Kicking off another attempt at soccer

September 13, 2010 By

Two years ago:

Last weekend:

(Hadley and BFF Alex, 2 years wiser and with a lot less teeth. Especially Hadley. She lost #7 that night, which was her third tooth loss in a week. She is now relegated to a liquid-only diet).


On Saturday, community soccer kicked off and for the first time, both my kids played.

Jamie and I enrolled 6-year-old Hadley a couple of years ago but she went on a two-year sabbatical after a disappointing season of general apathy and lack of killer instinct.

In her defense, her team name was the Butterflies. Not exactly cutthroat.

This time around, things were better.

Well, with the exception of the administration staff who somehow forgot to inform parents we didn’t have a coach until a few days prior.

It could have been the Lord of the Flies, soccer-style.

Oblivious to the pre-season drama, Hadley was excited to play and it showed. Not only did she actually attempt to touch the ball, she even scored.

Four-year-old Bode was the dark horse. Though he took to skiing, swimming and softball like a pro this past year, he is generally reluctant when attempting new activities. Coach Eric held a half-hour practice before the game and Bode was among the smallest and slowest on Team Dragon.

I held my breath as the game started. There were three players on the field and Bode was on the starting line-up with his best friend Seanie. The first half of the game was like a comedy show gone bad: running, tripping and general confusion.

A few preschoolers figured it out but Bode was not among them. When we took a break at halftime, he complained, “My dragon legs are hurting.”

At least he was getting into the spirit of it all.

My husband Jamie became his personal trainer. After massaging his hamstrings, he gave him a pep talk and promise of a candy bar if he scored.

Everyone has their own motivational strategies.

Something clicked with Bode that second half. He started dribbling. He didn’t give up. And dare I say there was a glimmer of that oh-so-coveted killer instinct.

He went on to score three goals, the second most on his team.

Not that I was keeping track.

© Crazy Bloggin’ Canuck–A Denver Mom’s Blog
Filed Under: Bode, Hadley, Humor

Making the Tooth Fairy work overtime

September 10, 2010 By

Only Hadley would finally lose her fifth tooth.

You know: the one that has been precariously loose for weeks now….


On the very night Hurricane Earl arrived.

=================

Four days later, we were at a neighborhood BBQ for Labor Day. Hadley had another front tooth that was loose. Our Cat Sitter Sadie (a third grader, well attuned to the world of teeth-pulling) graciously yanked it out for Hadley.

She then sweetly proposed that she should be rewarded half of Haddie’s Tooth Fairy earnings for her involvement.

She has a future with the IRS.

Or Canadian government.

© Crazy Bloggin’ Canuck–A Denver Mom’s Blog
Filed Under: Hadley, Humor Tagged With:

The Outer Banks’ Glorious, Glorious Beaches

September 9, 2010 By

I fell in love with the 130 miles of unspoiled coastline in the Outer Banks.

Though truth be told, I only explored a very small portion of it.

Everyone has a different idea of the ultimate beach vacation. When we were evacuated from Hurricane Earl, we spent part of the afternoon exploring Virginia Beach. A popular boardwalk, the beach was littered with tourists, tattoos and revelries. The atmosphere was upbeat, fun and for me, completely overdone.

The Outer Banks’ pristine coastal villages were the very antithesis of this party atmosphere. My very first morning, I arose before dawn (at 4 a.m. Denver-time; oh, the insanity) to watch the sunrise and collect seashells. It was the perfect kick-off to an idyllic vacation.

Getting lost and wandering around for an hour trying to find the beach house afterward? NotSoMuch.

I truly did not know how Bode would react to the ocean. Haddie fell in love with the surf in Puerto Rico but Bode is notoriously the more timid of the two. But within a few minutes, he was the madman of the ocean.

Just picture him on the bow of the Titanic with Kate Winslet in this shot.


Hadley was predictably in her element, even forsaking her Colorado mountains and declaring herself “a beach babe.”


Sigh. I just know I’ll be fighting off the boys sooner than I’m ready.


Some of my favorite beachfront moments:

So great was my love for the beaches of the Outer Banks that I was even tempted to declare myself a “beach babe.”

But then remembered it would likely entail actually getting wet.

© Crazy Bloggin’ Canuck–A Denver Mom’s Blog
Filed Under: Bode, Family, Family travel, Hadley, Humor, travel Tagged With:

Kiteboarding, golfing and islanding–Outer Banks’ family travel fun

September 8, 2010 By

Despite my family’s premature evacuation due to Hurricane Earl, the Outer Banks was one of my all-time favorite family travel destinations. This long string of narrow barrier islands off the coast of North Carolina is pristine. Raw. And achingly beautiful.

The beach house my mom rented in the Southern Shores was one of hundreds of million-dollar mansions that dotted the Atlantic Ocean.

Despite its name, Southern Shores is actually in the northernmost part of the Outer Banks with a busy shopping hub. For our next trip, my goal is to stay on the southernmost tip, Okracoke Island. Accessible only be ferry, it boasts untouched beauty, whimsical lighthouses, a quaint village and me.

Gotta start planning now.

During our five days in the Outer Banks, we crammed in a whole lot of family travel fun. Some highlights:

Kiteboarding

The Outer Banks is renowned as the Kiteboarding Capital of the World. My brother Pat (an avid wakeboarder) has recently taken to this surface water sport that uses the wind to pull a rider through the water on a small kiteboard.


I have never been a water person, nor am I talented enough to fly a simple kite so this sport was beyond my ability level. Knowing my aversion to water sports, my sister-in-law Jane tried to convert me to “Dragging.” Basically, this is kiteboarding without a kiteboard. You are harnessed to the kite and let the kite guide you as your face is used as a skipping stone across the water.

I remained shore-bound.
=======================

Miniature golf

There are oodles of non-beach activities for children in the Outer Banks that include amusement parks, an Indy Kart racetrack, skate parks, horseback riding and so much more.

Our “more” was going miniature golfing at Lost Treasure Golf in Kill Devil Hills with cousins Jaxson and Connor.


To access the first hole, we rode on a mining train through caves, “ancient” ruins and under waterfalls.


And I confirmed that Bode and cousin Jaxson are actually long-lost twins.

=======================

Roanoke Island

One of my biggest disappointments was being unable to travel to Okracoke Island (tourists were evacuated a couple of days prior to Hurricane Earl). Roanoke Island, one of the Outer Banks’ primary visitor destinations, was The Next Best Thing.

What we could have done:

Pet the stingrays at the North Carolina Aquarium, strolled through the breathtaking Elizabethan Gardens, saw the popular outdoor drama, The Lost Colony and enlisted the kids in Pirate Adventures where they could seek out treasures aboard a pirate ship.

What we did do:

Time was short and the weather was hot so one morning, Jamie, Hadley, Bode and I drove to Manteo. This charming hamlet wraps around Shallowbag Bay on the eastern side of Roanoke Island.

We strolled the Manteo Waterfront and devoured coconut chicken salads at the Magnolia Grille. Next, we searched for fossils at the waterfront’s pirate-themed playground.

We explored the cottage-style Roanoke Marshes Lighthouse.


And climbed trees. The kids did, that is.


Though this activity did not involve liquid face-plants, I still deemed it best to remain on solid ground.

=======================

Pool

We started and ended each day playing in our house’s pool….


And hot tub.

(My niece Ashton’s darling girls.)

And reached for the sky.


(My toe has never looked better.)

The lowlight: When The Lord of the Gourds tossing me into the pool fully-clothed. My trespass? Mocking The Great Pumpkin, of course.

In my defense, who wouldn’t make fun of the GPC (Great Pumpkin Commonwealth)….

Stay tuned tomorrow for details on THE BEACH!

© Crazy Bloggin’ Canuck–A Denver Mom’s Blog
Filed Under: Bode, Family, Family travel, Hadley, Humor, Jamie, travel Tagged With:

How my family literally looked into the eye of Hurricane Earl’s storm

September 7, 2010 By

(Originally published at Mile High Mamas)

Poor eyesight. Baldness. Big feet. These are all things that can be passed down from generation-to-generation.

In my family, our inherited trait is bad luck.

And also the aforementioned misfortunes.

We come up a wee bit short in the gene pool.

I hail from an uproarious, fun-loving Canadian family but if anything bad can happen, it usually does. That said, what do you get when your entire Murphy’s Law clan congregates for the first time in 10 years in North Carolina’s famed Outer Banks?

Hurricane Earl, that’s what.

And I only wish I was joking.

Our week-long vacation actually started out smoothly. My generous mother rented a beach-side mansion that accommodated all 15 siblings and cousins in the Outer Banks’ Southern Shores.

For five glorious days, we splashed in our pool, built sand castles, chased the waves, explored quaint fishing villages, kite-boarded, stalked crabs at night and collected sea shells at dawn. It was as close to utopia as The Bad Luck Clan has ever come and I never wanted it to end.

Hurricane Earl had other ideas.

We had been casually tracking the hurricane’s progress. We knew when we planned our vacation that it was peak hurricane season but, as my friend Tom queried on Facebook: “What are the odds of you being there when a hurricane is coming?”

Evidently pretty darn good because, out of all the destinations along the Atlantic Ocean, the Outer Banks was Hurricane Earl’s first stop.

We were unsure of what to do. As Canadians, the only natural disaster with which we’re familiar is having our nose hairs freeze in sub-zero temperatures.

The southern portion of the Outer Banks was evacuated in what meteorologists initially predicted would be a Class 4 hurricane. Our beach house was 45 minutes north. While we did not want to cut our vacation two days short by leaving, we also did not want to take any unnecessary risks.

The county made the decision for us by ordering mandatory evacuation of all visitors.

We hurriedly loaded up our cars. As the queen of worst-case scenarios, I was ready. We had bottled water. Ample food. A full tank of gas for our inland escape route. If nothing else, escaping Earl’s clutches would make for some great blog fodder.

Except the drama never really unfolded.

I had anticipated being stuck for hours in traffic with other desperate, fleeing tourists.

We easily cruised across the bridge to the mainland in record time.

I envisioned the storm leveling houses and flooding streets.

The area did not even lose power.

In the end, Hurricane Earl sideswiped the Outer Banks causing some flooding but no injuries and only modest damage. Though it was a huge upset in our family vacation, it was an instance wherein it was better to be safe than sorry.

Unless you’re my Crazy Canuck brother Pat who wanted to kite-board through it all.

My mother had wisely invested in hurricane insurance. She was not only reimbursed for the two nights we had to leave our beach house but also for the cost of our stay in exile.

Because even Murphy’s Law deserves a silver lining now and then.

© Crazy Bloggin’ Canuck–A Denver Mom’s Blog
Filed Under: Family travel, Humor, travel Tagged With:

How my family literally looked into the eye of Hurricane Earl’s storm

September 6, 2010 By

Poor eyesight. Baldness. Big feet. These are all things that can be passed down from generation-to-generation.

In my family, our inherited trait is bad luck.

And also the aforementioned misfortunes.

We come up a wee bit short in the gene pool.

I hail from an uproarious, fun-loving Canadian family but if anything bad can happen, it usually does. That said, what do you get when your entire Murphy’s Law clan congregates for the first time in 10 years in North Carolina’s famed Outer Banks?

Hurricane Earl, that’s what.

And I only wish I was joking.

Our week-long vacation actually started out smoothly. My generous mother rented a beach-side mansion that accommodated all 15 siblings and cousins in the Outer Banks’ Southern Shores.

For five glorious days, we splashed in our pool, built sand castles, chased the waves, explored quaint fishing villages, kite-boarded, stalked crabs at night and collected sea shells at dawn. It was as close to utopia as The Bad Luck Clan has ever come and I never wanted it to end.

Hurricane Earl had other ideas. CLICK TO READ ON

© Crazy Bloggin’ Canuck–A Denver Mom’s Blog
Filed Under: Family, Humor

Just when you thought pumpkins ruled this roost

September 2, 2010 By

The entire Canuck clan is in the Outer Banks this week (18 family members = concentrated chaos).

The only member who was left behind was Remy a.k.a. Fat Kitty. The fat dude can survive if we leave him for a weekend by himself but an entire seven days?

Ugly.

We found this out when he stayed behind for 10 days as we journeyed to Utah.

“But Jamie was with him,” some may protest.

Let’s just say the Lord of the Gourds ain’t too willing to snuggle up to our somewhat needy fat kitty.

Remy is like most cats: he sleeps a lot. He hangs out around us in the morning and after dinner and disappears for several hours for his afternoon naps. But the evenings? Fat dude comes to life and desperately needs to cuddle up to someone in bed.

As he found out last week, that someone ain’t Jamie.

Poor fat cat was so stressed from the lack of affection that his hair started falling out in clumps.

And so I have brought in reinforcements while we are gone. I, the very woman who never even wanted a cat, have hired a cat sitter to stay with him. To snuggle him. Take him for walks in our backyard until he throws up from eating all the grass.

Oh wait. That’s only what happens when Jamie forgets to bring him inside.

Despite Jamie’s indifference to the cat that the rest of us adore, I was surprised to discover he named our production company after him.


Didn’t know we had a production company?

Neither did I.

But to tide you over ’til next week….

Enjoy this revealing video that demonstrates pumpkins probably do rule this roost.

P.S. Is it just me or does the Lord of the Gourds not even pronounce “pumpkin” correctly?

© Crazy Bloggin’ Canuck–A Denver Mom’s Blog
Filed Under: Humor, Jamie, pumpkins

Evidence we know how to party

August 31, 2010 By

Last week, we celebrated Aunt Lisa’s birthday and per her request, we met at Pei Wei for dinner. She tried to be in good spirits despite having one foot closer to the grave. But she was understandably bummed because her television had died that day and she can’t afford to replace it.

To try to cheer her up, I gave her a pick of fortune cookies and told her the one she chose would be indicative of the year she was going to have. I have great faith in these little cookies of wisdom. Once upon a time when I was single, I was having a rough day, went to the store, bought an entire box of fortune cookies and ate them all.

I felt moderately ill afterward but was I ever bolstered up by all the well-wishes.

As I assured Lisa that this cookie was going to prophesy that this was going to be HER year, she opened it. The inspirational counsel? “Don’t be tempted to spend money.”

Her year is gonna suck.

We returned to our house where we stuffed her full of 12 mini-cheesecakes from glorious Cheesecake Therapy and presented her with her present from the entire family. So as not to give false expectations, I wrote on the card:

“THIS IS NOT A TV.”

But a pink camera is pretty darn cool.

Jamie had his own ideas for the celebration. He gave us his puppy-dog eyes and said we all needed to go to The Pumpkin Patch. Truth be told, I haven’t been there in a month. He is growing his pumpkins on our neighbor’s property and has to hop two fences to get there. And so we drove.

He is growing two Giants that he measures morning and night. He obviously cannot put them on a scale so he guesstimates their size by measuring their circumference. One of them has already exceeded his previous year’s 755-pound mark and he still has over 30 days of growing until the competition.

See those huge posts and hail netting? They took him weeks to build.


Some pictures defy words but this one?

It reveals that his pumpkin is indeed his second wife.

© Crazy Bloggin’ Canuck–A Denver Mom’s Blog
Filed Under: Humor, Jamie, pumpkins

Bowling Mama I am NOT

August 30, 2010 By

I have a confession: I generally avoid activities at which I suck. I’m not sure if this is due to the fact that I hate losing or that I’m not having a good time if I’m not winning.

Oh wait. Is that the same thing?

Regardless, bowling is one such activity. So, when my friend Eva invited my kids and me to go bowing at Brunswick Zone in Wheat Ridge, I hesitated before deciding that socializing with friends in an air-conditioned building far outweighed any personal failures.

We had six moms juggling more than 20 kids so I did not have time to care about the game until I realized that out of the moms, I had come in dead last.

I’m pretty sure the toddlers in the bumper lanes beat me, too.

I laughed it off but have to admit, my fire was fueled just a bit. We went on to play another game and I fared a lot better, even knocking out a strike and a spare. I was still not invested until Eva announced she was one frame away from declaring victory.

Here’s the thing about Eva. On the surface, she appears laid-back but I’ve seen her competitive drive ignited when she talks about her son Rory’s Olympic gymnastics ambitions. I also feared for my life when I got caught in the crossfire as she and her husband Jon watched the United States lose in the World Cup.

The closet competition hounds are the ones you need to fear the most.

Eva may have been one frame away from winning but I noticed that victory was within my reach: she needed to choke and I needed a strike. And so I did what any overly-confident and incompetent bowler would do: I started smack-talking her.

In the end, she did not choke but got choked up just enough that there was a window of opportunity. As I deliberately did my approach, my sports psychology strategies of yesteryear came into play as I chanted, “Strike, strike, strike.”

And miraculously enough, that is exactly what I did. When I won the game, I waxed Biblical by prophesying, “The first shall be last and the last shall be first!”

My final score? A blistering 116.

It was a new lane record, I’m sure.

© Crazy Bloggin’ Canuck–A Denver Mom’s Blog
Filed Under: Humor

First Grade Before & After Shots: Evolution to a Hoodlum?

August 28, 2010 By

BEFORE

This was Haddie on the morning she started first grade. So excited. So clean-cut. So full of promise.

AFTER

This was the picture that was sent home commemorating her first day.


Should I be worried?

© Crazy Bloggin’ Canuck–A Denver Mom’s Blog
Filed Under: Hadley, Humor
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