Still in the vein of scanning old pictures: as complete a set of family members as I can manage.
Also, this:
Tag: family
Trip to Isle of Wight
We spent a week on the Isle of Wight. Ben drove the ferry on the way there. We bought gin, wine and liqueurs. We saw a funky chicken. We handled owls and saw birds of prey. A ferret walked Bean. We went on a steam railway and looked at a train museum. We saw the coloured sand of the Needles, the coastline and the lighthouse. We saw glass being blows and sweets being made. We went to a donkey sanctuary and saw lots of donkey penises and a horse with an itchy ass. We saw a model village. We went fossil hunting and saw dinosaur footprints. We went to a dinosaur museum. We heard Benedictine monks sing a mass in an abbey. Then we went home. About the only thing we didn’t really do was relax.
All pictures here: https://www.flubu.com/blog/pictures/iow_jul_2017/
Thanks Pops
Katy has the unfortunate habit of kissing things with the car bumper. Most times, it’s not a big deal. Last time, with a cement column…less so. It took about 15 minutes of cursing, but I managed to get all the brackets realigned and the bumper back on. It wasn’t that big of a job, but it made me think of my dad. I don’t have anywhere close to his mechanical skills, but I’m also not afraid to get my hands dirty. And I got that from him, as well as the importance of a decent set of tools. So, thanks pop.
Family picture
Taken June 25th. From left to right: Gaston, Marie, Rejeanne, Monique, Aline, Serge, Bernard.
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.