Saturday 12 June 2010

Simple makes happy

Dinner: Simple; all protein. Happy. Fish, chicken, pork. There was an odd vegetable thrown in but it was a meatstravaganza.

The Brothers Dave were in the house. Shoot back to here: http://canuckplaceadventurechallenge.blogspot.com/2009/06/no-man-im-dave.html
and the magic of the brothers Dave comes to light!

Dave Senior to my left and Junior to my right. Junior decides he was full...turns out he was just a little unhappy with the dryness of the salmon. Sharpeyed nurse knows he is more like a garbage disposal unit when it comes to food and figures it out. On to the carrots! Seemed like we hung out at the dinner table for a long time. Eating and hanging. Santos was in, Joan was in, and peer volunteer Amanda was also in.
The other set of brothers were also in:
http://canuckplaceadventurechallenge.blogspot.com/2010/04/brothers-j-another-set-go-squirrel.html
and were in fact still intent on catching wildlife. This week they thought that birds were a good idea. . Junior J2 had made a bird catching apparatus and was intent on using it.
This makes two sets of Brothers J...so these guys are Brothers J2.

Senior J2 FINALLY got some glasses. Something I have been trying to get him into for over a year. I am well chuffed that he has them; more so that he says they make such a big difference.

It was such a nice night that we decided to road trip. A rolling caravan of chairs out through the rough and tumble streets of Shaughnessy. Always a sight!

These kids here all know what is going on. Junior J2 made the observation to me that he is having a much tougher time walking. He and his older brother both have Duchenne's Muscular Dystrophy.
JJ2 gets out of his chair to get into the bathroom by himself. He is 12. I asked him if he knew when Senior lost the ability to walk. He answered "when he was 8...so I am doing way better".

Duchenne's is a progressive muscular disease that slowly works its way up from the lower extremities. Eventually it can make it difficult to breathe.

JJ2 knows that his condition will progress. That sucks. These guys take it as life. I'm not sure if they take it well, or if they live in a private morbid fear of dying well before anyone should, or have an insane jealousy of kids who don't need to belong to Canuck Place, but I do know that when they come to the house they are plain and simple kids.

Simple makes happy.

Friday 4 June 2010

A Marshmallow Crazy Night

Hi....it's Joan! Long time no blog. Well, here I am - to post about tonight's Canuck Place night!

On the shift were Amanda, Marjan (new family volunteer), Kal (subbing for Tony), and I. All girls! We were pretty excited about it being an all-girls night during dinner because it seemed like all the kids who needed hanging out were girls too: Leanna, Leigh, and Monica (who is Gordon's sister). Leanna was a super fast eater, Leigh was looking forward to watching a movie, and Monica was excited about shopping for her elementary school graduation dress tomorrow with Mom!

Suddenly, a little boy named Stevy came sprinting into the kitchen and declared air hockey war (hence the almost all girls night). At first, chef Roberto played with him but he had work to do in the kitchen so Amanda accepted the challenge...and lost. I think. Stevy is a very good air hockey player.

After dinner, Leanna and Leigh were put in bed because they had a long day at Science World. Marjan, the techno guru, succeeded in wrestling with the DVD player and got a movie playing for them.

Kal, Amanda, and I went outside with Monica and Stevy to play Apples-to-Apples, and we brought with us lots of fruit, tea, and cookies. Stevy accidentally ate 5 cookies and therefore had tons of energy...that we needed to expend. He then decided that he didn't want to play the game, and ended up zooming around in the hand-bike, bicycle (with helmet, at my insistence), scooter, and merry-go-round. While Kal, Amanda, and I kept an eye on Stevy, we played Apples-to-Apples with Monica until it got rainy and Stevy wanted to go inside.
(If you don't know what Apples-to-Apples is...check it out at Wikipedia!)

We went in and struck a deal with Stevy: we would go to the Volcano room to have a "Marshmallow Fight" for a short time, and then finish our game. After a little discussion and a lot of help from Mom, it was settled. The marshmallow fight was a little too intense...I actually feared for my glasses. But clearly, it drained Stevy (finally!) and he was quite tired out.

We returned upstairs to play more Apples-to-Apples while I set Stevy up with some Rockband (it works now, Malcolm!) Very soon, Stevy's Mom took up him upstairs for bed, while Marjan came downstairs and joined us in our game. We played the amazing Apples-to-Apples until it was time to go.

It was a night of multitudes. Never a surprise at Canuck Place!

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!