The Polar Bear

For a long time now, I've talked of buying Caroline an eternity ring, but the timing (and more importantly the financial situation) really haven't been right.

When I bought her engagement ring, I did so without her involvement. Hell, if the whole thing was going to be a surprise, I didn't exactly feel like the right way to go about it involved her telling me what it should look like. Caroline has always been more than happy with her engagement ring, but in the various discussions about an eternity ring (ahh the joys of shared finances) it had been decided that this time she would need to be involved. After all, it would have to fit with the rest of the bling.

Since being in Canada, we've heard a lot about Polar Bear diamonds and had discussed the fact that it would be a good part of an eternity ring and something special to take back home.

Well, events conspired in a number of ways and the jeweller that we had in mind had a closing down sale. We went in to see what they could do for us 2 days ago simply because of the sale and an hour later a plan had been not only hatched, but executed as well. It came down to the fact that they could put together a ring symbolising past, present and future, incorporating the diamond from Caroline's engagement ring along with a matching diamond sitting either side of a polar bear diamond. When the owner of the store said to us, "I suppose you would like it for Christmas?" we were done. We hadn't even considered the possibility of having something back in 2 days.

Sure enough though, we went in today and there it was, sparkling magnificently and ready for Christmas. We took it away and I wrapped it up, but given that it isn't really a Christmas present, more of a good God look how much i love you present, i only left it wrapped under the tree until just before mass.

Rather than describe just how lovely it is, I thought it easier to post this instead:

Deep Freeze

Winter has come back this week with a vengeance, just to remind us that whilst global warming might be a significant concern, there’s more than a little way to go before we start growing palm trees in the streets of Fort McMurray.

All week I’ve been waking up to the sound of the weather report saying happy things like, its currently -31 degrees and we’re going to get to a high of -24! I hate to correct them, but there’s no way that should be called a high.

The temperature first plummeted on Saturday last weekend, when we drove to Edmonton (having avoided the Friday night drive due to a blizzard that was dumping snow and wind all over the province and turning the roads to skating rinks). We navigated the road to Edmonton without incident (and were thankful that much of the drive was in daylight having not left until 7am (The sun rose at 9!). The 6 inch deep snow in the streets of Edmonton was an interesting experience though, with little two wheel drive cars skating their way around the city. Nothing like watching the car next to you at the lights trying to get moving with its rear wheels spinning as the back end of the car slides toward you.

One of the problems that you face when its that cold is that if you choose, like we did, to walk to the shops, you need to layer yourself up with clothes so that you don’t die of exposure getting there. Then of course, once you get inside the shop, they have the heat set to ‘Caribbean’ which means that you have to shed coats and things and carry them around the whole time you’re shopping and kids are so good at carrying their own coats!

The ride home was again uneventful, though there was that morbid fascination with watching the temperature drop on the dash … -20 …. -25 … it was about then that Emily said that she needed to go to the toilet. We were of course in the middle of nowhere. Fortunately she fell asleep and gave us a reprieve. Sam however decided he needed to go. So I told him it was -25 and asked if he could hold on. He assured me that he’d try. Of course half an hour later, Michael too needed to go and Emily had woken up again. Things were desperate so I pulled into a rest stop which happened to have a toilet (We were in the 200km, no services part of the trip). At this point it had plummeted to -30C.

We trooped in to the washroom to find that there were no lights. Fabulous. I happened to have a cigarette lighter in my pocket from starting cooking fires the last time I’d worn it and so used that to give us a faint glimmer with which to work by. It was a miserable little thing and of course, it kept getting too hot for me to sustain, so it was a comical little performance of light, hold …ouch. Light, hold … ouch, Light, hold … ouch! Emily quickly stripped her pants down her legs and sat down, only to quickly stand up again and say “Daddy, could you please get the ice of the seat?” Ahh the joys.

For the rest of the week, we’ve been facing those temperatures and being reminded daily of the little things that that means:

- Within moments, your lips are dry and cracked and you’re looking for that old chapstick you put somewhere last winter.
When your car has been outside all day, you really need to run it for a good 15 minutes before you want to get in because the seats are like frozen lumps of ice

- The LCD display on the car tends to be sluggish and confused for a while until it warms up (apparently the liquid in Liquid Crystal Display starts to suffer).

- When you do sit in the car, your breath not only fogs up the windows but forms ice crystals on the INSIDE of the window

- The tyres of the car are so cold that when you start driving you think you’re on old-fashioned solid rubber tyres and the suspension and all the lubricants squeak and groan as they warm up.

- It suddenly doesn’t matter how bad the thing you put on your head looks as long as it’s warm enough.

- Gloves aren’t just for girls and sissies anymore

- When you take off from the traffic lights you’re surrounded by insta-fog* and have to slow down to avoid hitting the hidden ‘truck in the mist’.

- All is good though, because it is supposed to warm up again (we’ll see) despite the fact that when I woke up this morning I was greeted by the radio happily announcing that its -39 outside right now and we’re heading for a high of -32!

I heard someone say, step outside with a smile on your face today and you’ll be smiling all day ... because your smile will be frozen there and you won’ change it no matter how you feel!

Skiing has been cancelled for the weekend (hell, its off the chart cold), but next week we might get warm enough to get to freezing rain! (See the 17th of December below – the white line is the average for this time of year)



Freezing rain was new one for us this year. Basically it means that it’s warm enough to rain, but cold enough that when it hits the ground, it turns to ice. We’ve seen it once so far this year and the footpaths were literally frozen over with ice, a nice slippery, glassy sheet of ice. It was bad enough that my traction control kicked in getting up the drive way. I’ll be happy if we don’t see more.

For now, the brass monkeys have packed their bags and headed South, sans orbs.


*Insta-fog – That’s what you get when you pump exhaust gases out the back of your car at -30C or so. It’s like an opaque cloud of fog enveloping everything behind you, kind of like the old cartoon black inky clouds that you’d expect to see come out the back of Dick Dastardly’s car in Wacky Races (yes, showing my age).

And that's why I'm the Godfather!

Received on Facebook

Sitting at the table last night and Cameron says "Uncle Dave is cool" out of the blue. "Why?" I say and he replies "becasue he can stick his tongue up his nose."

"So how is that cool I ask?" "Becasue he does not get boogy on his fingers"

Hahahahaha

Miscellany

Deer
I happened to look out the window during a meeting today (hey I live in a box without windows all day and don’t t see the sun, give me a break!) and happened to see two Mule deer walking past through the car park. Not something you see every day.

Twilight
No, I haven’t seen the movie. No, I haven’t read the book. Yes, I have seen too many publicity photos plastered across the web. All I have to ask is; Is it mandatory to have eyes that don’t open properly to feature as a teen heart throb in this flick? Take a good look: Stewart, Lautner and Pattison. Either they’ve dropped more drugs together than can possibly be good for someone, or they just missed out on getting eyes that open all the way up. Sure, I’m not the most photogenic bloke out there and hell my eyes aren’t exactly going to get my mug on the web, but I just can’t help but notice that in almost every photo I’ve seen of this trio, they all look whacked.

Irony
Fort McMurray sits amongst the second largest oil deposit in the world. Its in the form of Oilsands though, so we mine the sand, extract the bitumen and then turn it to crude. The crude gets sent elsewhere for processing. I can’t help but find it ironic though that whilst working in the second largest oil deposit in the world, the local petrol station ran out of fuel. Twice, in the last 2 weeks.

Fade to White

After the early dump of snow just before Halloween (what we like to call a Helen special) we’ve had a couple of weeks of unseasonably warm* weather. That meant that unlike the first two winters that we’d spent up here, the first blanket of white to lay itself over everything disappeared. We had a couple of weeks of mini-spring, IE mud.

Over the weekend we received another crisp white blanket of snow though, restoring things to what one would expect for this time of year. Saturday was overcast and it snowed for most of the day, but Sunday dawned bright and sunny> When the snow is crisp and fresh and the sun shines, it reflects of the thousands upon thousands of ice crystals in the snow and you’re treated to a gorgeous sparkling blanket. Right up to the point where the plough runs along the road, spraying all the dirt and grime from the road across it.

Of course, with the snow having arrived properly, it won’t be melting again this side of spring and so the colour has again drained from the world. The trees are bare and everything that isn’t vertical get’s its coat of white. That might be great news for the ski season (33 days until we head off to kicking horse!) But it’s not so good for the soul. Eventually the lack of colour, the constant cold and absence of the sun really start to wear you down. Which is why like last year, we’re planning an escape about mid-winter. Last year it was to Jamaica, this year, we’re flying to Florida before embarking on a Caribbean Cruise. It should be awesome (and for those that are counting – that would be me – its only 75 days away!)


*By unseasonably warm I mean that it was hitting highs of around +4 Celsius instead of lingering down around 4 or 5 below.

Fade to White

After the early dump of snow just before Halloween (what we like to call a Helen special) we’ve had a couple of weeks of unseasonably warm* weather. That meant that unlike the first two winters that we’d spent up here, the first blanket of white to lay itself over everything disappeared. We had a couple of weeks of mini-spring, IE mud.

Over the weekend we received another crisp white blanket of snow though, restoring things to what one would expect for this time of year. Saturday was overcast and it snowed for most of the day, but Sunday dawned bright and sunny> When the snow is crisp and fresh and the sun shines, it reflects of the thousands upon thousands of ice crystals in the snow and you’re treated to a gorgeous sparkling blanket. Right up to the point where the plough runs along the road, spraying all the dirt and grime from the road across it.

Of course, with the snow having arrived properly, it won’t be melting again this side of spring and so the colour has again drained from the world. The trees are bare and everything that isn’t vertical get’s its coat of white. That might be great news for the ski season (33 days until we head off to kicking horse!) But it’s not so good for the soul. Eventually the lack of colour, the constant cold and absence of the sun really start to wear you down. Which is why like last year, we’re planning an escape about mid-winter. Last year it was to Jamaica, this year, we’re flying to Florida before embarking on a Caribbean Cruise. It should be awesome (and for those that are counting – that would be me – its only 75 days away!)


*By unseasonably warm I mean that it was hitting highs of around +4 Celsius instead of lingering down around 4 or 5 below.

Learning

On wednesday of this week, we had a holiday for memorial day (the 11th of November and all the import that that implies). That however, is not the purpose of this post. Michael has had a project looming over him for a while that he wanted my help with as it involved constructing a moving vehicle. Having the day at home gave us some time to tackle it.

Whilst getting ready to do that, I came across Sam in his room who was very upset. Enquiries lead to the revelation that it was because he had some school work to do that involved having to draw some pictures. And he couldn’t draw them (must have inherited my lack of artistic ability). He was attempting to draw planes and birds, from scratch, with nothing to reference to help him.

It was a bit later on that this caused me to pause and think about the two different approaches that I was seeing between Michael and Sam.

Michael was very much in the mind set of getting the least amount of work possible done at the latest possible time so that he could devote his time to more enjoyable pursuits.

Sam on the other hand, unprompted was trying to tackle his homework and was upset because he couldn’t live up to his own exacting standards.

I helped them both, showing Sam a few tricks that would help him produce pictures of a quality he’d be happy with that didn’t involve the internet or a computer and he was happily on his way.

I also helped Michael to get his model constructed and working, as well as showing him a good way to document his design. Of course, once the model was built, Michael was happy to put the whole thing aside and move on to those more enjoyable pursuits. Sam plowed away at his homework (admittedly a less demanding task) until it was complete.

Michael needed some prompting to pull out the assessment guidelines to be sure that he was covering all his bases, but once prompted, at least took some time to look over it (well most of it) and make sure that he’d get a good result. It must be said that his chief concern was that the car that we’d made would go fast!

And then, there’s Tom. I feel for Tom, because Sam is usually coming home from school and telling us that he managed to get very high marks for his various tests. Michael doesn’t announce things in the same way, but he usually does very well. Tom doesn’t do badly, but with the legacy of his speech difficulties, things are significantly more challenging for him, so we build him up with his good results, hoping that he can focus on the fact that he’s doing well, rather than the fact that he can’t quite make it up to the extra-high standard of his brothers.

We’re all learning still.

delayed

Today (well it was when I wrote this ... 2 days ago now) was supposed to be a happy day, because Mum and Dad were going to be arriving in Fort McMurray to visit us. The obvious use of tense here gives away the fact that that isn’t going to happen. Apparently they missed their connection in Sydney by 10 minutes. I don’t know the details of why, but I blame Air Canada because they seem to be good at that sort of thing (I have no idea if it’s true or not, but they should have bloody waited!)

That means that having put the kids to bed full of the excitement and anticipation of Nanny and Poppa’s imminent arrival, they get to wake up to disappointment and an extra sleep added to the count.

The other highlight for this week was supposed to be the pool table that we’ve ordered for Christmas arriving at our door. Although it’s for Christmas, when we ordered it we were told that as they had a delivery already going to Fort McMurray on the 28th, they should be able to get it up there at the same time. That certainly had us excited.

Having heard nothing from them since placing the order, I thought that I’d check and make sure that it was still going to be arriving as planned. After all, we’ve all been looking forward to having the table in the house (it was quickly decided that there’d be no waiting until Christmas!) So I called through at lunch time only to be told “it seems that the delivery has been delayed and won’t arrive until the 2nd of November and of course that means arriving in Edmonton on the 2nd, so I asked when I could expect it to arrive in Fort McMurray. “Oh, I’m not sure, you’ll have to speak to your salesman about that, he’s at lunch just now and I’ll have him call you back.”

One day I’d just like to have someone give me some good news *sigh*.

eleven

Yes, it’s one of those posts. On the 16th of this month, Friday, Sam turned 11. I sat down to write about it earlier and managed to get as far as the title before things got in the way, but had to come back and mark the occasion. (I won’t have to stretch my brain on a birthday post until March after this … unless there’s a big call for one call Thirty Nine in February?)

What to say about Sam at 11? Well fortunately there’s nothing negative that I have to say. No running off and joining a gang or the like at this point. Sam is probably the quietest of the four kids. He keeps his head down and quietly plugs away at what ever work he has to do and needs little reminding. He managed honour roll again last year and from what I’ve seen of the start of this year, there’s no reason to suspect that he might not do it again. I have no concerns for him academically.

He’s been devouring my bookshelf this last year. I don’t quite recall which of the books it was that he really started to get into, but it took some convincing to get him onto the next one. He’d reached the end of a series and wanted something to read. I kept throwing Feist’s Magician at him, but it took several attempts. Of course, once he started, there was no putting it down. Between he and Michael, they’ve slowly been identifying the gaps in various series that I have. At first Sam seemed to be on a mission to find the book with the largest number of pages and that anything with less than 600 or so simply wouldn’t be acceptable. He’s come around now and will read almost anything. It might start to hurt me if we have to buy book at Australian prices one day.

Sports wise, Sam is all about minimization. He enjoyed soccer over the summer and played in the under 12 development team with Michael. That proved to be a bit much though when he had to do something soccer related up to four days a week. He was happy to play a bit, not a lot. He didn’t play ice sports last year and although he’s a good skier, isn’t interested in anything particularly organized. He simply doesn’t like having to put a swag of clothes on. He’s been holding out with the shorts as long as possible as the temperature here starts to slide. He’ll be playing indoor soccer this winter and skiing when he feels like it. He’s also playing volleyball again at the moment (school sport is weird here) and I think again that one of the reasons that he likes it is that he gets to take clothes off rather than put additional clothes on in order to participate.

Sam hasn’t quite clicked with the Canadians though has made a couple of friends. There doesn’t seem to be anyone that would fit a best friend category and I think that he’s pretty much put that sort of thing on hold, pending a return to Australia. Of all the kids, Sam is the one that has most explicitly stated that he wants to go home.

Just this morning we were talking over breakfast and he said that what would be really good was if we could be home for his birthday next year (this was his third in Canada) but still get to be here for Halloween. That’s one little holiday I think our kids will miss when we go home (though I suspect its all about the candy!)

Speaking of breakfast, one of the unexpected joys of Sam’s volleyball is that the practice is usually before school, so he has to be there between 7:15 and 7:30am. That means that I get to drive him there. There’s something special about getting to have an early start to the day with Sam. He’s a good morning person generally and when you get him one on one like that, happy to have a chat and tell you things that might otherwise be lost in the noise of a busy family.

So on Volleyball days, we eat breakfast together and take a quick trip to school. It’s got to be one of my favourite times of the week! It’s a time when I’m reminded of his ever growing maturity, his imagination, fragility and the complexity of his evolving personality.


Happy Birthday Sam!

Oh Shit.

One of the main reasons for getting to Edmonton was to shop prior to winter. We went through the outlet stores on Saturday and on Sunday, headed off to the West Edmonton Mall.

Of the unacquainted, it’s the fifth largest mall in the world (and the largest in North America), has an amusement park, a water park, mini golf, an ice rink …. etc etc. We thought we’d get the shopping out of the way first and then take the kids to the water park as we hadn’t been back there since the very first time.

As we shopped, we started running into fellow Fort Mac based Aussies who like us had taken the opportunity to bugger off for the long weekend. So it was that I found myself chatting in Gap Kids, with the kids looking at clothes (um yeah, sure, so some of them were just terrorizing each other and everyone in the store – its LIKE looking at clothes) and Caroline was trying to sort out payment.

I looked around to do the obligatory head count as it had been a while. Michael? Check. Samuel? Check. Thomas? Hmmm, oh wait, there he is … Check. Emily …probably in a change room with 436 different things to try on. I chatted a bit longer as I continued to scan the shop looking for her. I couldn’t find her and checked with Caroline if she’d seen her. Nope. The people we were chatting to? Not for a while. The heart notched itself up just a fraction (after all, I was used to not seeing a kid for a bit and finding them hiding in the middle of clothing display or sitting down out of the way waiting) and I started to search the store. It’s at the point you start calling out your child’s name that other people start to take a bit more interest.

It’s when you think you’ve looked through the entire store and all the change room that your heart accelerates to the point where its beating is like a drum placed within the ear canal. When you check just outside the store and there’s now collectively 6 adults looking and you still haven’t found her, headlines start to work their way into your conscious despite your best efforts to continue calmly looking.

The staff at Gap closed the doors so that she couldn’t’ get out without us noticing, Caroline had raced off outside to start searching the mall (hey, there’s only about 800 shops and 570,000 square metres to look through). I rounded up the boys and started to describe (and wonder) what she was wearing so that security could be informed. Thomas quietly enquired if Patrick could come back to our campsite.

Before things could get too bad, we had a call back from security to tell us that they had Emily. I think there must have only been 2 minutes pass between the call being made from gap and getting that call back. You know you’re looked after when that happens. The things I think about that could have been alternatives are simply too horrible to even write about.

I called Caroline to let her know and was escorted to security where I was instantly clung to and somewhat relieved.

I didn’t even stop to ask where they’d found her or who had brought her there, I was simply too happy to have her hanging on and not letting go. I was impressed with the way the Gap staff handled the situation as well. I just hope that’s not from lots of practice, because no one really needs to go through that!