Thursday, October 29, 2015

Halloweenies

Sometimes as a family, we just kill Halloween...homemade costumes and atmospheric trips to rural pumpkin patches. Sometimes Halloween kills us. Last minute costumes and nary a pumpkin to be found. Guess which one we had this year..?

No one seemed to know what they wanted to be to dress up. And our weekends were too busy for pumpkin patches (and they didn't stay open on weekday afternoon/evenings).

So, in a last ditch effort to do something considered "Fall Fun", we headed out to Burnaby Village Museum for their Haunted Village on a VERY, VERY rainy evening. These little troopers and I trudged around the spooky village and collected some candy, rode the carousel and admired the gorgeous decorations.

We got very wet. We weren't dressed up. We never did get pumpkins. But we did succeed in finding some fall fun after all.

Monday, October 19, 2015

E - For when I wonder where all the time went.

Wednesday night- fire fighting

Thursday afternoon- 3 hours coaching basketball.

Thursday night- my Police and Fire games team won a late night game by 20 points.

Friday morning/afternoon- our Delta fire hockey team played in the competitive division of a charity tournament. Playing at a higher level than I'm accustomed, and not wanting to cost our boys meant playing full out every shift for 3 games. We missed the finals by giving up the game winning goal with 6 seconds left to Vancouver fire. We did beat Burnaby though.

Thursday, October 15, 2015

School Cross Country Season Wrap Up

It was the usual chaos at Trout Lake this year...barely contained mayhem. No Molly there this year, which made me sad...it is only for elementary students.

There were over 3,000 students there to run...nuts! Below is a picture of Lukey's race. There were 307 boys in his Grade 4 race. You can see him about thirteen kids over from the right in long red socks (they were the socks Eric wore for a dodgeball competition...they have capes sewn on them!).

Lukey had a great run, coming in the top 30. He's not a runner, so he was pretty pleased with that.


Here's Finny at the front of the mosh pit that served as a marshalling area for the Grade 6 girls:


And here's a part of the start line for her race. Again, there were close to 300 girls.


Finny had a great race and came 7th. She was very happy to have her good buddy Sophie there to cheer her on and help her warm up. In fact, all was good until we ran into this zombie in the park parking lot. There was (hopefully) some filming in the area and this zombie was straight up terrifying. They should have had him chasing the kids from the back of the race and I am sure the times would have all been faster!


And as always, a trip to Dairy Queen on the way home to celebrate a job well done.


I am proud of both of the kids for going out for all the mini-meets and the big race. Carrying on the family tradition. All we were missing was Moll...


Wednesday, October 14, 2015

E- Kelowna rockets

Yes, there was some hockey played on this trip as well...but it was just as much about good times off the ice as on it. 

Our boys have won their first 6 games of the year in Atom Rep tier 3, so it was a great chance to come back to reality by playing some higher tiered teams in this Kelowna tournament. We headed up on Friday at 6am to make it in time for a noon game. 

All 3 games in the round robin were fairly close (the biggest loss was 6-3 on an empty net goal). We didn't really deserve to win them, but we held our own. 

With movies, popcorn...


and casual dinners where the rookies had to wear Macdonalds bibs...


and hot-tubs, waterslides, pools....


and mini stick hockey....


and fancier dinners too...


the boys could be forgiven for not getting too upset about the losses. 

While they bonded as a team, the parents also go to know each other and the coaching staff. Our coaches love of beer-pong made for a fun Saturday night, but also a really long next day for me as I got up at 4:30am to fly back to Vancouver in time for work. 

I had to miss the boys final game as they played the top, undefeated team. On paper it looked like a guaranteed loss...but it sounds like they played really hard, Lukey made a number of key saves, and they missed a wide open net down 3-2 in the dying moments. I think the players' disappointment was equally balanced by the parents elation to get out of Kelowna early enough to drive home in the light and make it back for Thanksgiving dinner.