January 2010 - a good month

Looking back, this has been a good month for our family...

Judith had her six-monthly visit with her oncologist who told her that her test results were all negative, clearing her for another six months. One always wants to exercise faith and be positive, but there is always a certain degree of anxiety in the days leading up to the appointment and a great heave of relief and gratitude to God when Judith tells you the good news.

The family secret is now out for the world to know. Geoff and Miriam are expecting a baby, their first, at the end of July!!! There is already much excitement, as you can imagine.

Luisa and Mark came back after an amazing delayed honeymoon in South Africa and Mozambique. We all spent last Sunday afternoon at their apartment/flat looking at some of the really lovely photos they had taken over the 4 weeks that they were there. I am still waiting for Mark to send me some photos for the blog. He also took a few videos of Aunty Bessie who is 93 years old.

Ingrid's bionic finger continues from strength to strength, literally. She has been very faithful to the exercises that the OT has given her and it has paid off. The occupational therapist's expectations have already been exceeded.

I have received a promotion of sorts. Some colleagues insist I have moved to the Dark Side. Whereas I used to be the lead for product validation I have now been made lead for engineering quality which monitors that processes are being followed correctly rather than looking at the quality of the product itself. The appointment was from January 1 and so far I have been enjoying it.

I have added some pictures of recent snow taken from the door to our back deck...

and of some ice crystals on our bedroom window.

I forgot to mention...

I forgot to mention in my previous post...

Ingrid and I spent New Year's Eve "home alone" watching a DVD. The original plan had been to go to a dance at church but that was cancelled due to insufficient tickets being sold. We quite enjoy these evenings met ons tweetjes (just the cosy two of us) and being New Year didn't alter that. I set the alarm on my Blackberry to go off at a minute before midnight and we settled down with some crackers, cheese and red wine to watch the movie "The Departed". It's a good movie, full of suspense, and we really got into it. There is a scene towards the end where Matt Damon is alone, maybe, in a warehouse and he makes a call on his cellphone (there are quite a few cellphone scenes in the movie.) As he makes the call, another cellphone rings and so, obviously, the person he is phoning is right there in the warehouse somewhere. It's all a bit confusing. When the cellphone rang again Ingrid realised she was being paged from work (she was on call) and so we paused the movie while she scrambled for her pager. I stopped her and pointed out that her pager plays "Hey Jude" and what we heard was "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" whereupon the penny dropped and a light went on in my head that the "other" cellphone had been my Blackberry alarm which repeats every two minutes and the time was now 2 minutes past midnight. We both just sat there in stitches of laughter before filling our glasses and drinking in the New Year.

In my defence I had just recently changed the tune on my alarm from "The Entertainer" which I would have recognised immediately as my alarm.

My mom used to say that getting old was a "helluva thing", but being older does have its lighter moments.

Happy New Year

Another year has started. Ingrid and I wish all of you, our family and friends, a peace filled, happy and prosperous year ahead for 2010.

Looking back, the first main happening to mention since "The Weddings" is Ingrid's surgery. She is is truly on a mission to become more and more a bionic woman. Actually Ingrid had been having a great deal of pain in the finger due to arthritis and the finger had become quite twisted with a markedly enlarged knuckle. Thanks, possibly, to all those superstitious people who refused to have surgery on a Friday 13th, Ingrid went in for day surgery early on November 13 and was back home again by 13:30 feeling fine and dandy with a new knuckle on the middle joint of the middle finger of her right hand. Not to make too light of it, she really was in a lot of pain later that night and the days that followed when the freezing wore off. It took a good two weeks for the pain to get down to more bearable levels. The trouble was that every time the pain got nicely bearable they altered the angle on the splint to force the finger straighter and straighter. The pictures tell the story and all credit to the surgeon (cosmetic) and occupational therapist at Southlake Hospital who did an amazing job. The second picture was taken two weeks later on Nov 26.

Our Halloween was a disappointing non-event with only five kids knocking on our door. I think the houses on our street are too far apart to make it worth the effort. One little fellow did make it worth the effort for us, however. I don't think he was even three years old yet - dressed like Tigger the tiger. We had a scarecrow with a skull head and flashing red eyes sitting on a Muskoka chair next to the front door which made a HUGE, SCARY impression on little Tigger. Eventually his mother prompted him into the trick or treat ritual whereupon he offered us the candy/sweets in his little bag. He was one very cute little tiger who made it totally all worthwhile for us.

Of course we had our annual family Sinterklaas gathering again at the beginning of December but this year we had a true believer in our midst. We invited Peter and Vicki, Canadian friends of ours with a Dutch background, to bring their three year old son, Samuel, to help us sing Sinterklaas liedjes and collect up the candy that gets thrown into the house. After finding de zak van Sinterklaas in the trunk/boot of my car Sam had a wonderful evening helping us hand out the presents powered with a sugar high. He can't wait for next year's event to come around again.

Mark and Luisa went to South Africa for Christmas and New Year to enjoy a delayed honeymoon. Seeing Mark again and meeting Luisa was probably the highpoint of the year 2009 for Aunty Bessie (93, frail, nearly blind, but sharp as a tack.) She had been waiting in anticipation for months and was not disappointed.

Miriam and Geoff spent Christmas in Ottawa with Geoff's family. Judith had introduced Miriam and Geoff to Settlers of Catan who promptly bought their own edition. They then introduced the game to Geoff's parents who went out and bought their own copy before Geoff and Miriam had arrived back in Toronto.

The rest of the family came over to us for Christmas Eve mass, gift giving, sleep over and amazing Christmas Day dinner prepared by Sean in our kitchen.

On Sunday, 27th we all drove out to Heather's parents (Stephen's girlfriend) who have a farm with beautifully modern horse stables. You get the impression that although it is not on the Tundra you can see the Tundra from there. After another amazing dinner (so much fine eating at this time of year) we all got to ride Heather's mom's horse - a first-time horse ride for Judith.