I got to see my friend Jill Barber at The Aeolian Hall Friday night!
He said
This week… over texts while I was at work to Danielle in the throws of her daycareday, we decided to call the camping season *gasp* over. With the weather having turned officially cold this week and actually having seen snowflakes in the air, it just felt right. And while I thought I’d be more sad about the idea, I was really quite okay with it. The reality is the last trip was planned just to get one more trip in, and there wasn’t anyone we were going with. We knew the campground would be empty, but the more we thought about it, and the colder it got, we envisioned the trip more about doing it just to be able to say we did, and spending an entire weekend inside the trailer to stay warm. So midway through the week, while I walked the mall on my lunch break, we called the season over and adjusted our plans for winterization and then, winter storage for Wolfie Too. That camping weekend will now be a weekend for us to spend together and find some other fun.
The biggest event on our week was going to see our friend Jill Barber play The Aeolian Hall on Friday night. A few weeks ago, we got a message from Jill inviting us as her guest to whichever of the two nights she was playing here in London. Being that we already plans on Saturday (more on that in a bit) we opted for a Friday night out as a family. It was such a thoughtful gift from Jill even if we were planing on going anyway. We will make donation in her name for a charity she’s supporting (Girls Rock Camp, Vancouver) with the money we would have spent on tickets.
We have seen Jill a ton of times from basically since Emelia has been two and a half years old. We’ve seen her at The Aeolian, at The Church (now Revival House) in Stratford, at Home County Music & Arts Festival, Wolfe Island Music Festival, and the famed Massey Hall in Toronto. Emelia has been listening to her music every night at bed time since her album Chances came out ten years ago. But, more importantly we have become very good friends over those years. It has been so amazing to see her career grow and the way her music has developed in that time. The show was amazing – we all had an amazing night of music and even got to visit with her after the show.
The other big event on our week was the yearly festive season gathering at our neighbours and friends The Grants. Last year we thought we were on the naughty list as the invite never came, but as we found out they actually skipped a year. The Grants are a family we’ve met through the school as two of their kids, their twins, one of the three in Emelia’s grade, are part of Emelia’s circle of chums. There are quite a few of the families in our ‘hood we’ve met this way and I know every year I go on about how much we love our neighbourhood for this. And this festive gathering brings together almost all the friends we’ve made so it’s great for us. And because it’s a parents-only party, it means we get to unwind and be grown up a bit. We got home at an entirely reasonable hour as I had to work today, but more importantly we had an evening as a couple with friends who were doing the same. It was bliss.
That was our week. We had a great mix of music and the friends who make it. As well as getting time to hang out with the community people we call friends who are our neighbours and school community. And then there was plenty of time in between where we got relax. And I managed to find a sweet set of mint condition vintage PSB speakers on Facebook Marketplace for $45 that sound wonderful. It was a perfect week!
She said
John really did a great job talking about the weekend so I do not have a ton to add this week but I wanted to chat a bit about other things going on with Emelia.
As I mentioned last week we have been trying to get to the bottom of the continue saga of what is going on with Emelia’s stomach. This week I brought her to the doctors to see if we could get some answers. The doctor went through more of her symptoms, what we have tried and failed to change her symptoms. After this appointment we got blood work done to test for her bacteria levels in her stomach and made more appointments to get a closer look in her tummy. She isn’t happy about the upper GI series and ultrasound but she is as desperate for answers as we are so she said she knows she needs it done.
The rest of the week was basically the same as most other weeks, lots of driving around to get Emelia to training and dance classes. Today John had to work and since I didn’t have a lot on the go today it let me stay around to see her train for a bit. I don’t see her work on the floor or vault often so I was happy to see how she’s progressing there. Her strength and confidence builds every week. Only a few weeks ago she was wanting spotting on her back tuck and today she was doing them with ease. It has really built her confidence for everything she can take on. The one area that I saw some amazing improvement was vault. I haven’t seen her do her level 4 trick yet this year and she has great form and is doing so much better on lots of areas, so much that her coach was letting some of the girls try some higher levels on vault and she did some with ease. The smile on her face when Alex told her she nailed it was so incredible.
Next week should be another week like this week, lots of hours at the gym and the dance studio. Our big countdown will be to the weekend so we can finally have a family weekend together this month. It has been a long month and we are really happy that we get to wrap this month off with some time together.