Jeremy...He's an Angel and a Miracle

Since my last blog a lot has happened. Some friends of mine just bought their first house together, we've had Thanksgiving, and we've had people visiting from Scotland. All of these events are something to celebrate and gives us something to be thankful for.
I'm happy that my friends have moved closer to me (I only have to travel 40 minutes instead of 2 hours to see them now). They've got a lovely home with relatively new appliances. When I saw it last they were still fixing it up a bit and there were boxes everywhere, but they've apparently got that all done and sorted out now and the place looks great!
We had a great Thanksgiving. It was wonderful to have some family time playing games and watching movies, things that get overshadowed in everyday life. We didn't have the traditional turkey, but we did have a lovely joint of ham.
It was lovely to see friends from Scotland. They were able to relax and take it easy for a couple of weeks while getting to see the lovely colours of the leaves turning on the trees. They even got the chance to rake some of them! They also were able to experience the wildlife. We've been having deer come into our front yard. There are about 5 different ones. It's very cool!
Despite all the wonderful things that have occurred over the last little while, I've had to deal with the passing away of a little 8 year old boy. I've been working with Jeremy since he was about 3 or 4 years old. He had many medical needs, but seemed to be getting stronger and stronger as the years went on. He was starting to use his voice with the help of a speaking valve and his latest surgery allowed him to sit independently (which he absolutely loved). He was definitely a fighter. He survived many things (getting a trach, getting a G-tube, getting a GJ-tube, a collapsed lung, hip surgery). There were many times he had us sitting on the edge of our seats, but always pulled through. Thursday, October 12th, he apparently went extremely pale and stopped breathing. He was rushed to Sick Kids in Toronto where the doctor's found that his bowel was blocked and ruptured. There were 5 different surgeons. They did what they could, but in the end all that was left to do was wait for him to go. At 6 o'clock Thursday evening doctors guessed he had about 2 hours left. He passed away around 1 o'clock Friday morning. It's been an extremely hard couple of days, and it's not over yet. He's having a sort of memorial service at his school this evening and his funeral is tomorrow. I've been asked to be one of the paal bearers, which will be emotionally hard to be, but at least it gives me another chance to hold him. The good thing about all of this is that he went quickly and didn't have to suffer (or if he did suffer, he didn't suffer for long). For a little boy who was not even supposed to come home from the hospital at birth, he lived a very good life. I'm just glad that he is up in heaven now, where I know he will be well taken care of.

There She Blows!

We've had to deal with some pretty nasty weather recently. The wind zoomed up to 90 km/h two weekends ago and managed to not only knock some trees onto hydro wires, but also totally uproot some of the huge pine trees we have around here! I couldn't believe my eyes when I went out to my car Sunday morning to go to work. I spent about 5 minutes throwing branches off the driveway only to discover that there were branches and trees all over the road!! There was even an enormous pine tree just across the road from me that had totally come out of the ground and was resting dangerously on another tree. I actually swore out loud!!! What should have taken me five minutes to get to work ended up taking my about half an hour. Every road I seemed to take had a tree fallen right across it. The hydro was out all over the place, people's houses had been crushed, and hydro wires dangled dangerously by the roads. It was kind of neat to watch the hydro repairmen cut the tree down in front of our house. They seemed to cut and cut until it was practically standing upright in the middle of the road, but still hooked on another tree. The guy with the chain saw would cut and then run for it! It took them about an hour and a half to get the tree safely to the ground.
It was the annual Turkey Dinner this weekend, which I didn't go to (I feel it's a bit of a rip off and you feel like you're being rushed), but I did go to the fireworks afterwards. The fireworks were held at the beach and were launched from the boat dock. It was cool to hear them echo across the lake. The little boy I was with was pretending to get shot (boys will be boys). They used to launch them from one of the Islands (Rocky Island) and it was always much nicer. They used to do this waterfall effect at the end as the grand finale...very cool!
It was funny, and maybe it was one of those "you had to be there" moments, but I was talking to this 9 year old boy who was saying that when he becomes a teenager his older sister would have to be his mom. Curiosity set in, and when asked why his mom now wouldn't be his mom when he was a teenager he said, "because she'll be retired!" I found it quite amusing, and trying to keep a straight face it was explained to him that his mom would always be his mom.