Saskatoon Traditional Karate Club Seminar with Sensei Katsumata

Mark is a part of the Saskatoon Traditional Karate Club and he had a chance to train with Sensei Katsumata, a seventh degree black belt last weekend.  I took Oliver and Jordon along and we took some photos of the weekend.  My photoset is here and Jordon’s can be found over here.

Oliver Chilling out at Mark’s Karate Seminar

Mark has a karate seminar with a seventh degree black belt last weekend.  Karate blackbelts from all over western Canada came to see Sensei Katsumata which meant that Mayfair School was probably the safest place in all of Canada for a couple of days.

This Summer

Jordon and I have been planning out our summer.  It’s is actually a lot easier with tools like Upcoming and Jordon is also using Dopplr which is a fun tool to plan your travel with.  We made a list of the festivals, events, and shows we wanted to take in and made a big list.  A lot of the stuff is free and the other stuff like the EX gets budgeted in like a mortgage payment or utility bill.  I doubt we will see it all.  The crowds of Folkfest often scare us away and as Jordon has said, multiculturalism in Saskatoon is often expressed as beer and perogies.   I will take a pass on car racing and will leave that to Jordon and Mark.  If you know of any good events to take in this summer in Saskatoon, let me know in the comments.

Most of our travel will be the cabin although there is a trip to Regina to see the Roughriders play the Eskimos.  The cabin is only an hour away from the stadium so it will make a quick trip down and back to the game.   Jordon had to cancel a trip to Hamilton so we are heading to Victoria for a weekend in October over our anniversary.  Mark hasn’t seen the ocean yet and desperately wants to fly on a trip with his dad.  One of the plans is that Jordon and Oliver will fly into Vancouver and then take the ferry to Victoria while Oliver and I fly directly into Victoria.  We will see how it all plays out.

Weekend at the lake

I spent most of the weekend at the lake with a friend of mine and her daughter.  Jordon did the math (two women, three kids, and a dog) and decided to chill out at home with some books and Maggi.  I posted some photos over at Flickr and documented our weekend at The Cooper Cabin weblog.

Off to the lake

Jordon was supposed to be in Hamilton this weekend but fate intervened and he had to stay at home.  The good news is that we were able to get the ticket changed and we booked a vacation to Victoria in October for a weekend.  Mark will be able to see the ocean for the first time and we will be able to connect up with some good friends.

So while I was expecting to be husbandless this weekend, I had invited a co-worker of Jordon’s and a friend of mine to the cabin with her daughter for the weekend.  Jordon decided to stay at home and do some reading and catching up on some sleep.  His health has sucked and a lot of it has been because of exhaustion over the last couple of months.

So while he chills at home and reads Liar’s Poker and the Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 I will be chilling out at the lake, barbecuing up some good food and watching a couple of kids race by.

Mark’s new bike

Jordon posted a photo about Mark’s new bike up at the lake.

Mother’s Day Recap

As some of you know, we spent Mother’s Day at the cabin.  Most of the weekend was spent trying to do some painting and cleaning up after making a MASSIVE mess tearing down walls and painting the last time up but we did find some time to do some cleaning while we were up there.

The chaos started last week when our resident gift shopper got called in to do a midnight shift after pulling a regular shift the day before and then having to work the next day.  By Thursday night, he had worked 24 out of 32 hours and was exhausted.  I took Mark and Oliver to Wal-Mart and let Mark pick out some Mother’s Day gifts.

• From Oliver he picked out a basketball for the cabin.  We have a basketball court just down from the cabin and he knows the only sport I can still beat him at is basketball.
• For Jordon he picked out a bowl set for the cabin.  Jordon also managed to get me a candle and holder for the cabin as well.
• From himself, he gave me some new ear rings.

Jordon obviously trained him well.

On Friday the plan was to leave by noon but I was left in charge of packing and to make a long story short, we left by 4:00 p.m.  On the way out of town, I had to stop by Home Depot to get the paint and Jordon ran into Wal-Mart where he came out with some lacrosse sticks for Mark and some toys for Ollie.  It meant that the weekend was full of Jordon and Mark trying to keep the lacrosse ball away from Maggi which they had mixed success doing.

While it did snow on Friday and it was pretty cold inside the cabin (especially after we blew a breaker in the middle of the night) We did bring up Mark’s new bike which he spent hours riding around with.  There was also some time to go for some walks along the beach, install a drying rack, enjoy a fire, and also install some landscape lights around the cabin.  All in all, it was a pretty productive weekend at the lake.

Misquoted

I am pretty biased but I am pretty sure Jordon was misquoted by the CBC in this article which suggests there has been discussions in the Salvation Army about the merits of wet shelters.

My well placed source tells me that Jordon told the reporter to talk to those who manage those services like Larson House and the Saskatoon Health District and not the Salvation Army (which runs dry shelters).   He also pointed out that since the Salvation Army is a dry shelter, they don’t even have that much of a request for one.

It’s Over

The other day I made the phone call to the fine folks at Service Canada to see how long I had left in my maternity leave.   Then it was the long walk down to my local Safeway to tell them that I was coming back to work and work out my schedule.  My leave comes to an end at the end of the month and then I am back to work.

The difference between now and a decade ago is that I am leaving Oliver with Jordon and Mark, Oliver is a year old instead of just six months, and I am really looking forward to be working within two blocks of home.  I am also going back to better hours, some more responsibility, and a sitter that is a block away.  Life seems more compact now.

The bad part is that I won’t be able to help out at the Centre as much.  I really enjoyed the opportunity to help out down there.  We’ll see what happens with how work meshes with Jordon’s schedule as well.  We have worked opposite schedules so much over the years that I dread the idea of going back to never seeing him again.