Shuko

 Shuko stayed with our family for a month. She was in her 30s and had worked in Japan at an orphanage! I was always touched by how careful and kind she was. 

After living with us, she found an apartment in the SW. She hopes to get a job working as a nanny. 

Miyu

One of the things that has really added to our family is having English students stay with us. As a family, we have many wonderful memories as well as crazy stories from these experiences.

After many years of not having a student stay with us, we decided this year to open up our home again. Miyu arrived from Japan on January 21. She is outgoing and friendly and not afraid to jump in and try taking the bus without a dry run! Years ago, whenever we had a student stay with us, we'd go with them on the bus to show them how it was done and draw detailed maps. They'd always get lost the first few days. Not anymore though. Google maps is a great help! 

Her birthday was a couple days after she arrived so we had a cake and presents, of course. Happy birthday Miyu! 

Happy Birthday? Wait. Happy New Year!!

 Not just a happy birthday, but happy new year!!

Last night my sister came over and we visited for a couple hours, then I went to bed. My family, on the other hand, attempted to stay up all night, I think. It was a rough day for them today. Good thing staying up all night is really only something once a year.

The parties weren't a big hit. Jill went to the YSA dance and she gave it a "meh". Although, she did run into a missionary friend, so that was really fun. Peirce went to a party at a friend's house which ended up not being that fun because they played drinking games and got throw-up drunk. Blech. Tony and Zoe went downtown for dinner and saw fireworks. Their report was the most positive. Allen stayed up for all the reports. Personally, I'm fine waiting until the next day for the updates.

But, the happy birthday part. What is that? Well, thanks to Dale Shoults, we learned that today Allen is 18,000 days old! Isn't that something?! Happy birthday old guy!

My favorite picture of our family

Everything is cuter with Frank!

Merry Christmas!

Life sure is different from when our kids were little. No one was up before 9 am today. I had some lovely quiet time sitting by the tree, prepping breakfast, and just relaxing. This year I made overnight French Toast. I was always leery of stuff like that. How could bread that has soaked in milk all night be good? I had visions of it being goopy. Blech. It wasn't though. It was delicious!

Once again, there was an abundance of gifts to open. We are pretty lucky!

 I got a beautiful new purse. I'll feel so fancy using it!

Frank has a thing about Santa hats. He thinks they are a toy!

We had a great dinner: turkey, stuffing, lots of veggies, mashed potatoes and gravy. Dessert was apple crisp. I was going to make a pie, but I really should have done it the day before. There was not enough time on Christmas day. It was delicious though!

There were more games.

In the evening we went to a movie. This has become our tradition on the evening of Christmas Day. It's a great way to relax. We rarely go to a movie as an entire family, so it's fun to do that together on Christmas Day. This year Tony bought the tickets. Thank you Tony!

Christmas Eve

Today was full of last minute preparations during the day. In the evening, after Peirce was finished work at Safeway, we had Chinese Food and played games. After, we had planned to go to the nativity pageant, but it seemed like staying in would be a better idea. We watched a movie. It was the Christmas class, Die Hard! LOL Some of us stayed up VERY late. Some of us went to bed at a more reasonable time (Peirce and I). They rest have much better late night stamina, I guess.

 You can't see it too well, but Jill went over to the Sawa Sawa's 

tonight and they gave her an African skirt. So beautiful!

 Chico was barely in the game.

 Phase 10 was a hit.

Even Allen played!

Tony is In Town

Tony lived with us for a couple years. For the last two years, he has been going to school in London, Ontario. He comes back to Calgary for Christmas though! When he lived with us, at first he would scoff about Christmas. It wasn't something he celebrated. He likes it now though!

This year he brought his girlfriend, Zoe! They are from the same town in China. His tailor introduced them. He knew both of them and was surprised to hear they were both going to school in London, Ontario. He knew they had to meet.

Guess I will need to get a better picture!

End of the French Exchange

This weekend our boys went back to Quebec. Loic flew, but Michael took the train.

Peirce is also on his way back home. He really had a good time and wishes he could stay longer.

This is the place that he worked for six weeks: Kayak Junky

Everyone signed his flag and he has a framed picture of all the kids from the exchange.

 

The house where he lived.

Getting on the train!

 

It's a big country!

Train #2

How does snapchat do that?? It knows he's on a train. Weird!

Welcome Anri!

The same day that Hikaru left, Anri arrived. She is also from Japan. She is 16 and when she grows up she wants to be a fitness instructor. She loves to play basketball.

On Monday, she and I went downtown. I showed her how to get to her school on the bus. We then went and checked out the Goodlife gym that is downtown. She gets to work out there this month while she is in Canada. It is so beautiful!! It must be good for one's soul to work out in such a beautiful building!

After that, we went to the Calgary Tower. They have really upped their game there. They have a system where they give you headphones and a device and you can listen to information about Calgary in any language. You use it while you're touring around the top of the Calgary Tower and looking at the landscape from every part of the circle. It's really cool. They also have a movie about building the Calgary Tower and about tourism in Alberta. Made me feel so grateful to live here!

We also went for lunch downown. All in all, a great day!

See ya Hikaru!

We had a student from Japan stay with us a couple week this month. He was eager to get to know Lois and Michael, our French boys, but between trying to get enough sleep and language challenges, I'm not sure it was that memorable for them. We enjoyed getting to know Hikaru though. His parents were concerned he'd sleep in or that he would lose things and so they emailed me. I appreciated the information and let them know waking kids up and helping kids stay organized is my forte! :) We got along great. He was really a nice boy.

Today they had a good bye party at the school. The group of kids he came with all go to the same private school together. The Japanese girls all cried. Really cried! They all loved their visit to Canada, it seems.

One Week Until MY Summer Starts

Did you know I only have one week left of school?! I love my class this year so much - but jeepers, I'm sure ready for summer!! It feels like this has been a really long year. We started out the year with the bathrooms under renovation and we're going to end off the year with them renovating the portables. Not mine though. The library and the music room will be in beautiful new portables come September. We'll see if they're even finished by then. They're going to have air conditioning AND big beautiful windows. I might be spending a lot of time in the music room/library. 

Actually, my coworker's husband does air conditioning for his job. He maintains air conditioning systems in big buildings downtown. This week he brought her an air conditioner for her room. It even makes a difference for my room. It's so great!! Some people give her a hard time about all the electricity it'll use. I say that she's just ensuring there's an environment where these little minds can focus and learn. That is very important and well worth the cost! Also, it's important they have a teacher that isn't a worn out dish rag. We're much perkier now that there's cooler air in our portable. It's bliss.

We went to this really cool place this week called Ralph Klein Park on a field trip. The kids got to scoop up water and look at all sorts of creatures in there. We even saw a muskrat! It was so cool. Check out this eel:

I decided I'm going to get started on my 5 km a day pursuits this week. I should be able to do that since I used to get up and get to seminary on time. Last week was a bad week for walking. I had this idea that I had all this time in the morning and so I tried to do too much - then I'd realize time was almost up and just be able to do 1 km. Time to change that, baby!

Karen Johnson is moving to the states and so they're renovating their house. She needed a bunch of boys to come help so I got Peirce to do it. He pulled up carpets and he did a lot of painting. He said he really likes painting. 

It was pretty hard work - but in the end, he was pretty happy about the money he earned. That'll be some good cash to start off his time in Quebec. He goes this week. Oh my heart!!!

This weekend Gaylene and Duane went to Kelowna for Neil's birthday. Rachelle had a surprise party for him. Of course, the best part is being reunited with his dogs. Oh Harley! 

They donated blood for Neil. I think it might become a new tradition. Neil needs blood transfusions all the time because his hemoglobin gets really low. I am going to get back into donating blood regularly.  Taylor and Sydney went too - but Taylor, apparently, is too short. LOL 

On Saturday I went grocery shopping. I know. I know. I always do that. The reason I'm sharing it is it reminded me of how I always like to turn things in to a game. Did I ever tell you that about me? For example, when I was growing up and cleaning rooms in my dad's hotel, my cousin, Nickee and I used to time each other and see if we could beat each other's time for making a bed. We had requirements for how the bed had to be made and we'd try to do it super fast. It made the job fun. I've always done things like that. When I get up in the morning, I challenge myself to be dressed and have the dishwasher finished before the CBC news podcast is finished. Then I have to have lunches made before the other podcast I like to listen to ends. I do it with grocery shopping too. On Saturday, you could get a box if ice cream treats if you spent $250. My goal was to get the treats but spend as little over $250 as possible. In the end, I ended up spending $250.33. My best job yet at that game!! When I was on my mission we used to play that game too. We'd challenge each other to only say kind and positive things. We'd see how long we could go before one of us would slip up and complain or say something negative. We got so we could go all day! Maybe that's where the whole streak thing started in my mind. I don't know. All I know is the mundane things can be made a lot more fun if you turn it into a game. 

Tony leaves this week. Oh boy. What am I going to do without these boys?! I will miss Tony, for sure. 

SBT: Seussical the Musical

I love the Storybook Theatre organization. We have been volunteering with them for years and I love it now as much as I ever did! Last night we saw Seussical the Musical. It was fabulous. The music and action is non-stop. You have to have some serious energy to be a part of this show.

Tony was very excited to volunteer. He said he had never volunteered before. I was a little worried he wouldn't enjoy the play because he wasn't familiar with Dr Seuss. He said he really enjoyed it though. It's hard to enjoy all that action and music.

Seussical cast ready for final Dress Rehearsal!

A post shared by StoryBook Theatre (@storybookyyc) on May 19, 2017 at 2:18am PDT

Day 103 Famous Family

I got behind. I keep trying to get caught up, but it isn't working. I think it is time to do it the Fly Lady way and just start where I am. She always says, "You are never behind...just start where you are."

Bobby is taking physics. Today he discovered that Allen's dad is an author of his text book! What a surprise it was to him!