Author Archives: Crystal

The Summer Season: Sun, Fun and Endless Laundry

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With kindergarten, preschool and the autism program all done for the summer, we’ve begun a new chapter around here. Both boys had cute little graduation ceremonies to end the school year, although both of them will be going back to their respective schools in the fall, so graduation didn’t really mean very much. Justin’s behavior consultant is going to do a social skills group with him this summer, so that’s good news, plus he’ll have weekly OT sessions, so we’ll see what kind of progress he makes. One of the things they’re going to work on in the group is flexibility, which is one of the big things he struggles with (I can just hear my family going, “We know where THAT comes from!”) so I’m excited to see how that will work out.

We had a kick-ass Canada Day with the boys. We went to an adventure park in Penticton that I found on the web a few days ago (I’d never heard of it before but it’s been there for 10 years, so that shows how in touch I am). After a late start, a wrong turn and a quick stop for lunch, we finally got there around noon. I thought it would be busy for Canada Day, but I guess most people were at the beach, cause we hardly had to wait around for anything. The place had a whole bunch of cool stuff: mini golf, go-karts (which Justin loved…I think he saw it as a real-life Mario Kart experience), trampolines, bumper boats and even a giant slide. It was awesome.

We leave for Prince George next week (one week til Dave and Tanya’s wedding!) I get mocked for my detailed planning, but that’s what it takes to make sure everything runs smoothly. The boys are easier to feed than they used to be, but I’m still going to bring most of the food we’ll need, just to save a few bucks and probably a lot of aggravation. I’m wondering, however, how we’re going to get through six days without doing any laundry. I seem to do a load every other hour or so when we’re at home. No sooner do I finish cleaning everybody’s clothes than someone spills their milk, has a potty accident, gets caught in a sprinkler, rolls around in a sand pit…sigh. You gotta love summer.

Backyard BBQ

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Two weeks ago, when it was 30 degrees outside and the kids were running around the backyard with the water hose, I decided to plan a BBQ for all the people who have had us over in the last few months, along with a few new faces from around the neighborhood or from Justin’s class. I reasoned that I could handle a fairly lengthy guest list because the kids would be running amok in the yard rather than in my living room. And almost no one said no, so we were set for a good time. Then the weather went to s*** and we found ourselves praying that the rain would stay away long enough to at least let the kids play outside (37 people crammed into my house would not have been much fun). We got lucky — it was cloudy and a little cool, but it never actually rained, and everything went pretty much the way we’d hoped. I was too busy to get many pictures, but there are a few (check ‘em out in the photo gallery).

A Daddy’s Day Tribute

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With Father’s Day coming up this weekend, I thought this would be a good time to share my top 10 reasons why Chris is such a great dad:

1. No matter how busy he is at work, he manages to make time for the kids’ soccer practices, gymnastics classes, school field trips and countless other activities.
2. He always gives the boys a special treat whenever Mom is out for the evening.
3. He knows that the best way to play with little boys is to wrestle and make lots of noise.
4. He’s the first one up at night if one of the kids has a problem.
5. He never hesitates to fly solo when Mom needs to get out of the house to save her sanity.
6. He shares part of his banana with the boys every single morning at breakfast when they ask, even though they each have their own (apparently Daddy’s tastes better).
7. He crawls and climbs all over the indoor playground because he can’t resist pleas of “Daddy, chase me!”
8. He has almost endless patience for the 900,000 questions the kids ask every day.
9. He knows baths are only fun if there’s lots of splashing.
10. He never says no to a cuddle request.

Have a great Father’s Day, Chris! You deserve it!

Boring Can Be Better

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Inspiration for this blog has been hard to come by lately, but maybe that’s actually a good sign, since it means there are no major crises in my life. I’ve noticed I’m not the only one who’s been slacking — a few of the blogs I read regularly haven’t been updated in a while either. It’s interesting that my public writing (this blog) and private writing (my journal) often mirror each other, and while there are things I write privately that I don’t share publicly, it’s been a while since my last journal entry too. The bottom line: life is kind of boring these days.

But I’ll take boring. One of my college classmates passed away unexpectedly last week, and while I didn’t know him all that well, it was still a shock to think of someone my age dying so suddenly (the guy was only 35!) I don’t want to get into all the feeling-a-sense-of-mortality stuff, so suffice it to say that boring is not a bad thing.

Not Much News

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How is it possible that there’s only a month left of school?!? I always dread the end of routine, but the summer is shaping up to be pretty busy (summer camps, my brother’s wedding, my course in Vancouver) so I’m not going to complain too much ahead of time. The boys are independent enough now that they don’t require supervision every second of the day, but I often have to referee, so life is a lot easier when at least one of them is out of the house. We’ll see how things go.

Chris promised me a day to myself to make up for leaving town over Mother’s Day, so last weekend I had a day out with the girls: nine holes of golf followed by a nice lunch and a chick flick in the afternoon. At least two members of the group were only golfing to make me happy, but I think everyone ended up having a pretty good time. The next day Chris and I took the boys mini golfing and then out for dinner, both of which went great, so I have to say it was a kick-ass long weekend.

Someone’s calling for mom (sigh)…

Holding Down the Fort

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I’m on day two of a four-day stint as a single mother while Chris jets off to Seattle for a weekend of baseball and beer. Over MOTHER’S DAY. OK, so he’s going for my brother’s stag, and he didn’t have any input in the date selection, but what were the organizers thinking? Almost all of them are leaving wives and small children behind to go get drunk with their buddies at some Mariners games. You just wait for Father’s Day…

I almost missed the Mother’s Day tea at kindergarten cause I had no one to watch Brayden, but at the last minute a friend of mine volunteered her husband for babysitting duty, so it all worked out in the end. I’m glad I went, cause it was a much bigger deal than I’d expected, and it would’ve been heartbreaking for Justin to be the only kid whose mom couldn’t come. They gave us cake and iced tea, the kids sang a few songs and everyone got to read the forms the kids had filled out with details of their moms (apparently Justin thinks my favorite TV show is Sid the Science Kid). It was pretty cute.

Up to this point the weekend has been filled with the kids’ activities, most of which Chris usually handles, so I’m still catching my breath. Justin had swimming yesterday, which is always a challenge cause I spend the entire time making sure Brayden doesn’t jump in the water, run on the pool deck or crack his head open on the concrete steps. This morning I dropped Brayden off at Grandpa’s (thank God) so I could take Justin to gymnastics, then this afternoon we’re all off to Brayden’s gymnastics class, during which Justin will hopefully stay occupied with his iPod. The real problem with all this running around is that it happens at exactly the times I would normally be making meals, so I’ve had to do a lot of cooking early in the day so we have something to reheat at the appropriate time. Whew.

But tomorrow is Mother’s Day, and more importantly it’s the day the kids spend the entire morning at Grandpa’s, so there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I haven’t had time to figure out what I’m going to do with my free time, but I’m sure I’ll come up with something. The grandparents are hosting dinner tomorrow night, so I don’t even have to cook, which is a huge bonus. Mother’s Day has actually been a little weird for a couple years now — we missed it last year cause Chris and I were on a plane back from Rome, and this year Chris is away again and I’m overdosing on family togetherness. C’est la vie.

(P.S. I love you Mom!)

Bunnies and Birdies

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It was pretty much a perfect Easter weekend. We used our points to fly Mom out for the weekend, and Dave drove down from Kamloops, so we had a nice family visit. Chris’s brother was also in town from Prince George, so he and Chris entertained the boys while Mom, Dave and I went golfing — we played three rounds in three days (and I birdied the last hole!) so that was awesome. I hosted Easter dinner, but that really just involved putting a ham in the slow cooker, so the whole thing was pretty stress-free. Very cool.

We actually kept forgetting it was Easter, so we didn’t really talk up the whole bunny-egg-candy thing with the kids, but they seemed to enjoy themselves. Justin took a while to warm up to the egg hunt (naturally) but once he got into it he was really into it — he even insisted on taking all the plastic eggs over to Grandpa’s house so he could hunt for them over there too. Brayden ate his Easter treats in a hurry and almost succeeded in stealing his brother’s. Good times all around.

Celebrating Brayden

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We are officially past the toddler years — Brayden turned four yesterday. The day before, we had a Cars party for him (naturally) which went pretty well despite the wild and wacky weather (the kids did manage to play on the trampoline for a while in between all the snow, rain and hail). Justin was actually napping when the guests arrived, so when he woke up to a house full of people his anxiety got the better of him, and he never really got comfortable enough to join in the fun. Everyone else seemed to have a good time, though, and when I put Brayden to bed that night he told me, “All my friends came for a play date!” so he’d obviously enjoyed himself. Check out the pictures in the photo gallery.

And now that the birthday is over, it’s time to focus on Easter. My mom is coming for the weekend, as is my younger brother, plus we just found out Chris’s brother will also be in town, so the kids will be super busy. The forecast promises to be better, so I’m hoping to get out for a round of golf, but we’ll have to see.

And just 14 months from today we start our next cruise (sigh)…

Jobs vs. Careers

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I often wish there was less of a conflict between what I actually want to do and what I think I should want to do. I’ve been pondering the fact that I’m only a year and a half away from having both kids in school full time, which will leave me doing…? I feel like I should want to do some retraining and get back into a real career — but what I actually want to do is get a mindless part-time job (maybe cleaning houses…I used to work for Molly Maid in the summers between college years) so that I could fill some hours and make a little money but not have to turn around and spend it on child care. I also feel a bit guilty for wanting such a scenario because a lot of my friends are single moms struggling to support their families, whereas I’m fortunately not the one who pays the bills in our house. (Actually, while I’m glad I don’t have to be the breadwinner, it kind of bugs me that I couldn’t fill that role. Argh.)

Getting Educated

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I was re-reading one of my favorite biographies last week, marveling at the way someone could craft a compelling story from a real person’s life, and I got the urge to learn more about how books are put together. You’d think I’d know this already — years ago I completed a very intense week-long book editing seminar at Simon Fraser University that introduced me to the ins and outs of the book world. But that was 2005, which feels like eons ago, and both the publishing world and my interests have changed since then. So I looked around a bit and found that SFU is offering a two-day workshop on substantive editing this summer. It was perfect, so I signed up. When I mentioned this to a friend, she said it was too bad that I wasn’t taking something on content development for websites, cause those skills are in big demand — and as she was talking, I felt the old self-doubt creeping back into my head. Why was I taking a class in something that realistically held no career possibilities for me? Shouldn’t I focus on something a bit more marketable?

It was thoughts like that that led me to journalism school in the first place. I never wanted to be a journalist; I didn’t have the slightest interest in news, and I love structure and routine, two things that don’t exist in a reporter’s life. In high school my interest was writing, but whenever I said that to an adult who was asking what I wanted to be, they translated it as, “Journalism, eh?” I briefly flirted with the idea of pursuing creative writing in university, but the adults in my life persuaded me that there was no money in it (they were right, of course), so journalism it was. I detested coming up with story ideas, chasing down sources who didn’t want to talk to me, and coming up with 500-word stories when most people would never read beyond the first paragraph…but I did eventually find my niche in editing.

So I’m trying to stay focused on the fact that I’m taking this workshop because I want to learn, not because I want to enrich my career possibilities. (And frankly, two days away from the kids has its own appeal.) Chris understands that I want this and is encouraging me to go, but I don’t think he’ll ever understand what it’s like to love something that has little marketable value. A few of the computer guys he works with have other hobbies: golf, poker, playing a musical instrument, whatever. He does not. Ever since he was a kid, he’s focused on nothing but technology. In high school it was important to me to do well in every subject, so I did, whereas he aced his computer classes and flunked English. He got so bored in university that he didn’t even finish his degree. So he only has one interest — which happens to be in great demand. It’s a charmed life.

Here’s to personal development!