Daddy-Daughter Day

It was the last Saturday of August. The last weekend of summer vacation. And it was perfect.

I started out the day with a sunrise round of golf at Silverwing, which is so close to the airport's new runway that you have to factor in the jetwash from incoming planes when playing your wedges. It reminded me of our house in Castleridge, where conversations at the dinner table would pause in mid sentence to let the planes rumble past, and my brother J would keep notes of the numbers painted on the underside of aircraft from the window in the upstairs bedroom that we shared. This was only my second round of golf for the season, and the familiar roar of turbines really improved my game compared to the session back in June.

The plan for the afternoon was to see "How To Train Your Dragon 2". However, Katie was not at all interested in a show that might feature a villain or some tense music, so we decided that R would take Scott on their own. That left Katie and me to do whatever we wanted. I suggested that we go for a bike ride. She thought that sounded nice. I expanded on the plan and suggested we put the bikes in the truck and drive to a place where we could also get some ice cream. She thought that sounded really nice. I told her to go get ready and she put on purple flip-flops.

I asked her, "Are those good shoes to ride your bike?"
She said, "I thought we were just going to ride in the truck and get ice cream."
"You don't want to ride your bike anymore?"
"No. I just want to ride in the truck."
"Okay. That works for me. Let's go"

The kids love the truck because they can ride up front (no airbags, and the seatbelts are better in front) and see out all the windows. Katie and I drove all the over the place, just doing whatever we felt like doing -- after we got the ice cream, of course. For that we hit Menchie's, which was Katie's choice. Self-serve frozen yogurt and a ridiculous amount of sugary topping options. She mixed chocolate and green apple flavours, with smarties, marshmallows and chocolate sauce on top. I get as much chocolate and peanut butter into my cup as I can.

After that we hit up my favourite oil change spot near SAIT, where they always give the kids a sucker. She quite liked that, and she remembered that we weren't in the same service bay as we had been the previous time. Good memory for detail.



We were heading back towards the NW and we passed the Canmore Park splash pad, which I have never been to. There was no one there so we pulled in to check it out. Katie protested that she didn't have her swimming suit on. She didn't even have shorts. I just folded her pantlegs up and we started to explore. At first she was tentative about getting wet, but by the end she was drenched. Her particular favourite was this little pole that sprayed out in every direction to create a smooth umbrella of water. When you poked your finger into it, the umbrella would split apart. When you poked your whole leg into it, you got really wet.

I happened to have a towel in the back seat from when we were hot-tubbing/watersliding/ALS-IceBucketing at Grandma's earlier in the week, so I wrapped her up in that to head home. The only other thing on our list of things to do had been a car wash, since the truck was filthy from Fathers and Kids camp 2 weeks before. Katie squealed with delight when the automatic arms started blasting water at her window. She is so cute.

Perhaps when she grows up the roar of car washes will remind her of our day in the truck. Or maybe green apple mixed with chocolate will make her nostalgic for her childhood. We all have something.

Stars Basketball Camp

This was Scott & Hayden's second year in the Stars Basketball Camp.

Growing up, it seemed to me that a week of basketball camp at SAIT was an integral part of every summer. My mom would drop me off the first morning with my bball gear and a packed lunch, and I would worry how well I would stack up with my peers on and off the court. The camp ran all day, with occasional film sessions to give us a chance to catch our breath. Late 80s basketball videos were filled with bizarre raps about Hakeem Olajuwon ("Can he block the ball? He can block the ball. Can he block the ball? He can block the ball") and other VHS gems. My brothers and I would come home after a week with a new tri-colour basketball and an appreciation for pinball machines (lunch break diversions) and fine rap. I think we all feel a bit nostalgic for the gyms at SAIT to some extent.

When I looked into SAIT camps for Scott, I realized that they don't offer the full-day camps until you get to be in grade 4 or older. I had no idea, since I don't really remember anything from grade 1 except that I didn't how how to swim or ride a bike at that age and I had a really large head. For kids as young as Scott and Hayden, you go to Stars, where they are teaching the basics of the game.

Last year Scott and Hayden were in with the younger half of the group, and they started to dominate by the end of the week, because many of the other kids had never really played before. This year they were in the deeper end of the talent pool, playing with kids a year older than them. Scott was pretty tentative at first, bewildered why no one was passing him the ball, as he lingered well behind the play. One evening he and I went out on the driveway and worked on getting rebounds, which I described as the best and easiest way to get the ball, regardless who is on your team. I lobbed up brick after brick and he chased down the rebounds.

Katie came out and practiced dribbling the ball and shooting on our 4-foot toddler net. However, the driveway has a bit of slope to it, which makes dribbling a bit tricky and somewhat tearful. Once I pulled the cars out of the garage and gave her a flat surface to work with, she made better progress. We do the game where I count how many times in a row she can dribble it. I think she got to 16, although those last few dribbles are just inches off the ground so it gets hard to adjudicate.

While Katie worked on her dribbling, I showed Scott that his first dribble should be accompanied with a big step forward, so he could get past people. He was enthusiastic about the rebounding, but didn't want too large a dose of coaching, so I left the "go moves" for another day. Instead, we tried to see how many shots we could score in a row. He got up to four pretty quickly, and I struggled to get up to two. Scott was delighted. However, once I stepped back to the far edge of the driveway I suddenly hit 10 in a row. You could tell that took the wind out of his sails a bit. For the next 30 minutes he shot over and over again, trying to get 10 in a row. He would get close and then the pressure would get to him and he would miss. Katie came out and helped feed him the ball. I showed her how to do a bounce pass. I would get the rebound and pass it to Katie and then she would pass to Scott. He liked to blame her passing for any shots that he missed, so finally she and I went back into the garage and let him do it alone.

Persistence paid off, and he finally got to 10 (there was one airball that we said "slipped" so it didn't count in the tally). All this practicing seemed to help. By the end of the week, he played a great scrimmage:



Now we just need to dig out some VHS tapes to work on his rap skills.

Outdoor Swimming Lessons

[July 2 2014]



This year Scott and Hayden went to a week of swimming lessons at an outdoor pool. By some stroke of luck, it was actually warm enough to swim all week. Not only that, but it was sunny and nice enough to want to stick around and play in the wading pool each day before leaving. This is all pretty remarkable, since Calgary is a high altitude, high latitude place and summers are not known for being consistently hot. There aren't many outdoor pools in the city, and those are all from an earlier era, when people must have been hardier or had misconceptions about how weather works.



I remember having an outdoor swimming lesson before. Mine was down in Murray, Utah, when I stayed with my Grandparents for several weeks when I was about nine years old. I remember that I was considerably taller than the other kids in the beginner class, because I had never taken lessons because I couldn't really put my head underwater for many years on account of having tubes in my ears. So, we were bobbing around and making bubbles and stuff, and it was pretty ridiculous. I recall that our instructor was named Buffy or something like that. And she got really embarrassed one day when she demonstrated to us how she could dive off the high dive and the front of her suit came a bit unzipped (but we would have never known if she didn't tell us).

The most vivid memory I have from my outdoor lessons was that I ate a whole bag of Twizzlers licorice beforehand and I got ill while in the change room and puked all over the floor. Little red Twizzler-bits all over the place. Then I felt better and I went out to the pool to swim. You know, if you puke a bunch of licorice, it doesn't taste bad at all. It's almost like getting an serving of Twizzlers for free... with none of the calories.