Hello again from the nation's capital !
Easter Sunday already. It is a beautiful spring day in Ottawa. The sun is shining, the air is cool, the streets are busy with walkers and neighbors chatting. Many yards will be raked and cleaned up this weekend including ours. The Easter decorations are all back in storage for another year. Our daffodils are almost ready to bloom but our little blue violets are all in full bloom.
Carter and Paula have been busy dyeing lacrosse heads. It is an arduous process. They began with taping and applying hot glue where they did not want the dye to hold. They then boiled a big pot of water, took it out to the BBQ and boiled it in the dye. It was then dried and froze in the freezer. They have been trying to scrape off the glue and tape for the last two hours. The first batch was red. The second batch will be black. Why did he not just buy a black head... that would be to simple. To top things off they have been filming the process to post on You Tube.
We have enjoyed another busy week. Lacrosse practise on Tuesday and Thursday and time for household chores on Monday and Wednesday. We took Good Friday as a day of rest and relaxation. Randy did manage to clean up a bit with the vacuum and washed the cars. You can imagine how much dust accumulates in a month. Paula took a break from her knitting to make us a nice tuna casserole for dinner. Carter and Randy dragged the hockey and lacrosse nets up the stairs to the front drive. We managed to break two light fixtures during the process. Do not fret they were repaired in minutes. The boys played in the front yard until dinner was ready then we hunkered down to a hockey game and a movie. We had moved the cars onto the street, unlocked and forgot about them before going to bed.
Saturday morning we were up early as we had to drive to Kanawake reserve in Quebec. We got up early, showered, had our morning caffeine fix then headed out to load the car. To our surprise we discovered we had visitors during the night. Both vehicles had been vandalized. Randy had also forgot his wallet in his car. Luckily they just made a mess and only wanted cash. The wallet was present and all the papers and cards we scattered in or outside on the street. It had rained so anything that blew away was found in the neighbors grass. We quickly gathered the items, moved the Escape and hit the highway. We had no time to stop for cash or tea. It was probably the first time Paula has ever brought her purse into the house. She had misplaced her credit card the previous day so brought it in the house to look for the card. How fortunate.
We drove an exhausting 160 minutes through miserable conditions and every small town in Western Quebec. Driving in rural Qc is different because the speed limit and conditions changed every ten minutes. Small towns (30km/hr) and rural winding roads (70km/hr). We arrived just twenty minutes before game time. We followed provided instructions from the reserve and were totally stressed the entire trip. It turns out 90% of the Griffins were in the same boat. After hearing that we never felt bad about arriving late. Half the team arrived after us and some of the Bantam team players, who play after Carters Peewee team arrived just in time for the game. The players had dressed in the car enroute. You should have seen how stressed they looked.
We had given Carter permission to play every second or third rotation. To our surprise he was on the second line and played on every second line the entire game. It was a barn burner of a game. We were missing six players due to conflicts with spring hockey. The coach had called up four players from team 2. It was quite obvious why they were on team 2 but we were thankful they took up some slack for our players. Carter was elated and played a very thrilling game. He scored a modest five goals. He also made some awesome passes and set up some good plays. Overall the team played okay with an 8-8 tie. Five out of eight goals is pretty incredible. His parents sat humbly in the crowd cheering on every play, goal and good pass. We were so proud. It was very hard to be humble. That was then, not know!
We had a second game on Saturday in three hours at another reserve just across the St. Lawrence River at Cornwall. After getting lost exiting the first reserve we stopped at A&W to feed Carter and a team 2 player to a much deserved lunch. None of us had had breakfast and were starved for food. We drove through the rain another 90 minutes and arrived forty minutes before the next game. We knew where we were going so the stress was a bit less.
The second game was not near as exciting. The boys showed some fatigue and lack of skill. We lost by five or six goals. Carter was also a bit fatigued but still managed to make some incredible passes and set up a few goals. He also darted from the scrum on several occasions with break aways. The Akwesane goalie was no slouch which made it much harder to score. Carter managed to score twice and assist on a couple others. Overall it was a good learning experience for the boys. In the end the boys were all happy to have played two games in one day. The parents were all entertained and thrilled it was over. Most stopped in at the local sports store for lacrosse supplies. If anyone left spending less than $100 they were lucky. Five Griffin teams stopped in his store yesterday. The owner told Paula he was overwhelmed with business all day. We figure he sold just the Griffin players over $7,500 in the afternoon alone and that is probably low. The good part is no one is charged HST because it is on a reserve. Outstanding. Carter received, from the Easter Bunny as he put it, a new Warrior lacrosse bag, new Mark Mesh, new shooting strings and a wicked new T-shirt. Paula got herself two new Under Amour shorts and a t-shirt. Randy chose to enjoy the sun outside as it broke through the clouds. We had a wonderful relaxing drive home. The chilled glasses that awaited us made the drive much more relaxing.
We stopped at Metro for groceries when we hit the city then returned home and chilled with frozen pizza, cocktails and frozen ice cream. We watched a period and a half of the Halves game then turned it to the movie Salt on HBO. It is a very good action movie. To our amazement the game was in overtime after the movie so we watched Montreal LOSE. HAHAHAHAHA! We are all Chara fans. We were all fast asleep after that, in fact Randy was before the goal.
We look forward to hearing wonderfuls news about your Easter weekend!
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