Shortly after my last post we celebrated Mary’s 13th Birthday. It’s a bit of a mind-bender for me to see her hitting the official teenager mark. In my mind she is still strapped to my back in an ergo carrier…snoring. She still snores but is a tad big to strap to my back. She is properly sized, is just about as tall as any of us and has some sass.
Fortunately for all of us, there was a break in both the volleyball and basketball schedules that allowed us a birthday fun trip to Calgary to celebrate. We (and I mean “I”) had been casually hunting for a replacement for our trampoline and a quick search of Kijiji lead me to a family in North Calgary. They were moving to Portugal and were selling everything. When we moved from Langley, we brought our trampoline with us but quickly realized that there was absolutely nowhere to put it at the Alpine Trail house. Not outside and definitely not in storage. It made its way to Kijiji and was sold. The girls regularly grumble about the loss and now with a patch of flat land around the rental, an even larger patch of flat land at the new house, AND signs of spring lurking in the wide-open spaces where the sun is off and on warming the ground – it was time. A friend of mine recently said that Kijiji is just a convenient place to store your stuff until you need it again. Absolutely right. I essentially stored my trampoline for 4 years at a cost of $250, and got an upgraded and newer version of it when I got it back. Win-win-win.
It should be noted that I am not factoring in the significant amount of labor involved in the tearing down and rebuilding of the trampoline, all of which will be repeated when we move it to the new house, and I am discounting the gas and time we spent going to and from Calgary to get it because we were going there anyway to celebrate a birthday so it doesn’t really count! Back to birthday celebrations and parallels…
So Mary decided she wanted to go to a trampoline park for her birthday. Go figure. We decided that Saturday was the day and as luck would have it, her friend Bode was available and would come along on our mission. Bode is a year younger than Mary and is in his last year at IDES while Mary moved on to Fernie Secondary. They still get to see each other but distance and different schools can make that difficult, so this was a great way to get them together. Bode is full of energy and is a really good kid. It was great to have him along for the ride.
Mary picked the Flying Squirrel for her destination. We had planned to leave early so we could have enough time to pick up Bode as we drove through Fernie, make our way to Calgary and drop them at the trampoline park just ahead of our appointment to go dismantle the trampoline we were buying, and still have time for a lunch-dinner-something and a trip to the mall. It was a tight schedule that went awry almost immediately.
We were bringing the utility trailer with us because we needed the Armada to fit all the people which meant there was no room for a trampoline. All fine. We hooked it up and got on the road. About 10 or so minutes into the trip, Jeff noticed the trailer lights were off. Hmmm. We stopped at the next pull-out only to discover that the plug had disconnected and had been dragging on the highway. It was done, but at least we still had the plug. We drove the rest of the way to Fernie (carefully!) to fetch Bode and as usual, we were running late, but right on time for the Lordco to open so we could get the parts we needed to re-wire the lights. Oh, did I mention it was somewhere in the neighbourhood of -17C outside at the time? The fellow at Lordco luckily had all the right parts, and Jeff set about fixing the trailer lights…
Back on the road and on our way to Calgary! Woo-hoo! Made a quick stop for gas and food since there were some hungry people in the car by this time and it felt like we had been away long enough to have gone there AND back. A quick call to the seller meant we would miss our window in the morning to get the trampoline. They were having a house showing and we were trying to get ahead of it. No such luck. We would have to wait…we dropped the kids at the trampoline park and went to visit Marci and Christina in Airdrie instead since they were just a few minutes away.
We eventually got the call that the coast was clear at the seller’s house and made our way there to get busy. It was a slog, but once we got the hang of it, the dismantling went relatively quickly. Of course, by the time figured it all out, the kids were done at the trampoline park. They were told to stand-by…Fortunately they are all old enough to amuse themselves unsupervised. We finished up as quickly as we could and made our way back to the crew for a pick-up. Hungry again, we found ourselves being drawn to the Cheesecake Cafe for a lunch-supper…it was nearly 3PM and it had been a looong time since breakfast. We also don’t usually miss an opportunity to get a cheesecake when we are in Calgary. We are making our way through their flavors. So far it has been pumpkin, earl grey tea, and very berry. We also highly recommend getting one of their wagon wheels. You’ll never look at the ones out of the box the same way again!
With lunch behind us we headed to the Mall. Again, shopping is not Mary’s thing, so we tried to make it quick. Straight to the Lego Store where she chose a very challenging NASA Space Shuttle set (space is never far from Mary’s brain), and then off to the Nike store to look at gear. I don’t think anyone was enjoying the crowds in the mall at that point, so suggesting that it was time to go was not a chore. We exited as it was starting to get dim outside, signaling that it really was time to go. We had 3+ hours of road ahead to get us home. A quick snack in the parking lot (wagon wheels of course) and we were on our way.
As with most birthdays these days, we are woefully un-prepared and shopping on Amazon lacks inspiration. Cakes are also challenging since we have 3 gluten sensitive bellies in the house so I try to find alternatives. We have a pavlova go-to, or the more recently added jello-cake. I had tried to get gluten free cake mix, but the store substituted the vanilla for chocolate (Mary doesn’t like chocolate cake). She wanted a space-themed red velvet cake. We decided to make red-velvet from scratch and the consumers would just have to be mindful of the wheat.
The baking was on me, but the decorating became an all hands event. We had a great time turning Mary’s cake into the Millennium Falcon. It was rough and we weren’t winning any contests for this one, but it still tasted good.
Birthday dinner was had and sang horribly in her honor. The year 13 milestone was well celebrated I think thanks to a good window of opportunity where everyone was home and a bit of a lull in the schedule. Whew!
Lizzie went to her first Alberta volleyball tournament the next weekend and all told it went pretty well. Her team is a bit green and had some trouble finding their feet but by the end of the tournament it looked like they had started figuring things out. Sadly, it put them in a bad spot, bumping them down the ranks when they didn’t win their cross-over game. The trip home was a bit subdued, but there were lots of positives to come away with and some work to do. They are headed to their next tournament March 16/17 and they are keen to raise their standing – they are also playing in a much nicer facility this round which will make the experience a lot more fun for everyone.
Work has been busy for Jeff while Teck organizes itself to separate the Metals part of the organization from the Coal division. They seem to go back and forth about how best to extract themselves and the target seems to move a lot, adding a load of work on top of what is already on his plate. Not much he can do about it but soldier on.
For me, work is interesting and busy as always. There is some change on the horizon there I think, so I will be putting my feelers out to see if there is more work to be added (both a good and bad thing as I am struggling with bandwidth to add more) I have parked myself on the Fernie Volleyball Club Board of Directors, hoping that I can make some improvements there and have signed on to help with strategic planning.
Margaret has signed up for the school soccer season again. They have enough girls this year which is great to hear since last year they were having to pull from the younger teams to make up the shortfall. She really enjoyed playing last year and I was glad to see her join again.
And back to Mary for a moment…she got her braces on this week and suffered for a few days while her teeth adjusted to a bit of torture. She’s good now and she definitely got through it easier than Lizzie. There was applesauce, smoothies and pudding to ease the way.
The before picture:
The after:
Mom is ticking along as well. She is in the thick of watching curling and has us all in it with her. She’s also rejoined a bridge club that plays on-line every week. I am hopeful that when we get back into Fernie that the senior’s center there will have some games she can join that are in company instead of on-line, but we shall see!
The sun is shining, we have nowhere to be and the temperature is just zero which means we are taking an opportunity to walk with the dogs this morning. Its going to be a lovely day.