My Family

Family

One of our first weekends out as a family this spring was fishing, pretend fishing lol. We hit up Grovedale and Clairmont Ponds, Moonshine Lake and Clairmont again. There were fish, we saw them. some little rainbows jumping around was all.
I am sure we will get out again this fall and catch some nice trout. Next stop, Spring Lake and Sturgeon Lake…

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We love our animals and then some!

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The Early Years

Mary Mary Quite Contrary

Melanie would be better off telling you all about Mary and she will have a ton more pictures I think. Mary was her BFF and this super awesome, well trained dog. She was a brilliant cross Pitbull and the best trained house dog I ever saw. These photos are from a little later in her life, I can especially tell because of the Grays.

Once I have a blog special to Mary I will put a link in here ( note to self ).

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I am so blessed to have my oldest and sweetest daughter Patience, my boy Daniel, and Faith – Last but not least. This photo is of Daniel on his first birthday. This little guy is why we delayed getting married by a year. He would have been born right when we had originally planned to tie the knot.
It is a miracle to have these 3 beautiful souls sharing their lives with me. As you may know, a child I was diagnosed with Hajdu Cheney Syndrome, an ultra-rare genetic disorder predominantly of my connective tissues and especially the ends of my bones.
Patience quickly stepped into the big sister role, she is such a natural leader and boss like no-one else. Children learn so much at a such a young age and even though this was 8-10 years ago she is still a great sister and always on the lookout for Daniel and Faith. Too much sometimes :).
Daniel learned early, too, about being a big brother and helping his little sister. He is a good follower too, he naturally followed Patience’s lead in play and in chores. He does learn at his own pace and he can go in spurts where he just matures a bunch overnight.

I love Faith so much, her and I butt heads far more than we should and way more than I want to. She’s so stubborn (maybe the Scottish in her?) and wants to be so independent. I get that it must be hard being the youngest and smallest of a family of 5 and that she has one of those wild and free spirits. Still, it can be really hard when I am exhausted and sore. She is very particular and can be very difficult to get to clean up and chip in with chores and cleaning her room up. Mom has way more patience than I do with her not cleaning up her messes which is a good thing. I have different ways of organizing her stuff and it just confuses everyone else lol

As we get older we grow and change and fit the world around us. Patience naturally leads, Daniel is a silent observer who doesn’t say much but pay attention when he does. Faith gets a way with a lot more being the youngest child. We are looking for ways to encourage her to take on more responsibilities at home. She doesn’t have the same executive functioning that Patience has, it is a curse and a blessing to say the least.

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I cannot believe almost 11 years with children have passed, 13 since Melanie and I began dating again after an 8 year split. It is seriously a blink of the eye. I used to think it was some time distorting from working in a fast paced kitchen but nah, life just goes fast, faster with young kiddos in the mix of it.

This summer we were able to get most of the immediate family together and magically got some photos taken by a good friend and old colleague, Daylin.

This summer had a lot of swimming lessons, some gymnastics and some basketball too. This was the first time they got to do some summer camps and it’s definitely something we will do again. We lost our free access to the Eastlink this year but next year it will be free for us and we will get way more activity in. Some more competitive stuff in the summer would be great, swimming lessons may be better off a winter thing.