Wednesday 25 March 2009

Justin is in AGAIN!

One of my students, Justin, has put his two-bits in again this year. Ok...make that 960-bits.
Justin has a vested interest in Canuck Place as his family was a part of the house several years ago with his little sister Tamryn.

Thank you Justin.

Sunday 22 March 2009

Another night!

It is quite amazing how you can be associated with a place for four years and yet spend so little time there! I checked my hours of service tonight and found that I have logged about 300 hrs. That doesn't seem like much! Some people work 300 hrs in 3 weeks! My point is that you can volunteer with an organisation without breaking the 'personal time' bank account.

If it is time for you...then do something. It won't break the bank.

There were a ton of people in the house tonight! One of my students who has become a peer volunteer was on her first shift at the house. Great...she must be thinking...Chrystal again?

We had young ones, elementary aged kids, and teenagers in the house tonight. A pretty broad spectrum. Little Nelson is still hanging at the house with Mum. As there were a lot of kids, Mum decided to spirit him away and kept things quiet for him.
Steve (who broke the drumset) went upstairs with Keith, Aviva went upstairs to the Kids floor with Suzie and her friend Asha, and Joan and I hung out in the Sun Room with Jason, Ivan, and later Martin and Keith.

Everybody kept moving around and it was all as smooth as could be!

As I write this I am thinking "what a boring night". Nobody (Steve) broke anything, nobody (Malcolm) made anyone mad by being really annoying, and nobody was overly upset about anything. It was just kind of a chill night.

I think that is the way things are supposed to be!

Saturday 14 March 2009

Friday March 13

OoooOoo, Friday the 13th...how queer. Even queerer is that there was also a Friday the 13th in February...oh the queer things in this world.

Yesterday was a pretty quiet day at the hospice. As I walked in I was greeted by Karen the receptionist and one of the nurses holding a very cute baby Hannah. I peered into the kitchen and there I saw Jen, Tony, some nurses and a family. So Jen and Tony finally meet! For three months they have missed each other - either Jen was sick, or Tony was sick, but finally yesterday they were both not sick. yay!
As I said before, the house was pretty quiet - a lot of kids left earlier today, like Kenneth, who was at CP last Friday too! Too bad I missed him.
A family I had met before were there too, and I saw the mom and the sister, Stella, at the dinner table. Stella is 9-years-old and she was very eager for us to finish eating our dinner!
After we finished off the delicious meal, Stella led us up to the Art room via the elevator, which she insisted was our taxi and she was our driver, and we started playing School. We had a "field trip" down to the Volcano room, where we had a competition in building castles. I won (according to Stella) the "fastest" award, and Jen won the "most effort" award. haha!
Then we went back upstairs, and while Stella ran to her room to get some candy, I sneaked out of the schoolroom to go downstairs to meet someone I have been hoping to see for awhile - Normie! As I went into his room, grandma and aunts were also there, entertaining him with a stuffed monkey that plays a guitar. I was a little worried when I saw how tired Normie looked, and his mom said that all he wants to do is stay in bed and sleep. Too bad the rockband drums are broken now and can't help lift his spirits.
I returned upstairs to find Jen, Tony, Stella and her mom all in the art room. Stella suggested that we play a game with play-do : one person sculpts something and the other people have to guess what it is. Whoever guesses it correctly gets to make the next thing! Stella went first with a bouncy ball, then her mom with a duck, then me with a pod of peas, then Stella again with a stamp, then Jen with a canoe, and finally Tony with a pepperoni and onion pizza!
The final event of the night was..dun dun dun duuunnnn...rock band!!! Tony had to take off early, so it was just Jen, Stella, and I rockin' it out. It was pretty fun, and I got to sing a few songs too. teehee
When it was time for us to go, Stella didn't want us to leave, but her mom bribed here away with a promise for movie and popcorn. =D

Tuesday 10 March 2009

Friday March 6, 2009

Greetings, readers of this blog!

Last Friday was pretty exciting, but it would have been way better if Malcolm were there! Hope you feel better soon!
Anyways, so I walked into Canuck Place and I see some of the volunteers from the previous shift helping out with dinner in the vestibule, and I spy some little kids: one with short, blonde hair, and another with longer brownish hair, a bit taller. Before I had a chance to recognize them, I am greeted by "Bomb-it Girl!! You're here!!" Low and behold, here are little Lucas and sister Gloria! So apparently after I introduced him to bomb-it, a super cool game, he's never stopped talking about it or playing it. Even his parents know I'm the "Bomb-it Girl"! I thought that was pretty cool, and I was really touched that I had made an impression on the little boy. XD
So anyways, we had take-out pizza for dinner that night because the kitchen was under some construction and cooks could not perform their magic. Regardless, pizza was good, and through out my whole meal, Lucas kept coming over and pestering me to finish eating fast so we could play Bomb-it. Then Gloria kept stealing my name tag to make funny noises with the magnet.
I forgot to mention, in my awesome rant about Lucas and Gloria that Jeffrey was also here today! He was really let down when he found out that neither Malcolm nor Tony would be there that night. I would have to do.
A new kid, Kenneth was also there on Friday. Maybe not new kid, but it was the first time I'd seen him. He was very friendly and very talkative.
Steve came in later on, and the first thing Lucas yelled out when Steve was in sight was "He's the guy who broke the drums!" Then Lucas kept on chanting and chanting until he got distracted by Jen, the receptionist that night, who was feeding the fat fish.
So the rest of the night, I played some Risk with Jeffrey, with Gloria tagging along a bit. Lucas kept playing some funny penguin game on the computer.
Then Jeffrey and I played some Texas Hold'em! I kept on winning because Jeffrey kept bluffing for no reason. Afterwards, Jeffrey showed me this cool card game that he designed called "the Stanley Cup" which is basically what the name says. We shuffled the cards, then dealt out two sets of 5 cards facing each other. Then we flipped opposite card pairs; whichever side had the higher card won that game. We flipped all the other cards and the side winning at least 3 games won the set and moved on to take on the next team! It was pretty cool.
After I wrestled with Lucas a bit and picked him up, I brought him and Gloria back to their room where Mum and Dad were waiting.
Then, Jeffrey, Steve and I tried to make some sense out of an origami book...but had no success.
So anyways, that is it! Stay tuned for this week's shift post...

The Blog

My name is Malcolm and I was a volunteer at Canuck Place Children's Hospice in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada for nearly seven years. Now I support them by raising money by participating in the Canuck Place Adventure Challenges!


I said hospice. Not really a word that you associate with children but there you go. We will tell you about the house as this blog progresses with the hope that you will learn, and as you learn we hope that you will share. The purpose of the Adventure Challenge is to raise money for AND awareness about Canuck Place.

The name of each kid at the house you read about has been changed.

September 14th and 15th are the dates for the next Adventure Challenges.

You can sponsor me for the race here: Adventure Challenge
Maybe you should do the race?

Names:

Just a quick note about the names of the kids in the house that you will read about: they are made up!