August-Oct 2022

 Besides the Capes race, I was able to go hang out with my grandma while Hubby held down the fort. Her memory is having some trouble, but her BFF takes good care of her.  Grandma moved into the same facility as E, her bestie in April.  

It was good to spend time with Grandma and have hours to talk and chat.  She's not getting out very much but still loves chatting with people and telling stories.

As summer came to a close, 
we took the kids river rafting with friends:

H and V also got an opportunity to fly with local airplane pilots:

Once I got home from Chicago we had an appointment for H.  H is about to start high school and grades 7 & 8 were pretty rough.  H is very bright but struggles in a traditional class setting.  We made the difficult decision to try ADD meds to see if it would help him with school. During the appointment, the Dr. agreed with us and his teachers that he had signs of ADD (different than ADHD) and medication might be helpful.  

School started in September.  The kids are in Grades 12, 9 and 7 now.

I had another trail race in early September-Heart Lake put on by a trail company called 5 peaks. It was 14km.  Again made it into the top third.

V has started in the gifted program for our district.  She seems quite happy to have this outlet as she's been bored in school for the last few years.  A few times a month she takes a bus to another school and does higher level, creative work.  1st semester 20% of her science grade will be from the class.  2nd semester 20% of her art grade will be.  She also gets to take electives which are optional (she signed up for all of them). The first was a murder mystery day where they were assigned characters.  The second was a pasta car construction and race.

In Sept/Oct Hubby and I made a bit of a change in our livelihood. Hubby took his Level 2 ice technician class and I took my level 1.  The current curling club ice maker is set to retire in 3 years and when that happens, we will be taking over for him. Until then Hubby is the Assistant Ice Technician and I'm his assistant.  Right now this works out to about 10 hours of work a week for Hubby and 2 for myself as we prepare the ice under the watchful eye of the Official Ice Technician.  This means 4pm-6pm usually finds us at the club preparing ice for that evening's games and since I curl twice a day on Thursdays when I help out, I spend most of my Thursdays at the curling club.  We plan to take on more and more work over the next 3 years with the last year being 50% us, 50% the current ice maker.

In October, my last race of the year was the Chicago Marathon. I've been training for a few months now with the goal of finishing in under 4 hours.  Considering my previous marathons were at 4:29, 4:22, 4:12 this seemed a good goal.  I'm happy to announce I finished in 3 hours and 54 minutes!

My cousin came to see me at the finish line and make sure I made it back on the train.

While I was in Chicago I was able to see my cousins, including their daughter/granddaughter and my university friends and their kids.  It was so good to not only have a great race but see friends and family.  After 2 years of deferrals it really was a treat.  I also enjoyed the race expo.  After Covid one of the local run stores in our area didn't survive and it was neat to see some of the clothing and equipment we don't have as much access to where I live.

I've still been active with our local run club, in fact I won the president's award this year and have started running a Friday Night Lights run where we trail run in the dark.  With the longer runs, I found this was an area that was keeping lots of people from attempting these longer feats so I started teaching others to run in the dark and also keep up my own skills.

C and I volunteered for our run club's fall trail race:

November was the last really long run of the year. I and some friends ran 50km on the Bruce trail to remember our friend's brother who was killed by a drunk driver while running.  To learn more about the incident, you can watch a FB live video her dad recorded with OPP earlier this year. She recently got married and it was a hard day without her brother.

Hubby and I got dressed and attended her wedding the week before:

My parents came out for a visit and we had great weather while they were here. We went to check out the Niagara Parks Power station, a hundred year old Hydroelectric power station.  We did the tour, had lunch and came back for a nighttime light show.

My favorite-a giant labelmaker!

Now that we are into fall, H is skating 2 lessons a week and a Program Assistant with the CanSkate program helping out coaches with new skaters; V is swimming, working towards her Canadian Swim Patrol completion; C is hard at work on classes to qualify him for University and pick what he'll be doing next year (finalists are computer science degree and electrician) and Hubby and I are curling and taking care of the ice at the curling club.