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Here comes the bride!

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On a misty summer morning ten years ago my cousin was married in the First Nations feasthouse on the top of Grouse Mountain overlooking Vancouver, BC. Though he arrived via the Grouse Grind, a challenging 2.9 km hiking trail that climbs 2800 feet up the face of the mountain, his bride and most of the guests took the easier way up the mountain arriving via the Skyride, North America’s largest aerial tramway.

On Friday, we attended another mountain wedding. Our niece , Stacey, was married high above Sun Peaks Resort near Kamloops, BC. This time the bridal party and their guests, including Stacey’s 88-year-old grandmother, arrived via chairlift!

It was a beautiful sunny day and the setting was spectacular.

The ceremony was simple and meaningful. It was truly a family celebration with Stacey’s brother, Martin, as her “man of honour” and Gerhard’s father and older brother as his two groomsmen. Even Odin, their beloved canine was present! Richard was honoured to be asked to bring a blessing.

Congratulations, Stacey and Gerhard! May all your days be blessed and may your life together be as beautiful as the day on the mountain!

A life of its own

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I’m a Site Stats junkie. When I’m at home, I check WordPress several times a day to see how many people have viewed my blog. I guess that sounds a little narcissistic but I love knowing that someone has read what I’ve written and I’m always fascinated to see where they’re from and what search terms have led them here.

We were home for less than a week in June. Most of the month I was either camping without internet access or so busy that I didn’t have time to spend online. Consequently, I only posted three times and I rarely checked my stats. When I finally did, it was with a bit of trepidation. Had Following Augustine died of neglect? Would my stats page show nothing but a flat line like a heart monitor on a patient with no pulse?

No! It appears that the blog has taken on a life of its own.

Even when I’m not here, when I’m off gallivanting instead of writing and I’m not even checking my stats, you, my faithful readers are still here!

It thrills me to know that because the trailer is packed and we’re leaving again tomorrow morning! There will probably be much to blog about over the next few weeks but once again, we won’t always have access to the internet and when we do I’ll sometimes be too busy. There’s a family wedding to attend near Kamloops, BC and grandchildren and aging parents to visit in Vancouver. We’ll also cross by ferry to Vancouver Island and spend a few days with some of Richard’s relatives at Port Alberni. When our time with family is over, rather than coming straight home, we’re going to follow BC’s gold rush trail through the mighty Fraser River canyon to Cache Creek then on northward through Cariboo country. With a side trip to historic Barkerville, we’ll continue at least as far north as Prince George before circling back into Alberta. Along the way there will be geocaches to find and perhaps a few golf course to play as well as lots of history to explore.

Yes, there will be much to blog about and I will update as often as possible. In the meantime though, I’m happy to know that the blog will survive without me!

 

Five years!

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Tomorrow is the last day of school and also marks five years since I walked out of the classroom for the last time. It amazes me to think that we’ve been retired for that long already! Where has the time gone? For the past couple of days I’ve been doing some self-evaluation, asking myself what we’ve accomplished over those five years and whether or not we’ve done the things we wanted to do. Overall, I think the answer is a resounding yes!

We had some pretty specific goals in mind when we retired:

  • teach English in Asia for at least one year – done
  • travel – never completely done but 9 provinces and 15 states plus Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Macau, Saipan and Costa Rica are a pretty good start
  • short-term mission work – one summer in ministry has only whetted our appetite for more

Becoming grandparents was something we hoped for and though we can’t take any credit for that being accomplished, grandchildren have been one of the most delightful additions to our life since we retired. Four of them are firmly attached to the family tree and there are five others who also call us Gram and Grandpa. Four of those belong to two families in Japan who ‘adopted’ us while we lived there and with whom we’ve been able to carry on a relationship since our return to Canada.

The past few years have brought other unexpected surprises including becoming seasonal farm labourers! That definitely wasn’t part of the plan but we’ve enjoyed it immensely. For the first time since returning from Japan in early 2009, we weren’t involved in seeding this year’s crop. Louis, our 83-year-old ‘boss’ and very good friend, passed that part of the process on to his stepson and grandson this spring. He still plans to have us help him harvest the crop this fall though.

Surprisingly, we haven’t golfed as much as we thought we would since retiring. In fact, we haven’t golfed as much as we did before we retired! We’ve been too busy fulfilling our other goals. This year eight of the nine greens on our local course are undergoing reconstruction. The course is open but the temporary greens are pretty pathetic so the desire to play hasn’t really been there. It was a good year for us to take up a new hobby; geocaching. Though there are geocachers of all ages, many are retired. In fact, the activity is highlighted in the most recent issue of News and Views, the quarterly magazine published by the Alberta Retired Teachers’ Association.

Writing was always something I planned to return to in retirement. I thought I’d be freelancing again, sending my work off to publishers and waiting with baited breath to find out whether it would be accepted. Instead, I find myself blogging! Though I did experience the thrill of publication, in my early writing days I also received enough rejection slips to paper a small room! Blogging is so much more satisfying and I enjoy the opportunity to interact with some of my readers.

Do we ever regret retiring as early as we did? Never! Would we do it again? In a heartbeat! Have I enjoyed every moment of it? To be completely honest, no. Most of the time, I absolutely love being retired but there are moments, especially in the depths of our long Canadian winters, when I long to be doing something more meaningful with my days; moments when I join the writer of Ecclesiastes in lamenting that “Everything is meaningless, utterly meaningless!” Fortunately, those days are few and far between. I don’t think Richard has experienced them at all. Maybe that’s because he spends so much time playing Farmville that he doesn’t have time for such thoughts. His ‘farm’ is something else I didn’t expect to be part of our retirement but it keeps him happy!

As this school year comes to a close, I wonder what the next five years will hold. Our goals remain the same… more travel (we haven’t seen Europe yet) and more short-term mission work. I’m sure there will also be more unexpected surprises along the way.

 

 

Graduation day!

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Taking a two-year-old and a four-year-old to a university convocation might not seem like the best idea in the world but that’s what we did today. Seven and a half years, one husband and two children after she started working toward her degree, our daughter Melaina graduated from the University of Calgary today! I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a more well earned degree and the children were so much a part of the process that it was only fitting that they be there for Mommy’s big moment.

All dressed up and ready to go!

Melaina graduated from high school in 2001 and headed off to college to begin a two year legal assistant program. By early in her second year, she was already fairly certain that she didn’t want to spend her entire life at that career but Melaina isn’t a quitter. She finishes what she starts so finish she did. After graduation she went to work for the Merchant Law Group. At nineteen years of age with little life experience behind her, she found herself handling difficult immigration and residential school cases that she didn’t feel ready to deal with. In January 2005, after a year and a half on the job, she chose to cut back to 30 hours a week at the office and entered university part time.

That fall she became a full time student again. In December of 2006, during her Christmas break from school, she and Aaron were married. Full time studies came to an end when Drew was born in the spring of 2008. In fact, she had to have her final exams deferred when he arrived a little earlier than expected! She wrote them when he was just a week old.

Melaina had planned on graduating that spring but exhaustion brought on by her pregnancy and what was later determined to be an enzyme deficiency had made it impossible for her to carry a full course load that year. When Drew was born she was still a few courses short. Four years later, by taking a night course here and an online course there, she finally completed all the requirements for her degree and today was a day to celebrate!

Melaina’s graduation comes 37 years, almost to the day, since my own. When the graduating class rose to recite their pledge today, all past UofC graduates in attendance were invited to stand and recite it with them. As I did, I thought of the many papers I’d edited for her along the way. Though hers is a Bachelor of Arts and mine a Bachelor of Education, we both majored in English.

Watching one’s child graduate is always a moment of pride but today I was proud of Melaina for more than hanging in there and completing her degree while raising her children. I was also incredibly proud of her for the job that she’s doing with those children. Though today’s program lasted almost two and a half hours, their behaviour was fantastic!

Melaina has no immediate plans for the degree that she’s finally completed. She works as a part time administrative assistant for her church, a job that allows her to work from home. Though she’s a gifted administrator, being Mom is her first priority these days.

  

This morning when Melaina was telling Drew about what we’d be doing today, he told her that someday Mommy, Daddy, Gram and Grandpa would come to his graduation too. I hope so Drew, I really hope so!

Alex’s yellow lizard

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After a busy day planting flower beds and cleaning out our holiday trailer, I suggested that Richard and I spend the evening geocaching. One of the aspects of geocaching that I like best is the trackables; geocaching game pieces that are moved from cache to cache by geocachers like ourselves. These can be travel bugs, tags that are usually attached to other items known as hitchhikers, or geocoins, special coins or medallions created by individuals or groups. Both function in exactly the same way. Each trackable has a unique code that is used to log its movements on geocaching.com as it travels the world and most trackables have a goal or destination set by their owners. Some of them have travelled hundreds of thousands of miles! We have already found several trackables and moved them along.

On our way home from Winnipeg the week before last, we picked up a travel bug from a roadside cache in Manitoba. Alex’s Yellow Lizard began its journey in Minnesota last June. Its destination is Ireland and the owner asked that pictures be taken and posted along the way so that his seven-year-old son could watch his little yellow lizard as it travels around the world.

We wanted to find a special and interesting spot to leave Alex’s lizard. My first thought was the  world’s biggest pysanka or Easter egg at Vegreville, Alberta. Surely that would appeal to a seven-year-old boy. Alas, when we visited family in Vegreville last weekend we only had time for a quick search and didn’t find the cache located near the big egg. We’ll have to try again another time.

I’m very happy with the spot we finally chose, however; a cache hidden at a native ceremonial site on a high point of land about 24 km north of here. It’s one of nine places in Alberta where ribstone rocks have been found and the only one where the rocks remain in their original location. These rocks, carved by the Indians over 1000 years ago, are thought to depict the ribs of buffalo, the animal that provided for so many of their needs. Local natives still leave offerings of tobacco (cigarettes) and coins there. They have also hung many colourful prayer scarves in the trees at the site. Though I’d been there with a class of students quite a few years ago, Richard had never even heard of the place before. Isn’t it amazing how we can travel the world in search of interesting sights and yet sometimes miss fascinating ones on our own doorstep?

Ribstones

Prayer scarves

The site was a peaceful spot with a gorgeous view of the surrounding farmland, a perfect place to enjoy a few quiet moments on a sunny spring evening.

While we stood admiring the scene, this saucy little fellow popped out of his hole almost at our feet and proceeded to chirp at us!

Like Alex’s little lizard, we’ll soon be on the move again, hence the time spent cleaning the trailer today! I’m sure we’ll find plenty of geocaches along the way and hopefully there will be trackables in some of them.

Chrissy, child of my heart

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I gave birth to three of our children, one we adopted at birth and one is the child of my heart. It was a spring day in 2002, when Christina came to Richard at school and asked if she could come live with us. We talked about it, prayed about it and decided that it was a perfect fit. Our youngest, Nathan, was about to finish high school and head off to college but I wasn’t ready for an empty nest. Ours was a home that needed a child and Christina was a child who needed a home.

Chrissy hadn’t seen or heard from her father since she was a preschooler. With her mother and younger brother, she’d spent her childhood moving from place to place as her mother moved in and out of one relationship after another. When it became obvious that that was about to happen again, Chrissy decided that this time she simply couldn’t go. She had recently become a Christian, had made a new circle of supportive friends that included our daughter, was involved in a youth group and wanted to finish high school in one place.

Though we reminded her that in spite of the fact that their relationship was in tatters at the time, she had only one mother who’s place we would never be able to fill, we welcomed her into our home and took on the role of surrogate parents. Like any parent/teen relationship, ours had its ups and downs, its good times and its bad but we bonded and became family.

There were funny moments, of course, but one stands out as being the most hilarious. Shortly after moving in with us, Christina accompanied Richard and I on a trip to Vancouver to meet my parents and our oldest son, Matt. My parents immediately accepted her as another grandchild. Rather than buying gifts at Christmastime, it was their habit to send each of their grandchildren a cheque. When December rolled around and it was time to write the cheques, my father realized that he didn’t know Chrissy’s last name. He asked Matt who couldn’t remember either. He, in turn, volunteered to phone our daugher, Melaina, at college to ask her. When Melaina got off the phone, her roommate (now her sister-in-law) asked who she’d been talking to. “That was my brother,” she replied. “He needed to know my sister’s last name.” It wasn’t until she realized that her roommate was looking at her quite oddly that she realized how strange that sounded! She had to go on to explain that our family really wasn’t as dysfunctional as that made us sound!

Eventually, Chrissy went off to college too and there she met a fine young man. We were delighted when she and Buck married and lived for a time in Sedgewick. They even moved into our house and took care of it for us for the year that we lived in Japan. Now they live in Winnipeg and have a darling 21-month-old daughter who calls us Gram and Grandpa.

Ten years have passed since Chrissy visited Richard’s classroom in search of a stable Christian home. How fitting that I should spend this Mother’s Day here in her home!

Chrissy, child of my heart

 

Drew’s big birthday adventure

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Our oldest grandson, Drew, was 4 years old today! How can that be? His Mommy’s Facebook status reads “And today my boy is 4. I want to hold him and squeeze him and make time slow down.”

Since Saturday was his little sister’s second birthday, we celebrated with a joint party that afternoon. It was a warm sunny day so the festivities were held in the yard. Children frolicked and adults visited. Gifts were opened and cake and ice cream consumed. A good time was had by all.

Today was Drew’s real birthday though so Grandpa and I wanted to do something special just for him. Drew is enamoured with fire trucks so what could be more fun than a visit to a fire station? Varsity Fire Station No. 17, one of Calgary’s largest, is a ten minute drive from here so I stopped in yesterday and made the arrangements.

We didn’t tell Drew where we were going, only that he was going on a birthday adventure with Gram and Grandpa. Imagine his excitement when we pulled to a stop in front of the station just in time to watch one of the enormous trucks back into its bay. We were invited inside by three firefighters who devoted the next little while to making a wide eyed little boy’s birthday a memorable one. He was invited to climb into the back of the truck to see all the levers that control the hoses and to sit in the drivers seat and turn on the flashing lights.

   

He was a bit overwhelmed by the sheer size of everything but he clearly enjoyed the opportunity to hold one of the hoses and to see some of the tools the firemen use.

Fireman Mike even put on all his gear for Drew to see.

After saying good bye, we stopped at the mall for a treat before heading home for lunch. It was pouring rain outside so we dubbed it a mall picnic!

Later in the afternoon when Drew was busy putting out pretend fires all over the house, Richard made the mistake of calling him Fireman Drew. I’m Fireman Mike Drewbie, he announced! Clearly the big adventure was a success!

Second annual WordPress walk

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When I learned that WordPress was once again inviting bloggers around the world to join staffers in a 5k run/walk, I was delighted. It was through last year’s walk that I ‘met’ one of my blogging buddies. I haven’t actually met Maggie, who writes Living Life in Glorious Colour, in person but over the year since we read each other’s posts about the first WordPress walk, I’ve followed Maggie and her husband as they travelled much of North America and she’s followed me to Saipan and back. We jokingly say that we must be long lost relatives because we are alike in so many ways.

The WordPress walk is a simple concept. There’s no time limit, no searching for sponsors, and no fund raising. All that’s required is getting out and getting some exercise then blogging about it. Though the event was officially set for today, participants were allowed to do their walk anytime this week.

When I realized that this year’s walk coincided with our trip to Calgary to celebrate Drew’s 4th birthday and Jami-Lee’s 2nd, I decided that I’d do my walk while we’re here. After all, there are only so many places to walk in and around our tiny town of Sedgewick. After lunch today, I left Grandpa playing with the kids and headed off to nearby Bowness Park.

I was surprised to find the lagoon and the waterway that joins it to the Bow River almost devoid of water. I remember skating on their frozen surfaces when I was a student at the University of Calgary many years ago. I suspect that this winter’s lack of snow might have something to do with the current situation and hope that as the snow melts high in the Rocky Mountains, run-off will cause the water level to rise again.

As I strolled the sun-dappled pathway, it was easy to forget that I was in the middle of a city.

I soon came upon the Stoney Trail Bridge though and the sound of traffic high overhead reminded me that I was, indeed, in an urban area.

I sat for awhile beside the river before crossing the pedestrian bridge to the other side. Returning to the park, I continued my walk along the riverside.
  

For awhile, my path followed the narrow track of the miniature railway where happy children will ride on warm summer days.

Though the southern sky was brilliant blue, dark clouds loomed to the north. I wondered if I was going to get wet. Sure enough, the rain started to fall about 4 km into my walk. I took refuge for a few minutes under Bowness Bridge. I’m not fond of graffiti but I had to chuckle when I read this!

  

I, too, was looking for colour in a somewhat drab early spring landscape.

   

Fortunately, the rain didn’t last long and I didn’t get very wet at all. Before long I was back at the vehicle, ready to head back to the house and spend the rest of the afternoon with the grandchildren.

Now I wait to find out whether or not this year’s walk yields anymore blogging buddies!

Awakening memories

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Ever since we began our journey through Alzheimer’s disease with my mom, memory and how it works has been of greater interest to me than ever before. There are certain triggers that I know will awaken some of my earliest memories. The smell of Ivory soap always takes me back to my grandmother’s bathroom. Though almost 50 years have passed, I remember it in amazing detail… the old clawfoot tub, the washboard, the bare wooden walls, the violets growing in pots on the windowsill, the old-fashioned curling irons hanging on the back of the door.

Other times I’m completely amazed by something that suddenly comes to the surface of my memory. That’s what happened yesterday in the middle of a funeral! Knowing that she was dying, the lady who’s funeral I was attending had written down some of her own memories and they were shared during the service. She mentioned attending CGIT as a teenager. I, too, was a Canadian Girl in Training but I hadn’t thought about that in years. Instantly the entire CGIT purpose, recited at every weekly meeting for the five years that I participated in the non-denominational program for 12 to 17 year old girls, came back to me. Obviously it was firmly cemented in the deepest recesses of my memory.

As a Canadian Girl in Training
Under the leadership of Jesus
It is my purpose to
Cherish Health
Seek Truth
Know God
Serve Others
And thus, with His help,
Become the girl God would have me be.

I could hardly believe that it was still there in it’s entirety. Though my CGIT pin is still in the bottom of my jewelry box, I attended my last meeting in 1969! This really makes me wonder what else is still hidden deep within my mind and what it would take to access all of it.

Remembering the CGIT purpose has also caused me to do a bit of self evaluation today. Looking back at what I recited so faithfully all those years ago, how have I done? Did I go on to cherish health, seek truth, know God and serve others? I think I can answer with a resounding yes! Those four goals could still be my mission statement today. Does that mean that I’ve become the girl God would have me be? I’d like to think so but I know that I’m still a work in progress!

More pieces of the past

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The Alberta prairie is crisscrossed with roads, many of them only a couple of miles apart. After living here for almost 36 years, there are many of them that we’ve never traversed but over the past few days searching for geocaches has taken us down several new ones. We found three more caches yesterday but it’s the pieces of the past that we keep finding that intrigue me even more.

We explored two more old abandoned houses yesterday, neither as majestic as the house on the hill but interesting nonetheless. The first was a very simple structure. Little more than a two storey wooden box with a very steep roof, its main floor was made up of just two rooms. We could see where a very steep staircase once led to the upper floor but it was no longer there; possibly removed to keep intruders like ourselves from falling through the decaying floorboards. Once again, there was nothing left in or around the house to tell the story of the people who once called it home.

The second house finally yielded what I was looking for; signs of human habitation. It was the windmill that first captured our attention. Connected to a pump behind the house, it would have provided water for the family as well as any animals they might have had.

The sign on the fence might have read “No Trespassing” but since we didn’t tear it off (I promise!) and it could just as easily have said “No Hunting”, we climbed the fence and went exploring!

The open door was so inviting. I just had to go inside! Treading carefully to avoid falling into the root cellar below, I made my way from room to room.

Who sat in the old armchair I wondered. It might have been quite comfortable before the mice did away with all the upholstery and stuffing!

Another skeleton sat in the centre of a different room. Clearly a baby once lived here!

I was surprised to see the old wood stove still there. I would think that an antique collector would like to get their hands on this beauty.

There was also an oil heater to keep the cold Alberta winters at bay.

Where there are children, schools are also needed and before the day of school buses the Canadian prairie was dotted with one room schoolhouses. Though many of them are gone, in our area historical markers show where they once stood. We passed a couple of them yesterday and as retired teachers, it was easy to imagine the voices of children from the past playing where farmers now cultivate the land.