Getting old

I am getting old. 

Its true. 

It started about 54 or 55 years ago and has been happening ever since, but recently it feels like its getting faster. Days meld and seep into weeks and what was new and exciting a minute ago is now a distant memory, replace by something newer and crazier, but a little more blurry in the vision department, more painful and stiff in the muscle department and infinitely louder in the hearing bit!

Take for example 'Tinkertown', the local kids theme park that it feels like we visited with the kids just a few weeks ago (it was actually a year ago) and compare that visit to the recent visit we actually really did do just a few days ago. The kids, in my minds eye at least, are just the same annoying, loveable, feral, idiot children that they were last year.... but last year we had to ride the rides with them, or they were just too little to go onto most rides. But now, Hannah is running round like a teenager, riding the biggest, swingiest, puke inducing spinning rides in a way I couldn't even do when I was a kid and loving it. Ollie is still just a little too short for these big rides, but he too is running round, in control of himself and everyne around him, and knowing exactly where he is going and what he is doing. We only rode a couple of the smaller rides with them all day, like the Ferris wheel and mini coaster this yyear before they wanted to do their own thing!

This year we were also lucky enough to go with Alena and her two kids, Jack and Norah, who are almost exactly the same height as our two. So they paired off and did most everything together, with us watching on - It was so much more relaxing for us adults to do it this way and no one was even close to a vomit! A great day had by all and a little reminder in my ever blurrier brain that pretty soon these kiddles won't need us anymore and that will be OK and sad -  and amazing  - and surprising  - and normal all very quickly.   

A few days later and we were off out for another pile of fun - this time to the Rainbow Theatre for Frozen - the musical. 

Rainbow theatre is a cool, shaded outdoor theatre in Kildonan Park and seats a couple of thousand people underneath a pretty spectacular domed roof! 

Our kids have been through and left behind the 'Frozen' phase, but still know and like all the songs and the characters, especially Olaf and Kristof. Hannah was acting a little 'teenage cool' on the way there, saying she wasn't interested, but spent the entire show sitting with a huge smile on her face and didn't miss a second! It was lovely to go along with Susan (Grandma) too. Everyone had a great afternoon - apart from when Hannah lost her stick (literally a stick, from a tree - like there aren't any MORE sticks!. Kids are insane!!) 

                                       

Yes, you are right, that is NOT Ollie in the photo above. It's our little nephew, Austin. Ollie didn't want to be in the pic haha . I forgot to mention tha before the show, while we were in the park, we also had our annual visit to the Witches cottage and got to feed the ducks!

The very next day was yet another trip out. This time to see the Bison up close at Fort Whyte. 

Fort Whyte is advertised as an 'urban nature oasis', with lakes, trails, and lots of outdoor activities such as boating, canoeing, hiking, skiing and the animals! The main draw on the animal front is the herd of huge bison, that you can watch from afar or get on the bison bus and drive out into the herd to get a closer look. We had wanted to take the kids for ages and finally got around to it. 

It was a fascinating hour learning about the bison and watching them play and eat from inside the bus and occasionally from the bottom step of the bus entrance. The weather was perfect, and the kids enjoyed playing with and touching a real bison horn - Hannah pretended to be a unicorn, of course, which Ollie was very keen to copy! 

Last weekend was our 2nd trip to Rubber Ducky Resort - The kids had loved it last year, and we all hoped for a repeat of the great time we had 12 months ago - it didn't disappoint!

We arrived late on Thursday, and after I had a quick fight with a big rock (I reversed the car into it! Yes, I am a cock) We set up the tent and were in the pool an hour after arriving! The weather on the first afternoon was perfect - about 24/25c and sun with clouds. The kids are now really happy to be in the water and loved the slides and just jumping in and out of the pool.

We got a huge dinner of pizza, chips and chicken from the little food place there, played some fussball and then returned to the tent where we sat up with a good fire going and watched the stars appear. The kids spent ages taking daft photos with glow sticks - finally getting them to bed well after dark. 

The following 2 days were supposed to be cool and drab, with some rain. But we got lucky - It WAS a bit like that, but we had plenty of sun, and it wasn't even close to how cold it was supposed to be, so we spent more time in the pool, visited the little farm where we saw the pot-belly pigs, goats, chickens and short horses. The goats were by far the favourite with the kids, as they ran to greet them when the kids rang the special goat bell! 

Late on day two, Adam, Alena and their two kids Jack and Norah arrived and helped to make a good weekend even better as the kids all enjoyed playing and being daft together. We played on the park, the kids danced at the Saturday night concert, and we even saw an old Fire engine that the owner pulled out of storage specially to show us!

 Here's Hannah bombing into the pool!

Feeding the duckies at Rubber ducky!

All in all, it was a fantastic little holiday! 

On the way home, we even managed to spot the Prairie Dog steam train and stopped to watch it pass by - what a great way to end a fun holiday!

Its now September 2nd and the first day back at school for the kids. Hannah is now in Grade 2 and breezed through her first day with her friends. Ollie actually start Kindergarden/Nursery again on Monday so got to meet his teacher today and then spent the afternoon at hos new daycare  - both of which he loved after a nervous start!  

I will probably write a bit more about all this and Ollie birthday which was yesterday (He is 5 now can you believe it?)_ with his party being set for this coming Saturday! Summer is drawing to a sasd close, but its been a pretty great on all around!

Summer 25 so far......

Just to let you all know - I wrote all the stuff below on July 14th - Its now Aug 7th, so it's a bit old. So sorry about that - Its really, really busy at the moment and very hard to find time to do this blog thing!!

Life is generally good. It's hard being a 54-year-old dad to 2 very energetic kids. Looking at the photos and videos below, y might imagine that everything is hunky-dory and bloody wonderful. 

Well in all honestly, Life isn't bad, but it can be hard. 

The kids are pushing boundaries and learning where and how they can get their own way and when they don't it can be emotional for everyone. Its important we stand our ground as parents though and teach the kids that we also get upset and tired and that's ok - but we do fight with each other on a daily basis. I don't think any of this is unusual, but I also don't ever want to give false impressions of our instagram life! We are a normal family who often disagree. But we do love each other a lot and at the end of the day once the kids are in bed we can sit and relax for 3 - 4 minutes!

Hello everybody well i'm trying something else again today -  instead of typing all this out I decided that I'm going to basically look through all the photos and the videos that we have taken in the last couple of months and basically talk about them. This is what I normally do when I'm typing stuff out but I can't be arsed typing it today so let's try some AI dictation instead!

So where are we  - let's go back to  May and June this year...

In June this year Ollie did his first year of timbits soccer, which is  for two nights a week for Ollie and Hannah did two nights a week as welll. So on those four nights a week we go to one of the local schools and the kids play soccer with their mates. It's all organized with coaches and stuff and they both did pretty well this year. There were nights when they didn't really want to play and other nights where they played really well. They both got better at soccer and they like playing soccer with me in the yard at home too. At the end of the 6 weeks of soccer they both got a little medal which they were really chuffed about. 

I am just scrolling up through the photos and I can see there's lots of stuff that we did -  the kids were still at school at this point. Hannah came to the end of Grade 1and Ollie to the end of nursery. They both enjoyed the last year of school, even with a few issues with other kids, but they both did really well and got good reports. Hannah in particular is head and shoulders above anyone else in her grade for reading - she is reading at a grade 3 level! 

I'm looking at these pictures and I can see the kids in the museum  - the kids have been to the Manitoba museum a few times in the last year and they love it. They also still love the zoo and particularly when the dinosaurs are in the woodland walk there. 

Hannah's been riding her big bike a lot and we gave Ollie a new bike too which he has started to ride without his training wheels. He started the last few days so hopefully in a few weeks he'll be properly able to ride it without any training wheels that would be cool!

Towards the end of the school year we also had invites to lots of birthday parties  - the kids are reasonably popular so this year there's been about 10 birthday parties so far this year including Hani's birthday party herself where she had some friends around. We got a little paddling pool in the garden, and I'm all her friends played in a yard did crafts and messed about in the paddling pool in the yard. 

It was a lovely day outside, with us sat around chatting while the kids played. Its it's really nice that the kids are growing up now, they're much more independent and can play by themselves a bit more.

I now see photos of Buffy and Hannah when Hannah decided that she wants to have pink hair like Buff so I took Ollie out for the afternoon and Buffy and Hannah did their hair together before dressing up in pink clothes and taking some fashion pictures in the garden. It looks like they had a lot of fun! They had a really good day and it was nice to to come back and see them all too so happy. 

The house has had more work done too... The back of the house around our garage was terrible looking. All the old siding was a shitty, the paintwork was crap, and it was starting to look a little bit rotten so we were going to get something done about it. We were going to get it painted it first, but it turns out that siding was just as cheap as getting the old paint removed and would last longer.  Anyway we decided to get a new vinyl siding and the same time we got the roof fixed with the same company. The squirrels had been making even more holes in edge part of the roof which was starting to rot, so we got the roof fixed above the sunroom where they removed 6 layers of old shingles and wood. We also got the roof above the bathroom fixed because there was some water coming into the new bathroom after a really big rain fall. That was not fun but that's all fixed now, and its just more money spent on the house!

We have also just got a new heat pump/AC for the top floor, to keep it warm in winter and cool in summer!

In June we all went out and got haircuts in preparation for Steph and Alana's wedding,  it was actually the first haircut I'd had since December!

The wedding was a great day with a pool party in the afternoon and a great dinner and party later in eth evening. It was great apart from me getting called home by the babysitter because Hannah was being an asshole,  and so I had to come home and make sure everyone was OK before going back to the dinner at the wedding! Buffy was very happy at the wedding because she got commented on that she looked like 'fleabag' from the TV show and since it's one of her favorite TV shows and favourite characters, she was very happy  - she DID look amazing!

Back at school we had Ollie's final presentation where him and his little schoolmates all got together and songs before they finish their first year of Nursery. 

Then finally on the Canada day long weekend we had our first a trip out to the cabin this summer. We had a really nice time for 4 days and had a couple of little Adventures. We did some treasure hunts,  we went on a boat trip, we took a drive in to Kenora and saw the big fish! It was such a nice weekend thats the kids were actually crying when they came home from the cabin because they'd enjoyed it so much!

After the cabin weekend we came back, and it was actually BKKL (Burger King Kuala Lumpur) day so the kids came with us for the first time to have Burger King and and we had fun celebrating the 14th year after Buffy and I decided to stay together all those years ago.

Ollie is really growing up fast now and has moved into the top bunk now he's big enough to sleep up there by himself so he's very happy with that. He is also just about getting out of pullups,  so hopefully no more pull-ups or daipers ever again! (Update on Aug 6th - Ollie has been dry in bed for around 20 or the last 24 nights - not bad!)

The kids have also started to have good days out with mum during the school holidays - they had a trip to the Cat Cafe (Cleocatra) where you can sit and play with cats for an hour, they're doing lots of playing outside together,  they're getting on really well together at the moment. 

Hani also had a first VR experience of the museum a couple of weeks ago and loved it! There was a special exhibition on and she got to wear some VR goggles. They also have their first trip to Car Town  - this is where in the summer at one of the ice rinks they melt the ice and they turn it into a little town with electric cars for eth kids to drive. They love it so much that we're going to go back again a couple of times this summer. They have also done a little bit of 5 pin bowling as well with me and Buffy the other day and as I am typing their in bed shouting and playing with each other. I am not sure why, but they do seem to be having fun. 

In the next few weeks we have more trips to the cabin and they're going to have a really big summer doing lots and lots of cool stuff with me and Buffy so it's all going good at the moment. The kids are crazy we're all happy and pretty much everything is good. 

Well, that is not as easy as I hoped it would be - The transcription did work pretty well, but I still had to spend half an hour going over the script and tidying it up. I think I will try (or at least attempt) to keep saving small updates every few days and then putting them together in one big post, instead of waiting too many weeks and trying to do it all in one go. It takes too much time and time is summat I dont have much of nowadays with the crazies! I haven't even added photos yet! (I will do that before I post this ,so you will see vids and pics)

Anyway, time for bed for me - thanks for listening and keep in touch!

Last thing on Aug 7th - a few pics and vids from recent days...haircuts, days out, work on the house and stuff!