Goodbye Bazooka Joe

We had him since January 2006 - almost a year and a half - but today we found Bazooka Joe belly up at the bottom of his tank. Poor Bazooka. He hadn't been looking good for over a week now and had no appetite for the past few days. Calum kept telling him to wake up. It's very strange trying to explain death to a two year old. I didn't flush him until Calum was at daycare. Goodbye Bazooka.

Dad's Home!

Calum was pretty excited that Dad came home last night. Calum and I went out for a quick visit with Uncle Larry before we went home to wait for Don. It was Calum's first visit to their new place and he loves the back yard. Look out Larry and Tabitha, I expect we will be visiting a bit more this summer.

We had a quiet night tonight. We met Don and went out for ice cream. Calum shared mine, ate Dad's fries and then went for his ice cream too. He saw a picture of a Superman cake and really wanted one. When I said no he was ready to settle for one with balloons. I had to explain that we had to wait for Desiree and Dakota to get home before we get a cake. I expect he will be ready to head out the door and get the cake as soon as we even mention that they are coming back.

It sounds like the girls are having fun. I think Desiree is visiting in Merritt tonight and Dakota is visiting with her cousins in Kamloops. They are planning on coming back on Monday. I hope that they get some good weather there this weekend because they have a lot planned.

We're not planning much this weekend. Don's going to need some time to decompress after a busy week. Hope you all have a good weekend.

Some excitement

Calum and I have been keeping ourselves occupied. Yesterday we spent an extra hour at the Old DC playing outside with the kids. None of them wanted to leave and all of the parents were pulling them away when it was time to go home. After we left, we had to look for ladybugs and it was a good day - we found 2. We then went home and played in the backyard for awhile before going to the mall and the "park". The park is only the playground at a nearby elementary school but Calum likes it there. On our way across the field, a little girl came running over straight to Calum and gave him a big (picture a headlock) hug. Calum was surprised and a bit shy but as she walked away he kept looking back. Then another girl went running by saying hello and goodbye. Calum had to say goodbye to her too. I teased him about it later and he smiled - guess he can't help it if the girls already like him.

When we got home we found a raccoon on the back deck. It was happily napping on a chair so we rushed inside then tried to scare it away by yelling out the window. That didn't work so we resorted to spraying it with water. We had a good close up view of it though so Calum got to learn about why we leave them alone (big teeth) and why we don't want them in the yard (fight with the cat).

We had a restless night - much tossing and turning by Calum so we got up at 5am. By 6 he was hungry but only wanted pudding (I know, most important meal of the day, etc. but I was just happy he was going to eat something) and we had the wrong kind. We got dressed and made our way to the grocery store where Calum happily carried the basket (almost tripping on it the whole way) and got his pudding. He also stopped for a donut which he insisted on paying for with the change we had put in his pocket (he likes having some money on hand already).

Now he's at the Old DC and I'm back at work. It seems like we've already put a full day in but it's only just beginning. Luckily, Don will be home tonight so maybe Calum will sleep better.

Too quiet

Don and the girls are away for awhile. The girls went to Kamloops to visit their mom and Don is in Westbank for a few days. Calum and I talked to them a couple of times while they were on the road. They stopped in to visit mom and dad and then Don continued on to Westbank while dad took the girls over the Merritt. Calum and I kept busy last night at a pizza party at the Old DC. Calum didn't want to leave and was one of the last out the door. He even helped pick up the toys. It was nice to talk with the other parents a bit - we usually only see each other when it's time to pick up or drop off the kids.

This morning it was pretty quiet. Calum was a little more subdued but I told him he had to check on the cat and Bazooka because he had to take care of everything when the girls and Dad are away. He liked that, and also liked walking around the house locking things up last night (something Dad usually does). Now the house is probably as quiet as it will be all summer so I better get to finishing my work.

Geocaching Adventure

We went out to Golden Ears Park yesterday to do some geocaching. We had the GPS, the map and a car load of kids. We stopped at the Maple Ridge Park on our way for a warm up find - one called Bugs in the Park. We found it after a bit of searching - a first find for Desiree and Dakota. Calum wanted to take all of the bugs from this one but we convinced him to take only one.

Happy with our first find of the day we went back to the car and set off again. We made a big mistake with the cache at Golden Ears Park. The clues weren't entirely clear on where to park, and we couldn't go the most direct route (through the campsite area - you had to pay $22 to camp and we were directed to day parking). We parked in the day parking area, got our gear together and started walking. We found a great path, followed the creek and when we got to the end found that we were on the wrong side! We could see the spot where the cache was probably hidden but had no way to get to it. We had just walked 1km, had a 1km walk back to the road and it would have taken another 2km+ just to get to the cache site from the other side. After pushing the stroller up and down the path we had enough and decided to leave it for the next time we were in the area. We had fun though and it was a beautiful walk.

Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad

Hope you are out enjoying your camping trip!

Belated Happy Father's Day

Hope all of you fathers had a good day. We had a bar-b-que with Grandpa, Grandma, Rob and Buddy. The girls watched Calum while Don and I got to go out to see a movie.

We had a good weekend. We went to the New Westminster Quay - Calum wanted to go to the casino but decided to play on the boat instead. He and Dad had a good laugh on the way home. We did some reconnaissance work for Don on Saturday. We drove around downtown and got to see a lot of sights. We also went geocaching this weekend. We found 2 caches, Calum spotted one by himself. We couldn't find one.....think it's missing.

We've got a busy couple of weeks ahead so we may not be posting much. If I forget, happy anniversary Mom and Dad (June 23). I hear they may go camping. We will wish for good weather.

Happy Anniversary!

To my sister Bonnie and Clint.

Fistacuffs

Oh oh. Someone was in a bad, bad mood this morning. When we got over to the Old DC I saw him come to fistacuffs with one other little guy. I was horrified. We've we talking to Calum about this lately - trying to help him find acceptable ways of expressing his emotions. He will try pushing, head butting, pinching, kicking, stomping.......and now fighting with his fists. I don't want him to grow up to be a bruiser. It sounds strange, but I'm glad that at least it wasn't one-sided and they were both not backing down. We had to separate them for awhile then all was forgiven. It ended with a hug (after some tears).

Calum enjoyed the cake!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANGIE!

Today is Angie's birthday!

Busy weekend

We had a busy weekend. The girls were working (both very busy) and Don, Calum and I kept pretty busy despite the rain. Yesterday I got my present early - a GPS. I've wanted one for awhile, as we've wanted to start geocaching. As soon as we got it Calum and I tried it out (never used a GPS before). We loved being able to tell Don what speed we were going, to tell Dakota how high above sea level we were and Calum liked being able to see where we were in relation to where Grandpa, Grandma and Buddy live.

Today Don, Calum and I went to Central Park (in Burnaby) to try it out. We tried to find 3 sites. Geocaches are small hidden boxes (can vary in size from a film canister to a tupperware container) that people hide small items in and provide GPS coordinates and hints for you to find them. These are all posted on the web at http://www.geocaching.com/. We told Calum that we were looking for treasure and he quite liked that idea. We found one and had a lot of fun doing it. The second one we looked for may have been muggled (disturbed by non-geocacher) because we couldn't find it and the third one we were close to but Calum had enough and wanted to go home. We had fun in Central Park though, we saw a lot of squirrels, ducks and dogs.

Geocaching in Central Park

Listening to Dad's iPod

It's Superman (He wore this everyday since Friday)

Home movies

Lately, Calum has taken an interest in our home movies of him. Funny enough, he doesn't necessarily like the older ones but prefers the more recent movies. We took some footage on the weekend, not much, but enough to keep him entertained. He likes to watch it and even says his lines along the way - exactly as he said them on the day. Funny boy! If I want to get him to do something I only have to tell him "Let's go work on our movie" and he's off. Maybe by the time he's 5 he'll be directing his first movie. Don will probably try to convince him that tornadoes are interesting things to film.....he hasn't managed to convince the rest of us yet.

Calum and I slept in again today. It made for a much happier boy when we got to the Old DC though. I read a few quick stories, said hello to all of the toddlers, acted as their jungle gym for awhile (three kids on my back, one climbing over top and two jumping around me) and we made bugs with the play dough. Calum tried to get me to read more stories as I was leaving but settled in quickly when one of the staff started in on his favorite book about spiders. Looks like it will be a better day, if only I can get myself to wake up a bit more. Why doesn't Starbucks deliver?

The school year is almost done for the girls. The last week of school is approaching. They always try to convince us that it's not worth going - final marks are in, the teacher is playing a movie, no one else is going (seriously, no one), the teacher told them they didn't have to go......if they don't intend to do anything in the last week why even pretend that they are? It always takes a little getting used to though, having them at home again. When you work from home it's both a luxury and a challenge. Some days are easy and the work day flies by, others it's hard to ignore the laundry or the little distractions like the cat.

Hope you are all having a good week.

Does he remember?

Did you still have little things you've found to remind you of some event or place? I keep some things - I have an old watch from my first trip to London (doesn't work anymore but I've still got it), a small stone from Hastings (the town where my maternal Grandma grew up), a dollar bill I got from a ski trip while in college, a bone needle I made in an archaeology class, a picture painted by my niece Jen when she was much younger (I stole it from Mom's fridge, I love the colours and for some reason it reminds me of her). I've got all of these things scattered about, some on my desk, some in boxes. All together, I guess it would all fit into a shoe box. When I come across these things I wonder why I still have them but then a memory will come back and I decide to hold on to them for just a little longer.

I've been wondering if Calum is going to develop the same tendencies. He loves to pick things up and cart them around. Lately, it's been sticks. He loves collecting sticks. I don't think they have any real association for him yet, a stick is just a stick, but how much longer before he'll get mad at me for throwing them out. He does associate things with a time or event. We've got some shells that we collected on the beach near Grant and Jen's on the day before Coy was born. Calum and I call them Coy's shells.

On another note, Calum was grumpy this morning at the Old DC. He was happy that Kiernan was there today but immediately started fighting with everyone (No! MY TURN!). The fighting turned to tears and he had all of the kids asking what was wrong with him (only made it worse, as he cried harder). Maybe it's the rain. I think we were all a bit late today - the girls for school, Calum and I for the Old DC...I'm not sure about Don. Oh well, lots to do today so I'd better get back to it.

Calum's Weekend - Visits with the grandparents