Taken June 25th. From left to right: Gaston, Marie, Rejeanne, Monique, Aline, Serge, Bernard.
Tag: family
Bears on a plane
Little family selfie on the way back home.
Family portrait
Katy made me a family portrait in sock penguins as a valentines day gift. Each penguin is made from Bean’s, Katy’s or my sock. I love them! On a scale of 1 to 10, they go to eleven!
Bit less lucky than we assumed.
My mom is under observation at the hospital. She was feeling some pain today and went for some more xrays. More info to come. It’s like exercising. It always hurts more, not the following day, but the one after that.
Someone to watch over her…
There was chaos on the roads because of high winds and blowing snow on Monday, resulting in a major pileup on Highway 417 in Eastern Ontario, near North Glengarry.
In total, twenty vehicles were involved in this series of accidents, which occurred shortly before 4pm westbound, between the villages of Saint-Isidore and Vankleek Hill, near Highway 34.
A Voyageur coach, two tankers, a semi-trailer truck carrying a cargo of cars and some cars were involved in the pileup which were likely cause by the poor weather conditions.
Fifteen people were injured slightly. Two further people had to be transported to the hospital. Several emergency vehicles were deployed to the scene of the incident, almost halfway between Ottawa and Montreal.
In total, more than 150 accidents were reported during the day, both on Outaouais roads that Eastern Ontario, due to difficult road conditions.
One of the people that went to the hospital was my mom, coming back from seeing my sister in Montreal. The coach got caught in the tail end of a white-out and collided into the back of a car, itself involved in the multi-vehicle pileup. My mom, sitting in her usual spot in the first row seat, went through the front windshield of the bus and landed on the road. Miraculously, and I don’t use the word lightly, the only injury she suffered was a cut on the top of her head, requiring a dozen stitches, and a big bruise on her shoulder. She thinks that the glass probably shattered when the bus hit, lessening the impact when she went through it. I can’t really believe I just typed that…
She thinks she might have blacked out for a bit, but not too long, and was lucid the whole time, after realising she was on the road, getting wet from the snowstorm. The paramedics did the whole neck brace backboard thing, but xrays showed there were no fractures, no concussion and they only kept her for observations for one night. She feels a bit stiff, but less than she expected to. She’s mostly annoyed that she can’t wash the blood out of her hair. Tough (and lucky!) old bird, she is.
A family movie outing.
We went to see Frozen as a family unit. Happily surprised on several fronts. The movie itself was nice and funny. They had a very old school meets new school Disney short, that mixed old fashioned black and white with full colour 3D and was really cool. Best of all though, Bean was super well behaved all throughout the movie, sitting down an chilling with his popcorn and juice :-) These are the times I love my bean.
Update on my dad
Things have gotten a bit clearer now that I’ve had a chance to properly talk with my mom. Apparently, my dad had a stomach ulcer rupture.
The ulcer was caused by drug interaction side effects of some anti-inflammatories he’s been taking for his back and daily low dose aspirin he’s taking to thin his blood. He drove himself in to the local hospital on Thursday when he felt some very sharp pains, and, after being violently ill, followed by almost a day of tests, waiting and general faffing, they decided the situation was urgent enough to transfer him to a bigger hospital where he was operated on to repair the damage via keyhole surgery.
He’s now stable and alert and he’s going to stay for observations for the next week to make sure the patch they put on the ulcer holds. If that doesn’t work, they’ll need to remove part of his stomach, but the odds of that needing to be done are slim.
He’s on an IV diet right now, but that should switch to a liquid diet in a day or so, with solids being gradually reintroduced. Once everything is back to normal, they’ll do a colonoscopy to make sure there’s no other problems.
This is when time and distance suck
Not the best way to end the week… I just got a phone call from my mom. My dad is in hospital and will undergo some sort of surgery at an unspecified time later today (Canada time, GMT-5). His guts have been giving him grief for the last couple of weeks and he’s been to the ER a couple of times to no avail. Seems this time it might be serious enough to actually get something done. My mom mentioned a perforated ulcer, but how accurate or serious that is, I have no idea and I’m stuck waiting for info.
Unlike.
Canada peeps, give some love to my mom and give me details if/when you get them. My email/FB/phone is always close to hand.
Happy Birthday Pop
Current Mood:
Amused
What bean did in his summer vacation
I’m a very bad blogger :(
My mom came for a 10-day visit a couple of weeks ago and I’m just coming ’round to blogging about it now. Her flight came in on time and Katy picked her up from Heathrow. We spent the first day around the house, but the next few days were quite busy indeed.
We went to see visit Audley End (finally, after 3 years of living in Saffron Walden) but bean was feeling under the weather so we only saw the garden, stable yard and part of the service yard. We ditched the house tour because Bean was running a bit of a fever. Turns out he had tonsilitis, but you could’ve fooled us by his still-high energy levels… The horses there were huuuuge, but very friendly.
We went to Lakeside, where my mom spoiled Bean rotten with new coats and a scarf and hat from Next. He also got a big green tractor like pop has (bonus for him that it makes noise!). We also stopped at Ikea, where Bean had meatballs and my mom treated us to a few goodies of our own.
We went on a mad framing rampage. We’ve had stuff that has been needing framing lying around for years. We got some frames from Ikea and we also took most of the stuff to be custom-framed at a local shop in Shire Hill. Hopefully those will come back soon. We had about a dozen pieces to be mounted and framed and I’m really looking forward to seeing the results.
We took my mom and Bean to Wimpole Hall, where we were so enthused by the farm that we bought a membership to the National Trust on the spot because we figured we’d be going there so often in the future (it’ll probably be a rotation between the farm and Scottsdales). Katy and Bean have been there again since, and Bean’s already gotten to chase some piglets and turn on a milking machine. It’s a really nice place to spend an autumn day and we got a really perfect day for it.
The gardens were beautiful (not something you’ll hear me say often) and I know that Mel will be proud that Bean scrumped his first apple (even if it was with the consent of one of the gardeners).
Mel, Pam and Stu came over for a day and we all went for lunch at Scottsdales.
Katy and I had a chance to have some alone time because my mom threw us out of the house twice. The first day, we went into Cambridge to shop a bit for things for Bean, Gaby and Antoine. We spent waaay too much money on children’s books and we had a really nice lunch at a french Bistro called Cote, on Bridge Street: herb chicken, steak frite, moules, calamari and wine :)
We’d planned on going to the Spanish mafia’s pub quiz that night, but I inadvertently poisoned Katy with some raw onions during the day and she didn’t feel up to going. I did get dispensation to go on my own though, and my contributions (Zara Philips and Chutzpah) were well received, even if we didn’t win. I got accosted by the rather elderly and inebriated sister of the pub landlord, a fellow expat, who spent a rather long amount of time telling me that life was great and the world was small. David won’t let me forget that moment. Bastard.
The second day, we went shopping for Bean’s bicycle. We’d been saying for months before my mom came that Nana would be buying Bean a bike, so we got him a little scooter and a proper bike with training wheels. He’s already gotten the scooter and will get his bike for his birthday. We also discovered that I can safely eat at Subway :)
My mom said that she ate very well, which makes me happy. I’d made gumbo one night, fajitas on another and we also discovered an italian take-away restaurant in Saffron Walden that can cater to my allergies! Shocking, I know!! My mom also had fish&chips, and had a few bites for my dad (who was, btw, seriously missing my mom)
All in all, I hope that my mom had a good trip. I know I enjoyed seeing Audley End and Wimpole. I think they’d be nice alternatives to our sunday plans.
Pictures online: http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/mom_trip_sep_2011
Current Mood:
Happy