Mike’s Family Blog

As I prepare to head to London Ontario for the 2010 Special Olympics Canada Summer Games, this blog will remain online until the next power spike happens.

I’ve been having some power issues with my UPS and instead of switching to backup battery, is has been choosing to instantly shut down the server the moment there is a dip in power.  This is something I will address when I return as I plan to migrate to a new server.

Who knows, this may end up staying powered on for the whole time I’m away, but if the track record shows, it’ll only last a few days.

In the meantime, you can follow the team on http://teamtoba2010.blogspot.com and http://www.twitter.com/teamtoba2010 You don’t have to have a Twitter account to follow us on the Twitter website, but if you want updates sent to your cell phone, you’ll need to sign up.

Cheers!

Yeah, some people just forget themselves when they are using social networking.

Well, I promised a post so here we go.

Summer of 2009 has proven to be a busy one thus far.  What’s been going on you ask?  Well, let’s start with the bad news.  In May, Lisa was informed that she would be laid off from work before she even returned from maternity.  What to do?  After some thought, she decided to open a home daycare with her Mom, in her Mom’s house.  She did some calculations and figured that she could double her previous income.  So ads and word of mouth went out and suddenly people were calling.  With plans to begin on August 1st, she had time to get ready.

The August 1st start date was good.  After I started summer holidays, we spent a lot of time together in July.  We traveled all sorts of dusty back roads while doing the Eastman GPS challenge.  We had just a couple of weeks to visit 30 spots around Eastern Manitoba and record our visit.  Couple that with a lot of Geocaching, and we found all sorts of neat places that were tucked away around the Province.

A couple of weeks back, we were off camping in Birds Hill.  For Lisa, myself and the kids, this was a first.  It’s been something we’ve been talking about doing for a while now, so when tents and camping equipment started going on sale, we jumped on it.  Overall, the kids had a good time.  The adults had a couple of nights with very little sleep but it wasn’t bad for the first time.  We’re hoping to head out one more time this summer, but as always, play it by ear.

Photos in the gallery are up to date.  Enjoy.

Looks like I haven’t posted in quite some time! That’s what happens when life keeps you busy, I suppose.  Look for more posts coming.

Well, that’s it.  The closing ceremonies are done and the games are over.  What a ride.

We took the short drive down from McCall to Nampa and, after checking into the hotel, headed over to the Family Reception hosted by Clipped Wings.  That was a fun time.  The volunteers there made all the families feel so welcome.  We had a nice buffet meal done Idaho style.  Potatoes (of course) salad, chicken, shredded beef.  It was all good.  Our meal’s entertainment was a square dancing demonstration.  I’ll tell you, I’d step on a few toes if I tried that.  In 3 of the corners, there were photo booths set up where you could get your photo taken in several themes with one of the acrylic globes used for the ceremonies.  You’ll enjoy the photos in the gallery.  One of them we got to dress up and look silly (well, I did anyways) and the other you’ll see is Abigail with a collection of beauty queens.

Then it was off to the ceremonies.  What a good time that was.  There were recap videos, speeches and bands.  There were some local Idaho bands, including one made up of Billings Police Officers.  The final act was one called Crash Cowboy.  I hadn’t heard of them before, but they were pretty good.

The kids did okay in the ceremonies.  Abigail had a brief nap and we had to feed her there.  Jonathan played and danced until he couldn’t go further and passed out on Mommy’s lap first and then when we traded kids, he slept up against me.  (Not easy taking pictures with a kid pressed up against you! LOL)

This morning, it was time to hit the road to Billings.  We did a brief stop at Twin Falls to take some pictures of the Shoshone Gorge in the daylight.  What a sight.  While there, we were witness (I took video) to a pair of base jumpers who jumped from the bridge.  Not for me, but it was cool to watch.  I’ll have some photos online in the next couple of days.  I’m not doing photos tonight.

Otherwise, the drive here was rather uneventful.  We took rte 191 through West Yellowstone.  The roads were fine and we only had a bit of snow.  It was fun watching the GPS reflect our elevation.  As high as 7300ft above sea level at one point!

Tomorrow, off to Fargo!

Today was the final day of competition.  With it comes a mix of sadness and relief that it’s all over.  McCall did an amazing job hosting the snowshoeing venue.  The volunteers here were truly amazing, friendly and accommodating.  It really didn’t matter what job they were assigned, they were just so happy to be participating in such a big event.  As we in Winnipeg can attest, when the world comes to your door for an event, it’s an amazing experience.  For Idahoans, it’s been just that.  Our thanks goes out to all of those volunteers that put in countless hours of work to make this an amazing event.

What a way to end a week of competition for Team Canada.  We started the day with Gold Medals from Marinka Van Hage and Jean-Francois Leclerc and Silver Medals from Leaha Van Steelant and Adam Wakeman.  Even more impressive was that Leaha’s silver came in a division in which she was the only female!

Then we were on to the 400s.  Ashlee McLeod and Nancy Leduc won Bronze medals with Alex Shankel, Bridget Colvin and Michael Bisaillon - Goudreau pulling out a Silver medals.  (I’ll edit this when I find out the complete results for this event.)

After lunch, it was back for the 4×100m races.  Wow, what races we had!  The women were up first and despite an early fall by Carrie Froese, she tagged Ashlee who made up ground, then it was Nancy to put us into third and it was up to anchor Courtney to hold off a challenge by (Chinese Tapei?) to win Bronze for Canada by less than one second!

Then it was the men’s turn and boy did they impress! It only too 1 minute and 13 seconds for Ed Wallace, Michael Bisaillon-Goudreau, Brian Dinwoodie and Jean-Francois to power out an impressive win and capture Gold.

The unofficial tally stands at

Gold - 10
Silver - 10
Bronze - 6
-

In our own news, after several days of posing and smiling for so many pictures that we lost count, Jonathan had his fill.  This morning when people were asking him to take his picture, he started saying ‘No!’ and hiding.  I guess he started feeling what celebrities always complain about when the paparazzi are hounding them.

One website that he might show up on is http://live.specialolympics.org

That’s all I’ve got for now.  Time to turn in so that we can head off to the closing ceremonies tomorrow.

Day 4 from the snowshoeing competition is in the books and Team Canada is shinining bright.  The first 2 heats of the day produced the first 2 gold medals from Marinka and Leaha in the 800m race.  That was followed by Jean-Francois destroying the field for Gold and Michael coming in for Silver and Adam Wakeman putting in a strong 6th place in his heat.

After the 800s were over, the 100’s started and there was more to come.
Brian Dinwoodie - Bronze
Austin Horrox - 6th
Robert McLellan - Gold
Ed Wallace - Silver
Courtney Cook - 5th
Carrie Froese - Silver
Sandra Hunt - 4th
Catia Miele - 5th
Then in the 4×400s, the Mens Team of Darrell Robinson, Alex Shankel, Adam Wakeman and Robert McLell hauled in a solid Silver.  The women’s team of Sandra Hunt, Marinka Van Hage, Leaha Van Steelant and Bridget Colvin scored a very respectable Bronze against 3 other mixed gender teams.

That was the day that was over here in snowy Idaho.  We’ve have beautiful weather through out the week.  The weather even cooperated enough to part the skies for the evening’s fireworks.  You just couldn’t ask for better.

Tomorrow, the finals for the 400, 1600 and 4×100s are being run.  It promises to be another exciting day!

——–

Canada’s count

Gold 7
Silver 5
Bronze 3
4th Place 5
5th Place 4
6th Place 2

Another fine day in Ponderosa State Park.

Today the 200 meter race finals were held with the final tally being 3 Gold, 1 Silver and 1 Bronze.  In the afternoon, the 4×400m divisioning races were run and both Canadian teams did well.  In the evening, a come and go reception was held for athletes and families at one of the local hotels.  It was a chance for the athletes to unwind and party a bit.

The kids had another full day.  For Abigail, it was a day of riding in the sled or snuggly and either sleeping or watching what was going on.  For Jonathan, he played with ‘his girls’ in the snow all day and then in the evening danced and socialized with athletes and coaches.  During the daytime, there were a couple of grade 3 classes out on field trips from local schools.  Of course, there was Jonathan, flirting with all of those girls too.  I swear, my kid’s a natural born babe magnet.

Tomorrow are the finals for 100, 800 and 4×400.

The sun was shining, (at least in the morning) the birds were singing (just far away from the crowds) and the Canadian contingent was cheering at full volume.

Today was day 2 of divisioning which saw our athletes compete in the 400, 1600, 100 and 4×100m races.  The bad news was that our 4×100 team was disqualified when Ashley McLeod and Courtney Cook missed a tag.  At this point it is unclear if they will be able to move on.  All other athletes had a good day with many taking time off their submitted times.

On the personal end of things, Jonthan had a fun day playing in the snow.  In the morning, he amused himself by pulling Abigail around in the sled.  In the afternoon, he was occupied by playing in the snow with Courtney Cook’s younger sister, Sydney.  Needless to say, when he got back to the hotel room, he flaked out early.  Since we got back to the hotel room around 3:30, I had time to head out to get a few caches.  The only frustrating thing about that is I’ve got a whack of travel bugs to drop into caches and all I was finding was micros!  Ah well, there’s still time and plenty of caching opportunity ahead.

Back at the hotel, it was some challenging times trying to access the internet yesterday and this morning.  Last night I was talking to the desk clerk and after identifying myself as a techie, he took me to the only room he had access to so I could reboot one of the wi-fi routers.  A few hours later, it was down for the night again.  So this morning, before heading out, I was asked to have a look at their network again.  The owners had heard the story from the night before and were excited to have someone who knew what they were doing staying with them.  (Because they didn’t.)  So I spent a good 45 minutes this morning trying to track down the source of the problem and finally got it solved.  (No network drops all day.)  They were so appreciative that they gave us a bit of a discount off our room.  Can’t beat that!

Anyways, I’ve got some photos to upload, enjoy them when I get them into the gallery.

These are a couple of links to local news media that are covering the games.

http://www.idahostatesman.com/specialolympics/
http://www.ktvb.com/news/special-olympics/

We’ve made it to McCall.  We had a lovely 2.5 hour drive up from Nampa through some beautiful scenery.  We drove alongside a mountain river with mountains sloping up on either side.  (Pictures to be posted shortly.)

McCall is a beautiful little mountain resort town full of log cabins and buildings amongst the trees.  We took a drive out to the competition location to see where we’d be for the week.  (Turns out some of the divisioning happened today and we weren’t aware of that.)  Ponderosa State Park is very pretty with Douglas Firs towering overhead as you drive along the roads.

Tomorrow morning we’ll be out in full force to cheer on the athletes.  For now, enjoy the photos.