So our youngest doesn’t seem to be all that young any more, as you can see below he is getting older every day. Hope you have a happy birthday dude!
Category Archives: Family News
Football Update
Howdy folks. As I mentioned briefly a while ago, we jumped into the football (weird shaped ball variety) world this summer in a big way, with both boys practicing all summer long with the Bell Warriors. This is a competitive league, with a limited number of spots available on the teams for kids to play on. Full tackle football, with excellent coaching to get the boys ready to play in the fall. It’s been a blast. Cael was playing with the tykes team and Quinn is on the mosquito team.
This past weekend they had the final pre-season evaluation in the form of a mini-tournament with the other teams in the league. For Cael it was Friday Night Tykes, and for Quinn it was Mosquito Madness.  There were lots of butterflies in the tummies leading up to this weekend since it was really the first game-like situation that most of the lads had been in. In both cases, the Bell Warriors teams did really well, probably “winning” about half of their mini games, although scoring was not really maintained. The Vallentyne boys can play football it seems. Who knew? Certainly not my younger, scrawnier asthmatic self, who never would have played in a million years.
So needless to say there was a lot of strutting around with pride, puffing out of chests, etc. And that was just me.
Anyway, here are some pics of the event, which have already been on Facebook but of course I like to roll my own solution so that these things will live on once Facebook finally dies (what, you forgot about Myspace already?).
 
Unfortunately, as we were told was a possibility when we started, Cael got cut from the team this week. It was not very fun, but he will be playing in the Beckwith league this fall hopefully and gain some valuable experience. We will come back strong in the spring for the Warriors again.
So there you go. The real football season is just starting for Quinn, and Cael will have lots of games in September and October too. More pics to come then for sure.
The shifting sands of (deck) time
A couple of years ago we built a deck, some of which got documented here. And here. And here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here.  Anyway, you get the picture. So last year I got almost nothing done, or rather nothing that I ended up writing about here. Actually I got tons of stuff done, some of which even made the deck almost usable for humans. But in the end I traveled for half of the summer which made progress on the deck pretty tough, much to my dismay. But not this year. Nossir, we have been busy little beavers this year.
First off, it seems that leaving cedar untreated for even one summer really changes the colour from that awesome reddish gold to, well, grey. So, I decided that we would sand the deck back to it’s original luster before we stained it. If I can offer one word of advice however, it’s to actually wash the deck with a commercial product before you try sanding. That stuff brings the colour back way faster, and with much less effort and time than sanding. We did it both ways, and in some places the effort and time to sand grey cedar back to new was long indeed. Where we washed the wood first, it was trivial to sand it quickly and stain it. So there you go.
Read on for obsessive documentation….
Cael’s Vacation Request
I posted a couple of days ago about Quinn’s writing assignment outlining just how much he enjoys breathing. Today we have Cael, who is lobbying for a certain family trip, and he has some very specific reasons for it.
The cell phone pic really doesn’t make it easy to read, so I will transcribe it here for you.
Dear Mom and Dad,
I hope your having a spectacular day. I’ve been thinking maybe you could take me and Quinn to New York city.
I think I would have a better childhood if I traveled at least once. I would have stories to tell to my friends and other family members. The family would have great adventures to share. Plus, it would be my 1st time seeing a national landmark like the Empire State Building.
I think it would be a good trip for you too, because it would be stress free and I don’t think you will be commuting from America so, no work! Just relaxing, I know you like relaxing Mom, you too Dad.
And we could see new things and learn about New York. We could have more family time. Plus we would have great memories. And me, Quinn and Jordy would be too busy to fight or be bored because we will be having fun instead of fighting.
This is why I want to go to New York City.
So there you have it. As sound an argument as any I could come up with.
Quinn’s Favourite Hobby
A few months ago we had the pleasure of meeting Quinn’s teacher at a program night at the school. She made sure Nikki and I had a look at one of Quinn’s first writing assignments, which she thought was just great. The assignment was to write about your favourite hobby. Quinn had told us that he picked “breathing” as his hobby, which I actually had just initially thought was a cop-out topic, considering how many hobbies he actually has. But, when I saw it I was actually rather glad he picked it, I think you will agree.
My Favourite Hobby
My favourite hobby is breathing. I love to breathe. Breathing the fresh delightful air. Though it has to be the outside air with the shining sun staring at you, chirping birds flitting about and football sized sunflowers smiling at you. Not the crammed dismal office cubicle air, with plump and sweaty old Bob next door complaining about rush-hour traffic. Or greasy Joe spilling his coffee on the floor duct, flavouring the whole east wing oxygen with hint of chocolate latte. But you gotta rough it with Bob and Joe because it makes it better when you hit that long deserved oasis.
Stay tuned for Cael’s masterpiece….
Hello Mudda, Hello Fadda, oh nevermind
As I have mentioned here many times before, summer camp is something that our kids have been doing for several years now. To say they love it is a complete understatement, it’s so important to them now they look forward to it all year.
I saw this article indicating that apparently the usual summer camp activities were just too risky for a school board in Toronto and they ended up cancelling a year end trip on a class of grade 8 students. It’s easy for me to say that they are being silly since I’m only responsible for my own kids, but I do have to say that this does kind of seem on the nutso side. I mean when you see stuff like this:
He described Camp Walden as an exclusive facility that reduces its rates for the school to make the trip possible, at a cost of $150 per student.
Chiro said he was making final preparations for the June 10 trip when the school board’s superintendent asked for proof that safety requirements about activities such as swimming and archery had been met.
This kind of thing just says to me that these kids were probably the victim of one or two squeaky wheel parents that complained about safety in the dangerous wilds of “an exclusive” summer camp. There might even be SPLINTERS on the docks, gasp.
I mean come on folks, ANYTHING can be dangerous if you let your imagination wander. These kids live in Toronto after all, there’s just so much that could happen to them. I mean, heaven forbid it, but they might accidentally meet their Mayor, what then? I’m thinking that some Hunger Games-style archery skills might give them a fighting chance, right?