Fifteen Candles

The baby that made us parents for the first time turned 15 on February 26. Diedre is a sweet daughter, a loyal friend, a voice of reason with an obvious gift of godly wisdom, a counsellor to her friends, she is gentle and serves others in childrens ministry, singing, and is a joy to be around. She loves athletics (basketball, track, fitness) and is a positive teammate. I love spending time with her and she is a friend to me. I pray that she will continue to seek God’s will for her life and allow Him to work in her and lead her in the path He has planned for her.

Ezekiel had the idea to buy her a ukulele and wanted to pay for half of it. She was so excited to open it! He planned such a sweet and thoughtful surprise for her.

This grade 9 year has been a year of growing up with her first loss of a grandparent, adjusting to a new school and social groups, losing some friends and having her eyes opened to some pretty serious problems among her classmates.

As a family we always do a birthday activity of the child’s choice but this time we tried to make her birthday special and I had planned a concert for our whole family to go to on February 27 (but Derek was still sick from Vegas—hopefully Coronavirus—and didn’t feel up to it so we took a friend).

The concert was full of many musicians that we all liked. Some of Diedre’s favourites and really someone for everyone. It was a crazy long concert—like 4 hours or more!! So many families from school were there too. Toby Mac, Jordan Feliz, Aaron Cole, We are Messengers, Tauren Wells and more! It was crazy. Unfortunately Ezekiel got a crazy headache (not a good combo for a super loud concert) and kept having to leave the arena. I had earplugs in which were super helpful and so I finally gave them to him but he was too far gone. It was so loud! Anyway, if we do that again, I’ll make sure to stock up on earplugs for everyone. The birthday girl seemed to like it a lot

A trip to celebrate

Sometime last year, I suggested to Derek that we should go to the Las Vegas Challenge Disc Golf tournament to celebrate our upcoming 20 year Wedding Anniversary (April 24). So we saved up and found some local friends that were also planning to go. We booked two nights at The Flamingo and would stay five nights with friends for free (sharing costs of Uber to the tournament each day).
I was excited to get direct flights from Abbotsford for a decent price! We flew out on February 16. The Flamingo room was upgraded for about $30 and it was HUGE! A long wall of windows with a view of the strip and the Bellagio fountains. We’d call the kids in FaceTime and show them the fountain show. Loved that!

The weather was perfect but I suffered from crazy altitude headaches for four days straight and took steady doses of Advil. While we were there we started hearing more about Coronavirus that was coming out of Wuhan China. I was getting a little worried being in such a hub of international travellers. At one point Derek was coughing so hard and throughout the night. We both hope we had a mild case of the virus. They did ask us while travelling if we’d been to China.

The disc golf tournament went great! Not that we played especially well in our categories, but the event was super fun, the Las Vegas disc golf club were super helpful hosts, the weather was amazing, and the company of our local friends down there was so great! It was a fun time being together to celebrate our 20 years of adventuring and our marriage. We didn’t really do much Vegas-y type stuff other than a 24 hour buffet (except for celebrating Robin’s birthday on Fremont Street). We were able to buy the buffet passes in time that we got 5 meals for it! We enjoyed a lovely view of real flamingos while we dined, we got lost a few times and ended up having our final meal at a lovely French cuisine buffet. Seriously so good!

Life had been pretty tough after the loss of my Dad. It was so good to get away. Our poor kids were still dealing with the strangeness of losing a Grandparent when we got the news in February that Derek’s Dad was also diagnosed with cancer. We got the confirmation of it while we were away. Derek and I decided we would keep the kids home on the day after we returned from Vegas so we could hang out and share this sad news.

Our eldest daughter was just about to turn 15 so we were trying to choose the best possible time to let the kids in on this news—we knew we wanted to wait til we got back so we could comfort them since we knew it would hit them hard.