Great Long Weekend and Clinic Day

The Canada Day long weekend was a very busy one around our house.  Canada Day started out a little rough.  We went down to the bank and were heading over to Chapters when the car just stopped.  I thought I might have stalled the car, but looked down and the clutch was still in.  I tried to restart the car, but nothing happened.  We pushed the car over to the side of the road and called Grandma to ask her to come pick us up.  We had a few people stop and offer their advice and then a great guy in a truck stopped.  He offered to hook up a tow rope and pull us over to Canadian Tire.  We hooked up the car and dropped it off.  Thankfully they could take a look at it that day.  We headed home to wait for a phone call.

Around 2 we headed over to Grandma’s for her block’s annual Canada Day party.  Their block puts on an incredible potluck party.  They got 2 huge (the biggest I had ever seen) bouncers and provide all the burgers, hot dogs and Spolumbo’s sausages you can eat. The kids had a great time spending almost 5 solid hours in the bouncers!  We had a good time sitting around on the green visiting, drinking a few beers (and wine and coolers) and enjoying the food and great weather. During the middle of this party Canadian Tire called a couple of times to let me know both the battery and the alternator needed to be replaced.  Thankfully they got everything done and the car up and running on Canada Day!  Ryley was very upset when we left at 7pm.  Last year they had fireworks and Grandma told him about them so he wanted to stay and watch them.  Unfortunately the kids were too tired and would have never made it.  Thankfully we didn’t stay as they didn’t let off any fireworks this year.
 
Saturday we went to a pool party at Willie’s house.  It was a party for Ryley’s hockey team (The Lightening Bolts).  The kids had a wonderful time playing in the pool, throwing water balloons, shooting water guns and eating food.  There were only a few kids from the team there, but everyone had a good time.  Thank you to the Rennie’s for hosting all of us.

 
Saturday evening we went to a BBQ and potluck at Steve and Shelly’s place.  The kids had fun playing with the other kids and jumping on the trampoline.  Travis brought his guitar and played for all of us and there was even a poker game going on, which Jennifer was eliminated from and I had the sense not to join.

Sunday afternoon was Cousin Oliver’s 3rd birthday party.  It was a great celebration with lots of family there to ensure his birthday was a special day.  It was nice to have all of us there as Karlee and Jennifer have missed a couple of get togethers at Randy and Catherine’s due to Karlee being sick or in hospital.

Tuesday was Karlee’s monthly clinic day at the Alberta Children’s Hospital.  It was a fairly routine clinic day with a procedure.  She is down to having procedure days every 3 months now, which is a nice change.  One thing of potential concern is her liver enzyme levels.  They are currently 8% above normal.  If they reach 20% above normal we will have to pause treatment and determine if the treatment is doing more harm than good.  Karlee has been complaining a little more about stomach pain lately so we are hoping this is what is causing it and that the levels return to normal next month.

Wednesday night was our first night of church at the new location.  Our church has rented space from another Church to save some money to allow us to realize the dream of building a community centre (and Church space).  It is a nice cozy location that will hopefully fit New Hope’s needs for the next few years.  The one downfall is the lack of air conditioning.  During the summer we meet on Wednesday nights as most people want their weekends to do family events or go camping.  Meeting in the evening after a warm day makes for a very, very warm service.  Once winter rolls around and we start meeting on Saturday evenings it should get a lot better.
 
Thursday was Ryley’s first day at Skillz.  We had a year membership donated to Ryley at the Skate-A-Thon last year.  He had a great time working his butt off.  It is great to see him coming home dripping in sweat and enjoying it.