Tobogganing & Runaway Willies

We had a blast this past Sunday. One of the great things about Calgary, is that its neighbourhoods all seem to make a real effort to create a 'community' atmosphere that really promotes family involvement, outdoor physical activity, respect for nature, etc. Nearly every community or neighbourhood centers around a community centre, has its own newsletter, and its own council. We are fortunate to have a community centre that has a weight room for all the residents, a playschool, gyms, etc. We also have a tennis court (I think), that in the winter converts to an outdoor shinny rink.

We are even luckier because we live next door to Sally & Greg. They have a BEAUTIFUL neighbourhood park (hence the community name of Parkland). There is an awesome tobogganing hill, shinny rink, frisbee golf course, regular skating rink and even a path that circles the entire area, through the twinkling-lit trees with music in the overhead speakers, that people can skate around on. We were invited by Sally to use their park so that we could go sledding and what fun the boys had!

Owen couldn't wait for his turn to go down.

It sure wasn't fun for Dad or Diane when they had to carry Owen back up! - on a related note.. we are actively looking into seeking some physical therapy for Owen to work on building his muscle tone and helping him with his walking. He continues to trip every 10 steps or so and we call him the "floppy man" because his joints are so loose. It was never as much as a challenge as it is now, because he is filled with a lot of energy and wants to run and be active, but his little body fails him and he falls so frequently. This has made walks as a family nearly impossible unless we have the wagon, because he just can't keep up. Another exciting thing to note however, is that our specialised services include a goal that will teach both Owen and Will to ride a two-wheeler bike with training wheels by June 2007! This will make a HUGE impact on what we can do as a family together if we can go bike riding by this summer. Can't wait! We'll keep you posted on how that goes...

Don't let our bundled clothes fool you. We were dressed smart, but our weather out here this past week has been very comfortable. We still have 'old' snow on the ground from the cold snap a few weeks back, but the temps have just been hovering between -5 and plus 5 for the past week.

Jake was the bravest of the bunch and the second we arrived at the hill, off he went by himself. No scrapes or bruises!






Okay, I spoke too soon. No scrapes or bruises for JAKE. This is Will BEFORE he went down the hill with Diane. Unfortunately, Will ended up falling off the sled and proceeded to slide down the rest of the way on his face. He had a pretty bad nosebleed and while we were attending to it (with only his scarf to mop it up), we didn't realize that the rest of his face was raw with scrapes. Because we thought it was just blood from his nose and because Will doesn't have the words to tell us, we rubbed the poor little muppet's face to clean it not realizing we were rubbing an ice-burn!!! Can you say "terrible mother"?

this picture doesn't show how bad his face really looks, but let's just say we'll have a story to tell when the Christmas photos come out!

Diane and her boys. We miss her already!!!



Easily the funniest part of our day was when Will thought he had a chance to make a getaway. We knew the area was fenced in, so we let him think he could get away with it. We're not sure where he thought he was going...