Grandchildren

Calgary Zoo

/ edebock / 2 Comments

While camping with our daughter and her family at Bottrel, Alberta we were less than an hour away from the Calgary Zoo so we made a day trip into the city to spend a few hours there. I’ve loved visiting the zoo ever since my days as a University of Calgary student in the early 1970s. In those days it was a great place to take a relaxing break from my studies. Now it’s fun to share it with my grandchildren!

One of the city’s favourite family destinations, the Calgary Zoo is home to almost 1000 animals from 119 unique species. One of only five zoos in Canada accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, its mission is to become Canada’s leader in wildlife conservation. I love the fact that the zoo is committed to high quality care, housing only those animals that they can best care for and being intentional about providing habitats that are well suited to each species.  The Calgary Zoo is also an urban forest boasting more than 7000 trees and numerous smaller shrubs and flower beds that add to its beauty.

The zoo is very spacious requiring lots of walking, but we bought Melaina and the kids annual passes for Christmas this year, so they’re able to visit often and we didn’t feel compelled to try to see everything on our recent visit. Before we left the campground, I asked the children which animals they most wanted to see. The penguins, said one. The tiger, said another, but for me this visit was all about the giant pandas!

The panda has been my favourite animal for as long as I can remember, probably going back as far as the big black and white stuffed teddy bear that I loved as a very wee child. In 2012, I was delighted to hear that a pair of giant pandas were coming to Canada on a ten year loan from the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in Szechuan, China! Da Mao and Er Shun would spend their first five years in the Toronto Zoo and then come to Calgary for the second half of their stay. Simon wasn’t even born yet, but I determined then that I would be taking my Calgary grandchildren to see them!

Five-year-old female, Er Shun, and four-year-old male, Da Mao, arrived in Toronto on March 25, 2013. Canadians across the land were delighted when Er Shun gave birth to two cubs, Jia Panpan and Jia Yueyue, on Canadian soil in late 2015! All four were moved to Calgary earlier this year.

When we arrived at the zoo, we stopped first at the Penguin Plunge. Agile in the water and entertaining on land, all four varieties are delightful to watch. Here, the little fellows basking in the sun are Humboldt penguins and most of the larger ones shown inside their temperature controlled habitat are King penguins. If you look very closely, there’s also a Rockhopper penguin in the centre of the second photo. He can be distinguished by the yellow crests on both sides of his head.

On our way to the Panda Passage, we stopped to watch the flamingoes. I love their beautiful colouring. Though these two look rather elegant, a group of their mates were having quite a squawking match.

Then came the moment I’d waited over five years for! After my hand to paw experience with a giant panda at the Dalian Forest Zoo when we were living in China, I was afraid I might be disappointed, but that was not to be the case and we didn’t even have to wait in line! Da Mao, in his separate enclosure, was rolling around playfully.

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Next door, Er Shun was resting right in front of the plexiglass window. If it hadn’t been there, we could have reached out and touched her.

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Though his sister was hiding and we didn’t see her, Jia Panpan entertained us by playfully tearing up a large sheet of cardboard.

Outside the panda enclosure Drew, Simon, and I had our photo taken with this giant pretender!

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After lunch at the on-site Kitamba Café we continued on to see many more of the animals. The baby Bactrian camel, with his two humps just beginning to form, was quite hilarious looking.

IMG_6080 The Amur tiger didn’t disappoint, coming right up to the fence in front of us.

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Though I didn’t take pictures of every animal we saw, I had to photograph one of the zebras, symbol of my neuroendocrine cancer.

IMG_6088IMG_6084Perhaps the most fun of the entire day was watching and listening to four year old Simon as he watched the antics of the comical little meerkats following their keeper around their enclosure and getting underfoot as he prepared to bring in their food! Simon laughed and laughed! Unfortunately, neither he nor most of the meerkats would stay still long enough for a photo, but this one little character decided to chill while his buddies scurried around. Perhaps he was posing for me!

 

Digital detox

/ edebock / 4 Comments

After two weeks away from my computer and with very limited cell phone access, I’m home and back at the keyboard again. I was able to write my last two Fashion Friday posts in advance and schedule them to publish automatically while I enjoyed a much needed digital detox.

We spent the first week camping with our daughter and her family on the banks of the same lovely little creek at Botrell, Alberta that we visited with them last summer.

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Every now and then, we retreated under the awning or into the trailer when the sky began to rumble with thunder and it started to rain. One afternoon, about ten minutes of golf ball sized hail left us with damage to the awning and a hole in one of the skylights. Those will need to be replaced, but we patched them up with some awning repair tape and carried on.

Another day, we did the same hike at nearby Big Hill Springs Provincial Park that we did last year. A beautiful spot, it also has historical significance as the location of Alberta’s first commercial creamery as well as a failed attempt at a fish farm.

On the trail, our old knees had a hard time keeping up with the grandkids who ran up and down the hills like little deer!

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When they stopped long enough, it was a beautiful spot to get some great photos of them.

Time with these little people is always such a blessing!

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We spent our second week away from home at Camp Harmattan, the Church of the Nazarene campsite located in the valley of the Little Red Deer River between Olds and Sundre. There we enjoyed rich times of worship and prayer and sat under the teaching of two extremely gifted speakers. We also spent most of our afternoons relaxing and reading and evenings visiting around a campfire. What a blessed time of rest and rejuvenation!

Now we’re back in the real world, but feeling very refreshed by our time away.

 

Choosing your Grandma name

/ edebock / 6 Comments

When this hilarious video showed up on my Facebook newsfeed this morning, I couldn’t help laughing out loud! Those of us who have grandchildren have all faced the question… What will your grandchildren call you?

Next Tuesday I will have been a grandmother for ten whole years. That’s right! Our Drew is hitting the double digits! I can’t believe how quickly that decade has flown by. It seems like only yesterday that I was thinking about what I would want him to call me.

Growing up, I had a Gran and a Nana. I only have one clear memory of my Gran who passed away when I was five. Though she was younger than I am now, she had a serious heart condition and all I remember is a frail little lady who needed help from the car to the house when she and Grandad came for a visit. Tiny and frail wasn’t the kind of grandmother I hoped to be, so that name didn’t resonate with me. My Nana was robust and a woman known for speaking her mind. I think I must have inherited that trait from her! She was very much a part of my childhood and lived to see my first two children. The only reason I didn’t want to be called Nana was that some of my childhood friends didn’t know what a Nana was. I wanted a name that clearly identified me as a grandmother, but like the lady in the video, I wanted one that sounded younger and hipper than Granny.

I didn’t want to be called Grandma because Drew’s other grandmother already had three grandchildren who called her Grandma or Tiny Grandma because of her small stature. I wanted to choose a name that was different from hers and I most certainly didn’t want to end up being Big Grandma!

After considering many possibilities, I settled on just plain Gram. It’s simple and easy to pronounce, or so I thought. I was thrilled when Drew, at the age of 15 months, began to call me Am. Of course, we didn’t realize then that that was a symptom of a severe phonological disorder that caused him to drop the initial sounds off almost every word. As he began speech therapy and he and his Mom worked diligently at home, we began to see a marked improvement in his speech and finally the wonderful day came when he called me Gram! Thankfully, you wouldn’t know today that there had ever been a problem with his speech.

Now there are five children who call me Gram. Distance prevents us from all getting together very often so the photo is over a year old, but these are my treasures. That’s Drew in the top left hand corner with his siblings in front of him and their cousins to the right.

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Do you have grandchildren? What do they call you? How did you choose your Grandma name? If you don’t have grandchildren yet, but hope to, have you thought about what you would like them to call you?

Creating a distraction

/ edebock / 2 Comments

LogoIt’s now been five months since I made the decision to let my hair grow out and I haven’t given up yet! I even survived six weeks of camping, often without power. I’ve been surprised and pleased with how well it’s gone, but there are days when I despair and consider giving up; days when the unruly curls and frizz almost get the best of me.

I’m enormously grateful to whoever invented hair combs. Some days sweeping the sides back and holding them in place keeps me from completely losing my mind, but I’ve also learned that accessories are a great way to create a distraction taking attention away from my hair and focusing it elsewhere.

Here I’m wearing a silky scarf designed by Northwest Coast indigenous artist, Clifton Fred, and a pair of eye catching earrings.

The same principle works to draw attention away from other flaws or body parts that you’d rather not accentuate. Hats, scarves, sunglasses, belts, statement jewelry, colourful handbags, or stylish footwear are all great ways to steal attention. Use them to draw the eye away from those parts you don’t particularly like and to enhance those that will give you your best possible look.

For example, if you have what is commonly referred to as a “turkey neck”, lose skin around the neck that often develops as a woman ages, you may want to camouflage it by drawing attention down and away from that area. Opt for scarves, necklaces, or earrings that create long vertical lines. On the other hand, if you are big busted and prefer not to accentuate that feature, shorter statement necklaces that draw the eye up to your neck area are a better choice.

Be careful not to overdo it by wearing too many accessories at once, but be sure to add one essential and inexpensive accessory to every outfit… your beautiful smile!

Before we leave the topic of my unruly hair though, I just wanted to share the fact that it’s a genetic trait inherited from my mother’s side of the family. Clearly, I have passed it on. Here’s my youngest grandson ready for his first day of preschool last week.

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And here’s what he looks like when Mommy tries to tame his locks!

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Photos of Simon: Melaina Graham

Play clothes

/ edebock / 7 Comments

logoI grew up in an era when girls wore dresses to school and changed into play clothes when we got home, but what do I wear when I take my grandchildren to the playground?

We picked up grandsons, Sam and Nate, from school yesterday afternoon and headed off to Start with Art, an annual exhibit at Deep Cove’s Seymour Art Gallery that encourages young people to appreciate, collect, and curate their own art collections.

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After perusing the the work of numerous different artists, narrowing their choices and finally making their selections which will remain on display until the show ends next month, we were off to the nearby playground.

It was a crisp spring day; too warm for a jacket, but perfect for my light denim waterfront shirt from cabi’s fall 2016 collection worn open over a striped tee and a white cami. Though Nate was comfortable in shorts, I was glad to be wearing my dark wash jeans from Old Navy.

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“I’m almost as tall as you Gram!”

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“Am I taller?”

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The waterfront shirt (unfortunately no longer available) is a great layering piece but can also be worn alone as a button-up shirt. Its stand up collar and ties set it apart from similar shirts and give it greater versatility.

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Robin’s ride

/ edebock / 5 Comments

After our day of dinosaur fun at Drumheller, we moved on to Banff where we camped at the beautiful Two Jack Lakeside campground. The main reason for choosing that destination was our daughter-in-law’s participation in the Banff Gran Fondo, a 150 km bike race/ride on Saturday morning.

Our grandson’s, Sam and Nate, slept in the trailer with us on Friday night so that Mom could get a good night’s sleep before her big ride. Before any of us were out of bed in the morning, she was already on her bike! At 7:15 am, we headed over to the campground entrance to watch and cheer her on. As the first wave of riders rounded the curve and came into view, excitement built and it was an emotional moment for all of us when Robin rode by. We are so proud of her!

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It takes a lot of determination for any young mom to prepare for something like this and even more so when she suffers from rheumatoid arthritis! She is definitely one of my heroes!

In addition to offering us a front row view of Robin’s ride, Two Jack Lakeside campground, just minutes away from Banff itself, was a perfect spot for us to explore the area from and just down the path from our campsite were the most stunning views imaginable.

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Special dates with Sam and Nate

/ edebock / 2 Comments

Separated by distance, we aren’t able to spend as much time with our Vancouver grandsons as we’d like and when we’re here, we also need to spend time with my very elderly father and my special brother, Donald. Fitting in quality time with the boys is a priority, however, and this time we managed to go on a special date with each of them. Though they enjoy a lot of the same activities, Sam and Nate are as different as night and day personality-wise, so one on one time with each of them individually was great.

Sam is just finishing first grade, but Friday was a professional development day for the teachers at his school. Nate was at preschool that morning, so it was a perfect time for our date with Sam. He decided that he wanted to go geocaching, a hobby of ours that we introduced the boys to a couple of years ago. We started by searching out a couple of caches within easy walking distance of his house. He was especially intrigued by this old gent sitting very near the location of the first one.

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Here he is retrieving the next one from beneath a cedar tree!

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Found it!

Here in North Vancouver you are never far from nature and forest trails are easy to find. Part of our morning was spent in Princess Park. The clue for one of the caches there included this description: “You are steps away when you see a trunk that looks like a bird bath, or a water bowl for a Great Dane.” What in the world could that mean?

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It was obvious when we saw it and sure enough, the cache was hidden nearby.

Sam loves sushi and so do we, so when we asked him where he wanted to go for our lunch date, he chose Valley Sushi, a great little restaurant close to his Lynn Valley home.

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This morning, Sam was back at school and it was time for our date with Nate who only attends preschool three mornings a week. He knew exactly where he wanted to go; Lighthouse Park in West Vancouver. He’d been there once before with his other grandfather and had shown me a brochure containing a map of the trails that criss-cross the park the day we arrived. He wanted to hike to Juniper Point and after hearing about Sam’s geocaching adventure, he also wanted to find some caches. There were two of them along that trail. The hint for the first one said, “Horizontal tree meets vertical tree.” The GPS doesn’t work really well under tree cover, but we thought we’d found the right spot when we found a fallen tree right beside a standing one. When we didn’t find the “treasure” right away, Nate grew bored and wandered a little ways away. Suddenly we heard his shout, “I found something! I think this is it!” Sure enough, he’d located the cache all on his own, tucked into the end of another fallen tree.

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Another cache was found near the beautiful rocky point where we enjoyed a snack overlooking the ocean.

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After completing that trail, I also managed to convince Nate to hike out to the lighthouse. Look closely and notice the bald eagle perched on the weathervane!

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Nate’s date ended just like Sam’s with lunch at Valley Sushi. Even his order was the same; California rolls and Dynamite Rolls. Yum!

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Making memories with the boys on our special dates worked out so well that I think this should be the beginning of a new tradition. I wonder where they’ll want to take us next time we visit?

Starting them young

/ edebock / 2 Comments

At five and six years old, our Vancouver grandsons are already avid skiers; a passion passed on to them by their mom’s side of the family. We, on the other hand, look forward to the day when we can play a round of golf with them!

Today, Victoria Day here in Canada, we left our daughter-in-law at home preparing a delicious turkey dinner for later in the day and headed for a driving range with the boys.

Nate’s club of choice was a putter, but he did a pretty good job of whacking it off the tee.

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Oops! The ball’s still there!

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Sam got some tips from Daddy then made some great shots.

We finished off the morning with a fun round of mini golf.

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Unlike their Gram who didn’t take up the sport until I was about 40, these two are starting young!

Writer’s block

/ edebock / 10 Comments

Yikes! It’s been almost a month since I posted anything here. I’m pretty sure this has been the longest dry spell since I started blogging seven years ago. Yes, my blog had a birthday earlier this month and I didn’t even acknowledge it with a post.

Lest any of my faithful readers begin to worry that something is seriously wrong, let me assure you that I’m fine. I did come down with a nasty cold immediately following my last treatment and I was under the weather for a little while but I blame the blog’s silence on a combination of the busyness of the season and writer’s block. It seems I simply ran out of things to say!

As I’ve mentioned before, I think the secret to Following Augustine’s longevity is its eclectic nature. Though I’ve loved sharing our experiences in faraway places, it’s been more than a travel blog. Family often shows up but it isn’t a mommy blog and while I occasionally focus on clothing, shoes or accessories, it definitely isn’t a fashion blog. Over the past fifteen and a half months, I’ve used the blog to share my cancer journey but it’s always been about more than that. My faith permeates every part of my life, including what I write, but this isn’t a religion blog either. Occasionally, I climb up on my soapbox and write about a cause that I feel strongly about but it’s definitely not a political or an activist blog. It really is a bit of many things and as a result, I can usually think of something to write about!

Lately, however, my writing brain has been blank! I have a feeling that that isn’t going to last though and I’m certainly not ready to call it quits! I’m in the middle of packing suitcases again and we’ll soon be off to Vancouver to spend Christmas with family there. If that doesn’t provide me with inspiration, I’m pretty sure our trip to Mexico in January will!

In the meantime, let me leave you with a cute conversation that our six-year-old grandson had with his parents lately.

Drew: I wonder how old Mickey Mouse is.
Mommy: Mickey Mouse is very old.
Daddy: Like older than Grammas and Grandpas.
Drew: Wow! Like 21?

Here’s my slightly older than 21 hubby with Drew and his two younger siblings on our recent pre-Christmas visit to Calgary.

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Porteau Cove

/ edebock / 3 Comments

As we sat in an Edmonton waiting room on April 10th anticipating our first meeting with the surgeon who was to remove the cancerous tumour from my salivary gland, my cell phone rang. It was our four-year-old grandson, Sam.

“Can we go camping with you this summer?” he asked.

We spent the past week honouring that request at beautiful Porteau Cove Provincial Park, just a half hour drive from his North Vancouver home. At Sam’s age, I lived in an oceanfront house and the beach was my playground. I’ve always said that you can take the girl away from the ocean but you can’t take the salt out of her blood. This week at Porteau was good for my soul!

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From the morning mist hanging over Howe Sound to the sun sinking behind the ridge across the water, our days were spectacular. We watched seals bobbing in the water, bald eagles plunging from the sky to catch fish, and herons standing like sentinels at the low tide line every morning. We also watched the brazen little squirrel that we nicknamed Sticky Fingers attempting to steal food from our table!

Our days were filled with fun. With our two little pirates, Sam and Nate, we built a driftwood fort amongst the logs on the beach and searched for treasure (geocaches). We visited nearby Shannon Falls and toured the Britannia Mine Museum again. We even had front row seats for the beginning of the first Canadian Surfski Championships yesterday. We ended every day around a propane fire pit roasting marshmallows and eating s’mores. It lacked the crackle of a wood fire and the smell of smoke that usually goes along with camping, but the blue sky days and lack of rain have resulted in a fire ban along the coast and only propane is allowed.

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Now we’re back in the city where the next few days will be spent, in part, helping my 91-year-old father with banking and other issues related to my mother’s estate, but the memories made over the past week will be with us for a very long time!

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