It's the most difficult time of the year

I know that's a real downer of a post title but sometimes it feels that way. So much to do, all crammed into a month. It is as if we save up everything for Christmas, all the get togethers, gift giving, card sending and family time instead of spreading it out over the whole year. And the stress of spending too much money, eating too much food, drinking too much wine and getting too little sleep explodes all at once in a geyser of twinkle lights, reindeer and Holiday-themed made-for-TV movies.

I go into a pre-Christmas funk every year. It starts with all the ads on TV and the spreads in magazines about entertaining for the holidays (I hate saying holidays, we celebrate Christmas and so do all the people making the ads and spreads judging by the copious amounts of tinsel and pine boughs in them). It seems like everyone else is invited to a myriad of glittering parties that require new outfits and beautifully wrapped gifts and getting one's hair done. Not in my world.

I am waffling on whether to throw another Winter Solstice party, actually we had an "End of the World, So Say the Mayans" party last year and it was great fun. It lasted until 3am and all I did was fire up the fondue pot and the chocolate fountain. This year the Solstice is on Saturday, December 21st and I'm worried that there might be a lot of other parties that people are going to that night, parties that we aren't invited to (sorry, that's my pathetic voice coming out). It's just that the calendar is looking a little bare right now but maybe other people are waffling like me.

And being the child of divorced parents always makes for challenges. This year my sister heads west to Calgary to be with her in-laws and my brother is in Victoria and neither of our parents have ever gone out for Christmas for some reason. My Dad has a fiancée and that in itself makes things even more complicated, some of her family is here and they don't seem to be much for making plans in advance or including others which is fine but I can't imagine my Dad not being with his grandsons on at least part of Christmas Eve, morning or night. My Mum will be with us and Dad knows this and seems okay but I don't know about his fiancée. Hopefully they can work it out, I'm not getting involved, I just ordered a big turkey and will hope for the best. The boys will be chomping at the bit to hit the slopes on Boxing Day and then ski season beings in earnest with early mornings and lots of running from race to race. And to add to the general chaos, boat show season also kicks in right after New Years so my Other Half will be away for weeks at a time.

Sorry, this really has become a pity party, I always seem to have to get it out of my system before I dive head long into the fray. I've started my Christmas shopping and I am going down to the city for a dinner with my high school friends which should be fun even if it's on a Tuesday night and everyone has to go to work in the morning (there's that pathetic voice again). And I am joining S. in Florida on Saturday for  four days and although most of it is business I found a great deal on a lovely B&B for one night so it will feel a little more like a break to recharge our batteries before the Christmas chaos begins.

So it is beginning to feel a lot like Christmas and I know that's a good thing despite the Grinchiness I go through every year.

More Perspective

Too much going on and not enough time or energy to do it these days. It doesn't help that it feels like its been raining for over a month. Those gorgeous sunny Indian summer days are a distant memory. Now it's day after day of grey, brown and damp. Hard not to be down with three boys trapped inside every afternoon and weekend. I find myself doing way too much yelling while they bicker, watch too much TV and spend hours, it seems, on line watching ski videos. The snow can't come soon enough.

S.T.B.T. (Stupid Teenage Boys Tricks)

Number One Son is stressed as his school crams what normally take three months into six weeks but they leave for Maine on December 1st to ski til Christmas so I have reminded him that no complaining will be tolerated at any time.

Number Two will be lucky if he survives until he leaves for a week in Vermont on December 7th. He is busy at school with classes, volleyball and dry land training two afternoons a week. He, unfortunately, is not the most organized and when the going gets tough he would rather give up than figure out how to manage everything. He is so talented and smart but he makes things so much harder on himself and everyone around him.

Number Three is plugging away, counting down the days til he gets to ski. Unfortunately due to his knee injury we and his coaches have decided that he should not go on the trip to Mont Tremblant with the team to train because of the risk of terrible conditions which could potentially cause more damage and ruin his entire season. So he will be home on his own while his brothers are away and now it appears I will be away for part of that time too but I am hoping he can stay with his buddy across the street while I head south to help my Other Half at a boat show. If it works out everyone might just be happy for a few days.

It's hard to keep things in perspective. Juggling time and money these days is all consuming. The business is on the verge of major growth which is wonderful and terrifying at the same time. My OH is up at dawn and into the new plant where everyone is working so hard to get things up and running again after the move. Scott leaves for Florida on Wednesday til Sunday for another show and my Dad & I will be representing the company at a fundraiser in the city Friday night, introducing out latest product to a very discriminating crowd. Saturday I hope to visit Ben's friend, H who was finally discharged from the hospital and will be able to stay at home and do his rehab as an out patient. He is making great strides in his recovery and we are all so thankful for that.

The team raising the flags at the new plant

Saturday night my Mum (aka Geeya) is hosting a grandchildren's sleepover with my boys, my sister and Mum's best friend's grandchildren. Wendy died 15 years ago and never met her two grand-daughters and so Mum promised that she would treat them as her own. Now their grandfather has been diagnosed with inoperable cancer and we don't know how long he has left so spending time together seems even more important. Of course, now that the kids are almost all teenagers the sleepover is a little more difficult with my boys less interested in hanging out with the girls but they all love going to "Geeya's" farm and maybe, fingers crossed, it won't rain and they won't be stuck inside the whole time.

The Grandchildren in their PJ's circa 2004

Perspective

It's hard to imagine what it would be like to hear that your child has a brain tumour after a simple trip to the eye doctor and within 48 hours you find yourself at the Hospital for Sick Children, a place you always knew was there if you needed it but never thought it would be your son being wheeled into surgery. I learned about my former neighbour and friend's son's diagnosis the morning he was to be operated on. It all happened so quickly and anyone who doubts our health care system should stop reading the horror stories that are constantly trumpeted both here and south of the border and listen to the positive and quiet ones that happen here every day whether it be a life-threatening situation or not.

D and her son, one of Ben's oldest friends, experienced the terror of a diagnosis, emergency surgery to remove a 4cm tumour close to the brain stem and a week to hear if it was cancerous. It was benign, thank goodness and he will make a full recovery. But, once again, it puts everything into perspective as my family struggles day to day with sibling rivalry, homework drama, teenage angst and a small business on the very of becoming not-so-small.

H and my eldest grew up side by side, first skiing and then across the street from one another for the last six years. He is my fourth son, another brother to my boys, acting like one for better or for worse. His nickname was "Eddie" after Leave it to Beaver's Eddie Haskell as he was unfailingly polite to adults but you always knew he was up to something. This year his family decided to move back to the city and H went off to boarding school while my son also left their local high school to attend a ski academy. Being boys, I don't think they communicated much over the summer or while Ben was away in Switzerland and we found out about the tumour and surgery the day Ben was arriving home. Of course, because of Facebook, all the kids knew about what H was going through and my worry about how to tell Ben was for not. I don't think he fully understood the seriousness of what was happening to H but he kept asking to read the updates that were being sent by a friend of H's mother. We all worried that H would lose his luxurious head of hair (he did not, the surgeon only had to make a small incision on the back of his head) and if it was cancer what would happen next. Luckily that's not something anyone has to worry about.

We went down to the hospital to see H on Sunday with another school friend and his Mum and had a short visit. H got out of bed to go for a walk with his buddies, trailing an IV pole and talked quite naturally and Ben, who had earlier asked me, if it was such a great hospital for kids, why they didn't have anything like a basketball net, now understood what it had all meant.

Soon H will be moved to a rehabilitation hospital and is expected to make a full recovery. He may or may not go back to boarding school in January and he won't be back on skis for a while but he will be fine and his very droll sense of humour has already started to return. Ben has made it through his first full week of classes after seven weeks in the Alps and life is settling down once again.

I haven't felt like blogging for a long time but it seemed like a natural thing to allow me to express my fears and feelings swirling around. I have said before that as the kids get older the challenges get more serious and it has never been truer. I have missed writing and even though I know my blog title has never been truer I think I might get back into a routine of writing. We'll see.

Summer so far ...

It's only week two for us but so far it hasn't been too painful. Packing up to head out to a friend's cottage this afternoon, I finally get to be someone else's guest for a few days! Then next week we are taking Numbers 2 & 3 on a boat delivery to CT with a stop at an amusement park. No. 1 is hard at work in summer school and seems to be liking the work at your own pace environment. They are given a unit per week to work on, ask any questions and then they are tested on Friday. He will start his English course at the end of August, reading Lord of the Flies and A Midsummer's Night Dream, both of which I actually have my original copy of, marginalia and all!

Here are a few of the the very few photos I have taken (all on my iPhone) mostly because my children run screaming every time I try to take a picture and also because I haven't bothered to drag my SLR camera along with me anywhere. But I am taking it with me on this trip and I will again next week, in hopes that there isn't a gaping hole in the photographic evidence of my children's pre-teen and teenage years which they will be sure to reprimand me later for.

Last Day of School Cookout at the Beach

A flower box makes the peeling paint of the boathouse look charming, don't you think?

Hard at work on a new bridge to our cabin

Mountain bike riding 

The Outsiders circa Grade 5

No. 3 Son with his ski racing idol who graciously allowed him to hold the Crystal Globe. 

The trophy for being the best ski racer on the planet!

How are things with you?

Only three weeks til school is out. I know that for many school is already over but up here we push it til the end of June and still it's too soon for me. And I am feeling exactly how Jen feels in her blog post "Worst End of School Year Mom Ever." Right now I have two on the bench and we're not sure what is going to be happening with either of them this summer. Number Two Son hurt a growth plate in his ankle jumping up to head the ball in soccer last week. A very common injury and we see an Orthopaedic specialist tomorrow and, fingers crossed, she will say that it just needs a few weeks to heal. He's on crutches and missing out on both soccer and rugby. The former he just started playing and was the sport in which, I thought, he was more likely to get hurt. So he's hanging around, spending too much time on various screens. He is supposed to start a Mother's Helper job looking after three little boys a couple of days a week when school gets out and has a trip out west with my Dad planned. Not sure how either of those things are going to work if he can't walk.

Number Three Son is still waiting to find out what is happening with his torn ACL. We finally got the appointment with the doctor who everyone says we need to see at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto next Monday. There are various scenarios, none of which make me feel any better.

1. He has to have surgery and it happens soon which is good because we want to give him as much time to recover before ski season but it's bad because then he won't be going to camp in August and will spend the whole summer on crutches or with a brace on his leg while it heals.
2. He can't have surgery because he is so young and they don't want to risk injuring the growth plates on the bones that they have to screw into to repair the ACL. Some people never have it repaired but those people don't live to ski race, run and play soccer. If we have to wait, which I'm hoping won't be the case, he will have to wear a brace for activities and probably won't be able to  do anything at the level he would like.
3. They decide to wait to do the surgery because either we can't get him in or he won't have enough time to recover before ski season which means he still will have to wear a brace and won't be able to compete full out which is the only way he knows how to ski.

None of the above are great scenarios but I guess we're lucky to have options, a great hospital relatively close by and don't have to worry about having to pay for it. Now if I can just figure out how to pay for No. 2's braces which go on in a month.

Number One Son is counting down the days til he gets out of grade 9 and can move on from a very disappointing first year of high school. He will have five days off after exams before his summer classes start. He will be in class 8:30am to 1:30pm and then spend the afternoon doing dry land training in preparation for ski season which will start for him at the end of August in Switzerland. He is going to a ski academy nearby and they train for six weeks over there then come home to work on school before they begin skiing again next winter. He is very excited and motivated and I only hope he stays healthy and strong (touch wood).

In the meantime, our business is in its busiest time and my Other Half is up and gone at dawn or on the road. He is stressed because business is booming and he is moving to a new facility which is all good but as he says, "It would be a lot easier to do without customers and employees to deal with."

Oh and we have our house on the market, have bought a lot to build on and are in the beginning stages of designing a new house. So while all of this is going on I have to keep this house in show-ready condition all the time and consequently I spend most of my time flushing toilets, picking up wet towels, cutting the lawn and cleaning the pool. Normal stuff made all the more stressful by the thought of someone coming by during the day when I have left the house without checking the above mentioned things.

Right, have I missed anything? Oh yes, my Dad announced on Mother's Day that he was getting married. To a woman he has been seeing for less than two months. 

How are things with you?

Little people, little problems. Bigger people, bigger problems.

I've heard this a lot lately and I've even repeated it myself to parents of younger kids. But no matter what the age and stage when you're in the middle of it, it all seems overwhelming so I was so glad to read a post by Kay at the MOAT blog. There are many blogs devoted to new parents and young children but they seem to peter out by the time their kids are into adolescence. I guess partly because so many of us are back at work full time or are just consumed by the endless chauffeuring, grocery shopping, meal planning and cooking for a herd of hungry tween and teenagers. And, as we all know, it doesn't get easier, just more complicated. No longer are play dates planned around the parents we want to hang out with, now we either spend time hanging around arenas, soccer pitches or gyms waiting. Picking up and dropping off at the movie theatre or a friend's where they are hanging out. I now know not to have my first glass of wine before all are home and accounted for. A couple of times I was caught about to settle in in front of the fire with my favourite Cab Sauv and a book when I remembered I was single parenting and there was one or more kids who still had to be picked up.

Kay's photo of the swings in the front yard of a house reminding her of the hours spent pushing one or another child took me back to simpler times. Our swing set/jungle gym which we got when our oldest was two is now primarily used by the boys as a launching pad for any number of STBT (Stupid Teenage Boy Tricks). She was at a panel discussion by Grade 8 parents and one of the things someone said was that their kids can't play with others until they can treat one another with respect. That's a tough one around our house right now. My boys are horrible to each other, the taunts, teasing and put downs are endless and they always hit the other where it hurst the most. They know one another's weak spots and go for it. So I came up with a new consequence - for every put down or negative comment they have to clean a toilet. Now since they are the ones who are responsible for the horrendous state of the toilets in the first place I feel this is a win-win situation and, although I can't imagine a time in the future when there is neither a dirty toilet to be cleaned or a negative comment free day, a MOB can dream.

As for the bigger problems that come with bigger kids we are just entering into that territory. School is the biggest issue and one that is going to unfortunately cost us money to deal with. Number One Son is most likely going to a private ski school next year and, as we have decided to move, the other two will be changing their schools as well. Number 2 has just realized that despite all the bullying issues he has dealt with over the past few years, it is still a little scary to think about changing schools for grade 8. I know it will be tough but hopefully in the end it will get us all where we want to be. They boys closer to the ski hill, their friends and busy on and off the snow. We all know that the key to keeping kids out of trouble is keeping them busy and while I haven't had to deal with our eldest partying I have heard from other parents that it has begun. Numbers 2 & 3 will probably more than make up for their introverted eldest brother who didn't even want to go to his own coed bowling birthday party which we hosted with three other families.

I really do believe and know that we are not doing our kids any favours by giving them everything and doing it all for them whether it's at school or at home and, as I have said a million times, I do not want to be the mother-in-law who my future daughters-in-law hate. Therefore, along with cleaning toilets, my boys will be doing laundry, vacuuming and generally helping to keep the house clean for any up-coming open houses or showings *shudder* because, here we go again. It's been six years in this house and right on schedule, we're moving.  No. 2 will not be getting the outrageously expensive camera he wants for his birthday but instead we will give him a bit of money and I have helped him to line up a mother's helper job for the summer so that he can earn and save money to buy the camera if he still wants it. No. 1 will be doing summer school to get a head start on grade 10 and No. 3 well, I'm still working on what to do with him but I do know that they will all be put to work clearing the lot once we get it in anticipation of building the house. Boys and chainsaws, what could possibly go wrong?

Lots to Catch Up On

Never a dull moment around here. Just got back from my first Girl's Getaway since, well, since I can't remember when and although I had a rather rude re-entry going from the beaches of the Bahamas to the ice rinks of southwest Ontario for a hockey tournament in less than 12 hours I have lots to look forward to in the coming months and lots to organize.

The beach at the Bahamas Beach Club in Abaco ... sigh

The home of our favourite drink in Green Turtle Cay

A plot with a view - Green Turtle Cay

A Sands in a sandal on the sand on Guana Cay

But back to reality, No. 1 Son played his last hockey game (except for his school team) and will now hang up his goalie pads and dedicate himself to ski racing. He wants to go to the National Ski Academy which fortunately is nearby and would help him balance his ski and school schedules. He was in class eight days from the beginning of this semester til March Break and doesn't appeared to have missed anything which has us worrying what the heck they are doing at the local high school. He's a good student but not that good. So the other option is for him to go to NSA, take a couple of summer courses, go to Europe to train for six weeks in the fall, back to school for a month then work on a course or two over the winter and finish up in the spring. We want to let him have a chance to follow his dream but not at the expense of school. My Other Half went through that when he was racing in high school and missed a lot and ultimately did not have the credits he needed for university. It all worked out for him in the end but the most important thing he learned from his experiences was that you want to have options when the skiing is over. 

Like father like son

The other big change that might be coming is that we are thinking of moving. Our lives seem to be focusing on the boys skiing and their friends at our club and over the course of the winter I spent far too much time driving the 20 minutes back and forth from the hill. We are hoping to buy a two acre lot in a development where the kids have lots of friends and build a house. We'll be sad to leave our friends here but it's not that far to come back and visit and if the boys are happier then I will be. 

And besides, my Pinterest Boards are already full of house ideas.