Christmas Festivities 2013

What a wonderful Christmas we had!  We took a ton of pictures and Breanne has put a video together of the family Christmas including both the Loaring side of the family as well as the Sharratt side which tells it all.  It is an awesome video!  You will see in the video my surprise Christmas gift from Brian!  Annika and I now can have some extra special play-dates!  We had many blessings this holiday season!

Merry Christmas 2013–going down memory lane…

Hard to believe that yet another year has gone by!  Brian and I want to take this opportunity to wish our many family and friends a very Merry Christmas and a healthy and safe New Year 2014!  Thank you to all the people that have sent us Christmas cards and especially those that have sent us pictures and updates of their family lives.  It is nice to know how your year has gone and what you have been up to.

I am always amazed at the number of people that keep up with my blog and Breanne’s blog at http://bjams-loaring.blogspot.ca.  We both love doing our blogs mainly just to document for ourselves the things we have done and the pictures we have taken.  As with most people nowadays, we take digital pictures and very few of us keep photo albums anymore so having a blog with the pictures that mean things to us is important.  I love being able to go back and read some of what I have written or pictures I have taken to bring back the memories and to help me not to forget.  I don’t consider myself “old” per se but I do find that my memory is certainly not as good as it used to be and I feel awful when someone says “do you remember when” and then realize that I don’t remember the event or thing they were telling me about.  So I’m hoping that as I age and as I look back on my blog and Breanne’s blog, I can see how I felt about things, see the pictures I love the most and talk about the people and friends I love the most. So this is a big thank-you to those of you that follow along our blog with us!

Talking about memory, I do find that I remember very vividly things from my childhood.  I remember having two of the greatest parents anyone could ask for and being so grateful for my two older brothers who always were there to protect their little sister!  Bob and I have the honour of celebrating our birthdays on the same day; yes I was born on Bob’s 10th birthday and instead of being upset that he now had a little sister that took away his thunder of celebrating his own birthday; with the money he got for his birthday that year, he bought his little sister a rattle and from then on, one thing that we will never forget is when each other’s birthday is!  We both will be celebrating big milestones in 2014 – in March, I turn 60 and Bob turns 70. Also next year, Bob and Gwen will be celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary!  Funny how the age of 10 was significant for Bob and me; I was 10 years old and a junior bridesmaid in Bob and Gwen’s wedding! 

For my brother, Roy, I always remember him as being rough and tough but always very protective of his little sister.  If I was ever afraid of anyone or anyone bullied me, I would threaten that I would get my brother, Roy, on their tail if they bothered me and it always worked!  Roy, for some reason, always had that reputation; as my mom used to say – the middle child is always full of woe and Roy was that child.  Nevertheless, the three of us were all so different, but that is what made our family life dynamic and I love you all dearly!

As I go down memory lane here, I am sure my brothers and dad will remember this: 

This was the mantle clock that my parents had through their entire married life.  We would listen to Westminster Chimes every quarter hour with the hourly donging to indicate the hour.  I always found this very comforting and just made home feel like home.  When my parents sold their house on Waxwing in Guelph, they gave me the clock which I was so happy to have but it didn’t seem to work, so I just left it sitting on our fireplace mantle to look at.  Dad, one day said he would take it to a clock-maker and see if it could be fixed.  Dad got it fixed and gave it back to me but Brian said he didn’t want a chiming clock going off all the time; so I never actually tried to get it working until a week or so ago after we had the entire house painted and as I was putting things away, I decided to see if it would work.  I had the original directions which my dad had “laminated” so I read through what I could understand and lo and behold, I got it working and the memory of that chime just threw me right back to my childhood.  Even Brian said “gee that actually sounds quite nice”; so we now have the clock fully functional and I’m loving it!  Our granddaughters, Annika and Selena, were over last week and Annika was so enthralled with the clock and said that she wished she had one that I told her that one day it would be passed down to her when she is old enough to appreciate it.  I hope that Annika will have the same memory as I do of her childhood and going over to her nana and papa’s to hear the comforting Westminster Chimes.  I have video-taped the chimes so you can all hear it and I will forever have the sound of it on my blog just in case the clock ever breaks down again but I resolve to keep it going and to have it regularly checked by a clock maker. 

Annika, being only 5 years old, told her papa that she wanted to make sure that she helped put up our yearly Nativity scene; so last week Brian picked her up from school and they proceeded to put our Baby Jesus on display. 

 

I think she did an excellent job of putting everyone in their place.  This is the true meaning of Christmas and why we celebrate.  Both Brian and I feel truly blessed for our family, our friends, and especially our children and grandchildren.  This is a special time of year that celebrates “family” and the true meaning of Christmas.

As another year passes, I still miss my mom’s presence.  She loved Christmas with us and I always remember her helping with cooking, and especially the cleaning up.  She was always one step behind me, taking dishes and cleaning up right away, always having things neat and tidy!  It is so hard to believe that mom has been gone for 4 years now and I seem to miss her more in each passing year. 

This was our last Christmas together (2008); mom passed away two months later on February 3, 2009.  Love you mom……until we meet again!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a goodnight!!! 

November 11, 2013

 

First order of the day is it is Remembrance Day today.  I attended a service at dad’s place yesterday with dad dressed in his jacket proudly wearing his metals.  Dad, we truly are grateful for the sacrifices you made to give us a better life and that you survived and still with us today.  I am very grateful to all the military men of yesterday and today  that we are able to live in relative peace because of the sacrifices these men and women make every day.  May God Bless them all. 

It certainly has been another busy few weeks.  On October 25th ,I officially retired from the transcription agency (Accentus) that I was working for. I still am running my own business with the contract I have for a hospital in Toronto but other than manage that account; I don’t have a lot of work to do – maybe just an hour or so each day; and I worked for Accentus just to keep myself busy but it was really starting to drag me down as you have to commit to do a certain amount of work each week and I have been finding that extremely hard and just felt that the time was right to leave.  I was always worried that I might feel “bored” if I didn’t work but I think I have come full circle with that and realized there are a lot of things to do without having to work; so now this leaves me time to do the things I want to pursue outside of work.  I still am bringing in a bit of money with my hospital account and feel very fortunate that I have the best of both worlds. 

I bought myself a new sewing machine and have started to sew again – it has been at least 25 years since I have done any sewing – so it is like learning all over again!  I have started by making some doll clothes for Annika’s new Maplelea Doll (18” doll) we have bought her for Christmas.  As most of you probably know, I am a “doll addict” and have been all of my life.  I still have all my original Barbie dolls in excellent condition and I am just loving this doll craze that the American Girl Doll has created (the Canadian equivalent is called the Maplealea doll) and now I can live vicariously through my granddaughter who just so happens to love dolls as well!!  Annika and I are planning to have the grandkid’s room here as our doll’s play house.  So at the moment, I’m all into making these doll clothes and other things that pertain to the doll; even getting Brian in on the act by making little beds and wardrobes.  Even my sister-in-law Pat is making things for Annika’s dolls!  Hopefully in another year or two Selena will also be into dolls but I’m not so sure she will be as she has a completely different personality than Annika and just doesn’t seem like a “doll” person (at least not yet!).  Also in my retirement, I am slowly going to get into some volunteer work, starting off with volunteering at my dad’s retirement home.  I am so loving my new found freedom and also being able to do things with Brian like a bit more travelling, taking some day trips, doing things around the house, the possibilities are endless it seems!

Well enough about me; Brian had his second last chemo round this past Friday and once again has tolerated it well.  This round almost made him hyper, not sure why that happened but he was really quite comical with his hyper-ness – it certainly is much nicer to be hyper after chemo than feeling ill, so we are grateful for that.  He has one more round in February and then he will be done and considered in remission until the lymphoma decides to show its ugly head again but Brian is going to be one that beat the odds and he is going to keep that lymphoma away for years to come. 

I have a few pictures to add below of things that we did over the last month.  First off we had our annual girl’s weekend away in the States where all the females of the family get together for shopping, eating, and catching up with each other.  We took Annika and Selena this year and it was great that they got to be with family and Annika was ecstatic to be with her “cousin – Christine”.  She loves being able to say she has a “cousin” and was going to talk about Christine at school and how Christine also had her American Girl Doll with her on the trip!

Family!!   From the left, Connie, Breanne, Selena, Janet and Annika; in the rear from the left – Pat, Gwen, Cathy and Christine. 

Annika driving – Selena on for the ride!

In the hotel pool; Selena and Annika had so much fun with Cathy and Christine!  This was the highlight of the trip for them!

Once Selena warmed up to Cathy, there was no stopping her; she was jumping into her arms and swimming around the pool with her.  It was hard to get her to finally get out of the pool.  Thanks to Cathy for spending so much time with her!

Here are our “only” trick N treaters” this year – our grandkids!!! Brian is now left with 4 boxes of chocolate bars to eat since we had no other trick and treaters at our door!

Trying out the Candy before they left.  Just noticed Timme’s bones in there as well!

A little out of order but this was Thanksgiving Day! 

Timmie and Mavie taking advantage of a beautiful sunny fall day. 

That’s it for this month; will write again in another month!

Long time friends–Barb and Kim

I find as I get older, I’m often reflecting on my life and all the people that had a big influence on me or played a major role in my life.  Two of those people are my very close friends, Barb and Kim.  We all met when all three of us had just left home and heading off to our first full-time jobs.  All three of us were starting work at Stratford General Hospital, Barb as a physiotherapist, Kim as an Assistant Librarian in Medical Records and me as a Medical Transcriptionist in Medical Records.  Thankfully, for us in those days, when we were hired at the hospital, you also had the option of renting a room in the old Nurses Residence which was no longer used for nurses and you were able to rent one of the rooms which I think was $40 a month!! That was very reasonable rent but you have to remember that for me, I was making $1.60 an hour!! That worked out to about $250 a month and I had a car to pay for as well.  One of my major purchases before leaving home was buying my green Duster for $3000!! It took me greater than 3 years to pay that off.   I remember the day I moved in, mom and dad coming with me to settle me in the residence and I’m feeling pretty nervous about living on my own for the first time and starting a brand new job in another city and I was only  19 years old.  I remember going to the shared kitchen area and there were other people there, two of which were Barb and Kim.  The three of us hit it off tremendously and from that day forward we were life-long best friends.  After a few months of living in residence, the three of us decided to move in together and we rented a three bedroom apartment on Kappelle Circle in Stratford. We had such a great time together for a year or so before we started to move on to other life events but those few years of being together will forever be etched in my memory as one of the most important times of my life. 

Over the years, we all got married, we all had children but we never lost touch.  We made a pact that we would get together at least once a year to spend a weekend together with all of us sharing in the hosting duties at our respective homes.  This year was Barb’s turn and she reminded us that it had been 40 years that we had met and I just couldn’t believe it had been that long.  I still to this day feel the most comfortable around Barb and Kim, when we get together, it is just like going back in time to the “good ole days” and we love to reminisce.  We celebrated this year with treating ourselves to a spa treatment, going out to dinner and later in the evening getting Barb’s photo albums out and reliving some of our great memories.

For lunch, Barb took Kim and I to a very unique “retro” place to eat called the Bag Lady and it was a wonderful place to eat.  Here is Barb and Kim…..

I cherish my friendship with Kim and Barb, they had a huge influence on my life; and I know that we are so fortunate to have met and had such a great friendship.  I love them both immensely!  Here is a picture that we took this weekend and the following pictures are ones that I scanned from my old photo albums. 

The pictures above were when we first moved into our new apartment on Kappelle Circle and look at our lovely dining room table – a CARD TABLE!  We had many good meals on that table!  In the bottom pictures, you will see Henry (who ended up marrying Kim) who painted a wall mural on our living room wall, going all the way down the hallway to our bedrooms.  It was awesome! 

So this is a tribute to my true best friends, besties, BFFs or whatever other word is used now for friends for a lifetime! Thanks for the great memories and many more to still come! 

Village of Arbor Trails

We finally have dad moved into his new home!  The move itself went very smoothly; Roy had organized the moving truck and other details related to moving; Bob has been helping dad pack for the last few weeks and all three of us went over on the weekend before the move to pack the last minute stuff.  Then on Monday, September 9th, the BIG move!!  Roy supervised the movers and Bob, Brian and I took dad over to the new place along with two carloads of boxes so we could get started on unpacking and getting dad settled before the movers got there.  By lunch time, everything was done!! We all had lunch at dad’s new place courtesy of Arbor Trails.  Since then, there have been minor issues to get dad comfortable in his new place. As can be expected, this is a brand new place, so staff are still learning their jobs, minor construction details are still being finished and dad is having to get used to things being a slightly bit different than where he was before.  Our biggest most frustrating issue was the non-delivery of the Toronto Star newspaper!!!  Not only did dad have this issue but other residents as well.  Now you would think, what would be so hard for the circulation department to get a call of change of address and delivery to a new address? Well we thought the same and never really got a true answer of why it took that long.   Delivery was suppose to start on Tuesday Sept 10; and day after day after day of phone calls, first from Roy until he got so frustrated that I took over and finally with my frustration, I asked the Circulation Department to get me in contact with a supervisor as this was just so ridiculous; finally 10 days later (Sept 19) dad started to get his newspaper!  If I had had my way, I would have cancelled the paper altogether because of this but dad loves his Toronto Star so with perseverance it now is finally being delivered.

So dad seems to slowly be settling down to his new routine in his new wonderful home.  The Main Street of the Village is quite breath-taking and once they get all the services running properly, it is going to be a grand place for dad to live.  Dad is already going to exercise class every day, he loves his new apartment with a patio out the back where he can sit and enjoy his “back-yard” – much better view than looking at Highway #6 (Hanlon) where he lived before.   I found out yesterday that the “Spa” and “Hairdressing/Barber shop” are also open to the public; so I’m going to start getting my nails done and have a visit with my dad at the same time!  I truly hope that dad is going to enjoy this place once the dust has settled. Here are a few pictures I took: 

Front Entrance to the Village of the Arbor Trails

This is as you come in the front door – looking straight ahead.  There is a lot of openness as you can see – the ceiling is surrounded with windows and is quite high.  There is a lot of light coming into the Village itself.

To the left of the front entrance is the cozy library with a fireplace and books!

Brian and Roy enjoying the “Café” where people can meet have a coffee, Latte, Cappuccino, juice, muffin, and have a visit. If you look up to the glassed-in balcony; that is where “Memory Care” is located on the second floor and people living on the second floor have their own dining room and other amenities available for them.

Another view of the café taken from a different angle.  The café also has doors to the outside where there are patio tables to sit and enjoy your refreshments outside  The little room at the right behind where Brian is sitting (enjoying the paper!) is the Social Club where there are games, puzzles, pool table etc. 

This is the “Restaurant” (aka Dining Room).  Dad lining his walker up with the rest of them! Residents actually order off a menu which is different from his previous residence.  They also can have a glass of wine with lunch and dinner if they so choose to do so.

To the right is the “Pub” where you can order drinks (once they get their license). This is one of the little issues they are still dealing with – you would think they would have got the license organized before residents starting moving in!!

This is the “town hall” and ‘Chapel”. 

This is the “hub” of the Village – walking down Main Street!  Dad’s room is just down the corridor to the right of this picture.  So he doesn’t have too far to walk.

This is the General Store.  At this point in time, it is not open yet.  It will have all the little necessities that the residents need to buy.  The residents can just tell them what they would like stocked in the General Store and they will get it in.  This will be opening soon.

This is the “Spa” where you can get all kinds of esthetic services, massages, etc.  I am going to frequent this shop myself getting my nails done!!

The Beauty Salon which is now open and if you look a little ahead where the clock is on the wall that is the “Nurses station”.  Dad’s room is directly across from the Beauty Salon – dad can converse with all the beautiful women that come from the Beauty Shop!

Dad’s room looking in through his front door. 

To the left of the front door is his bedroom.

The bathroom…..

The kitchenette

His patio out the back.

From his patio to the left he faces the back of the building where the Restaurant (Dining Room) is.  This the patio for the dining area – residents can eat outside if it is nice out.

From his patio to the right, he faces the boundaries to the pond…..

This is the pond if he looks over the cement fenced area. 

So, all in all, as you can see, it is a very beautiful place to live.  Mind you, it is expensive to live here but isn’t this what we save for in our retirement?  I am so happy that dad can live in a place like this and it is beautiful for us to visit as well.  Dad is always ready to welcome visitors, so if you are in the area, please drop around to see him.  The Village of Arbor Trails is located in the Aboretum across the from University of Guelph.  Dad is in room 124-32 Bayberry Crescent. 

Our last day

Our journey is now coming to an end.  We have had a great trip but we are happy to be coming home now. I was able to put a final video together of our visit to London on Wednesday.  We leave tomorrow morning and will be home by supper-time.  Thanks to all that have been following along our blog while we have been away.   We are looking forward to being back with family at home soon!!

London, England

We finally arrived in England by train and my cousin, Geoff, was there to pick us up.  He drove us through London, and I was shocked at how much building is going on in London!  On our way to Geoff’s house, Geoff took us around to see some “Family history”; first off we stopped at the Cemetery to see where our grandparents were buried (my mom’s parents) who were killed in WWII. We, the grandchildren, collected some money to buy them a proper headstone a few years back. 

Geoff and Janet (two of the grandchildren!!)

Then Geoff drove by Carpender’s Park where I was born and we phoned my dad in Canada to find out the address of the house we lived in:

This is where I was born!!

It was a Duplex House and we lived on the right-hand side.  22 Woodall Lane.

After settling in at Geoff and Lynn’s, we went to the local pub for dinner with more family.

Sara, James, Elissa, Geoff, Lynn, Lee, Anni (Geoff’s sister), and me. 

Elissa enjoying her chocolate ice-cream

we came home to meet Sara and James’ other family member – Blake (Chocolate lab)

Doing the laundry – something we can’t do at home – hang our clothes outside!!

Church where James and Sara were married.

Hey dad, isn’t this the company you worked for when we lived in England!!

This is where James work as an Assistant Manager.  I have never seen such a great fitness centre in my life.  Not only is it just for fitness, they have a climbing wall, a restaurant, a spectacular Spa facility, a 25 meter lap pool, and a restaurant.

Then we were on to visit with Michael (Geoff’s son and James’ brother) and Natalie with their eldest son Matthew.

Jacob sitting on Brian’s lap, Janet, Michael, Natalie, Matthew and Ethan. 

Geoff with his grandsons, Ethan and Jacob.

So today, we are off to London to see the sites taking the Underground (subway) and to see the Queen!!