And BAM! 17 Years Flew By

Tonight we spent the evening visiting with fine Canadian friends that we lived life with up in Northern Alberta in the early 90s.  I haven’t written much about our Northern escapades in a while.  Quite a few memories were reborn in my mind tonight…. quality fodder for blogging.  Good times!  I love love love reconnecting with friends where it seems like NO time has gone by…. except for our husband’s higher foreheads and a few more smiling lines for us girls.  We chatted and laughed and got caught up on 17 years of information in seven hours. 

When we lived together in Fort Vermilion, Alberta our first children were born within four months of each other.  We shared many meals and phone calls in those early parenting years.  Hard to believe we both have four kids now.  And my 17-year-old daughter LOVED being introduced to a “stranger” and told that she had changed her diapers.  :o)  Keepin’ ’em humble.  That’s my job as the mom.

We’ve matured over the years, but one constant remained… God is good.  All the time.  Hard times come and go.  But God is good.  All the time.  Amen.

February 28th, 2010

This day has new meaning for me.  It is the day I figured out quite a few highly important tidbits about life.

#1  My husband is 100% Canadian.  (yes, he did get his US citizenship…. I’m talking about lineage here.)

#2  I am 50/50 Canadian and American.  (You’d think I would have figured this out by now.)

#3  My children are 75% Canadian and 25% American. 

#4  I’m out numbered in my own household when cheering for Olympic hockey games between the States and Canada.

#5  A silver medal in the Olympics is awesome…. except in hockey.

#6  Crosby is a sweet last name.

See?  Today was foundational for me.  More next month. Please stay tuned.

A Tribute to Our Homeland, Canada!

Happy Canada Day, eh!  Yes, July 1st is once again upon us… without much fanfare, sadly, down here in Arizona.  Not a Canada Day goes by in the Crosby household, however, without singing the national anthem, waving the maple leaf and using out Canadian table runner.  Yes, we actually do.  We’ll probably even listen to Bob and Doug’s Great White North song as well as the I Am Canadian song.  All true heartfelt melodies to our rich Canadian blood. 

In memory of our time in the Great White North (take off, eh!) here, for you, on this Canada Day, a photo tribute to the land in which we met, schooled, froze, birthed two children, played hockey, made lasting friends and of course, spent 10 year and had AWESOME gardens!

Rick and I met at Trinity Western University in Langley, BC., barely over the border.  I could literally run back to America in an afternoon, if need be.  Here is an enhanced photo of our campus.  The glittery blue water is more commonly known as “the swamp”.  But the greenness in the landscape is true as well as that train track on the lower right that ran FAR too close to our dorms in the middle of the night.

During college, we also lived in Fort Langley, a sleepy little historical town just north of the campus.  Again, we somehow gravitated to the train tracks…. unfortunately, much closer that time.  We lived in a basement suite at about 11:00 in the following picture, this side of the island. 

When we finished school, Rick accepted his first flying job in Fort Vermilion, Alberta, a dinky northern town nestled on the Peace River.

This is what we looked like when we took off our hoods:

Larisa was born while we lived in the North country, but we quickly moved south to the little town of Spruce Grove, Alberta, just outside of Edmonton, Rick’s birthplace.  It was an eight hour drive from the Fort… AND there was Taco Bell.  We had returned to civilization!  Whew.

We were only 15 minutes from West Edmonton Mall, known simply as “West Ed”, the largest mall in Canada.  It was sublime.  We spent many a day there shopping (obviously), seeing movies at the $2 theater, watching the dolphins, steering clear of Hooters and buying material at Fanny’s Fabrics.  There is even a gigantic water park to make it seem like you are really in some warmer climate in a balmier part of the earth.

It was in Edmonton that Austin was born and from the Edmonton area that we made our departure to my homeland, the United States of America, known in Canada simply as “The States“.  We have been in AZ for 12.5 years and we still miss Canada… from late May to early October.  Happy Canada Day, eh!

Wrapped up in Elvis

Remember back a few months ago when I was celebrating the end of my boys’ hockey seasons??? (https://mysistersjar.wordpress.com/2008/03/31/the-fat-lady-sang-tonight/) Well, it all started again tonight.  <sigh> There I was in my cute, little silver flip-flops and denim shorts wrapped in a purple and lime green fleece Elvis blanket in the ice arena.  (Thank God someone left it in the van!) I’m trying excruciatingly hard to have a good attitude about this.  It’s a lot of driving… a lot of time away from the family dinner table… a lot of money…. but I knew all this when I married a Canadian hockey lover.  One of his first purchases five years before we had children was a pair of size 3 flannel Edmonton Oilers pajamas…. then we had a daughter first…. so we kept the Oilers jams in a hope chest for EIGHT years until our son was born… then two more years til they fit him.  I should have caught on that there was a slight addiction problem.  I’ve named it H.A.D., Hockey Attachment Disorder.  I don’t believe there is a cure at present.  I’ve been H.A.D.

 The actual fleece!!

Back to my excruciating good attitude.  I’ve decided that I must make the best of my Wednesday night drive time (one hour total) and my sitting time (one hour total).  (This is for son #2…. I’m not counting son #1… hoping that Dad will always be available for him.  His practices require driving for 1.5 hours and sitting for 2 hours…. TWICE a week.)  Having a good attitude.  Having a good attitude.  Having a good attitude. O.K.

So tonight, sitting on a freezing cold bleacher bench, I coordinated two of my four calendars, my month-at-a-glance purse calendar and my weekly To-Do calendar with check-off boxes.  (Yes, a bit anal here, but anal people get LOTS done.)  I have not found a pre-made week-at-a-glance calendar that is compact but still has 6-7 lines per day… so each January 1st I make my own out of a Walmart notebook.  This year’s was quite fat, so I’ve used pages in the back for various lists, secret codes, etc.  One such list I happened upon tonight that I haven’t read since I made it in March.  It is the list of stories for a book I plan to write titled Squeezing Laughter into a Leotard: Devotions for Above Average Women.  It’s about weight loss and weight gain and weight loss and weight gain and weight loss and weight gain and God.  I was a bench or two away from several other hockey moms and dads, but as I read the story notes I laughed out loud twice and constrained myself several other times, so they wouldn’t think I’m completely nuts.  This was the burst of energy and kick in the pants I needed to direct my hockey time.  My laptop will now be traveling with my to the Ice Den each week.  I’m itching to get started.

Can I just say that if you have a rapid metabolism and are mortified when you’re bloated and need a size 5 …. you won’t comprehend the stories I’m writing.  You may think they are humorous, but you will NEVER understand with compassion what people who struggle with their weight deal with minute by minute.  It’s like a being married to someone with H.A.D…. you don’t understand unless you’ve walked in my skates.

Wish me luck.. better yet pray for God’s voice to speak truth to a hockey mom wrapped up in Elvis on Wednesday nights.  :o)

Happy Canada Day!

Yes, July 1st is Canada’s Birthday as opposed to Independence Day here in the States.  They don’t call it Independence Day because they didn’t become totally dependent in their own right with all ties severed from England until 1982.  No, not a typo.  Who wants to celebrate partial independence?  Not me.  Hey, let’s call it a birthday so we can still have a national holiday!  Good idea, eh.

A slight Canadian history lesson is indeed needed, appropriately offered by a dual American-Canadian citizen…. ME.  The only reason I know anything about the history of Canada is because I went to college in British Columbia and took HIST 101: Canadian History for Dummies.  There I not only learned of the beaver’s importance to the nation, but I learned that Canada was actually going to be called a kingdom (you know, like Narnia, with lampposts and snow and beavers)….. but the rulers at the time didn’t desire to antagonize the US having just been through the Civil War, so settled on the title ‘Dominion.’   

It was July 1, 1867 when three British colonies joined forces into a federation following the 91-year-old bright idea of the settlers south of the border.  At that time the colonies were New Brunswick and Nova Scotia (home of the Crosbys), which are still provinces today, and the Province of Canada which split and became Ontario and Quebec. Voila!  The birth of a nation kingdom dominion.

Nuff said.  (I think I’ll have my kids read this.)

Hey, new bags are up at www.bagsforzaza.blogspot.com.  Check ’em out, eh.  Good day.