Adams Lake with the lads

After the festivities of the party it was time to take the family out to the lake. Only problem was - it's a little difficult fitting two baby car seats, 5 adults, bouncy chairs, cribs, baby clothes, adult clothes and food for two weeks all into one van. And the thought of taking an 8 hour drive in the aforementioned van with 6 week old twins who need breaks every 2-3 hours at a minimum just didn't seem like a bright idea. So Ken, Bonnie and Col travelled out by van while Kerstie and I got to travel in the lap of luxury on a plane with the lads. As scary as that idea sounds to someone who's only had limited experience looking after very young babies it turned out to be a very easy trip. The thing with babies this young is that they love to sleep and are especially easy to get to sleep if there's lots of white noise, vibration, motion and close quarters. Enter the turbo-prop DH 400 which should be advertised as a dual purpose people mover and baby calmer. It may not be the most pleasant environment for grown adults, but the lads just loved it, so we flew in relative calm and peace to Calgary whereupon we scared half the terminal with the cries and wails from the restrooms as the boys got changed and fed ("Please don't let them be on my plane" "Better you than me" "Why do I always get the crying babies?"). Little did they know that as soon as we took off the lads would be back in la-la land - which they were.

Instead of the usual activities at the lake: cards, snoozes, reading books, waterskiing, food, snoozes; we enjoyed some new and exciting things to occupy our time: changing the green oozing diaper, taking the late night feeding shift, listening to baby monitors, endless bouncing on the ball, marching on the beach with the snuggly and enormous amounts of cuddles, love and general baby happiness.


Gumper marching two by two on the beach

One year and 90 years

Today is the combined anniversary of two exceedingly precious things.

365 days ago Colleen and I married each other on the shores of Adams Lake in front of our dear friends and family in an event that will linger in our hearts forever.

All the hugs in the world

32,850 days ago Carrie Ruth Pawsey was born and 90 years later threw an amazing celebration party at the Royal Alberta Museum as our Granny, Ruth Maclennan. 90 guests, food, wine, women and song - what more could you ask for on such an auspicious event?

Ruth Maclennan ~ circa 1940

There are plenty of photos that are going to be up on Flickr in the hopefully not too distant future to mark down the night. Needless to say having Kerstie and Thom along with Campbell and Aidan made the night even more fun and memorable.

Ben Lee live!

We went with Alix to see Ben Lee at the Sidetrack Cafe (its new location is not as close as it used to be - the layout is a little strange for gigs too). He was in the middle of a Canadian tour and Col noticed that he was playing, we got tickets and boom! in the middle of the busiest social week of the year we end up grooving to some Aussie tunes after a party at the Hopes.

Most of the night was the new songs off his Awake Is The New Sleep album but my personal favourite was when he played Cigarettes Will Kill You with a huge instrumental in the middle. That used to be one of my favourite songs of all time and it got a lot of rotations on the little clunky stereo system on top of my antique wardrobe in the house in Stanmore. Seeing it live was pretty magical I must say. Of course we went out and got his new album straight away and have now played it a whole bunch as well. Songs are always easier to fall in love with if you can see them being played in front of you.

More evolved or less wise

My dentist says that wisdom teeth are slowly becoming an unnecessary part of the human anatomy and that they are getting smaller and smaller and one day we won't have them anymore. He says that humans are evolving to not grow wisdom teeth. I looked this up on Wikipedia to see if it was true or not and it appears to jive with the popular opinion out there at the moment. Our softer diet and the fact that we don't lose as many of our front teeth these days (excluding hockey players) make wisdom teeth a bit of a historical oddity. Of course if I go and check it tomorrow it probably will be completely the opposite - but that's the joy of Wikipedia isn't it?

The fact that I did actually have one completely descended and two almost-there-but-not-quite third molars (crafty technical dentistry name for wisdom teeth) means that I am not the endpoint of this evolutionary descent towards less teeth in the mouth. However the fact that it was so incredibly hard to get to with the toothbrush and was causing all sorts of problems with my other not-quite-there yet wisdom teeth covered oh so daintily by a flappy little bit of gum meant that it was time for me to get in the chair and become one tooth less wise and similarly 25% closer to a more evolved human.

To be perfectly honest I was terrified about the procedure. This was my first "extraction" and pretty much every single story I'd ever heard about people and their wisdom teeth sent me running in tears crying "Uncle". Not going under general anaesthetic and generally being awake at all to have a tooth pried out of my head contributed strongly to my fear. As it turns out my dentist is a wizard. After waiting for the freezing to take effect (not nearly long enough in my apprehensive pre-op opinion) and having a quick chat about how our generation got the short end of the environmental stick he lowered the chair to the ready position and informed me I'd feel "a little pressure". Now I've given people a lot of watered down and euphemistic encouragement in my time - "the server will be up real soon now", "don't think of it as losing your last month's work, more as a chance to do it better with the blessing of experience" - but I was pretty sure that "a little pressure" was the Moby Dick of euphemisms, coming from a man who was about to do something horrible to me that is usually reserved for the torture scene in bad spy novels. I had visions of cracking jawbones, him kneeling up on the chair to get more leverage, calls for "the big wrench", whimpers as my machismo shattered and I leapt out of the chair in tears crying "Uncle".

All of which was completely melodramatic and unnecessary. I'm such a drama queen. 30 seconds later he had removed the tooth and the dental nurse applied enormous amounts of suction to the fountain of blood that had suddenly appeared in my mouth for no apparent reason. "That's it" he said, turning away. "Not too bad". I can't even say there was more than a little pressure as there wasn't, he was good to his word. I even got to see the gnarled little thing once he'd cleaned it up and the blood fountain had subsided a little. Not too bad at all. As I said, he's a dental wizard.

So now I am one tooth closer to being that gummy old grandpa with the cool party trick involving the glass of water and dentures, a quarter of the way to being without my troublesome third molars, a little in awe of how good my dentist really is, and not so terrified about the next two which may require the deep sleep and an oral surgeon. I like to think that I'm now more highly evolved, but that's probably being just a little too melodramatic.