Month: August 2011

On Vacation…

Up at Ross Lake

We’ve been going to Ross Lake since the year we got married (that makes it 16 years) and we’ve only missed a few years. Last year we did not go, cause we were in the hospital all summer. What a blessing it is to be able to take Angelica (and the rest of our healthy children) up to the lake this year and have her health good enough that we can be out of cell phone range, because we don’t need direct access to the hospital right now.

It seems like we haven’t been very plugged in to work or school or other things and taking a vacation from all that right now is somehow wrong, but we have been living in a pressure cooker for the last year and a de-stress is very much in order… so look for us again (with fresh pictures from our wonderful Ross Lake) after August 29th.

Please Tell: What does your family do for vacations? What do you do to de-stress? Please share a vacation or camping story here for us to read when we get back…

We Love You All.

~
Jon

Busy, Busy, Busy

Well, things have been a little quiet for the past few days and that’s because life has been SO CRAZY BUSY!

We had Chris and Brynn’s Wedding on Saturday. Angelica and Alexandra headed up to Camp Goodtimes (the cancer camp) for a week. And I am trying to get ready to go camping with three little boys underfoot and no big girls to help……while recovering from the chaos that comes with a wedding.

Oh and what an AMAZINGLY BEAUTIFUL wedding it was! Hopefully I can snag a few photos and put them up to show you.

My house is a disaster. I had a Doctor’s appointment for myself and Judah today and I have a dentist appointment tomorrow. GAH! I’m not entirely sure how I’ll get it all done, but I’m sure that it will eventually all come together. It will, right?

Judah and I went to the Dr’s today to talk about veins, moles and poop!

Sounds like a fun trip, no? Can you guess which issues belonged to whom?

Well, maybe you shouldn’t guess….wouldn’t want things to get too embarrassing up in here…

I have the moles and veins and Siah is dealing with poop issues. There, does that make it a bit clearer…

I go about once a year to get my moles checked out and to make sure that none have changed or that any new ones aren’t scarey and as of this point….everything is A-OKAY! None are sun-related and all look fantastic…well, as fantastic as moles can look…

The veins….well, I have a couple of veins on my calf and yup….apparently they are varicose veins and I can have something done about them because well, they are not cool looking. So, I’m probably gonna do something about them before next summer…but no rush.

And then there is Judah. Still having pooping issues. And from all the symptoms that I described (Diarrhea, bloody mucus, food not being digested, food processing through in a matter of 4 hours, etc.), it could very well be celiac disease. As the treatment is the same (no gluten) we are just gonna be extra vigilant for right now, but will get him tested in a year or so when it’s a bit easier to draw blood and to do the other testing.

Did you know that Celiac Disease is most common in people who are Irish, Scottish, English and Scandanavian? Guess what my heritage is…….yup, all four of them. Not to mention that on both my side of the family and on Jon’s side of the family there are people who have issues with wheat…..I guess we are blessed that only Judah seems to have massive issues with it. Although I know that wheat/gluten doesn’t sit well with me either…

Oh well, I’ve gotta run and clean this house and plan out this week and the next two weeks worth of meals…..GAH!!! Not fun!

So, how have you been?

Happy Birthday Josiah

Today, Josiah turns 4. We are so proud of our little man and all that he adds to our family. Josiah, or Siah as most people call him, is very very very kind and loving and joyful. He is also younger than Jeremy by almost 7 years and wouldn’t stand a chance of being treated fairly, except he can very most definitely assert himself.

Josiah came into our world as a miracle. We had lost four consecutive pregnancies, and had basically decided that it wasn’t going to happen. The timing was all off, we shouldn’t have been able to get pregnant right then, but it happened. Patti’s brother, Chris, had his accident not long after and that consumed most of the pregnancy (and explains why his name is Josiah Christopher Culley). And then Josiah was born.

He has had a personality all his own since the day he arrived. He stole my heart right from the beginning. He has the ability to lighten the mood in the room, (or to do the complete opposite). He loves small fiddly things that he calls his “doo-dads” and says the most adorable things like “Gramma, you are my present”. He calls his favorite people with the word “my”… “My Brynn and my Chris are getting married and I’m their bear boy (ring bearer)”. Josiah is an amazing son, and Siah, I love you more. (He tells me that he loves me, and I say I love him more, and he says I love you the most, and then says “I win!” really fast, and it always makes me laugh).

We are fairly practical and don’t do much to celebrate a first or second birthday. Those parties are nice, but the kids don’t remember them and are mostly overwhelmed at why life got so weird for one day. But come age three, its party time…. Except in Siah’s case, we basically skipped his party last year, as Angelica’s treatment was overwhelming, and so this brings us to today.

Siah Looking at Daddy
My favorite photo of Siah - I am in his eyes

This summer is a bit of a cave for us… I mean that in the sense that it feels like a tornado went through our house last year and the violent winds, picked up and threw around our emotions, our energy, our direction, our fears, our life and left the house just a month ago. The cancer treatment has switched to something far more manageable, but just like a tornado coming and leaving, life isn’t just ready to get going right away. You have to repair the damage. I use the term cave, because the storm has moved on, but normal is unlivable and so we are temporarily living as simply as we can while we repair emotionally, spiritually, physically, and in every other way. We will live in “normal” again, but we need the summer to be able to.

Siah Today
Bear Boy

With that said, as of Monday, there was no party planned. As of today, we are having a party. If it is the only thing that gets accomplished today, then it will be a great day.

Josiah is sooooo excited. Angelica has already given him a present, and he has fully clued in to what is coming. He is telling everyone that he is getting a “ball that turns into a bird” for his birthday, and it took some doing to figure out what that was, but he is indeed getting some of those.

~
Jon

Tuesday July 18

After a full night of sleep, my alarm woke me up to start getting ready at 7:30am, I got ready in 10 min. then waited another 40 for Mia to get ready so we could go to breakfast, again at EuroPan. Then we all waited in the lobby ’till ’round 9:30am for the bus. And off we were to a country club to swim for the afternoon.

On the way there, we went through a tunnel, and I tried to hold my breath ’til we got out. I didn’t last. When we got out of the tunnel I found out the tunnel went all the way under the Hudson River.

We got to the pool around 10am and right away I jumped in the pool, I was the first one in. I swam for about 2 hours in the deep end, which was 8 to 10 feet deep, with two diving boards.

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It was super sunny so when we were called in for lunch I grabbed some food and stayed in the shade talking to some new friends for about an hour.

Then I was back in the pool ’til we had to go, around 3ish in the afternoon.

Back at the hotel we had free time. I went up to the suite and tried to Skype home, but it didn’t work on my computer. I tried to get it to work but it still was wonky when we had to leave for dinner at Carmine’s, an Italian restaurant.

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(The bathrooms at Carmine’s had mouthwash in soap dispensers and those little ketchup holder container things that you find in McDonald’s and Wendy’s to put the mouthwash in.)

Then we went to go see the Lion King, which happened to be right across the street.

We walked into the theater, and it was HUGE!! We went to find our seats, which, ’cause of who we were, the Sunshine Kids, we got good seats, we weren’t right up close like some of us kids would have liked, but we were close enough that we could still see the actor’s expressions.

The play was A·MA·ZING(said slowly and emphatically)!!!!!!!! The stage moved up and down and tilted and turned and the costumes were SO cool, and it was just like the animated version, just with people. My favorite of the main characters was Rafiki (though in the animated version it was a guy, and in the Musical that I went to it was a girl), and out of all the other animals were the cheetah, and the giraffes. I liked the giraffes because they stood on stilts and leaned on stilts, so they actually were tall, and I liked the cheetah because it had the best costume, the actor wore a head thingy that moved the cheetah head, and her legs were the cheetah’s back legs, and she stood so that it actually looked like how a cheetah stood and the actress held poles that moved the front legs of the cheetah and if she leaned back the cheetah would, like, stand on her hind legs (I don’t know how else to say that last one.).

After the play was over, we stayed in our chairs until everyone else was gone, then went up to the front and got a meet and greet with the cast. They said to ask them anything, so one of the kids from our Vancouver group asked, “What was the weirdest question you’ve ever gotten asked?” And the actress that played the cheetah answered that she once got asked what her favorite type of pasta was.

Then we got a tour of backstage, and the changing rooms, and we got to see where they kept all the costumes when they weren’t using them (most of them were kept up above everything, and out of the way).

And then we all got together and got group photos of us Sunshine Kids and the actors that were still there.

After everything was finished we headed back to the hotel and were told to go straight to our rooms and that we should get ready to go to sleep. I was so tired that I basically put on my pjs, brushed my teeth and got in bed and I don’t even remember laying down before I fell asleep.

And I still had water in my ear.

To see all of the Tuesday Photos click here….

Ambleside

Last Tuesday we woke up and it was just another day.

This summer has been a bit of a bummer. It has not gone exactly how we had planned or expected and while nothing terrible has happened, it’s not been as relaxing as I’d hoped!

First Beach Experience?

Around 9:30am, I decided that if the kids and I could get the house cleaned and packed and ready to go by 11:30am – that we’d head out to the beach. At this point, I still wasn’t sure which beach I would head to as they are all about an hour away from us, but I was determined that we were not going to just sit at home and do nothing for one more day.

The kids were pretty excited and we managed to get everything ready and done just after 11:30am and so off we went.

Arrival

As I pulled out of the driveway, I was still unsure about where we should go…I was contemplating 3 different beaches…White Rock, Spanish Banks and Ambleside.

In the end, Ambleside in West Vancouver won out mostly because I could park and be on the sand in about 20 steps and with 5 kids in tow and all our gear – the close proximity to the beach, the parking spot and the bathroom were key factors in my decision.

Toes

Traffic was NON-EXISTANT and we made it there in just under and hour. The weather was not AMAZING, but neither did it suck. It was one of those days, where it was cloudy, but there was still the possibility of getting a burn if you didn’t take the right precautions.

As soon as we hit the sand, the boys were gone, headed straight for the water. Jeremy stopped long enough to point out a good spot that he figured I should put the blankets down on and I agreed, it was a pretty good spot.

In the Water

We laid the blankets out and put the baby on them and he instantly crawled the edge of the blanket and picked up handfuls of sand and hucked them ALL OVER THE BLANKETS! At that point, I moved him over into the middle of one of the blankets and then took possession of that blanket. The girls shook all the sand off the other blanket and ATTEMPTED to keep it sand-free…….between the baby and the 3 year, it was a losing battle. I didn’t even try to stop him from loading up my blanket and to be honest, I just didn’t care.

The kids played and played and played and played.

Headed to the Water

The weather was perfect….warm enough that you could just wear a tank top, but cool and cloudy enough to keep just about everyone else from coming to the beach.

The kids tried to go in the water and the girls went in past their waists…..crazy kids. Josiah went in but decided that he didn’t want to go in, but then fell in and so that was that.

He came up and got a towel from me but from that point on, he was a sandy mess….it was…..AWESOME! sort of….

The kids were playing so nicely together and except for the occasional squabble between Jeremy and Josiah, it was the best couple of hours that we’ve had in a while.

Working Together

I was able to just sit and then every once in a while retrieve Judah and bring him back to the blanket….and then he’d start crawling back towards the water again stopping every now and then to pick up some random object and put it in his mouth.

The kids splashed in the water, made a sand wall, dug a hole, buried Jeremy, and played on the playground. We ate lunch and had snacks and went to the bathroom and the only mildly upsetting time was when we lost Josiah for about 90 seconds. He had come back with me (from the bathroom) and was right behind me. I guess, when we walked over the cement wall and onto the beach, he stayed on the wall and walked back along it towards the bathroom. I made it back to the blanket (which was about 10 feet away) and sat down. Talk to the girls about how the baby was when I was gone, turned around and Siah was gone…..Xani and I ran around like chickens with our heads cut off and fortunately, the lady next to us spotted him on the wall back by the bathrooms…..I had a short little chat with him and after that, he stayed pretty close.

In the Hole

The biggest downside to the day was when Jeremy decided to not feel well about an hour before we had planned to come home. He was complaining of a headache and an upset tummy and stopped playing, wrapped his head in a towel and lay down on the blanket. Then he wanted to go and sit in the van and was moaning loudly about needing to barf.

Downtime

After that, We packed up pretty quickly and headed home….unfortunately, the traffic was just starting and we had about an hour and a half drive from West Vancouver back to Langley. FORTUNATELY, Jeremy slept the whole way home and that seemed to help a little. He never did end up barfing (Thank God!) and by the next day he was 100%, so who knows what his issue was????

Traffic Going Home

It was an awesome day and we will definitely be headed back there before the summer is over.

If you’re interested, you can see all of my photos from our Ambleside Adventure by clicking here!