Catching Up

 One of the great advantages of Sarah being two (and having no baby at the moment) is that I can finally go on some of the older kids' field trips.  This is the only photo from Jacob and Hannah's trip to their teacher's farm (which included a hike through the bush and pastures while Farmer Shulist explained the concept of biodiversity - actually, quite fascinating).  We ate lunch at the farmhouse and then ended the day at the Pioneer Museum at Madonna House.  Sarah (yes, I am allowed to take her on field trips - what a life!) fell in love with the player piano and spent thirty minutes sitting side by side with an MH staff worker using her hands to choreograph an elaborate dance.

 These two photos are an inevitable consequence of living in a house full of boys.

 I happened upon this scene on a Saturday morning.  My immediate reaction was to admonish them and make them untie Joe at once.  And then they explained the game.  You see, this is a Houdini-type game in which the subject (always Joe) is tied up with ropes and timed to see how fast he can release himself.  I was assured that he was a willing participant and had reached Level 8.  Ben explained that Level 7 involved stretching the subject (ummm?) and that the blindfold was introduced at Level 8.  Jacob was in charge of tying up Joe while Ben timed and Hannah filmed.  Dave shut the whole thing down at Level 9.  I don't quite know how this bodes for their future.  Hopefully we can temper these skills with a good dose of empathy.

 My two ever-present buddies.  Isaac and Sarah really are my shadows or, as Dave refers to them, my two little calves.  I refuse to follow that metaphor to its conclusion regarding my role.

 A new sibling combination of love.

 Joe took a break from school today and set up an elaborate jumping course for Isaac and Sarah involving the couch, coffee table and copious amounts of blankets and pillows - "For safety, Mom."  Joe informs me that he has started a company called Jump and that he will charge money if not allowed to play on the iPad.

Ahh, feel the love.

Fall Pilgrimage

 Our parish, St. Hedwig's, is celebrating its centennial anniversary this year.  In honour of 100 years, the parish has hosted an anniversary mass and dinner, a fun fair for the family, as well as published a (very large and genuinely interesting) history of the parish.  Other events I have already forgotten, and more events are to come.  The most recent happening was a walking pilgrimage from Barry's Bay to Wilno, from where our parish originated as an outgrowth of the Polish settlement in Wilno.

 The pilgrimage started at 12:30pm on a Sunday and followed the old railroad bed for a distance of 7 km or so.  At the head of the line of walkers was a cross bearer and two banner bearers.  As you can see, at one point, Joe took over as the cross bearer and smiled/grimaced his way through half a kilometre.  Benjamin was next in line but quickly passed off the cross to this sister when he began to doubt his upper-arm strength.

 Jacob took his turn carrying the banner.  I think that the banner was a bit harder to negotiate than the cross as our priest had failed to find the proper rod on which to mount the banner.  Thus, the intricately embroidered banner sat precariously perched on two hooks protruding from a cross bar made of wood.  With each gust of wind, it threatened to fall haphazardly to the ground in a big mound of Polish-ladies hard work.  Can you see that look of responsibility on Jacob's face as he ponders the task which he has been given?

 And here is Hannah eating an apple.  And advising her mother that she (meaning her mother) could conceivably sneak off into the woods for a bathroom break before the pilgrimage got underway.  Her mother didn't as she judged the bathroom break to be far too obvious.  Pilgrimages do involve a certain amount of suffering, right?

 These people would definitely have noticed if I had left the group and run into the woods.  I mean, what other than a bathroom break would require such an excursion?  On another note, that tallish young man with the backpack slung over one shoulder?  A diocesan seminarian who is on his apostolic year at our parish.

 Joe getting ready to lead the parish through the woods and along the railbed.  Perhaps the actual church one day, Fr. Joe?  Don't worry, your sister will be there to advise you as to appropriate penances in the confessional.

 Here we are about 300m from our destination.  There were moments along that highway when I wondered whether we would all arrive in one piece.  Walking along the highway with exuberant boys is one of life's more extreme sports.

 A better shot so you can see the long line of people following that cross.

 Ah, yes, our good pastor, Fr. Shalla.  Is his flair for the dramatic apparent?  It was a rather hot day, in the upper 20s, and when I looked back and saw him with his hand over his heart, I had to ask whether such a pose was an act of piety or a plea for de-fibrillation.  Thankfully it was the former.

 Jacob and a few other boys ran the majority of the pilgrimage, as the CWL ladies just weren't up to pace.  I confess that I too, when grown tired of chit-chat, also ran a good portion of the walk.

 I made Joe run as well.  Although he looks content, he was actually quite angry with me for making him exert himself in such weather, "I thought this was a walk, Mom!"

 This was our final stop as we regrouped and prepared to cross the highway.

 These five boys were officially the winners of the pilgrimage.  I mean, they made it there first...

Lovely photo of some wonderful young lads:  future fathers of one sort or another.

School Fun

Can you spot Hannah, Ben and Joseph?

Some of my favourite aspects of school life are the extra-curricular events:  Christmas concerts, BBQs, fun fairs and sporting events.  One of the traditional school events of the fall in this end of the Valley is the Partridge Run.  Its name is derived from its timing - partridge hunting season has just begun at the end of September when the race is run.  The kids tell me that if you pass another participant on the course, you are supposed to yell, "Partridge!  Partridge!" to give them fair warning. I don't think anyone feels confident enough to follow that rule.

All the kids run according to age group and gender, with the younger groups running an 800m course and the older students running a 1600m loop.  There are also two open 3000m events to close the day.  The top three in each category earn points toward an overall school total to determine which school takes home the trophy.  Hannah took home second place in the 1600 and later ran the 3000 where she placed fourth, sidelined by a cramp that hit her early on in the race.  (Jacob had to run her across the finish line cheering her on the whole way.)  I am told, by my husband, that I allowed her too much to drink between races, "Well, Elena, you can drink that much if you're out for a jog, but not if you're out to win."  Oops.

 Dave is, how to put this mildly, very interested in the school's sporting activities.  There is a running joke among teachers that the trophies tend to follow Coach Afelskie around.  Our own kids, demonstrating some familial running talent, were told that if they wanted to win, they had better start training in July.  So, train they did.  The kids logged 1-3km almost every day of the summer.  They ran to church, they ran to swimming, they ran around the neighbourhood and they ran barefoot along country roads in Nova Scotia.  (The latter was by far the most interesting training to watch:  the kids ran shoeless and in bathing suits on their way back from the beach, with us trailing behind at a super-slow pace in the van.)

 Dave coached the school and he coached his kids.  As his principal remarked when commenting on his mild-mannered personality combined with his iron-willed determination, "I didn't expect you to take this so seriously."  

 In one of life's great ironies, the night before the race Dave came home from school with the flu.  He took to his bed with fever and migraine and told me that I was now in charge of filming the races and tallying the scores.  I judged that he was not too sick to keep Sarah at home with him the next day, and so I secretly delighted that I would be able to attend the whole day without anyone to watch but the school kids.  (This did not stop me from several times during the day looking around me in panic as I wondered where Sarah had wandered off to.  Old habits die slow deaths.)
Ben also took second in his category, one place off his last year's finish.  Jacob finished fourth in the 1600 and eighth in the 3000.  As he later told me, "I would have placed if Dad had been there to coach me."  Perhaps next year, son.

 The biggest surprise of the day, and perhaps the season, was little Joe.  Joe has always been the slowest of our oldest four children.  On training runs he would reluctantly jog while the others kept up a steady pace.  At times he would even run backwards in a bid to make someone laugh.  However, about midway through the summer, something changed.  The smile dropped off his face and was replaced by a look of tremendous determination.

 He began to run faster and longer.  As his fitness improved he started to wonder if he too could win a ribbon at cross country.  We called him our wild card and wondered what the day would hold.

 I stayed at the bottom of the finishing hill waiting for the grade two boys to round the corner and begin the final stretch.  When they appeared, Joe was in third.  Jacob had positioned himself midway up the hill in order to cheer on Joe and encourage him to dig deep and run through the pain.  His eldest brother's tactic worked and Joe began to pick off the first and second runners.  I was so astounded that I began to jump and yell, "It's Joe!  Joe's going to win!"  I ran to the finish line and grabbed my mother-in-law in a bear hug.  (I was only slightly embarrassed by my exuberance when I later reviewed the day.)  I texted Dave and he responded with emoticons and exclamation marks.  Joe was so surprised by his win that he forgot to register at the table where the order of runners is recorded.  Jacob rectified his mistake.  I later asked Joe how he had managed to pull off a win.  He squinted his eyes, scrunched up his lips and said, "I don't know what came over me.  I've never run that fast in my life.  It just ... came out of me.  I am so tired."  That pretty much sums it up, Joe.  My other theory explaining Joe's win is that the baked goods table and hotdog stand are located another 100 m after the finish line.  I had told him that he had to wait until his race was over before he could buy any lunch.  Perhaps he was just hungry.

At the end of the day, Isaac summed up how everybody felt - hungry, tired and just a little bit accomplished.

A day out at Algonquin Park

 The third Friday of the school year was an in-service day.  Dave had to go to work, but the kids were all home in their sibling glory.  Instead of spending the day refereeing fights, I decided to take them all on a hike at Algonquin Park.  The Park is a 35 minute drive and is perhaps most glorious in the fall.  Your eyes might grow wide at the thought of one woman taking her six children to a provincial park.  Trust me, the wilds of Ontario are sometimes much easier to navigate than those of the familial home.

 We packed a picnic lunch and started our day at the Visitor's Centre.  The Centre has a wonderful, but small, wildlife museum inside and an incredible lookout at the rear of the building.  It also has a small movie theatre which shows the same movie about the history of the park over and over again.  The boys never grow tired of it.

 The Visitor's Centre also has a large and overly-priced cafeteria which has never proven unattractive to Joe.  Along the same line, the super-expensive stuffed animals in the gift shop also become a constant source of nagging.  Now remember that I was one mom with six children (among whom is a very persistent and determined child who will stop at nothing to get a stuffed animal or an ice cream cone); so, when I tell you that I shut the whining down with a promise of a used stuffed animal from a local thrift store, please don't judge me.  One has to survive, after all.

 See!  There I am surviving.  And in sunglasses, always in sunglasses.

 Sarah in her autumn glory.

 A little blurry, but you get the idea.  The last time we took this picture was when a visiting friend/priest from Texas came with us to the Park when Sarah was still a newborn.

 Ben spent the entire 3 km hike trying to convince us that he had heard a bear.  Every crack of a stick or rustling of a leaf served as evidence of ursine presence.  At times, he would run ahead and collapse on the trail in a mock-up of a death scene.  We would gently step over him and wait for him to catch up.

 Sarah walked for about 250m until she insisted that she be carried.  For the next 2.5km.  It was a good workout.

 At one point she grew quite fussy, so I sang her a bedtime song and she fell asleep!  I had expected that the song might quiet her, but apparently "I'll love you forever" is as soporific as a darkened room and a welcoming crib.

She stayed like this for around 20 minutes after the walk.  I found her so adorable that I took around 20 photos, to which Dave asked when scrolling through the photos on the iPhone, "Aren't these all the same?"  Only slightly.