2015 - Let the Good Times Roll

Rob and Cher’s 2015 Ramblings

Let the Good Times Roll

We are on the last few days of our official first year of retirement. After some initial feelings of misplaced guilt about not having to drag myself off to work every day, I recovered remarkably quickly and have spent the year trying to figure out how does one live life without the shape and structure of the daily grind.

Bottom line, we are getting there – I have discovered that I am someone who likes structure. I guess, go figure, I’m an accountant at heart. I like my art with lots of clearly defined lines, none of that fuzzy wuzzy modern stuff and the debits and the credits must balance. Once I recognised my need for structure, my weeks and days now look a bit like this – office one day a week to show my face and look interested;  Gym – three times per week, understanding that twice is acceptable; grandchildren one day per week. Rising bell typically goes off around 7am (late for us) until we get some more daylight in this northern clime. My email inbox must be cleared, preferably daily – a task I am perilously close to surrendering on. I must have a 10 minute power nap after lunch, after a brief read, to refresh the failing brain. I have discovered the joys of TV without adverts (Netflix), so that is some pleasant late evening entertainment, leading up to the evening news which is like a trailer for bed time as we both generally fall asleep during it. Pretty much any gaps in there are taken up by our volunteer ministry work with a specific segment of immigrants to Canada. All that to say, that our lives are full, but not unpleasantly so. God is good.

Before the Fall….

Our year was relatively blissful prior to the Fall…. of the Conservative Party that is, in our general elections in October. Lead by our glorious and fearless, though now fallen, leader Stephen Harper the CP has managed Canada, admirably for the last ten years through a variety of storms and trials. Stephen had the great knack of not much caring what the press and opposition were bleating on about and he would set his course and steer through every storm in his unflappable manner which I loved. Most of his values reflected mine, so I have appreciated having him as a sane anchor in an increasingly crazy world in which “Wrong” has become “Right” and “Right” has become “Wrong”.

Anyway then along came young Justin Trudeau, 43, leading an unmentionable opposition party, sporting a flashy hairstyle and not much else on his resume. He inherited his father’s (a previous Prime Minister) good looks and winning ways. Aaaaaagh!!  I’ll spare you the details. We now have a party in power, with a comfortable majority who have promised to put the country into deficit again for the next three years – having just spent the last 25 years getting the country out of deficit.  Good ole Justin has promised so many people so many things that he’ll have to spend us into oblivion to give everyone what they feel they’ve been promised. Stephen Harper’s response to that would have been – “sorry, the kitty’s empty, we’ll consider that in the next budget”.

Anyway I must say it’s not all bad – Justin at least, is not Donald Trump. And in his defense – he does seem like a genuinely nice guy. I must get the name of his hairdresser and maybe I’ll pass it on to Donald too.

Big Doings

The Land of Zuma (January 2015)

We visited SA in January for a month or so, to see the family. It is always nice to be back “home” even though my heart bleeds when I see what the ruling party and politicians are doing or, perhaps more accurately, not doing. We had one of our most entertaining TV viewing evenings we’ve seen for a long time when it came to President Jacob Zuma giving the State of the Union address. The opposition parties had vowed to force him to deal with the question of when he was going to pay back the money he had stolen to build a luxurious compound including a luxury house for each of his five wives. Added to that, one of the parties had threatened to come to Parliament naked – this had the impact of ensuring that virtually every South African would be watching the State of the Union address closely – very closely. Bottom line – the opposition parties did indeed disrupt proceedings, resulting in the, might have been naked, party being thrown out of Parliament by plain clothes security officials, making for some highly entertaining TV. Of course at the end of the day it’s just sad to see the promising start that Nelson Mandela gave the new South Africa giving way to bribery, corruption and nepotism on a grand scale. 

Having said that, if we ignore the politics, SA is a great place to visit and we spent a very pleasant month visiting my family in Johannesburg and Cher’s family in East London, including a week-long stay in spectacularly beautiful Plettenberg Bay on the fabled Garden Route in the Cape Province, with Cher’s Mom.

We expected to come home in mid-February to warming temperatures and thawing snow, but no so such luck. Our area was experiencing its coldest winter on record (so much for global warming) and the temperature was – 24 degrees on landing. This was a bit much to bear after the gorgeous temperatures in SA.

Living it up European Style – entering the Fabulous Forties

Cheryl and I have just celebrated our 40^th wedding anniversary on December 20^th. Apart from the celebration of the fact of this increasingly rare achievement, I’m mainly struggling with how did I become so old that I could have been married for 40 years? I remember my parents 40^th wedding anniversary and they were seriously old at the time – so not sure how that works. I’m open to ideas on this apparent contradiction.

We have known two other couples, Ed and Andrea Zak and Alice and John Chase, who we met when Elaine and Julia were at school. We’ve grown up so to speak with them and their kids over 25 years and they just happen to share the same wedding anniversary year as us so we decided to celebrate our joint 40ths together. We three couples have been planning a cycling/boat cruise trip down the Danube for about six years, but each year one of us would be injured or there’d be a wedding in the family and so on. This year though was the year, we were all clear. We decided to Carpe Diem before one of us developed something sinister.  So to cut a long story short, Cheryl and I spent a great week on an Italian cruise liner in the Adriatic and Greek Islands for a week, following a couple of days in Venice. We then rendezvoused with our friends in Passau Germany where we embarked on a wonderful week of cycling and sightseeing along the Danube through Germany, Austria, Slovenia and Hungary. That was fun and the cycling was manageable as none of us are seriously fit. That would be fun to do every year, but we have too many other places to see and do.

 

 
 

RVing – Explore Galore

Mid March to mid April we embarked on another 4 – 5 week trip to continue our exploration of the USA. The trick is to head south as quickly as possible to get out of the cold. It also allows us to de-winterise the plumbing on the RV. 



We headed straight for Hunting Island, South Carolina, a State Park we’d read good things about and then down to St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest city in the USA apparently. 



Al, my brother and wife Rosie joined us there and we had fun exploring the city and beautiful fort. We then headed west to the Florida panhandle to spend a few days on at Topsail State Park, a lovely spot we’d discovered the year before, with beautiful beach and great facilities. 

















Our next destination was New Orleans, to see if it deserved its reputation as the city of sleaze. It was actually a great part of our trip, with music dominating everything. 

We even had a jazz band leading worship in the Presbyterian church we went to. Unfortunately the sleazy part of their reputation definitely held true for some streets at certain times of day, with some very weird people walking around.

Al and Rose left us after New Orleans and we continued on to Galveston Texas. Galveston, which is an island on the Gulf of Mexico with miles and miles of unspoilt beach, itself, was good. Getting there however by skirting Houston, through all the oil refineries was like driving through a science fiction movie set – ugly and awful. Mind you the great thing about Texas was finding gas at $2.03 per gallon which is like the Holy Grail for RVers. By then we’d reached our time limit and sadly it was time to head home via part of the mid-west. 

We’d been advised to visit Branson Missouri and so we stopped in there for a couple of days on or way home. It is a city with perhaps 100 theatres, mainly focused around music. We managed to squeeze in four shows in two days, including a great Elvis tribute by his youngest cousin who bore a remarkable resemblance. All too soon it was time to head home to face reality again.

Little Doings

Our grandchildren continue to be a wonderful blessing to us. We made the decision a while back to offer to look after all four of them one day a week to give the parents a much needed break. 




My theory is that when they get to playing with each other, they become self - perpetuating and less work, plus we wanted them to get to know their cousins. Unfortunately Sammy, our eldest was already at school, so could not join in the fun, but for quite a while we had Esther, John and James coming to us every Wednesday for quality cousin time. Since September Esther has now joined Sammy at school and so we have only John and James for the meantime. We have enjoyed zoo days, library programs, playgrounds, and reading together. 




We have all the kids trained that there has to be a mandatory rest after lunch, so that they can read and Granddad can nap – so far that’s working. Yiaaaa!!

Mini RV trips

All three families enjoyed a week at Fairhavens, a Christian resort in July. This was our third year and is fast becoming a tradition. We were in our RV, Elaine and Alex and Elaine stayed in a rented mobile home and Julia and Chris stayed in their tent. 

We had great family times of meals together, campfires and of course during the day the kids get shipped off to their separate programs while we went to our own. Cher and I played some lawn bowls which was great fun.

Cher and I took Sammy and Esther for a week to Beavermeade campsite in Peterborough, for a week in August while Elaine and Alex did a whistle-stop tour of Switzerland and Germany. It is gorgeous campsite, with beach, fields and parks to play in. Also Sammy mastered riding his bike which he had been struggling with. His prayer at the beginning of the week was for God to help him get good at it and by the end of the week he told me that God had answered his prayer – I was blessed by that. I think what helped him get confident was when he and I watched a little boy whiz by us on his bike, only to wipe out spectacularly 20 yards in front us. He looked around for sympathy from his Mum, got none, so he got up dusted himself down and carried on riding. Once Sammy saw that he never looked back.

Road trip out East

In September Cher and I did a whistle-stop trip for 10 days to Eastern Canada, to meet people and unearth new contacts related to our ministry work we do. We visited Ottawa, Fredericton, Moncton, Halifax and Antigonish. We also did a flying visit of the famed Cabot Trail, which whilst very beautiful, did live up to its reputation of being either rainy or misty. With its strong Scottish roots it is the land of Ceilidhs and we enjoyed that component of our trip.  We did about 5000 kms in 10 days and I am reminded of how big Canada is.

Family News

We feel very blessed by having all of our family living so close to us – Elaine and Alex are about 40 minutes’ drive and Julia and Chris about 20 minutes. We are all busy in our own rights, but manage to see them all at least weekly most weeks.

Elaine, Alex, Sammy (6)  and Esther (4)

Alex is now back to working full time at People’s Christian Academy (PCA) and Sammy is in Grade 1 there. In September Elaine was offered a two thirds teaching position and Esther started in Junior Kindergarten. So now the whole family goes to school together every morning, which is a handy arrangement.  Alex’s health is holding up well, so all in all they are doing well. 

Julia, Chris, John (3), James (2) and Peter (3mths)

Julia has just blessed us with 3 month old Peter. The birth was at home with the aid of a mid-wife. I was a bit nervous about this arrangement, but Julia sailed through it uneventfully. Having three kids aged three and under is a challenging job and at times I think she has had second thoughts. We may not get the next 9 disciples after all – we’ll see.

 




Chris was just recognized as “Employee of the Year” at his company which is nice. Having said that, he is about to move to a new company offering him better conditions and a much shorter commute – four  minutes versus 40 -50 minutes, so life is good for them at present.

Cheryl and Rob

Cher continues to be a busy bee, with a seemingly endless capacity to handle new projects with ease. She is really gifted in that. Combine that with her heart of gold, willing to help those who need it, she manages to keep herself very fully occupied.

My days also are full, so much so that I am actively looking for ways to cut down on what I am involved in. It’s a delicate balancing act though as I don’t want to find myself vegetating in the corner with nothing challenging me. I always remind Cher, that we could just do more RV trips for longer times, but I am shooed off for thinking such frivolous thoughts. I’m fortunate to have a wife who keeps me on the straight and narrow.

And so to 2016….

Who knows what it might hold for us all? We have some exciting travel plans, but we are also pretty stretched in our ministry related involvements. More and more we are asking God to lead us not so much to be busy for Him, but much more to be busy only on the things where He is at work and wants us to be too. We are both tired of being busy just for the sake of it.

We wish you and your loved ones all of God’s richest blessings in the New Year and trust that He will abundantly bless you in all of your doings.

Rob and Cheryl

December 2015