School was pushed back a week. I wasn’t upset about this.

He said

After a work week that ended on Sunday, I promptly loaded the truck after work and got the heck outta Dodge and headed straight to the trailer where my two lady friends were waiting. And the best part was they had a birthday dinner at the ready with a bunch of our camp friends. There’s no better way to end out a week, a summer (though I am not really ready to let that go just yet) and the last night in my forty-eighth year on this ride. An hour and half after vacating work I was sitting at the fire pit with an adult beverage in hand and friends all around me—it was perfect!

But, back to the week… After an eight day stretch at work this week that ended Monday at 8pm when I closed the store, I promptly made my way up to the trailer for a couple of days (sound anything like the paragraph above?) with my ladies. And that has been the jewel in the crown of what could have been a very crappy year with this COVID quarantine. We have love this seasonal site so much that both The Sherwood’s and our family have agreed we’ll be doing this again next year! It is the perfect fit for us and works with our lives just right. Both Danielle and I would have never thought we were the kind of people that would want to be locked down to one location for the camping season but there is just so much more camping we’ve done in this lockdown year than we have ever done in any previous year.

Normally this week we’re headed into would have been Emelia’s return to school but as the ever-changing regulations rolled out and the school board tried to adjust they recognized they weren’t ready and pushed the start of school back a week. With my three days off including Labour Day, that ended up being the perfect excuse to squeeze in even more camping. Emelia will start school next week with some alternate days to allow the school to get all the students acclimated to what it’s going to be like this year. Definitely strange and different times—especially considering this is her run at 8th grade and her last year before heading off to high school!

So back to me… (Ha Ha) Well more appropriately back to the last couple of days we’ve spent here at the trailer with friends who spoiled me. First off, when I got to the trailer I got to see how Danielle & Emelia had dolled it up for my birthday. But then, also immediately Emelia haded me a birthday card that had a message in it completely in her words that if I thought about enough I could actually cry – it was so beautifully thoughtful and spoke exactly to the place we are in right now and meant a lot to me. Then, there was the joint dinner we had as a larger group that loves camping. The Vilarandas, the Sherwood’s and of course my Teeter’s all spoiled me with food, laughter and love. I couldn’t have felt any more important to a lot of people who mean a whole lot to me.

There are lots of ways that you can end weeks that make you feel great and appreciative of all the blessings you have, but I am hard pressed to think of any more relevant or on the nose as this one I have had right here. I want to thank my family, my people and most importantly my wife and daughter for making me feel over the moon!

Love you all!
Thank you.

She said

This weekend has been all about celebrating birthdays. Not only is today John’s 49th birthday this week but, also Emelia’s bestie Olivia becomes a teenager! A couple of girls at THIRTEEN! Wow!

So we spent the entire weekend celebrating two of our favourite people.

It was very unfortunate that this week and most of this weekend that John missed most of our trip to the trailer. We had an amazing week in spite the weather. We had lots of time with amazing friends. Yesterday John was finally able to join us and when he arrived he was welcomed to the trailer full of birthday decorations. Yesterday Emelia and I spent the day getting the trailer all festive. She wanted to make sure her Daddy would arrive to a festive site! She proudly decorated not only our trailer but the Sherwood’s trailer to make Olivia know how much she is loved as well.

Today we focused on John, it was all about his favourite things, time with friends, family, camping and biking. After a pretty big storm last night we waited until the afternoon and got out on the road. Steph, Justin, John and I grabbed the trail just outside Auburn and made our way all the way to Goderich. It was a beautiful ride. It fully kicked my butt but am proud that I did the entire 25 km ride, I wanted to give up but pushed through and it was worth the effort.

It is hard to believe that we are now on the end of the what is normally the last weekend of the summer. This has been hands down the strangest summer of our lives. I have reluctantly spent the summer without work, the pandemic all but killed my long term income so I sadly have had to spend far too much time over the summer looking for work. It has unfortunately occupied a lot of my time and stress. I would be lying to say that I am not stressed because I am, very stressed. I haven’t been sleeping well lately as the end of government support looms in the very near future. I have tried every avenue to find work, well work enough to support our family. It hasn’t been easy. I have been able to secure a few interviews but the competition is fierce. I have done more online assessments, profiles, applications than I care to admit.

I had two interviews last week, one seemed quite promising but so far I haven’t heard either way how that went. Now I will say I have been fortunate to find VERY part time work with an ability to move to almost full time hours some weeks but sadly we cannot afford this income for long. I have been told by the school that I will likely see a lot more hours and I am really hoping this is the case. I have been wanting to stay in teaching and this position at Montessori has given me an amazing opportunity, now hopefully it turns into more hours so I can support our family.

I wanted to end this post giving one more Happy Birthday to John, we all love you to the moon and back. Thank you for being our rock through one of the most stressful times of our recent lives. We love you very much – Happy Birthday!