Brantford

We were away all weekend in Brantford for Mark's hockey tournament. They were 1-1-1. Mark was MVP for the first game and the coaches told him he played even better during the second game.
Of course Brantford is where the Great One #99 Way.ne Gret.zky is from and his dad, Walter, is still very involved with hockey there. He was in the arena signing autographs to a huge line of kids and adults on Saturday. Sadly, Wayne was in town last weekend not this weekend.



After a day of hockey, everyone spent some time in the water at the sports center. There were 4 pools, high diving boards and a water slide for the kids to enjoy. The place was huge and it was hard to keep your eye on them all. We really were relying on lifeguards! Jade loved the waterslide. I was too chicken to let her jump off the high board into 16ft of water.


When you are in a hotel with a number of families with kids on the same hockey team you spend a lot of time running the halls, eating, drinking and making friends. Mark was soooooo tired on Sunday that I found him sleeping standing up in the mattesses at Costco!!

Chef Mark

While eating his lunch on Saturday, Mark was flipping through the What's Cooking magazine.
"Mom" he said "I want to have this for supper, and I think I can make this all by myself. It looks pretty easy."
Not wanting to pass up a chance at having someone else slaving in my kitchen, I took his list of ingredients and headed off the the store.



With garlic bread and a salad, Mark served a pasta dish that we all devoured. I offered him the use of the kitchen on a daily basis ~ He can cook for me anytime!!

Melting...

The skates are off and the rubber boots are on.
Time for splashing:

and for trying to break through:

and for surfing on a floating chunk of ice and hoping you don't fall in:

It was all about hockey yesterday. Mark played 2 games and his team is now #1. The first game was very intense.....better than any NHL game could ever be!! Later in the afternoon they blew the team in their second game away leaving with a 6-1 win. Last night, during the second intermission of our city's OHL hockey game, Mark's school hockey team was in a Shoot Out contest with another school team. Each team got 20 shots at the other's goalie and Mark's team won!

• Mark, Z and Colin are waiting to go out on the ice. Mike took this pic and it cracks me up how little Mark and Z look and how huge Colin looks!! Quite the angle.....

• Mark making his shot. He missed both shots he took, which bummed him out. He's been practising for this for weeks. He got a little stage fright when he heard the crowd cheer when Z got his goal just before Mark went. He didn't realize so many people would stay in their seats to watch.
  

• Mark (in the white hat) sitting with all his buddies. I zoomed in to get this shot of them!
  

• Mark is the first shooter. You can hear the crowd say "Aww" when he misses. Colin is next. Then you can stop watching!!
  
  
  
  

Mark was in a hockey tournament in London this past weekend so we took advantage of it and made it a little getaway. We went to all his hockey games, which were fantastic. The boys were so determined to win that they worked their little butts off. Unfortunately they didn't go all the way. They had a lot of fun "bonding" with each other in the hotel pool, playing mini sticks in the hallway and eating, eating and eating. Mark played a game in the fairground arena and right next door was the London Trailer Show. We walked through it and saw some amazing trailers, but none that we liked more than ours. Mike has the itch to bring the trailer home and start camping. One nice day will do that to him!

Jade made this beautiful Valentine for Mark. She is so sweet. He was very gracious when she gave it to him. Her spelling needs some work so we are not sure if she purposely left out the "r" in brother or not. She loves him when he is a bother and a brother!

I have to take my brother GPS shopping this week. Someone broke into our locked truck and stole his GPS out of the console. I worried all night that someone was going to break into his house because his home address was in the GPS as Home. So we are advising everyone who has a GPS to not use their home address as Home on your GPS. Put in the address to the mall or the police station (good idea Chris). If theives are stealing GPS's out of hotel parking lots they know you are not home leaving your house an easy target.

Finally, the results of the father and son hockey game. I had to leave the arena to take Jade to Brownies so I didn't see it all. I was told by Mike that the dads won. I was later told by Mark that the sons won. Both aren't changing their stories!

You know that life is pretty boring when all you have to blog about is Jade's sandwiches! This is what remains of all of her sandwiches. She puts the crusts back in the original sandwich shape, kind of like doing a puzzle.

I know....exciting stuff.


Ok...this is a little more exciting. Mike and Mark played a father vs. son hockey game last night. Mike has been tormenting Mark all week about how the son's will be "goin' down". When Mike left for work yesterday morning he left this note for Mark on the table with a box of Kleenex:

A picture of Mark edited with the 1960's feature from Picnik.

Tired of Winter Yet?!?

While I was removing a years worth of snow from the driveway, Mark was removing it from the rink. At first I thought he was hurt, but nope, just taking a little break!

By the way, this child has never ever picked up a shovel to help with the driveway since he was 2 and had the cutest little snowman shovel, but when the only way he can skate is to shovel off the rink he has this remarkable shovelling talent that breaks all speed records.....why is that?!?!?

Mike spent most of Saturday and Sunday working on the rink/mancave.




Mark got a nice surprise when he went to his hockey game Saturday morning. He was named Assistant Captain. He's pretty proud. Actually, I don't know who's more proud, Mark or his dad!

Dilemmas.

Mark had a big decision to make today.
Does he go to Enrichment, which takes place at a different school, or miss it because today at school there is a something very, very exciting happening. Are you ready for it? A Bake Sale!
I'm not kidding, he really was struggling with what he wanted to do.

In the end he chose Enrichment, but I gave Jade extra money so she could buy him the candy kabob that was the root of the whole dilemma. You'd never know there was still a huge bag of candy on my dining room table.

"Of You Mommy"

When Mark was 2 he gave me this cube of pictures of him for Christmas. When you push the red button his little 2 year old voice says "Love you mommy"

Mark imitates it perfectly and sometimes out of the blue I'll ask him to do it just because it makes me smile!

FYI: It cost me money to get him to make this video and to be "allowed" to post it on the blog!!

Happy 11th Mark!!

On the 31st of July Mark turned 11 years old. It fell on a Thursday and he was born on a Thursday! I remember that I started my labour at midnight and he finally arrived at 9:27 pm! I also remember that at 9:15 I told everyone in the delivery room I was only doing this until 9:30! Looking back I wonder if they were all laughing at the delusional woman who thought she had some kind of control over the situation. How stupid I would have looked if it went on for hours after 9:30....

We had Grandma and Grandpa, Jeff, Tammy and Craig and Ron, Pam and the girls for a bbq. My dad was not well enought to make it this year. He says he will be fine for Craig's bday party next week though! Andy and Heather brought their kids over later for cake, ice cream and a water balloon fight.
Mark asked for Guitar Hero Aerosmith for his birthday and before the night was over he had enough money to buy one! He also got the MP3 player that he really wanted and some AE t-shirts. The Ripley's book he got has some very gruesome pictures in it...the perfect gift for an 11 year old boy!!

At camp Jade made Mark a bracelet with his favourite hockey team colours and a pop up bday card.

Mike was the water balloon filler-er-upper. He could not keep up with the demand!

Happy Birthday Sweet Mark! We love you to pieces and are so very proud of the young man you are becoming!

Week One Down...

Day camp is a huge hit for Jade. She's having a blast at the same day camp that I went to many, many years ago. She hops on the bus without a look back and is gone for the day. All the activity and fresh air is pooping her out and last night she had a m.a.j.o.r. meltdown. She was just so exhausted she could not function. A 2 hour nap helped tremendously and today she is the Jade we all know and love. *whew*


Mark did some work for Mike on Monday. He stickered the inventory and earned himself a few dollars for all his hard work! Mike was impressed with the job he did and how he worked without any complaining. One of his friends dared him to go 2 weeks without going to Daisy Mart (the variety store that has the majority of his money) and he is almost there. He says it's not as hard as he thought it would be. I'm hoping he will see how much money he's earned and saved in the last 2 weeks.

I wanted to take a movie of Jade singing but this is what she did when the camera came out! And she stopped singing too :(

University Already?

Here is Mark in his university dorm room.

Really.

It was just for one night..he's not leaving me already! He went on a field trip with his enrichment class to Wilfred Laurier University and this was his room. It sort of reminded me of a jail cell because that was all there was to it! There was a shared bathroom between his and a room just like it. The room was very dark at night and Mark said he was only scared for a few minutes. The only light was the light coming in around the door. He knew Mike was a few doors down so that was reassuring for him. Mike took 2 days off work and chaperoned the trip.

There were 4 courses that the kids took. One of them was archaeology where they got to dig and find "stuff" (See pic below). Mark really liked it but his favourite course was a business one where he had to run an outer space business where he had to finance his spaceship, pay insurance, his alien staff and provide trips for humans to outer space. His business didn't go bankrupt!

There was a dance which Mark chose not to go to because Sue (Mike's old girlfriend and a chaperone too) told him there was a girl in her group who thought he was cute and couldn't wait for the dance so she could meet him. Knowing Sue, I'm sure it wasn't true but it freaked Mark out a bit so he chose to stay back and miss the dance.

Instead of dancing he learned how to play poker. *sigh*

April Fool's Day

Poor Mark! Mike got him sooooo good this morning.

Mike handed Mark this brochure to "Chore Camp" and told him that he was spending the weekend there. Mark was horrified and fell for the joke hook, line and sinker!
He sure wasn't happy at the time of the joke, but was laughing when he was telling Colin and Lyndsey about it before they left for school.

Click on the brochure if you want to read what they offer at this fabulous (but fake) camp!


Mike also signed a permission slip for a field trip for the kids.....to outer space! AND, there's more, he put up a contaminated sign from the health department on Jade's bedroom door. Those 2 jokes got a laugh out of the kids!

But Mike better watch out......after he left for work Jade hid a rubber frog, spider and other creepy creatures in his underwear drawer!

Those Dots Add Up

Mark has been asking and asking for this:

for his Playstation. Mike and I both thought that is was way too much money for a video game ($180 with tax) so we told him to "Save your money". And he did! He did many jobs so he would get his dot on the calendar (each dot is worth 25-50 cents depending on the job) He had gift cards left over from his birthday and Christmas and a piggy bank full of money (donations to the cause I think!) Every couple of weeks he would make a little chart of how much he had in quarters, nickels, bills etc.

It's amazing what he can accomplish when he's determined.

On Saturday Mike took him to the mall and they came home with Rock Band. Mark was soooooo excited. He put the whole thing together himself and started jamming right away. He is amazing at this game. Jeff had to come over and check it out too. Jade looks so cute when she's banging on the drums.

I'm looking forward to the next thing that Mark wants so desperately. It was nice having my floors swept and the dinner table set and cleared for the last little while!

Mark and Trever playing hockey.

Hockey, hockey, hockey....


Jade having some fun on the trampoline:

Hockey Practice.

At Mark's hockey practice last week the 4 top hockey players from our OHL team came and joined the kids on the ice. Mark was soooo excited. He goes to every home game and is a big fan of these players. The player in the white hat - Steve Stamkos - just returned from the World Juniors with a gold medal for Canada. He will someday play in the NHL and at this practice Mark deeked him out during the scrimmage they had. He's very thrilled about that!

Mark is #16 in the grey.



While they were on the ice, Mike was making a quick trip home to gather up Sting stuff for Mark to get autographed.

Silly String

Sometimes it's the simple things that make a person's day! Like Silly String. I wish you could hear the noise these 2 were making! Happy noise....like laughing!!
Mark won a gift card for Winners from the blimp at the Sting game, so off we head to Winners where he buys a Star Wars Silly String gun! Mean mom wouldn't let him spray it all over the house so Mark took it outside to blast dad who was working very hard at cleaning up the leaves!