Victoria Day at Fort Calgary

The Mounties just had their 140th birthday and we were a part of the action.



The Canadian Parliament passed an act to form the North West Mounted Police in on May 23, 1873, and the force's first action was to march from Winnipeg to Fort Whoop-Up (modern-day Lethbridge) in summer of 1874 to clean up the cross-border whiskey trade. They arrived to find Whoop-Up deserted, so they moved further along the Oldman River to establish Fort MacLeod. The following summer the force began construction of Fort Calgary at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow rivers.



The fort was rebuilt in 1882, and then demolished in 1914 for use as a rail terminal. The site was later planned for a freeway, but in 1974 the city of Calgary chose to reclaim the land, removing the warehouses and rail facilities to reveal remnants of the original fort walls. A replica of the 1888 barracks was added in 2000.

Thirteen years later we showed up at the Fort to eat cake, try on authentic uniforms, receive balloon animals, have faces painted, check out exhibits about Calgary history, and watch an episode of Dudley Do-Right.









Scott thought he got an exceptionally good deal. He observed that some kids only got small spider design on their cheek, but he got a Spiderman half-mask that was WAY better. He also noted that he wasn't interested in getting a balloon animal until he saw a boy get a Spiderman balloon, and then he was convinced. He observed that the final creation didn't really resemble a real Spiderman very much, and commented that it looked like stick figure more than anything.



Katie was super-excited about her butterfly face paint and her purple-heart balloon wand. She especially liked all the vintage toys that they had set out. I was a bit surprised myself at how fun and interesting some classic wooden toys really are.

I have done a few early-morning runs near the fort and I have appreciated the beauty of the area and I think the city has done a really good job here. I had very little knowledge of the history and I found it all fascinating. We have had a special spot in our hearts for the RCMP since our time in Ottawa watching the Musical Ride, so it was fun to see how the force was instrumental in the founding of our home town.

Under the Big Top

The circus was in town on Victoria Day weekend, so after our visit to Fort Calgary we went to Big Top for the show. It was a pretty small venue, so we had a great view of the action. It was actually really entertaining and I think the kids enjoyed themselves.



The kids really liked the exotic animals, but maybe not as feverishly as some people -- R noted that there was a guy sitting in front of us who was over the moon about the large contingent of Bengal Tigers that opened the show. He shot photos pretty much non-stop during that segment and then left during intermission. Our kids enjoyed the Bengals, but maybe not quite as much as him. They probably liked seeing the elephant relief itself into a garbage can about as much as anything else. Potty humour abounds among the younger set in our house.



I was genuinely concerned for the safety of the acrobat who jumped rope on the outside of the revolving Wheel of Death. He was sweating like a maniac throughout, and when he missed a skip and nearly fell off the top he was either genuinely freaked out or a pretty decent actor. I remember going to the circus when I was young and the only things I can remember very clearly are the trapeze and the wheel of death, so I am glad that we got to subject our children to similarly harrowing experiences.

Opening Weekend at Calaway Park

Making More Purple Letters

Shelter from the Gathering Storm

Happy Mother's Day

Spartan Weekend with Cousins

I entered into the Spartan Sprint obstacle race near Kalispell, Montana this year. Since it was Mother's Day weekend, we decided that I would take the kids down to Montana with me and R would have the weekend to herself to do whatever she liked. Win-win.

Katie slept in the little girls' room, and her cousin Bailey obliged her in every respect, reading books to Katie late into the night. Katie was in heaven. She was also completely wiped out by the following evening.

Speaking of Bailey, she was playing solitaire on the computer and singing along to Fantine's "I Dreamed a Dream" at the top of her lungs. So awesome. On repeat.

Scott and Cannon are finally getting old enough that they are playing together. All they needed was a pickup truck and a couple of swords and they were good for several hours.











Chest Bump (Cam & Kaitlin)


Chest Bump (Kaitlin & Becca) - Attempt #1


Chest Bump (Kaitlin & Becca) - Attempt #2

Kindergarten Presentation

Scott's school had a kindergarten presentation to show off some of the things they learned during the year. They performed all together and in small groups. Plus there were a few videos up on the screen. You could tell Scott was really enjoying himself and really got into the dancing. Judging by his bright red face, he may have been a bit out of his comfort zone, but he never let that stop him.

Spartan Sprint in Kalispell

Obstacle races are a big thing lately. I see the appeal. It is a very accessible event with no real equipment or expertise required, beyond a set of shoes and shorts that are okay to get dirty. I have run a few road races now and I think they are fun mainly because I listen to audiobooks while I plod along. Conversely, having a race course that fights back and tries to maim you really passes the time.

My brother Cam was the one told me about the Spartan Sprint obstacle course. He told a lot of people about the race and ended up with a team of about 20 people that all registered together. Unfortunately, Cam had walking pneumonia and had to bail out of the race.

When you show up to one of these races, you really don't know what to expect. You don't have the benefit of a course map to study -- you don't even know how long the race will be. A "Sprint" race is described as a "3+ mile" event. In this instance, they went heavy on the '+'. It was more like 5 miles. Apparently, the race director got out to the site and was so excited about all the terrain that he added some more distance to include a extra bog here and an extra hill there, etc.

The advertisements mainly show people climbing ropes or slogging through mud, but the hills were the hardest obstacle of all. I find clambering over a 6 foot wall a lot easier than clambering over a mountain. It was very tempting to walk the hills, since you didn't really know if you needed hold back a bit of energy in reserve. I ran all the hills except for two -- one of those was a steep climb up a ridge and back down with a 50 lb sandbag on my shoulders, and the second one was right after the first, but longer and without the sandbag.

In the end I did really well. I was in the top 5% in my age group, in the men's category and in the overall. That is considerably better than I typically do in a road race, so I think this is more my style. Our team came 8th overall out of 300 teams, so that was another really good result. One of the guys on our team works for a company that sells remote-controled helicopters with cameras and they made a sweet video that really captures the beauty of the surroundings.

I am definitely doing it again next year. Aroo!

Fitness Contests & Other Feats of Strength

We have had several fitness competitions at work, starting with P90X, then half-marathon training, and yesterday we finished another. This time we had to log 5 1-hour workouts per week for 16 weeks, during which we did a fitness competition against each other every 3 weeks. The winner was the person with the best completion record for workouts, and the loser had to buy lunch for everyone else (and could only eat salad and had to wear a muscle shirt). Since no one missed a single workout, the tie-breaker came down to your average performance in the six competitions:

Wall Sit

For the actual competition, everyone doubled any previous time they had recorded in training. I thought I had a good chance of winning because I could do 2 minutes at home without too much pain. I thought I could do 2:30 on game day. For the competition, we all lined up on either side of a hallway and started the clock. When 2 minutes came and went without anyone dropping out I got a bit concerned. Same with 2:30, and then 3 minutes. I started to think that I might lose. But finally somebody gave up and dropped, and then it went like dominoes. I ended up 2nd place, because I could hide how badly my legs wanted to shake and the 3rd place guy gave up.

Box Jumps

The challenge was to do 100 box jumps as fast as possible, on a box 24 inches high. Once again, when game day came around, everybody went twice as fast as they ever had in training. I went head-to-head with the other two guys who had been in the top three for the Wall Sit and couldn't keep up with their pace. I was a few reps behind them when I got to about 80 reps and my legs failed me completely. I went to jump up and hardly left the ground, smashing into the front of the plastic steps with my shins (pretty good scar from that one). The guy who won did something similar at about 90 reps, but he recovered faster than me and got done in about 1:45. It took me another 30 seconds longer than that and I came in 3rd place.








Crescent Heights Stairs


This is a popular training spot just north of downtown. The interwebs say that there are 11 flights of steps making 167 total, for an estimated elevation gain of 125 feet (38 meters). Some people do regular training sessions there where they run 10 laps up and down (2 steps at a time) in <25 minutes, and other people run it carrying 50-lb sandbags. Our challenge was to run to the top and back down, taking the steps one at a time.

The first person did it in 1:27, which was much faster than the 1:58 I had done in training. However, in training I had always done the stairs in the middle of a longer run and had never quite given 100%. I just about crashed on the final downward flight of steps, but I made it in 1:31, shaving 23% off my previous time. I held my position in 2nd until the final runner managed to beat me by 1 second. Back to 3rd place again.

100 Pushups



I can't do 100 consecutive pushups, so the fastest way for me to reach 100 was to do 40, wait 10 seconds, do 20, wait 10 seconds, do 15, wait 5 seconds, do 8, wait 5 seconds, do 4, wait 5 seconds, then do 2 at a time until I could only do 1 at a time. It was a very painful process, and I managed it in 5:24 to finish in 3rd. The winner did it in 3:36, so there was no chance I was going to beat that. I did my first 60 pushups in about a minute. It took me 4.5 minutes to do the remaining 40.

1000 Skips





All that skipping that we did in elementary school came in handy, as I was able to grind out 1000 skips in 6:12 and lock down 2nd place. The guy who won used to be into boxing and was a flawless skipper. I went as fast as he did, but I missed more often. Scott has his own skipping rope and he liked to practice with me in the basement. He finally got so he could string about 3 consecutive skips together.

1-Mile Race



Our big finale was a 1-mile footrace along the Bow River downtown. In addition to my longer runs for marathon training, I did some training runs for the mile:
- My first attempt at a mile was 6:10, but I knew I could do more.
- Then next one was 5:56 and I still thought I could squeeze it some more.
- The last training run was 5:51 and I felt like I was going to die.

All my training runs were with a small backpack (2-3 pounds), so on race day I figured I would be a few seconds better. There were 7 of us in the race and 2 of us followed closely behind the leader, who is a pretty legit runner. After 400m the other guy dropped back into 3rd and I stayed within arm's reach of the leader, but he started to pull away from my at about the half-way point. Since I had a comfortable grip on 2nd place I didn't push it to 100% for the homestretch, but I still came in at 5:25, which was a massive improvement from my training and only 7 seconds behind the winner.

The competition is now over until we start up again in the fall. I came in 2nd so I can consider ordering a main course.

Tipping Point

One evening last week I took the kids down to the community center to play. Scott rode his bike, Katie rode her trike, and I brought up the rear toting some tennis rackets (it is important to Scott that he be first wherever we go). Right away we noticed that last year's paddleboats had been replaced with three red canoes. We decided to give them a try. I snapped a photo of the kids in their lifejackets just before we embarked. That was just a few moments before the tears started.



Scott climbed into the canoe (first, obviously) to sit up front and I helped Katie into the canoe to sit in the middle. Scott was startled how much the canoe tipped side to side when Katie got in. He started to panic a little bit.

If he thought things felt unstable with Katie's 32 pounds in there, well, he really didn't like it when I stepped in the stern. Katie didn't like it either, and she wanted out. I pulled her out for a second and we sat on the dock for a minute while she calmed down and then we tried again. It wasn't much different. In fact, it was worse.

Even though I had unhooked I couldn't push off because Scott had sprawled himself across the canoe to latch onto the edge of the dock and would not let go. Katie continued to cry. Her wailing pushed Scott over the edge and he began to scream. Then Katie started to scream and cry. I sat dumbfounded in the back of the canoe, trying not to laugh.

In the end, we abandoned the attempt and retreated to the safety of the playground, where the kids got on a teeter-totter mounted on a spring, where they proceeded to tip back and forth with laughs and smiles.



Makes sense to me.

Grandma's Book Club

Grandma W has inducted the kids into her world-famous book club. They just received their first books from her in the mail. The book club works as follows:
1. Grandma sends you a book in the mail.
2. You read the book.
3. You write a summary of the book using as least as many sentences as your age.
4. You mail the summary back to Grandma.
5. She mails you another book, along with a FIVE DOLLAR BILL.
6. Repeat.

Scott got a book about Dick & Jane & Sally, but it is about them as grown-ups, and they talk about things like job-searching and networking. It was a bit startling for him to see this familiar characters metamorphosized. He received the book when he was still 5, but now he has turned 6. Grandma's letter says that he has to write 5 sentences, so he is going to go with 5. He thinks that is only fair, since Katie got an easier book and she can't write at all and she still gets the same reward as him. R figured that instead of writing a summary, Katie could do a video. So here it is.





In the end, Scott managed to write 5 sentences about the book. R coached him along. I thought it was funny that he sent a letter to my mom describing something as "boring", since that word was taboo in our house when we were kids. I guess mom got sick of hearing the five of us constantly complaining that things were boring so she passed a law against it and we had to go our of our way to find other ways of saying it ("I find this minimally exciting" or "the other children have elected me chairman of the board"). Anyways, he wrote out the letter, so I imagine a payday is coming soon.



Katie also got out her pencil and experimented with writing. She did her trademark meticulous doodling, but this time she took her doodles left to right from margin to margin. She was suddenly shocked when she recognized something she had draw as an "H", so she quickly made a bunch more of them. Then Scott showed her how to make few more letters. She was very excited at her progress, since she has fake-handwritten for quite a while as her doodling has evolved, but she had never identified actual letters in the mix.

Nature Walk

One Sunday afternoon the weather was gorgeous so we went for a walk around the pond that is near our house in search of a rock for a kindergarten class project. The kids were enthralled by butterfly that was on the pathway and was not very concerned about having us near.



After throwing some rocks in the water, we came across a tree that was just a little taller than Katie and a little shorter than Scotty. We decided to take a photo with the tree, with the intent to come back and see it next year and see who is growing faster.

Soccer Skills Day

The community soccer league had a special skills day where the players could come out and get extra training from some professional coaches with some nifty drills and fancy equipment. I worked the camera from the sidelines while the boys went out and played. The zoom lens helped bring the distant mountain range into the photos quite nicely.

Wetlands Bunny

Mar 21 2013

Our community is situated in the wetlands, and Scott's kindergarten class has spent much of the year learning about this environment and the rabbits and ducks who live there. One day recently they had someone come to their class and teach them about making clay sculptures. Scott followed the directions closely to make this little rabbit. I thought it was fabulous.

In the Sporting Goods Aisle

Dancing At Grandma's

Apr 7 2013

It used to be that the boys monopolized the Wii at Grandma's house so they could play Mario Soccer or Mario Cart Racing, but these days there is some competition from the girls to do dancing games. Katie is particularly enthusiastic. One time the game was left to cycle through songs for 30 minutes or more and she stuck with it long after everyone else had left the basement. She must have been working pretty hard, because when I found her, she was getting pretty flushed -- that runs in the family.