Ready, set, Action!

Ethan has always been a pretty active kid, so this year we decided to try him in lacrosse. For those of you who aren’t familiar, you can check out the background of the game

here. I probably should have read that myself before this past weekend where I found myself asking one of the parents a few questions about the game. Too bad I picked the wrong person to ask – he looked at me like I had three heads. I openly admitted I knew nothing about the game – but ask me about hockey, rugby or even cricket and I am all good.

Lacrosse is a hell of a workout – running non-stop for the most part. Ethan loves it. He does keep asking when soccer starts again though – I think it is a bit hard to make friends when your teammates are always wearing face masks and the only way you can figure out who the kids are is by looking at their shoes. I kinda miss the soccer too (OMG did I just type that???). The parents were more laid back, and it seemed like the kids had more fun.

Lacrosse is a pretty physical game - even for the little ones. I can't even imagine how it must be when they are older. One thing I am not fond of though are the dads who scream and yell at their FIVE-YEAR OLDS during games. It is a wee bit unsettling. Of course not all the parents are like that, but there are a couple who treat the game like it is the gold medal match of Olympic hockey and their kids are earning million dollar salaries.

I really like the coach. I am not sure what happened at the beginning of the year, but apparently no one stepped up to coach, so one of the dads said he’d do it. He has openly admitted he doesn't know alot about lacrosse, but he is very good with the kids, and a couple of the dads who do know the game help him out. There is one guy in particular though to fancies himself as "coach" and he knows his stuff about lacrosse, but he has rubbed me the wrong way on more than one occasion when dealing with the kids. There is just something about this guy in particular that really annoys me. During one game he was “helping” and he picked Ethan up by the scruff of his jersey and pushed him while yelling, “run!” I was gob smacked – and my first reaction was to yell at this clown to get his greasy meat hooks off my kid. Anyone who knows Ethan knows that he is one of the most coachable kids around – does what he’s told and really pays attention. And he hustles. No need to grab, shove and yell at him. I didn’t do anything – but if he had touched Ethan one more time I was going to let him have it.

At any rate, I was at one of Ethan’s games this weekend to take pictures – it was a beautiful day, the game was outdoors (three cheers for natural light!) and Ken was at home to taking care of the other two rug-rats so I could focus on getting some good shots. I was in the players box waiting for the kids to get organized and just generally trying to figure out the best place to take pictures without getting in anyone’s way. Mr. Annoying came over to me and asked what paper I was from. I told him I was with Ethan. “What do you mean, “You’re with Ethan?”” he asked me. Funny coming from him – I’ve been at countless practices, a few games and even had the occasion to speak to him a handful of times. I told him I was Ethan’s MOM and the penny dropped. And so did his face when he realized his son wasn’t going to be in the paper (and to be honest, his son is a great player). His attitude did a complete 180, and he went back to pretending I wasn’t there. Too funny.

Little miss Diva

THIS makes a rough day worth it.

I might be old but....

Now that I am teaching (sort of) I am doing alot of marking of assignments that my online students send to me via e-mail. What shocks me is some of the e-mail addresses (changed somewhat for privacy - but you get the idea):

What's up bitch at gmail dot com
supersexydog at hotmail.com
party princess 69 at yahoo.com

I have about 50 students and I'd say about 10 have questionable e-mails....entertaining for sure, but professional - I don't know about that.

A cheering section would be nice.

A few nights ago I went out for dessert with some girlfriends that I hadn't seen in ages. We all went to high school together 20 years ago and they are the type of friends that you can go ages without talking to them, but when you do meet up it is like you just talked to them a week ago.

So here we are, the four of us on a night out without our husbands and without our children - and what do we talk about? You guessed it. Men and kids. We mostly talked about kids, and just generally supported each other in the decisions we made regarding parenting. It seems that we constantly run into people who tell us how we should be doing this or that when things are going wrong and yet when we do something right there isn't a whole lot of recognition for the hard work it took to get there.

One of my girlfriends told us about a incident that happened with her son. He had taken to peeing outside - something that I can totally relate to as my boys think that using the bathroom is a major inconveniece when building the dirt super-highway in the backyard. So when her son decided to pee in his sandbox she told him that he needs to come inside to go to the bathroom. So he did, and while he did another pee, she told him that she was just going to go upstairs to get his bath toys so he could play with them in the toilet. "EWWWW....gross" was his reaction. Then she said to him "think about what you did outside" - and the lightbulb went off. So instead of yelling at him to get inside to do his thing, she calmly made her point - and he got it. That was a great parenting moment. Wouldn't it be nice that when we had a great moment with the kids we had our own little cheering section - much like the BC Hydro ads here where they cheer every time you save energy.

Love Thursday

I came across this photo the other day, it was one that I took years ago with an old film camera. The quality isn't all that great, but honestly I don't really care as it is the expression on Ethan's face that I love as he is getting a thorough cleaning from Max.

Happy Love Thursday!

Love Thursday

Spring has sprung - finally. Here on the wet coast it has been, well.....wet. And cold. And SO NOT May-like-weather.

Last week I took the kids to a local marina, and we came across a group of baby geese. So cute and fuzzy and cute.....yes they are a pain when they get older (and you should have seen all the goose poop we had to negotiate to get this shot!), but when they are babies they are irresistible.

Happy Love Thursday!

I'm off to bed....well, maybe not.

Ever since starting my "side gig" tutoring a couple of classes online for a local college my personal down time has been significantly curtailed. I am home with the kids all day, and then at night once they are in bed I do work. When I am done work, I need to decompress - I can't go straight to bed without just relaxing first, which usually means surfing the net or watching a bit of TV.

Lately I have been surfing the net a bit more, and reading many more blogs. The latest two that I have been sucked into (and I mean that in a good way - the bloggers are so talented) are
sweet|salty and matt, liz and madeline. Almost every time I visit these two particular sites I cry. I cry for the loss they have both experienced. I can't believe how two complete strangers can have such an affect on me, but they do - and every time I think stuff sucks or I am feeling shitty I really need to remember how lucky I am. The internet has a strange way of bringing people together, and sharing people's loss and pain. You want to reach out and give hugs and try to do something, anything to make things better, to make things right. Yet they never will be. So it is now and hour after I told Ken I was heading to bed. And I am sitting in front of my monitor looking at pictures of a beautiful wee baby girl and bawling my eyes out.

His mouth will get him in trouble one day....

The kids grandfather (papa) came by today to help me out a bit so I could run some errands, sans children. Today I re-discovered what it is like to grocery shop ON MY OWN. When I go grocery shopping, I usually take all the kids with me and I have a list, AND I know where everything is. We are in and out pretty quick. Today I discovered the hidden treasures in the isles that I usually avoid at all costs. I even got to stop and sample some free food. Yeah, my life is that exciting.

When I got home, Nicholas and Papa were in deep conversation. I have no idea what they were talking about, but near the end Nicholas called my dad a "hoser". Now if you are Canadian, you know what that means, but if you aren't, here is an excerpt from Wikipedia for your reading pleasure:

Hoser is both a slang term and a stereotype, originating from and used primarily in Canada.[1]
Like the very similar term hosehead, it originally referred to farmers of the Canadian prairies, who would siphon gas from farming vehicles with a hose during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The expression has since been converted to the verb 'to hose' as in to trick, deceive, or steal - for example: "That card-shark sure hosed me." Hosed has an additional meaning of becoming drunk - for example: "Let's go out and get hosed."
The term "hoser" refers to an era in hockey before the ice resurfacing machine came into use. The losing team had to hose off the ice. The term "hoser" can then be construed to mean loser.

I haven't heard that term in years. I have no idea where he came up with it. My dad thought it was hilarious. "My grandson just called me a hoser" like it was almost cool (it isn't).

Later on in the day, the boys were playing outside. We have a great backyard, totally fenced in, so the kids can run themselves silly out there and I don't have to worry about them. I peeked out and busted Nicholas peeing on one of my plants. "Nicholas!" I yelled at him "why are you peeing outside?" And my son, in all seriousness looked at me and said "because I can". Isn't that the truth.

Look at that red hair!

This one is for Kate

This is little miss Renee and her mop of red hair. We were outside on a beautiful sunny day - still cold though - damned weather. The sun hitting her hair was just perfect.

I swear, one day she'll be sitting in the back of the classroom on St. Patty's day and when the teacher asks "Who's Irish" her hand will shoot up into the air and she'll say "me, me, ME!!!". She'll be the only half asian kid who can play the Irish card - all due to the red hair.