who knew?

I had no idea that Varsity Bowling club had enough youth bowlers (YBC members) to hold an Awards Night Banquet! But they do. And what a banquet they put on. Self-serve.

After the buffet (a secret to any budget buffet is a good macaroni salad), the awards were handed out. ...side note - the banquet was held at the Scottish Cultural Centre - which i have no idea why? We didn't understand a lot that went on that night...

The awards were lined up on the table and believe me - they looked amazing! and i thought to myself "please please please let Chaplin win an award."

Chaplin got to climb the stairs onto the stage and receive his very first trophy.

And Laika got one!

And Leif got one!

Now what you all need to know - is these kids are just pure joy to watch.

As an example of how we normally see awards received: - On TV broadcast from Hollywood inside the Kodak Theatre, Colin Firth's name is read out as the winner of Male Actor in Leading Role. He rises from his seat, gracefully walks up the aisle, up the set of stairs and onto the stage - where he smiles as he is handed his Oscar. His career is validated in that moment.

However this is what we saw: - to our children, this bowling award is as important to them as that award was to Colin Firth - when they hear their name being called they do what their heart feels - So for Chaplin he half fell out of his chair (literally), and ran straight for the stage! He took the stairs two at a time and did a little leap jumpy move to land himself in front of the trophy, and with a smile bigger than on Christmas morning grabbed that trophy as if it would some how disappear if not held onto as tight as possible. And I clapped!!! This validated every Saturday morning trip over to the bowling club.

Look how happy he is! He kept asking me " this is very special isn't it mom?" Yes Chaplin it sure is. It says high score of 113 Chaplin Boyd

Then the awards were done, and the dance started. That's right - a dance! I strongly suggest to anyone organizing a bowling banquet to include an hour of dance at the end. And you don't even have to dim the lights for this age group. The music started and Chaplin reached over to Laika and sort of held her by the hand as he dragged her out to the dance floor. She would have NOTHING to do with this bold move. But to Chaplin - the dance had started and that is all business to him - you must dance - so dance he did.

Best dance move ever!

Chap stopped for 10 seconds and got his photo taken with his Coach Gail. She thinks he's adorable.

Dance a bit more, then the dance just turned into Chaplin running around chasing Laika.

AND here is the surprise ending to the dance. A big bold move by the owner of the bowling alley, Mr. Hayden does a solo dance to YMCA. I did not expect this - and this man's ability to dance just added more to the mystery of the unexpected banquet night.

Before we left, we thanked Mr. & Mrs. Hayden for putting on such a generously crafted banquet. It was a solid hit with Chaplin.

This is the fancy bottle of Muscato Adam and I had in celebration of him graduating (again).

Yes - we had already celebrated his graduating back in December - remember earlier blog....

But unknown at that time, Adam would have to take one more class in January to get his Minor. On Thursday last week, Adam got his final grades back: A+ !!! WOW.

Who's in Banff

In January we got a phone call from Rod and Fran asking us if we wanted to join them in Banff this March for some spring skiing. We said no... but did no actually mean yes?? Yes. Between Rod (aka 007) and I, we planned our trip in secret so we could surprise Fran.

SURPRISE! Rod held Chaplin by the hand and lead him into their hotel room. It took Fran about half a second to scream and scoop Chaplin up into her arms.

What a great moment captured.


About 17 years ago i lived in Banff... i'm sure the only person who could validate this is Donna. I wondered if i would remember anything about the town, it all seemed so far in my past that it was pointless to say I knew anything about the town. BUT then something familiar happened the moment Adam and I drove into the town. Adam got pulled over by the police. He was speeding and passing in a no pass zone! And I remembered when Donna and I drove into the town, we had cars honking and breaking...all because I was driving too fast and failing to stop at any/all stop lights! I blame the city for not putting their stop lights in the middle of the road.


First night at our hotel. What a great hotel room by the way - a real fireplace!
Rod smuggled two books in his briefcase and brought them all the way from England to give Chap. What a treat.

So here is the reason we are in Banff - SKIING at Sunshine Village

Gondola Ride up the Mountain. Chaplin actually enjoyed this ride, but the moment I captured in this picture was him asking if this was going to be another ride scary Disneyland ride.

Can i ski? NO! Can Chaplin Ski? NO! Can Adam ski? YES but i didn't trust him to teach me or Chap! So we put Chaplin into Tiny Tigers for the three days we were up on the hill. Tiny Tigers is a day-care and a ski-school all wrapped into one. Chaplin LOVED being dropped off to play, and LOVED getting an hour out on the tiny tiger hill learning to ski.

Chaplin is the boy in the yellow bubble helmet.
He is riding up the 'magic carpet' and will ski down the little hill.

Down the hill towards the instructor


This is Chaplin doing "PIZZA".
Pizza is the term the ski instructor uses for snowplow. They also teach the kids to put out their arms for added balance. I thought Chap looked a little bit like a bird with wounded wings.

With Chaplin in Tiny Tigers, Rod Fran Adam and I were free to ski.
So Rod gave me a few instructions and off I went. Down a steep green hill. I know I said "Green" but it was steep to me!

The first day, i think i screamed going down the first three runs... The second day I was in too much leg pain to scream... Day three was less muscle pain, more confidence and I was ready to take on a blue hill. But i have to say - it wasn't fun it was just scary and I think i called Adam a name when he skied up to me and said "you're doing great baby."


Stop to look at the pretty view.


Stop to drink a beer



the chair lift was a bit cold, but the view made it worth the ride.

Did I fall!?


Did Adam fall? not likely. This guy was skiing black diamond runs like it was his job.

TUCK.


The skier in the family is Rod. He took black diamonds with Adam no problem. of course i have no pictures to prove it, I wasn't about to take a crazy run with them to snap photos.



I didn't get any action shots of Fran skiing, she is very graceful, she just glides down the hill effortlessly. I like her i-phone!!!

On our last day of skiing we picked Chaplin up a bit early so we could take him over to the public magic carpet ride to ski with him. I asked the lady in charge of the day-care how Chaplin's day had been... she told me "we have loved having Chaplin here with us, i would say he's probably the nicest child we've ever had in here. He's polite and very kind. There was a boy trying to grab a toy out of Chaplin's hands - so instead of pulling back - Chaplin handed the toy over and said to the nasty boy "you can have my toy and I'll get another one so we can play together"...." I know Chaplin is nice, but to hear this from a lady that looks after upward of 100 kids in a week...well i don't need to do the math to know that he's one in a billion.


Chaplin had a total of 3 hours lessons and he was so proud of himself.
He wanted to teach me what he learned. no harm there!


The last run of the day - Adam and Chaplin skiing together.


Chaplin spotted a deer on our way to the dinning room for breakfast.
Our last day in Banff - We ate breakfast in the dinning room every morning.



Chaplin took this photo of a grumpy daddy. Adam didn't want to go home?

And one last photo by Chaplin.

The human

Last Friday, Auntie Nancy suggested that I get Chaplin a journal, so he can practice writing words and sentences in it.

The first sentence he said out-loud was "The cat sat on the mat"
but he got bored and changed it to
"The human had a wonderful day." and with Adam's help sounding out the words Chap wrote that sentence all by himself.

And don't you love the little drawing of the "human". The sentence and the drawing are just too funny.

I'm Five Today

Chaplin is FIVE years old!

Adam got this little doll and put it with Chaplin's gifts.
I asked Chaplin if he knew who it was?
His reply "yes this is Chapa-lapa-ding-dong".



Huge, just huge... 800 pieces of lego! Yikes.

We asked Chaplin what he would like to do this year for his party, he said
GO BANANA'S

So here we are at "GO BANANA's", a jungle gym for kids.

We decorated cup-cakes together - no awards here. But the kids loved them.



After the birthday party we went over to Nordby's house for a pajama pizza party. We pushed the couches together and called this the 'bird nest'. This was my favorite part of the day, we all snuggled down into the nest and watched Mega Mind and laughed the whole way through it.

The past year has been wonderful watching our son grow.

Chaplin discovered humor, and is trying so hard to come up with jokes of his own, and the only funny part about them is how abstract they are.
Chap: "Knock Knock"
Lori: " Who's there?"
Chap: Peanut butter
Lori: "Peanut Butter who?"
Chap: Peanut butter I'm at the door. Yiiiikes. there's going to be a lot of work to do.
Chap: was that funny mom?
Lori: "not really".
Maybe someone should have bought him a knock knock joke book for his birthday!

Chaplin has asks a lot of questions, including ones on birth and death
Chaplin : "What day is Remembrance Day? Is it when you have a baby?
Adam: "no..." and gave a brief explanation on the day.
Chaplin: "Well what is the day called when you have your baby than. It should be remembrance day."
Adam - "that's called your BIRTHDAY"

Chaplin understands immediate passage of time, as in what happened yesterday but doesn't understand calendar time yet. if the sun is out and I say "what a nice day" Chaplin will always ask me "Is it summer now mommy."

Adam: "It’s time for Bed."
Chaplin: " OH barnacles, i hate bed time."

I over heard Adam talking to Chaplin about the bad guy in Star Wars:
Adam "Not Han Solo. Not Luke Skywalker. Darth Vader."
Chaplin "Yes, Darker Vader!"
Adam "You're not saying it correctly, it's Darth Vader with a TH."
Chaplin "Darf Vader?" - I left the room laughing, I'm not sure how it all ended!

another little story with sounding out words:
Chaplin says woowseum for the word MUSEUM. and corrected me when i said museum. “NO mom it’s Woowseum, like a -woow- sound, not a mu”.
He was so sure of himself that we were saying it wrong, it was hard to correct him.

We were watching Blue Realm - swimming with captive whale sharks;
Chaplin "why aren't I doing that mom."
Lori: "Doing what?"
Chaplin "being in that shark tank swimming"
I didn't even know how to answer that question - was he for real! Did he really want to swim with whale sharks? Then i thought about it - Chaplin is Adam's son so yes he would want to swim with sharks.

Oct 28th
Chaplin: "Electricity and water is bad isn’t it mom, it can stop your breath right?
Lori "Yes."
Chaplin: "Maybe we should put up a sign next to the sink so dad doesn’t put the toaster and water together. "
....Good idea.

Chaplin has grown a lot this year, he weights about 40 pounds now. And not just physically grown, but mentally.

This is how he wrote the alphabet out on his birthday, all by himself. He did not like how his "S" turned out so he put an "X" through it and did another one under it. He also knows his "W" doesn't look right. I think this is impressive! So should you.

His curiosity is endless, i recall so clearly one day on our way to preschool talking about trees and how we can take a tree, and from that tree make lumber and from the lumber we can build buildings. This fascinated him so much, that we had to stop and look at everything on the way to preschool so he could determine if it were wood, plastic or metal. Everyone that has been around a child for any length of time will get to experience life through their eyes, and it's amazing isn't it! We are lucky to have them give us a fresh look at the world around us.

And of course... I worry about how quickly time is passing, and before the next birthday blog, Chaplin will make one of the biggest steps in his life - he will enter into school. It will be hard letting go, knowing that somebody else will become Chaplin's teacher. I wonder (and worry) if I will have taught him enough - but I have a few more months and I smile as I hear myself saying to him "stop licking your jacket." ... "Why mom? does it have germs on it?"

Thank you for an amazing year Chaplin Adam Boyd, mommy and daddy love you.