Christmas Blog 2019

We hope that 2019 has been a healthy, happy, and prosperous year for you and those close to you!

Before getting into our 2019, check out our family portrait from Christmas 2018 when Darren’s family was in town.

2019 has been a fairly uneventful year in our family.

Laura is still working part time at a small pharmacy. She mostly works three days a week, sometimes four if she works on Saturday. Fortunately, no evenings or Sundays. Her manager just came back from maternity leave, so there are now fewer hours, but her boss owns a couple of other pharmacies and she has been able to pick up a few hours at those. She has become a runner and participated in a half marathon at Banff in late September with cousin Kristin and a couple of friends. She ran in the snow and had a harrowing 16-hour drive home on icy roads, so it is probably not an experience she will want to repeat.

Brett is still teaching grades 7 and 8 at St. Gregory school in Uplands while playing hockey in fall and winter and slo-pitch in spring. For the last few years he has focused on positive mental health for his students in partnership with the Understand Us organization and has received several accolades and media attention this year for his work.

The whole Matlock gang loves their camping in the summer and they get out as much as possible. They got out to Buffalo Pound near Moose Jaw a couple of times. Their major trip was to Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta and Cypress Hills Provincial Park in southwest Saskatchewan.

The twins are in grade one and quite enjoying school. Here they are on their first day of school.

They are starting to read and sometimes read stories to Louisa, but they still like to curl up with Grandma or Grandpa while we read them books. 

They still enjoy Ukrainian dancing and they take diving classes. 

This fall Celeste volunteered to take them to Sparks, the precursor to Brownies and they seem to be enjoying that as well. In spring they played soccer for the first time.

Louisa just turned three. She is quite a character and loves her days with Grandma and trips to story time at the library. She quite enjoys helping to bake muffins or cookies. 

She is very good at colouring and has lately become quite a puzzler.

 

Darren and Sue are still in Victoria. Darren quite enjoys being out of the office with its politics and other constraints. He drives the boys to school in the morning then works pretty much straight through until he picks them up in the afternoon. With his computer, the internet, and a phone he can be pretty effective with little downtime. He spent his birthday this year in an oilsands camp near Fort McMurray. His company owns part of an oilsands mine. Everyone up there is working hard to minimize their environmental footprints. He has been involved in an industry consortium working to improve the settlement of particles in tailings ponds for a couple of years now. 

Sue is still her company’s onsite representative for the construction of Victoria’s sewage plant. She still seems to be enjoying it, although it comes with its challenges. The plant should be operating next fall. The plan now is to move back to Vancouver in time for the boys to go back to school; Darren will go back to full time work; and Sue will go back to part time (unless Darren can convince her otherwise). She might have to commute back to Victoria occasionally for a while. They have quite enjoyed their time in Victoria and could easily stay there, but their career opportunities are in Vancouver.

Their gang goes skiing/snowboarding whenever they can, although the possibilities are more limited in Victoria than Vancouver. 

They also love hiking, camping, and the outdoors. They often go camping on weekends, usually to someplace where you must hike in anywhere from several minutes to a couple of hours. 

They spent much of July at the Spruston family cottage in Ontario. 

On the way home, Darren and the boys dropped in here for eight full days plus the travel days at either end. The days went by in the blink of an eye and we had a great time. In November the whole family spent a week in Palm Desert, California with their Spruston grandparents.

The boys play soccer in fall, winter, and into the spring. They normally have a game and practice each week plus they sometimes take skills development clinics. They are getting pretty good. 

There is not much time for anything else, but Cameron was in cross-country at school and Justin has his advanced orange belt in karate. 

Earlier in the year they were also in swimming and Justin played rugby. At home they both like to play board games and card games. And, of course, they love to wrestle.

Carla has been at her job with the Ministry of Education for almost a year. She had to make a small financial sacrifice, but she very much enjoys the short walk to work, the people she works with, the earned days off every second week, the not being on call, and the absence of weekend and overnight work.

Tyler is still with Global TV, helping to produce the weekday suppertime and late-night news. Unfortunately, they only see each other at breakfast and lunchtime during the week, but Tyler has given up most of his weekend work, so they usually have weekends together.

Carla and Tyler both enjoy trying out all the different restaurants and bars around town, but Carla has developed some food sensitivities that limit her participation. They are not campers, but they did make the pilgrimage to Victoria in August. They had a good time exploring and visiting with Darren’s family.

Glenn’s Mom is a little bit slower and has a little bit less energy, but she is still hanging in at her condo at age 93. She just keeps on going like the Energizer Bunny. 

For Celeste and Glenn, our main regular activity is babysitting on Laura’s workdays. Celeste goes over about 8, Glenn follows about 8:30 and walks the twins to the school bus stop. Celeste spends the day with Louisa, some days going to the library for story time and some days coming back to our place for part of the morning and for lunch. Louisa is outgrowing her afternoon naps and they are now hit and miss. Glenn goes back around 4 to meet the twins at the bus stop and we stay with the girls until Mom or Dad get home around 5:30.

On our off days, we both read the newspaper (yes, actual paper) in the morning and Celeste does the daily puzzles. Celeste watches a fair bit of streaming, does online shopping, and goes down numerous online “rabbit holes.” Glenn spends most of the day on his computer reading email and other things, operating the Zichydorf Village Association, and doing family history. We still have Roughrider season tickets and, for the third season, have subscriptions to the main Regina Symphony season and also the Chamber Players season. We made a couple of day trips to hook up with Matlock camping expeditions and spent four days in Cypress Hills with them and Darren and the boys while they were visiting in August.

Most of our travel this year was again to the west coast. We went to Victoria in March, June, and October. Darren, Sue and the boys were here last Christmas and Darren and the boys were here again in the summer. They will not be here this Christmas, but we are heading back out there in January.

We did make two other trips. Celeste’s sister-in-law’s (Linda) sister and family have a condo in Scottsdale. They invited Linda and Kevin to use it for a week in March and Linda asked us to join them for a few days. We had an excellent time visiting and touring around in weather that was much better than home.

In May we drove to Winnipeg. We visited old neighbours and friends on the weekend and Glenn attended a retired controller breakfast on Monday before we drove home.

Wishing you and yours a Merry Christmas and a Happy, Healthy, and Prosperous New Year!