved spending time in there, and if were up to the kids, we wouldn't have gotten out - except to go to Epcot.

And go to Epcot, we did!  There was a beautiful flower and garden exhibit going on while we were there with some amazing floral creations.  The boys wanted their picture taken with Donald Duck.

This ball always amazes me.  Fred got such a good shot of this on our way out.  We had a fun and very tiring day at Epcot, but it was way too short!  If we ever go again, we'll skip Magic Kingdom and spend more time in Epcot!



Here's another one of those fabulous floral creations. Christopher wanted to be next to Mater and Lightning McQueen.

80-Something

My friend, her husband and her 80-something-year-old mother-in-law were travelling together across the country via the friendly skies.  My friend and her husband were sharing a brownie, when the thought occurred to her that maybe her mother-in-law would appreciate some, too, so she broke off the last piece and handed it over to this little old lady. 

A few minutes later, my friend glanced across the aisle at her mother-in-law and about burst into fits of laughter ... and embarrassment!  Dear MIL had eaten the brownie and then had popped her teeth out and was licking the rest of the brownie off of her teeth because she had enjoyed it so much!  Not sure just how to respond, my friend stifled her laughter and tried to block the view of her mother-in-law licking her teeth from the rest of the plane.  Once they were licked clean, they were popped back into her mouth and no one was the wiser! 

Ahhh...what will I be like when I'm 80-something and travelling with my children?  I hope they have a sense a humor and patience just like my friend has!

Canadians and Their Holidays

(Disclaimer:  this post is written by an American who has lived in Canada for 13 years and has established official Landed Immigrant status in this country.  All perspectives portrayed are due to the fact that the author has divided loyalties between Canada and the United States and, due to the country of origin and the influence gained from those first thirty-two years of life, the comments made cannot help but have the slant that they do.)

Canadians love their holidays!  There's pretty much one holiday per month, preferably on a Monday, and if there isn't really an offical one like Christmas or Thanksgiving or Canada Day, why then, there is one that's created just for the fun of it, it seems.  August has no official reason to celebrate, but we have August 1st as "Civic Holiday".  What's that mean?  It just means that we need a day off in August. 

February doesn't really have a holiday either because you can't count on Valentine's Day to have a day off of work or school.  No problem.  Several years ago, Family Day was created and now we have yet another Monday off. 

Family Day is supposed to be a day where families spend time together doing family things.  For some people, that means cleaning out their basements together or sleeping in and maybe vacuuming out the family van.  To others, it means going on a weekend skiing trip or attending a local museum's free Family Day activities. 

This year, Family Day for us meant spending the day participating in a free Family Day skate at an ice rink with some friends and then going to their house for a wonderful visit the remainder of the day.  What fun!  While the dads worked on computers and the kids played outside in the snow fort and Monopoly Jr. inside , the moms sat and laughed together and cooked together and visited like only two moms with little kids can do - interrupted, disrupted, and non-stop!

Fred and Levi sharing some fun playtime together.



Lots of happy, noisy and goofy children!

 We let the kids eat first so that we could enjoy a quiet meal together with just the grown ups.  They loved the "privacy" of eating without parental supervision, as you can tell.

Watching Roadrunner videos

 When they were done, the kids all gathered around the laptop in the other room to watch Roadrunner videos while we had our quiet dinner in the dining room, next door.

 We weren't so quiet, I guess, because all of a sudden, some little munchkin came over and shut the door to the dining room because we were being too loud and they couldn't hear their show!  That, of course, made us parents laugh even louder and harder! 

While I still think it's funny that there had to be a day designated for families so that we could have another holiday with a day off, I sure am thankful for it!  We had a lot of fun with the Boronka family and the laughs we shared were welcomed and binding for our families.  The day was over far too soon and we left with wonderful memories.  What a great Family Day, February 2012 (or June 2003 - depending on what calendar you use, right Irina?)

Code Yellow

Do you know what Code Yellow at Zellers means?  I didn't either, until last night.  Code Yellow at Zellers means "missing child."  Yep.  When your child seems to have disappeared into thin air, you tell the first store employee that you see, they pick up a phone on a pole in the middle of the store and blast "CODE YELLOW" over the speaker system after describing to their superiors that a five year old boy in a black coat went missing in the toy section.

And how do I know this and why am I telling you this?  Why, because it happened to a particular little five year old boy that we know quite well last night, of course!  We were at Dad Weinhardt's last night and after supper, Fred took Timothy and Christopher to the mall to pick up some things while Stephen and I stayed at Dad's.  They decided to stop and check out the toys in Zellers (whose idea was that, do you think?) on their way out.  Timothy and Fred were looking at some basketballs when Fred turned around and realized that Christopher wasn't there any more.  He quickly looked through the toy section calling his name, but ... no response.  He said his footsteps got a bit quicker and his voice a bit louder, but soon realized that Christopher was no longer in the toy section.  He found an employee who called in the missing child report and then announced Code Yellow to the entire store.

Fred said that he checked out the toy section again, but then retraced his steps and went back to the mall entrance of the department store.  There was Christopher, standing at the gaping wide opening of Zellers, about ready to walk and disappear into that huge mall!  When he saw Fred, he ran to him and burst into tears!  He told Daddy that he looked for him and tried, but couldn't find him.  By that point, employees had swarmed from all points in the store (I would have liked to have seen that since I can NEVER find any employees in that store on any given day!).  All was well when Daddy and son were reunited and they left.

I'm telling you, parenthood can really stress you out at times!  Between the Code Yellow experience last night and Stephen's accident at school on Tuesday (that's another story) and all the every day things in between, I'm ready for a quiet week.  But that's IMPOSSIBLE!  It's the beginning of March Break!

Emergency Rooms and Memory Triggers

Yesterday afternoon Christopher was downstairs playing by himself when he started crying.  It didn't sound like he had gotten hurt, but just an overtired, whiny kind of cry, so I ignored it as long as I could.  Finally I couldn't take it anymore, so I went to check on him and he was at the bottom of the stairs holding a mast from a Playmobile pirate ship in his hand.  He told me that he hurt his eye.  I looked at it, didn't see much damage, so I carried him upstairs and told him that I would put some drops in it just in case, and that he should come up and lie in bed to rest while the drops healed his eye.  He ended up falling asleep (a blessing for sure!) and two hours later was back up and running around like before!

At supper, I glanced over at him and about threw up!  His eye had started to bleed and the white cornea was now bright red!  Oh - my - goodness!!!  It was not a pleasant sight, let me tell you!  Trying not to panic, Fred and I made plans for me to take him to emergency while he stayed here and got the other boys bathed and in bed.  I'm so thankful that Christopher had that two hour nap in the afternoon, because you never know how many hours you're going to be sitting in an emergency waiting room, right?!

We decided to go to Cambridge hospital instead of Kitchener, hoping for a shorter wait time.  After I parked and we walked toward the emergency entrance, I was hit with a flood of unexpected memories.  The last time I had been in that emergency room was ten and a half years ago.  I was two days shy of being twelve weeks pregnant with my first baby, and I was hemorrhaging profusely.  While I was hoping that being in the emergency room would help me, I also knew that I was most likely miscarrying and would lose the baby. 

These were bad memories that were flooding back.  I don't think one thing has been updated in that ER since that time as even the glass on the triage nurses' window made my stomach lurch. That had been where I stood, blood pouring from my body, tears pouring from my eyes, begging for help.  Last night when they called Christopher's name and we walked through the frosted, electric doors back into the emergency department, once again I almost burst into tears.  We passed the bathroom where I had sobbed as more bleeding occured, so many years ago.  Then we entered the very room where I had spent six hours lying on a table waiting until an operating room was available so that surgery could be performed to scrape the remains in my uterus.   There was no longer a baby, but just remnants of a placenta that needed to be removed.

That was the last I remember of that emergency room as I was wheeled off to who knows where after that and only remember waking up in the recovery room.  When Christopher and I left the hospital after he was done, I walked outside into the darkness and a sadness fell on me that once again caught me off-guard.  When I had gone to that hospital ten and a half years ago, my mother-in-law was with me and stayed with me as long as she could.  For some reason, when I walked out and saw the side of the building, I just felt so lonesome for her again.  I missed her terribly.

I tried hard to be upbeat and happy with Christopher because he was done (in just a little over an hour, too!), and there was no serious damage to his eye, but at the same time, I was overwhelmed with haunting memories of the past.  You'd think that over time, things like this would just go back into the deep recesses of your mind and you won't be affected by them ever again, but that was not the case.  Even now, my throat is tight and my eyes are blurred as I remember that sad, sad day that I lost my baby.  I try to explain it on here now, but even my words are not portraying the emptiness that my heart feels, an emptiness that I thought had been filled and healed.  Maybe, even though God does heal our hurts and binds our wounds, maybe those memories never truly die.  I'm sure there is a reason for that, and I won't bemoan the fact that my unborn baby died, but maybe God wants to remind me that even in those saddest of days, He was there.  He took me through those, and He will take me through future events as well. 

We left the hospital last night and came home to tell Fred the good news that all was well with Christopher's eye.  My sadness turned to happiness and thankfulness, but there is still this little pocket of my heart that is filled with surprise at the response of those memories.  I will give them over to the Lord again and ask Him again to comfort my heart and bring back the peace.  He will.  I know that, because He did it for me back then, too.  He is a faithful God and He can still my soul and fill it with praise...and with MANY more beautiful memories!

Christopher's Hands

This morning Christopher wanted me to help him get dressed.  At five years old, I know that he is more than capable of doing this himself, but for some reason it must have seemed overwhelming to him today.  I said to him, "You do it yourself.  You've got hands!"  He replied with a smile, "I've got hands, but I don't want to use them for this."

(I have a book of quotes and comments that I've kept for Stephen and Timothy since they were little and for some reason - third child syndrome I'm thinking - I didn't do that for Christopher.  The other day we were looking back at old blog posts of when the kids were very little and we were laughing at the things that they said. I told Christopher that I would start writing down some of his sayings on here so that we have them for the future.  Stay tuned for some of his funny lines!)

Timothy and Zach

The two older boys are participating in the Sunday School's Hidden Treasures Bible verse memorization contest at church.  They have a list of verses that they need to learn in order and word for word.  They have the opportunity to win a trip to our church camp as well as a cash prize, depending on how many verses they learn by the middle of May.

I found out that the youth group had some members that wanted to partner up with some of the Sunday School kids to help them learn their verses this year, so I jumped at the chance to talk to the coordinator to see if Timothy could have a mentor to help him.  I was thrilled when I found out that Zach wanted to work with Timothy (because he thought it would be cool to take Timothy to Tim Horton's to study!) because Timothy needs someone (other than Mommy) to help him learn these verses. 

Tonight was Zach and Timothy's first official night to practice their verses together.  At supper, Timothy was making up songs for his verses so that he could remember them.  I kind of forgot about that, until Zach approached me afterward to fill me in on their evening.  I guess when they first sat down to start reciting, Timothy told Zach that they should sing their verses so that they could remember them.  Zach told Timothy that he wasn't the best singer, but he'd try.  And then Timothy said, "Ok, go!"  Poor Zach didn't know what to do!  It seemed that Timothy wanted him to make up a song for them to learn and Zach just sat there dumbfounded!  I was laughing hysterically as Zach was telling me about this because Timothy was so very sincere about his desire for Zach to start singing and Zach was just totally thrown off guard.  I guess Timothy eventually sang his song for Zach since Zach didn't seem to be able to make up a song off the top of his head like Timothy could and Timothy was satisfied with that.

I know that the two of them will have a great time learning their verses together and who knows,  maybe while Zach is teaching Timothy his Bible verses,  Timothy will be teaching Zach how to ad lib songs!  In the meantime, those verses will be hidden deep in their hearts and a friendship bond will be formed.  Mentoring is a good thing!