I wanna be like Mike

We said goodbye to Milan "Mike" yesterday.  He was 88.
Before our house was our home.  It was Lucy and Mike's for 44 years.
We were the only people to view this house.
They chose us.
The kids moved their stuff out when they were vacationing in Europe.  Because the reality of leaving their home would have been too much of a shock.

But after several heart attacks, Mike couldn't travel the stairs any more.   And reluctantly, but happily they agreed to sell the house to us.
It was their daughter, a real estate agent, that we had met at another open house 6 months before.  Her daughter and Tresa's co-worker of many years were cousins.  So after that initial meeting, Melissa became our real estate agent.  And she showed us many houses, but the last one she showed us was her parents.  The one we eventually bought and live in today.

When we did the reception line, it was amazing to see peoples faces light up when they finally got to meet the people that bought the Criscoe house.  They have many fond memories of family parties, of DYI that Mike did, the stickers on the fuse box that I thought was in Serbian, but it was his phonetic english.
'DRAER' = 'dryer'.  Get it?  I didn't until the family called asking about those.  I had left them there since, I had no reason to take it down.  Plus Alex had done a diagram that was better.  I just updated it.

I remember him showing me around the house and all the things he'd done.  As well as the things he'd done on the neighbours house too.  In the first year, they would sometimes come back to visit Hela and Ola.  And Mike would check on us.  He showed me how to trim the vines.  He told me to control it, or it would become a jungle.  Straighten them out.  Put them where you want them, not where it wants to.  Be creative, use your resources.  Anything is possible, if you try.

Mike was immensely proud to be Canadian, and of his home, his work, and we are proud of it too.  We are extremely thankful for how they cared for it.  And we try to continue that tradition.  Criscoe is like a big extended family.  It even goes beyond the boundaries of the street.

I'm looking forward to when Lucy comes back to visit her old home.  Then we can show her, what we've done to the house.  Of course it has to be spotless or else she'll make us break out the cleaning rags, mop, Pine Sol and windex.  But I think she just used vinegar and water.  She had left me a spray bottle of the stuff before they moved.

I hope she doesn't become sad from the changes. We had to update the house. But it's still largely how they left it.  But nothing lasts forever.  Except for memories.

 They moved to Brampton, and the viewing was at Ward near Main & Queen.  Mike was in the same room as my mom was 23 years ago.  The room seemed bigger back then, but maybe it was because Filipino's have an average height of 5ft nothing, and Euros are so tall.  So Kieran and I explored the parlour, we found the basement hangout with the coffee and tea, but could not find the cookies.

Outside across the street was Gage Park.  I remember skating here long ago.  It was lit up like the stars.

And Kieran really wanted to go see.  And I was excited to show him pieces of my past.
It's changed, the downtown core, I didn't realize there was a museum here.  I had only known the ROM, but that's in TO.
It was chilly, but kids don't seem to care.  It was like following a rabbit.
Maybe when they freeze the ice, I'll bring him up here to skate.

 

Splash Albion Pool

We were at a swim meet the other day with the Swansea Stingrays swim club.  Kieran's swim club has a lot of talented swimmers on it's team and it showed in the meet.

We only got to see Kieran do 2 heats.  The 25m fly and the backstroke.

Both Kieran and Xander were in the same heats.
Still not sure how Kieran pulled this off in the backstroke, but it's all good.  He finally got a ribbon he's never gotten before.

One of the other boys, Luke, who's the same age as Kieran, won his backstroke heat.  He was very focused didn't look around while he was swimming, unlike the boy beside him who was in the lead but kept looking around at the other swimmers.  I wished I had recorded that heat.  It was something to watch. If he had not done that, he could have won, since he was in the lead at the half way point.

This was supposed to be the list of heats he'd be doing if we had time, but we were to take him and Xander to one of their classmate's birthday party.  So we only got to stay at the meet for a little over 90 mins.
They almost got to do 1 more heat, but we would have been late for the party.

There were lots of Swansea swimmers at the meet to represent the team.

I think he felt pretty good about that ribbon he got in the backstroke. I was surprised by the ribbon colour.  But hey, a 2nd place ribbon is a 2nd place ribbon.  That's why I took the photo before it got taken away, but I don't think they would've done that.  It's competitive enough to give kids a taste, but not that serious.

The other ribbon he got was 4th for the fly.
He was actually in 3rd but got beat out in the last few meters.
I asked him if he was tired when he got to the wall, and he said no.  We gotta work on that old cliche of leaving everything in the pool.
But everyone gets a ribbon.


Click for Albion Pool Splash photos


 

Elementary D Thanksgiving

I got this photo the other day from Molly at Kieran's school.  She must have taken it the week of Thanksgiving (here in the Great White North it is always in early October).
The students made this meal themselves, with the help of Giovanna.  She's there at the far end of the table.  She's the french assistant.  But she was also a pastry chef.  Kieran has been lucky with the french assistants.  He enjoys baking and gets to learn french at the same time.

I think Tresa mentioned to me that the kids didn't really like what they made, probably because it was nutritious and not full of sugar or sugar substitutes that lead you to think you are consuming something that is low in fat, but really is a carcinogen and turns to fat more readily.

The first image is a photo of the printout that was on an 11x17 sheet of paper, with my Canon Rebel. I straightened the photo out in Aperture.
This is version is stitched from 4 scanned images.  The printout was too large to scan the in one pass.  Not perfect but you see the whole image.