Fall Colours

This past week the fall colours in our neighbourhood have been spectacular. That's very late; usually by Thanksgiving the leaves are already past their peak. About ten years ago Ellie and I planted this maple in our front yard. It was about 7 feet tall at the time; it's over 15 feet now and is multi-coloured front yellow to orange to red. That's what Ellie wanted and she did get to see those colours for the past several years. It's hard experiencing things like walks and fall colours without her at my side. I miss her a lot.

Our maple in full bloom

But the kids are around a lot. Alida usually has me drop in to visit each week to see Logan and her. I go to visit Mark, Rosemary and Hannah every 2 weeks or so. Also I visit Henry, Melanie and the boys if they haven't dropped in on a Saturday morning as they did this past weekend. It's usually Henry, Oscar and Charlie but this time Melanie joined them for the visit. As always the boys want to play downstairs and have their treat (a penguin-shaped chocolate-chip cookie) while the grownups have their coffee. I make sure I have some around. Here are some photos from last Saturday:

Charlie is enjoying playing with Ernie

Cleanup time - Melanie looks so thrilled

At the moment we are having quite a rainy, windy day here in southern Ontario as the remnants of Hurricane Patricia moves through. I can't imagine how helpless the people in Mexico felt when it first hit land there a few days ago. I pray that they get the help they need. Here I understand there are only a few power outages but haven't heard of anything major yet.

I had a hard time getting around to writing this post. It's easy to write but I just didn't feel like it. Some days I have no initiative to doing anything besides eating, drinking coffee, reading and going for a walk in the neighbourhood. Is this part of grieving or depression or just feeling blah? I wish I knew the answer.  

Birthday time with Family

This past Friday was my birthday and I got to celebrate it with a number of family members. After I came home from swimming there was a message on the telephone with Henry and the boys singing "Happy Birthday" to me. Over Friday and Saturday there were other phones calls from family and friends wishing me a Happy Birthday. Later on Friday morning I hosted 2 of my sisters, Ann and Hilda, who came down from Barrie for coffee and a treat of brownies which they brought. In the afternoon I went to visit Mark, Rosemary and Hannah. There I was treated to a pizza supper and a birthday cake for dessert. It was a carrot cake, one of my favourites, and topped with some candles and balloons. Hannah helped me blow out the candles. I left when it was time for Hannah to go to bed. When I got home I watched the Jays game.  

Hannah & Opa with the Birthday Cake

This afternoon, Alida called and invited me over to watch the Jays game with them and have a hamburger supper together. So I drove down to spend the late afternoon with Jeff, Alida & Logan and the Jays on TV. It's great to spend time with family, especially at birthday time. Here is Logan in his office which is a plastic play structure that holds him and gives him several play centres around the outside. You can see he is totally occupied.

Logan concentrating in his Office

Thanks for all the best wishes, treats and time taken to make me feel special. I really appreciate it.

As to the Jays, they had nothing in the offensive tank on Friday night. This afternoon, the game was well in their hands until a miscommunication between Goins and Bautista allowed a pop fly to drop and gave the Royals the chance they needed to take away the game. Now down 2-0 against a better team than Texas, the Jays will have to play great ball back in Toronto next week. I hope they can do it.

Thanksgiving and Baseball

This was the first Thanksgiving without Ellie. We decided to have it at our house because we have the most room for the children, inside and out. Alida brought the turkey all prepared and the rest of us chipped in with the rest. The kids played downstairs in the playroom first and then outside in the backyard. It was great weather as you can see in the photos below. At times it was sad when we thought of Ellie not being there but then we realized she is in a better place. That doesn't make it any easier though. We had a good time together with only Melanie missing as she had to work. We had good food and fellowship and enjoyed the blessings God has given us. But it sure is different with young children at the table; I guess we all went through it but forgot how busy it was. Alida took along her camera and here are some of the photos she took:

All the guys hanging out before dinner

Hannah with her chalk drawings

Rosemary picking tomatoes with Oscar & Charlie

Jeff & Alida

The dinner table

Opa talking to Oscar with Charlie looking on

Henry taking care of  his sons and nephew at dessert time

Afterwards everyone helped with the cleanup and off they all went so that the grandchildren and maybe some others could have a nap.

Later in the day the Blue Jays played their second game in Texas and played well enough to take two wins there. Back home in Toronto on Wednesday they played well again. In a flukey seventh inning that lasted almost an hour, after a controversial call against them and 3 Ranger errors, Jose Bautista hit the greatest home run of his career to give Toronto a lead which Sanchez and Osuna were able to hold.
Yeh Jays! Now for the Royals in Kansas City tonight and tomorrow afternoon. Go Jays! Go and flip your bats.

Family, Fall Colours and Baseball

I checked the blog and again it's been a while since I posted anything. Since the last post I attended our small group meeting on Saturday evening, went to church on Sunday and volunteered at the Lighthouse food bank on Monday. On Wednesday I went to visit Alida and Logan. He is such a happy guy. Alida has started "sleep training" him and it has reaped some benefits already. Alida seemed more rested and he is catching on. But it is a "work in progress".

Logan and Opa

A few others and I were invited for supper by a senior widow on Wednesday evening. The food and fellowship was great. Thank you. Then on Thursday I went up to Barrie. On the way I took a side trip to Hockley Valley to see the colours. They were nice but not brilliant. I guess the weather this year was not good for fall colours. Even in our neighbourhood the trees that are most brilliant most years seemed not to be this year. I took some photos of some trees in our area but though nice they are not very brilliant this year. Here are a few of them.

Colourful Maple normally bright red at this time

Locust trees all yellow

Another colourful maple

In Barrie I watched the first part of the Jays playoff game but the team seemed to be off their game and lost. But I was really up in Barrie to help celebrate with my oldest sister and her husband their 60th anniversary. What a milestone! We were together with a lot of the sibblings at a thanksgiving dinner and then for a get together at my sister Ann's place afterwards. That was nice. I stayed overnight and came back to Toronto on Friday morning. Then I watched the marathon baseball game between the Jays and the Rangers. The Jays could not hit the long ball and went down to defeat again. It does not look good for advancing.

On Saturday Henry called to invite me down to spend some time with them, so I went and spent time at the park with Henry and the boys. We enjoyed the great weather and then we played in the newly finished basement and ended by having pizza for dinner. Here are a few shots of the boys.

Oscar on a twirly seat

Charlie loved the swing despite this stare

So this was a good week with lots of time visiting with family and friends. I watched lots of baseball and here's to better play by the Jays. 

Tootin'

When is it all right to toot or not? And I don't mean honking your car horn. This morning I went for a colonoscopy. This is the third time for me; I had one in '95 and again in 2005. So it was time. This time as in the others all was clear; so that's something to be thankful for. In the recovery room my nurse said: "Now you can let the gas out whenever you can". That's the first time in my life I was given permission to toot (in an other word, fart). Ellie would never say that. I'm quite sure I never heard that from the other women in my life (Mom, Mother or my daughter or daughters-in-law) either. I commented on that to the nurse and she chuckled. So after a while there was lots of tootin' going on, from me and my neighbouring patients. Sure was great to get the bloated feeling out of my abdomen. Henry kindly took time off from work and accompanied me to the clinic so that he could drive me home. It's good to be taken care of.

This week I managed to get in a quick visit with Logan and Alida on Wednesday. Logan was not cooperating very well with sleeping and Alida was at her wits' end with him. She asked what we did with them and frankly I don't remember that we had a problem; I remember that we just let them cry themselves to sleep after checking that there was no other issue. Maybe Ellie would answer differently but she's not here. So maybe there are mothers out there to give Alida a piece of helpful advice.

I have been spending a lot of time watching and cheering the Blue Jays on their way to clinching first place in their division. Way to go! I'm a bit nervous about the regulars not playing on Thursday. It has happened so often that the team that gets a well-deserved rest ends up upsetting their routine and cannot establish their winning ways again. I hope that doesn't happen this time. Here's to winning first place over all over the Royals and then playing great playoffs.

I added a few photos of some flowers in the garden:

Another splash of colour from the roses

 

The sedums have all turned reddish brown

The chinese lanterns are all orange