As Christmas Descends...

I'm sitting here on December 22nd and for some reason I don't feel like Christmas is a mere three days away. I have no anticipation for the season this year. It's not a negative feeling but it's also not a positive feeling...It's just, well...nothing.

Part of the problem here is the fact that there's no snow on the ground and it just doesn't feel like Christmas. When I picture the Christmas season (as I'm sure everyone else does too) I see lots of snow on the ground, a nice cool temperature (at least below freezing) and a calmness to the air. Here in Calgary we have little to no snow on the ground anymore, the temperature gets above the freezing mark every day, and it's a crazy madhouse in the city as everyone is hustling around to get things done (ourselves included). There's not even the anticipation of this "setting for the season" in Ontario either as they're having warmer weather than we are and along with it will come rain!

Another factor in this is that we're going to Ontario for Christmas with my side of the family so we decided not to decorate the house or set up our Christmas tree. As a result, the look and feel in our house did not really change as the 25th approaches and I'm sure it has a lot to do with my mood right now. Christmas is not about the presents but there's something about having a nicely decorated tree up with presents you've bought for someone under there or presents someone bought for you that are there. It's the anticipation of seeing the look on their faces when the unwrap the present or having something wrapped in your hands and trying to figure out what it is.

Karyn and I do Christmas with each other a little differently. Last year we didn't want to buy each other Christmas cards so we went to the card aisle at Wally World, found one that was nice, and exchanged them in the aisle, after which we re-shelved them. This year we gave out presents to each other in stages, starting almost 2 weeks ago when I got new shoes for a function we were going to and then the following week a new dress jacket for yet another function. I gave Karyn some of her presents in similar manners (though the therma-rest she got she hasn't had a need to use yet!). Last night was the "big night" when we sat down at 10:30pm after packing for Ontario and gave each other the rest of our gifts...almost none were wrapped and in fact, I just took the ones for Karyn and put them in boxes we had ready for recycling!

Christmas for me is all about anticipation and that's really the true story of Christmas. Two thousand years ago as Joseph and Mary made their way to Bethlehem they were anticipating the birth of their son, Christ our Lord. The Jewish people of the day were anticipating this birth as the Son of God was being sent to His people. We today anticipate the coming again of Christ and the Christmas season helps remind us that yes, he is coming again.

I'm getting that anticipation more and more as I write this blog. It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!

God Bless,

D
(In Thornton, Ontario last Christmas!)

Too Much Toilet Paper?!

This picture sums up our weekend...flooding, avalanches, and children without Christmas presents...."Trouble Emergency" is right! I wish Duane would've helped write this...probably would be more amusing than simple facts. Oh well. Here goes.

(The camera shutter doesn't always open all the way when the camera is turned on...this is what happens)

Let me tell you, this is not how we expected our already busy weekend to start! On Friday night Duane and I were relaxing in front of our TV, trying to finish a movie we had started a few days beforehand, when someone started pounding on our screen door. It wasn't knocking...it was pounding. Our neighbour put his arm around Duane's shoulders and said, "Hey, I think you've got a bit of a problem out here." Duane says(not seeing anything outside out of the ordinary), "Oh yeah, what's that?" Our neighbour, Mac, pointed to the corner of our front lawn and explained that he figured we had a water main burst. Brilliant. This is what we saw...sorry for the poor quality, it was pretty dark out. (This "bump" on our yard was a foot high and about 4 feet across!)
Our formerly snow-covered lawn was actually sopping wet underneath(which we discovered when we walked through it and soaked our feet!), and slowly but surely creeping towards our house! We thanked the neighbour and immediately called the City of Calgary 311 Information, and then called our landlord. He told us to make sure to check the water pressure in the house to make sure it wasn't our personal water, but the City's water...and doing that determined it was, in fact, the City's issue. Their crew was out to our place within the hour, and they also determined there was a City leak, but it was more than likely under the road, not under our lawn, and had nowhere to go except there(and the neighbour's driveway). The crew who came out informed us that they'd be turning the water off for the night, and they walked the street and told everyone elese the same thing. We caught a few neighbours ourselves and mentioned that it might be a good idea to fill water jugs and whatever they could find with water so we'd have enough to last until the water was back on. They all thanked us and went about filling stuff up while we continued shoveling our grass and the driveway...it was rather tedious, and Duane broke his shovel in the process. Duane also broke the bubble eventually. He wanted to see what it'd do if he poked it, having already concluded that it was fun to play with(it was rather like a grass-covered pile of Jello). This is what happened when he prodded it with the shovel! A small geyser erupted. We have yet to figure out how to add the video clip, so it'll be coming later hopefully...it is rather funny!We started out with the two of us shoveling, and in the end we had the two next door neighbours from the east of us, the one from next door to the west(who's driveway was filling up with water and he just happened to be at the neighbourhood pub!), and one from two doors west. We had never met one of them before...what interesting circumstances in which to meet a neighbour! Duane went over there with his big winter boots, his toque, his headlamp and his shovel...it was a rather silly sight! "Hi, sorry to meet you under such odd circumstances, my name is Duane, and we've had a water main burst...you should probably go fill up on water before the City turns it off." He looked like a crazy man! *LOL* (Here's the proud builder of a snow dam)
Apparently she wasn't too freaked out, because she was very thankful and came over afterwards to help shovel water. All we needed was some beer and pizza and we could've had quite the block party going on! Kidding. All I wanted to do was shower and go to bed...but the shower was out of the question. Gross.
Duane had already thought about filling stuff up even before the crew mentioned it, so I had filled up (most) everything I could, including the bathtub (so we had enough water to flush our toilet). Here are our water reserves...we had no idea how long we'd be without water.We were then told that the City leak crew would be out at 7 on Saturday morning to start their inspection...that sucked, though we had to be up early anyway. They brought in Hi Ho's and drill machines and dump trucks and trailers...our street was pretty full! They were able to locate the leak pretty quickly, and got to work digging up the street in front of our next door neighbour's driveway. Duane was already up when they arrived, and myself shortly after, since Duane was heading out early to do his first day of the Avalanche course he signed up for with Kevan and Matt, and I was going to Samaritan's Purse to help inspect the Operation Christmas Child boxes with a group from church. Duane had a full pot of coffee ready when the guys got here, but they already all had coffee...so we had a lot of coffee to drink ourselves! In reality, most of it was poured down the drain, but Kevan was thankful for a cup when he arrived.
We were rather intrigued and hung around outside taking pictures and watching what the machines were doing. Shortly after, all of us were gone and the guys could work in peace :)Later on in the day I noticed our neighbour, Lynn, outside hanging Christmas lights, and I went over to let her know she'd missed the community party the night before. She's always up for a party, and seemed rather down that she'd missed one. I told her I was kidding, and that it was nothing much, but we spent a good hour and a half shoveling water off our lawn after a water main break. She was shocked! Lynn also seemed to think we've been using too much toilet paper, and that might be the cause of the burst! She had been told by the city crew that the water would be shut off, but she didn't notice that two doors down we were all shoveling water! In the end, I think she was actually glad she didn't have to help and, in all reality, there were probably more than enough people with the 6 of us who were there!

And that was only the beginning of our weekend.

~K~

Pocaterra Ski Vacation

This past weekend we took a trip out to Kananaskis Country with one mission: Cross Country Ski. Kevan and Leah have done it a few times before, I've done it once before, and Karyn has never done it. Needless to say it was going to be an interesting experience.

Kevan and Leah arrived at our place at about 8am and we ended up sitting around the table drinking coffee for three quarters of an hour. We weren't really in too much of a rush. When we finally got on the move we headed over to the Outdoor Centre at UofC to rent some equipment and finished that a mere 45 minutes later! Seriously, how long does it take to get 4 x-country ski packages!

Our original plan was to ski on the Ribbon Creek trail. Part of this reason was Kevan and I had been there before so we knew what to expect. Part of it had to do with the fact that it wasn't too far away. While we were getting our skis at the Outdoor Centre Kevan took a look on a ski report and there was no snow to be had at Ribbon Creek so we decided to go out to the Upper Kananaskis Lake and considered skiing into the Elk Lakes...It was only about 10km return so we thought it would be a nice "easy" day.

On our way to the Upper Kananaskis Lake we went by Pocaterra and after much deliberation we decided to ski there instead. The main reasons:

1. I had been there before and kind of knew what we were getting into
2. There was track already laid which we figured would make it a little easier for Karyn

We started out on a nice easy trail and Karyn was learning the basics. For those of you not aware of the situation, Karyn HATES skis attached to her feet but she was doing great despite this fact (though she didn't think so). We came to a fork in the road and we ended up taking the trail that had a few ups and downs. Not too bad for those of us who are used to having 5 foot planks attached to our feet, not so good for Karyn who didn't know how to control them going up and down. Needless to say she didn't have that much fun. I'm sure it didn't help that the skis she had were too long and her poles may have been a little big for her too (though the jury is still out on that one). Going up hills is kind of awkward on skis because you basically need to walk ducky up the hills and use your skis and poles together. Going down hills on x-country skis is easy when there's track, problem was there wasn't too much track to be had on the down-hill sections and as you can see, Karyn didn't fare too well, though I should point out that none of us really did!

At lunch it was decided that Kevan and I were going to take a longer loop that went through an "expert" area and Karyn and Leah would go off on their own taking an intermediate trail for a short period and then getting on easy trails for the rest of the way back to the lodge. Kevan and I took off and did a short 3.1km uphill push. That SUCKED. I was so tired when we got to the top and along the way I ended up falling on the track and managed to crank my tailbone on the peak of snow between the ski tracks. Not so much fun. When we got to the "expert" area we found that it had not really been tracked and after a few hundred meters (and a few pictures) we decided to turn back and go the way we came as we thought we wouldn't make it back to the lodge before the sun went down. So, back to the 3.1km we went up and this time we got to go DOWN!!! That was good times. We managed to ski that out in just under 15 minutes!

Kevan and I took a different route back to the lodge and figured the girls wouldn't be too far behind us. We were both exhausted when we got back to the lodge and Kevan actually ended up catching a few zzz's while I stretched out. A funny side note, Kevan decided to sleep on the floor after abandoning the bench for reasons I won't go into and ended up falling asleep over a vent. He was suddenly awoken by a soft breeze blowing on his stomach (which for some reason he thought was me...SICK!) and got up pretty quickly! I had a good chuckle out of it.

We were at the lodge for a good 30 minutes and the girls still had not showed up. We decided to mount a rescue mission to go find our damsels in distress, though neither of us were really looking forward to putting the planks back on. Our plan was to take the two possible routes they could have taken and meet up where the trails met. It would have meant an additional 10km of skiing for both of us but it was getting dark and we were concerned. We started down the trail and luckily ran into them only about half a kilometer down the trail before we had to split off. Karyn was exhausted and sore and I don't think Leah felt much better. Our way home in the car was quiet and dinner wasn't too full of conversation either.

Karyn has been sore since we went out and vowed that she'd never go again. I think she was just thrown into it a little too hard and next time we go out we'll do the same area again but stick to the easy trails as much as possible. She did awesome for her first time out and I think in a few more tries she'll be ready for the Olympics (she'll probably disagree with that though!).

Here's a few extra pictures that I took through the day for everyone to enjoy.

Until our next adventure...

D

Going back!!

Hey all, thanks for the kind words and suggestions regarding my job. It really helped me see clearly what I should do. After yesterday's antics at Meikle I decided, for sure, I'd take the HandiBus job back. The prayer and thought process didn't really take too long, and honestly didn't really need to do that much thinking! God knows what He's doing, and as long as I feel peace and a calm about going back to HandiBus, I think things will work out well. I really don't think God would want me to be in a place where I'm getting pounded every day, especially when there's something else available that He knows I'd rather do! I feel that this is the right decision for my future, for my family, and for my financial well being. The decision needed to be made quickly, as I am required to give the two weeks notice, and it is two weeks tomorrow that will be my last day.
I really think that I get along much better with the young ones who look up to me(even in a literal sense!), can respect me, and who I feel I can help in the growing process. I guess I feel closer to them 'cause I don't feel like an adult :) I was laughing a lot more when I worked at HandiBus 'cause the kids are just funny, and at the highschool I was pretty much always concentrating and being frustrated with someone....constant disciplinary action had to be made. I don't really want to be a constant disciplinarian! I enjoy having fun and seeing the creative side of the little ones.
Yesterday at the end of the day, I went in to HandiBus to have a chat with the guy, and it's pretty much set up. We just have to figure out the rest of the process, and he'll call me soon with details.
I guess that's all for now! And Jenna, no I don't work at a Christian Middle school...but I understand that if you were just skimming the post, the name Christine Meikle probably looks a heck of a lot like that :)
Later!

~K~

God's Throwing a Curveball My Way!

At this point I've been at my new job two weeks, and some of you probably didn't even know I had one! I haven't had a chance to post about it, and now that I have time to post about it, it may not even exist after Christmas!! Let me explain.
A month ago I gave my two weeks notice at HandiBus to pursue a position in a special needs Jr/Sr Highschool here in Calgary. I was excited about this new venture, but sad to leave my young children who I'd grown to love. They're so enthusiastic, creative, and full of life! Well, I figured that since I got through the somewhat greuling interview with the Calgary Board of Education, I was prepared to step out of my comfort zone and try something new. Off I went two weeks later to Christine Meikle School to my first day as a lunchroom supervisor. Classy, I know. I was assigned two classrooms, two teachers, 5 Ed. Assistants, and 18 students. Whew! Both classrooms don't eat in the actual lunchroom(gym), they eat in their classrooms so as not to be distracted by things around them...that kept me running back and forth between rooms 4 and 7!! The Ed Assistants and teachers(a few at a time) go off for their lunch breaks while I'm there, and the other few stay around to help with all the wild children. Not like I could handle them all on my own; most of them are twice as tall as me...intimidating!! I never know what's coming from one minute to the next. My first day consisted of me observing and wandering around trying to figure out who does what and what I should be doing! Day two was memorable. I got punched in the nose. Yup. I should get hazard pay. Apparently I was lucky that he didn't break my nose...great...watch out for that kid. One of the Ed Assistants told me that in her first year as a lunch supervisor she was punched in the head and knocked out cold...and lost a tooth from it all! Good grief. Yup, lovin' my job! Hmmmm. Maybe not so much. My first Friday happened to be a Pro Day, so that was lovely...no students, just the teachers, Ed Assistants and lunchroom people. Does seem odd that the lunchroom people would have to be there when there are no kids to work with, but I guess because we're all on salary, we have to still make up our time. I did things like cutting up labels and cleaning, and wandering around the school looking like I knew what I was doing. It was a lovely waste of an hour. Yes, I only went in for an hour(instead of my full two...now I owe them time) because that was the day after I had spent a couple hours late into the night at the emergency clinic downtown.
The next week started well with me getting hit, open handed, by a rather large student who seemed to think it was ok to take out the side of my head with her hand, and later on pull my hair! Ouch. I had never met her, didn't know who she was or what her issue may have been, but I was rather shocked. That Friday went well. Probably the smoothest of all my days there so far. I was back and forth between classes with ease, and got lots accomplished, dealt with the students well, and was given a vote of confidence from one of my coworkers. I had told her I was upset about leaving my HandiBus kids, and wasn't sure if highschool aged kids is where I wanted to be. She told me I was handling the kids very well, and out of the lunchroom people she'd met over the years, she could tell I was one who has a way with the tough kids. I had really felt like I had given up my authority that I had with the preschool kids, and had become a peon being told what to do all the time and running my behind off between classes. I dunno. I'm just not enjoying myself.
Here's the curveball.
I got home from my Cardinal shift this morning, and Duane had news for me. Susan had called from HandiBus offering me a full time position from January until June(when we move)!! Wow. Ok, so I work at a job I loved for two and a half years waiting for full time, and when it doesn't come available, I branch out to try something new...get approved, start the new job, decide I don't like it but have to stick with it anyway, and then get offered a full time job back where I want to be!! Wonderful. My discerning skills really aren't so great. Is it God telling me, "Ok Karyn, you stepped out of your comfort zone and went for something you weren't sure about, and now I'm going to make the job you want available." Or is it, "Karyn, you went for it, got the new job...don't really enjoy it, but I want you to stick with it anyway, even when what you want is available. Don't give up."
What do I do? The hours are better, the pay is better(therefore the possibility of a better mortgage is there), I'd get one paycheque, only have to pay attention to Pro Days for one school instead of 2, I have a regular bus driver who knows the run(WOOHOO!!!), and I'd only have to deal with wearing the stupid uniform until we move.
HHHMMMMM.....
Gotta go avoid getting punched in the head now...

~K~

Goin' Ghetto

I'd like to start with a disclaimer: the word "ghetto" isn't meant to offend, and I apologize if that happens. I think that I automatically associate the word "ghetto" with cellophaned windows...not sure why!

Duane decided last week during the cold snap that he'd take back our power. Literally. The heating bill we've incurred during the cold weather has been ridiculous!! We had our thermostat in our house at 22-25 constantly, and the actual temp in our house has only been 18!! Since our house was built in the 1940s or 1950s it only has single paned windows an the drafts from them sure are cold! The door frames are pretty bad too, but cellophaning ourselves in our house sure won't solve anything :) Anyway, Duane eventually found that the biggest source of heat loss was from our fireplace. The flue was closed, but the Arctic blast of air was coming from the vents at the bottom of the fireplace. We've covered the hearth with blankets and towels to prevent anymore heat loss from there! Very aesthetically pleasing. Right. Whatever.
Here are some shots of Duane and our plasticized windows. You'll notice I'm not in any of these pictures, and that was because I REALLY didn't want to be a part of the plastic windows...especially because it was sleepytime!! It did happen to be the coldest night that week(-40 something), so Duane figured it was smartest to get it done while it was actually cold. Brrrr! You'll notice I DID contribute, however. That's my hairdryer.


~K~