Buddy, Halloween a Quickie and a Tree

Looking for any excuse to be part of the big day, I grabbed Deb’s coat from the stair banister and took off for the hospital, prepared to do my part. I found the parking lot, then the wing and eventually the room and I waited close enough to hear the screams of pain turn to tears of joy. It turned out she did not need her coat, but I am sure glad I brought it to her anyway so I could be part of the day. The nurse told them I was outside, so Guy came out with a smile I will never forget, with tears in his eyes to tell me that I have a nephew and all is well. I got a quick visit, and then I had to go to school but I did so with a smile on my face and a bounce in my step, because I was an uncle for the very first time.

Congratulations to Branden on his 18th birthday and many thanks for leading the way with all of your cousins by setting a good example, working hard and doing it all with a smile and a great sense of humor. We are so proud to call you our little buddy!

Jobs
When possible, we try to get the girls to pitch in and help out with things around the house and usually try to make life type lessons from it. Quite often they get “it”, but perhaps sometime they get it too much! To show value of things, after hearing them argue about a toy or the like, I will quite often point out that mommy or daddy bought it, so it is ours not theirs to argue over. This week, my fuzzy logic came back to haunt me, and Nathalie sure had a good laugh at it. Julia is quite often the first child up and because she is, I always ask her to go and let Bentley outside for his morning visit to the little tree in our yard. The protest is always the same, and this week I made the mistake of using the argument “but he is YOUR dog, Julia”. Walking downstairs she replies, “But you bought him daddy, he is YOUR dog not mine!”

Halloween
When I was in high school, I started a trend of dressing up as an inanimate object for Halloween. OK 2 or 3 times in a row hardly counts for a trend, but still, it was fun and one of my favourite costumes from that era in my life was a bed I had stayed up the whole night making. I covered a large rectangular box, with a couple of bed sheets and attached a pillow with glue and string, and cut a hole in the front for my head to stick out. If you stood just right with your head leaning to one side, I looked like a boy sleeping in a bed and I thought I was too cool for words. The only reason I bring it up is that at some point over the last year, I must have mentioned it to the girls, so Jordyn when asked what she was going to be this year for Halloween replied “a sleepy girl”.

Being the DJ for the annual Halloween dance-a-thon, I was able to get a good look at all the great costumes at school and after talking with my lovely and capable assistant Nathalie, we both decided, prejudices aside, that she had the coolest costume in the whole school this year. My sister Janey is looking for the only picture in existence of me in my bed costume, and if she finds it I hope she will be able to post it to this blog.

note… here is the picture!

Quickie
After getting my hair cut this week, I was thinking about things you would not often hear a 40-year-old guy say at the hairdresser… “Can you please make it a little thinner on top?”

A tree
I love the fall in a picture post card kind of way. Not a big fan of what is to come, weather wise and certainly not after the lack luster summer we had with respect to temperature but I do love the beautiful colours of autumn. Perhaps it is the brightness of the bark, offset with the shades of gold and orange but I think the mighty birch tree is the prettiest of them all at this time of year. We are lucky enough to have no shortage of mature trees on our street and in our neighborhood and they all look nice, but it is the 60-foot birch two doors down from us that I love to look at the most. Thousands of golden leaves, shimmering against the crisp white bark, moving to the unheard rhythm of the whistling wind. I love it, but the best thing about the tree has to be that it is close enough to enjoy everyday, but NOT close enough for me to have to rake any of its fallen leaves.

In Closing
On Sunday night, as a little family time treat, we all watched “The Wizard of Oz”. We thought that the kids had seen it, but they insisted that that hadn’t so we watched what it is truly legendary movie through new eyes and I can tell you that that was sure interesting. We missed the first 10 or 15 minutes of the movie, so that made it, perhaps a little more interesting, not understanding what was going on, but the kids enjoyed it nevertheless. At one point, Nathalie and I almost peed our pants when Dorothy accidentally kills the Wicked Witch of the West, while trying to save her friend Scare Crow. Julia in disbelief says, “Look, she is having a melt down”.

I love that my girls have a good sense of humour… sometimes it drives me nuts, but it almost always makes me laugh too, and that is ok with me.

Have a great and safe week and thanks for reading!
Jim