It was a busy week but I am happy to say I feel I did great on my exams and done grade 11!

He said

Initially it looked like this might be a lighter week with Emelia wrapping up her last exam on Wednesday, meaning her Grade 11 year was coming to an end. So that might dramatically pair down some of our schedule. However Emelia decided to do summer school this year to fast track her final year, so for the last few weeks of Saturdays she had been logging to an online portion of her Co-Op class she is picking up this summer. This week was a lot of finalizing for Emelia to looked to lock down her placement for Co-Operative Education. She had her interview Wednesday and has landed a placement at Boys & Girls Club that starts tomorrow for her first ‘shift’ there for training. She’a excited but already noticed how this will cut into her simmer time off.

But, then this week we had another curve ball thrown our way… a little over a week ago Mom was landed in the hospital because she had some swelling in her arms that severely limited her ability to stand with assistance by the PSW that supports her. It turned out to be that she had a flare up of rheumatoid arthritis and they were able to get that under control as well as some other nagging things such that she was back at Oakcrossing the latter part of this week. However, she wasn’t even back 24 hours before she was right back over to the hospital as she had a reaction to a new miracle medication they tried her on. She spent the weekend in the hospital while they sorted her out on medications and finally today she was well enough to be back at Oakcrossing.

With all that going on, plus Emelia’s busy life we were only able to sneak up to the trailer on Friday night after we were done work for the night and were back in London in the late afternoon. I worked yesterday but with today being Canada Day we were able to get back up to the trailer last night for another overnight trip. It was good we were up there last night as they did fireworks at the park, and our new site affords us a short work over near the Elk pen where we had a great vantage point to see them and then a short 100 metre walk back to our fire pit to enjoy the rest of the evening. It wasn’t all enjoyment though as Danielle over the weekend has come down with an extra fun summer cold. So she was off to bed very early both nights, while I made sure the fire didn’t feel lonely.

But, the good news for me was with two days spent up at the trailer I was able to get in two days of gravel riding on the G2G Rail Trail. And, with the newly opened Blyth Tunnel under Highway 25 I was able to ride my ‘home rink‘ section of the trail from Auburn to Blyth and back that meant I was back to being able to ride to the section of trail I was doing versus the driving to the section like we had been doing while the trail was closed for this massive project. It is so much nicer now with the tunnel because you ride right under the highway as opposed to the old way which was mostly hike-a-bike up the hill, over a busy highway, and then down the hill on the other side. So, consider me a very happy camper, with this section of trail back in the repertoire!

She said

Emelia’s last week was another really busy one. Emelia had her last three exams last week and to add to the craziness she had a 5 hour cheer training session with her coach to learn the stunts for this years routine. I asked Emelia how the training went and she said the stunts are really amazing, really complex and she feels great about how they were already looking even by the end of the training session. This season Emelia has a new coach, for the first 4 seasons at cheer Emelia always had the same coach and we did really love Hailey we are so excited for this new coach. Rayna comes with quite a pedigree. She was born into cheer, her mother owns one of the biggest gyms on the west coast, she is a well renowned choreographer and she has a championship background coming from Great White Sharks and won the Worlds championships twice. Needless to say Emelia is so excited that this is her coach in her last season. The rest of the cheer teams at CSR were getting their routines from another really amazing company but Rayna’s teams are all getting custom routines she has built for her teams. It is going to be a great year!

The rest of Emelia’s week was just trying to be as prepared for her exams as possible, she came out of all of them feeling that she did well and went in prepared. Her second semester was a very heavy one, especially considering everything we have been dealing with as a family. We are so proud of Emelia for how she balances it all. By the end of this week Emelia was ready for a mini break before summer school. She spent most of that time with her friends. On Thursday after cheer practice #2 she was off to her best friend Bri’s place to hang out with a big group of their friends and were off with Bri’s older sister to a party with some of her friends. Emelia said she had a great time. The big event for Emelia for this weekend came last night, the big annual Canada Day party with her friends at Lucas. All accounts it was a lot of fun and we were so happy she got to have this great weekend before she is back to the grind tomorrow.

Outside of school and sports for Emelia it was a very busy week for John and I. We were trying to support Helen and her medical needs. As John already mentioned Helen had a set back just over a week ago that landed her in the hospital. There was swelling so severe in her wrists that she was not able to support herself at all to stand. This made it not possible to be cared in her current home to meet her needs. The home wanted her assessed to see what was going on and to see what level of assist she would need to ensure she is taken care of. What this sparked was a lot of conversation and what was best for Helen and the family with Helen’s approval went about to seek other options that would meet her current and hopeful future needs. I went on a few tours with Helen’s requirement list and information on what we knew her limitations were. We found two solid options and we hope this will mean that we have a better match for her longer term needs. We will hopefully know this week how things lo0k and then we can start planning.

With all that has been going on John and I really needed a bit of a break. With Canada Day being today it meant that we could have a sort of long weekend. With a bit of back and forth to the trailer we were able to get some down time. What threw a wrench into the true relaxation was the fact that my body decided that it would be good timing to come down with a horrible cold. I have spent the last 4 days feeling like right crap. We made the most of it and still got some time around the campfire thinking that the fresh air would help a lot. I am hoping that I am back to myself by tomorrow because the next few weeks are going to be really busy ones not only at work but in our family’s life.