Canucks game

Nothing blog-worthy happened today until just before 9 p.m.  Then I went to pick up Ty at the dorm and we went to Ms. Chamberlain's house to watch the Canucks vs. Kings game.  Since she found out I was a hockey fan in one of the very first class periods I had with Ms. Chamberlain, she told me that whenever I wanted to watch a hockey game, that I could let her know and come over and watch one.  I never took her up on the offer until tonight, but now I'm really happy I did.  The first thing her son, Patrick, said when we walked in the front door and he came down the stairs was, "I'm the only person here with short hair.  Everyone else has hair as long as Mama's."  Both Ty and I thought that was hilarious because he was so serious about it and he said it several more times after that.  We went upstairs to the TV room and found it completely decorated with Atlanta Thrashers stuff.  Ms. Chamberlain is a huge Thrashers fan and that room has even more hockey stuff than her office does, including blue Thrashers-coloured paint and a huge Thrashers logo on the wall.  Patrick got right down to business playing some kind of game with Tyler interspersed with giving us demonstrations of how his new toy, a Whoopie Cushion encased in a fuzzy skunk body, worked.  Ms. Chamberlain just rolled her eyes and told us he had got it earlier today from his grandpa.  Then it was Patrick's bedtime and so Ms. Chamberlain put him to sleep and Ty and I got into watching the game.

 It was a really good one, better than I thought it would be.  I had a bad feeling about the game right from the start because typically the Canucks don't play with enough urgency when they need to.  That was the case in the first period and the L.A. Kings were up 1-0 by the first intermission.  Then Vancouver got a goal and it was tied until the Kings somehow got another puck by our goalie, Roberto Luongo, who was amazing for the entire game and made some extraordinary saves.  So by the second intermission, the Kings were up 2-1.  Then the Canucks came out strong in the third period and tied up the game before the halfway mark.  Then Ty commented that it would probably stay tied and go into overtime.  By that time, it was after 11 p.m. and we knew we had to leave at the end of regulation so I started hoping extra hard that the Canucks would get another goal before the end of the game.  And it worked!  Three minutes before the end, Daniel Sedin got a goal and then, when the Kings pulled their goalie, Alexandre Burrows sealed the win with an empty net goal.  I was celebrating inside since I didn't want to wake up Patrick.  So the Canucks pulled off a win and ended their first playoff round by beating the Kings 4 games to 2.  So they'll wait to find out who wins in the other match-ups before moving onto the second round.  And that means that I'll probably get home in time to watch more Canucks hockey!  I can't wait to see how far they'll go.

Frustrated

I really want to go on a rant on here. But I don't think I will because I don't want certain people to see it and possibly not let me go overseas next year. I don't think that certain people will ever read this blog, but just to be on the safe side, I will refrain. Let's just say I am frustrated with a certain class that is zero credits, but that I am required to take. I know other people are as well. OK, rant over.

In other news, Hockey Canada posted a really great commercial on their Facebook page this afternoon. I saw the post and watched the video and fell in love. You can watch it here.

Space Needle fireworks

I actually got up and going earlier today. My mum and I went out to do some errands in the late morning/early afternoon. We started with dropping by ICBC so I could renew my driver's license. It expires on my birthday next month, but I won't be around to renew it then and I kind of want to still be able to drive throughout this coming semester so I'm glad I remembered to take care of it now. Then we stopped at several other places before finally going to the hospital to visit Auntie Beth for a bit. She is not one bit happy to still be stuck in the hospital (yesterday was two weeks), but her breathing is still quite atrocious. My mum keeps explaining to her that the doctors aren't keeping her in the hospital just for the fun of it, but because they want to make sure she's all better before she goes back home. She seems to understand that while we're around, but by the next time we come in she's wanting to come home again. When my grandma came in to see her this morning, Auntie Beth actually asked her who was keeping her in the hospital, my mum or Sandy (the lady that runs the care home where she lives). Anyway we tried to make her more comfortable and happy, but she seemed to be in a blue mood today and still was when we left.

We stopped at Subway on our way back home and there was the strangest man in line behind us. He must have never been to a Subway before in his life. He kept asking the weirdest questions and then when the lady was going to toast his sub he said, "hey, well I want some fixings on there, too!" She looked surprised, but put on the veggies that he wanted. He also told her he wanted "salad" and the lady didn't understand what he meant until my mum translated "lettuce" to her. Eventually all the "fixings" he asked for were put on and she toasted the sub. The "salad" looked hilarious when the sub was done toasting, but that's what he asked for so I guess he couldn't complain.

(*If you don't care about hockey, skip to the next paragraph. I'm just so excited about what transpired tonight that I have to write it all down.)
When we got home I went to check out what was on TV and saw that the Canucks had just started playing so I sat and ate my sub while watching the game. Things went downhill quickly for them. At one point in the second period they were down 3-0 to the St. Louis Blues, but then they stopped taking bad penalties and started to play like they actually cared about the game and then they scored 4 unanswered goals to win 4-3 in overtime. An hour after that game started, the WJC traditional New Year's Eve game of Team Canada against Team USA started. Right from the opening puck drop I was scared for Canada. The boys looked pretty nervous and kept making bad passes that got intercepted. Team USA also looked faster and seemed to be making smarter decisions with the puck. Canada managed to open the scoring a few minutes into the first period, but the U.S. equalled it back up with a PP goal a couple minutes later. Then in the second period the U.S. got a shorthanded goal (was, I have to admit, was a beauty). I almost gave up on my team right then and there, but they managed to get another one soon after and the score was tied again. Canada was fortunate that the score was still tied after the U.S. had two great chances to widen their lead. One was a penalty shot that was shot wide and another was an open net after a breakaway. Then the U.S. got another shorthanded goal to finish out the period with a 3-2 lead. They got another goal at the start of the third period and after that it was all Canada. Our boys managed to get a goal halfway through the period and then we got a shorthanded goal of our own to tie the game at 4 apiece. With two minutes left in the game, Canada got another goal, but it was called off because of a player in the crease. Regulation time ended with the score still tied up so the game went to overtime. Those five minutes did nothing to solve the game so it went to a shootout. All three of Canada's first shooters got goals and so did USA's first two shooters, but our goaltender stopped the third shooter and we won the game!! The whole building erupted in cheers and Team Canada's bench exploded as players launched themselves onto the goalie. So now the U.S. has to play in the quarterfinals against Finland while the Russians take on Switzerland in the other quarterfinal game. Canada joins Sweden with a bye to the semifinals to take on the winners of those two games. I'll keep you updated.

Right near the end of the game I got a phone call from a GYC attendee, which was awesome. I have to say that I'll be pretty glad to get back to school on Sunday. Break has been nice, especially since we got some snow, but I'm ready to return for my last semester. Now I'm going to go let my mother take pictures of my siblings and me and then maybe we'll play a game while we wait to ring in the New Year. Our family's December 31st tradition is to watch the Seattle Space Needle fireworks, which is amazing. I hope someday I can actually be in Seattle for the celebration and watch the fireworks live. Happy New Year's Eve everyone!

Suit shopping

I woke up pretty early this morning, but continued snoozing after a bit. All of a sudden a familiar, but slightly out-of-place sound woke me again. I listened to a loud scraping sound go by the front of our house three times. I was suddenly convinced the sound was made by snowplows. Just then my mum walked into my room and I mumbled, "Did it snow last night?" "Yes, it sure did," my mum replied. As she left my room I dragged myself from my warm bed and looked outside. Sure enough there was a thin layer of snow sitting on top of front lawns all down our street. The snow looked like crisp, clean white sheets stretched over large mattresses. So finally we got snow! Even though it was just a little bit, it was still enough for the city to get the snowplows out on the road, so I think that is pretty significant. We actually had been forecast to get snow when I checked the weather last night, but that happened last week with no fluffy white results, so I hadn't believed the report. We got some more snow tonight though not very much. We have snow forecast for the next few days as well until the week is supposed to end with rain on Saturday.

Around 4 p.m. our entire family went out to Moore's to help Ty pick out a suit that he got as a gift card Christmas present. He found several he liked and then we all said which we liked best and he finally picked from there. My mum and I left then to take my grandma to the hospital to visit Auntie Beth. We made sure she got in the hospital alright and then went back to the store to help with picking out dress shirts, ties, shoes, socks and a belt. Man, it's quite a complicated process to get a new suit. I used to be jealous of guys cause they can get ready for church so fast. All they have to do is pick a suit and then make sure the shirt/tie etc. match and they're good to go. But I realized tonight that a lot goes into the buying of the suit. Maybe shopping for dresses/skirts/tops isn't so bad after all . . .

After the purchases were made we drove back to the hospital and all of us went up to visit Auntie Beth except my dad stayed with the car so we didn't have to pay for parking. She had just been moved to a floor in the hospital and I liked it a lot better. It seemed more cheery and happy. When we got to her room my grandma told us the story about trying to find the new room. She sure went on a trek to get to the right place, but finally she found it and was happy to see her sister. She called us to let us know the new hall and room, which was nice so that we didn't have to go through the same confusion. After a short visit with both Auntie Beth and her two new roommates, we prayer with her and left. Then we went straight to my grandparents place where my grandma and my siblings and I got out. My parents went home to get some extra food and us kids helped my grandma get everything ready to eat haystacks. I turned on the World Junior game and it was near the end of the 2nd period with Canada beating Slovakia 7-1. By the end of the game it was 8-2. There was another hat trick tonight and that guy got the Player of the Game award. So, because I know you all care so much about hockey, here's some interesting facts about Team Canada so far in this tournament: (1) Canada has scored 30 goals so far and only has 2 goals scored against them (both in tonight's game). (2) Canada had a shutout (no goals scored against them) for 157.25 minutes before Slovakia finally found the back of the net. I think that's pretty impressive.

My parents had come back over and we were pretty much ready to eat by the time the game was done. It was delicious and I ate too much. Then we gave our grandparents their presents that they hadn't had time to open on Christmas Day before sundown. After that we cleared the table and played some games. First up was 7-Up (the game played with Rook cards) and somehow I won that one, even though Bryn usually does. Then Ty wanted to play Probe because he had an awesome word to use. It's a game only really made for four players so we teamed up. I was with Ty. As it turns out, curmudgeon isn't such a great word when the G, O and N are guessed/exposed right in the first few rounds. Our word was guessed first. Then I figured out Bryn's and my grandma's word of phonics. Bryn and my grandma guessed my parents word of icily and then they eventually guessed my grandpa's word of curriculum. By the time all the other words were guessed we had only guessed the C and the L and two blanks of my grandpa's word, but then my mum guessed M and I knew the word right then. Too bad my turn didn't come back around until after Bryn and my grandma's turn. Oh well, they won, but I think Ty and I had the next most points. Then some people wanted to leave and get home to bed, but I convinced them all to play one game of SkipBo. My grandpa finally won that game and we headed home. So it was a relaxing morning and early afternoon and then a busy but fun evening and night.

Team Canada

For pretty much the first time all break I have nothing of much importance to write about. I was basically lazy all day. My friend Julie flew to NYC last night to visit a friend there and then go to GYC so she's gone. Bryn's friend Rachel and her husband are gone to Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland to visit their extended families. I think Nik left back to Alberta with his family today. Stephen, Chris and Jonathon, as far as I know, are at their house two hours south of us and I'm not sure if they'll be back in town during the rest of this break. My friend Jodi and her family are in Spokane visiting her brother and his wife for the holidays. Just after I got back home for the break I wrote to my friend Jodi, who currently lives in Alberta, that she should swing by my house on her way to or from Spokane where her family was visiting her brother and his wife. She wrote back that that would be rather difficult and add a lot of hours to their trip home, which I knew, of course. So I guess I'll just have to try and convince her to come down to visit us at school. Maybe she'll come for our grad. This is sounding like a pity party so I'm going to switch subjects.

I was on the computer pretty much all day. It was pretty nice. For a few hours in the afternoon I went out and settled on the rocking chair in the TV room and watched some World Junior hockey. Team Canada beat Switzerland 6-0 in their second game of the tournament. On the opening day, Boxing Day (the day after Christmas) they beat Latvia 16-0, so they still don't have any goals against. I suspect that could change soon though. They're playing Slovakia tomorrow and then the United States on New Year's Eve. Particularly the game against U.S. could be challenging for them. But I'm going to stay positive and say they can keep up their winning ways. Some notes about today's game: (1) Team Canada wore green sweaters. It was rather shocking to see them in a colour other than red or white. I read somewhere yesterday that the green jerseys were in honour of the Saskatchewan Roughriders, Saskatchewan's CFL team that lost in the Grey Cup (CFL's equivalent to the SuperBowl). Oh, by the way, the World Junior Championships this year are being held in Regina and Saskatoon, SK. I found the idea of the green jerseys rather odd since this is the first time the Team has ever worn any colour other than red or white that I can remember. I wonder why, when the WJC were held in Vancouver in 2005, Team Canada didn't wear orange and black sweaters in honour of the BC Lions, our provinces football team. It's all very strange and very hard to wrap my brain around. Even by the end of the game I would sometimes still think that Team Switzerland was Team Canada because they were wearing white jerseys with red emblems on the front. Hopefully in tomorrow's game they'll be back to their ordinary jerseys and everything will be back to normal. (2) Brandon McMillan got a hat trick in today's game. A hat trick is when one player scores three goals in a single game. (For more intriguing details, click here and scroll down to the hockey entry.) I was happy to see McMillan get the hat trick because they are always nice to see, but what made me proud was that he's a forward for the Rockets, my hometown WHL team. He's the only Rockets' player in the World Juniors this year so I'm sure that tonight all the junior hockey hearts in town are bursting from pride over his achievement. (3) I was disappointed to see the McMillan wasn't given the Player of the Game award at the end of the game. I think getting a hat trick beats out anything else another player does, even if they had good physical play or did a great job of defending. The only player that might supercede a hat trick scorer could be the goalie if he made numerous amazing stops and saved the team. But today our goalie had a relatively easy day with only 15 shots on goal from the Swiss. So I thought it should have gone to McMillan. Plus he's a Sask. boy. Why not give it to him in front of a hometown crowd? I definitely agree with TSN analyst Bob Mackenzie on that one. (4) The Team Canada coach talked in a press conference that I saw a part of tonight when I was watching the evening news. I was highly impressed with his tie, which was Team Canada red with little tiny Team Canada logos subtly spread out over the entire tie in the same red colour. It was classy, but showed pride for our team and our country.

After watching hockey I watched some Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, which is a pretty sad, but also uplifting show. There was a marathon so I watched a few. Didn't I already tell you it was a lazy day? Then tonight we went out to eat at Milestone's with a gift card from one of my dad's cabinet installers. Every year he gives our family a gift card to a restaurant so tonight was the night to use it. I hadn't been to the new Milestone's since it's been moved from in the mall to at the edge of the mall parking lot so it was nice to see how they did things up differently. It seems a lot more classy now. I stuffed myself even though Bryn and I shared our penne dish. Somehow, though there was room for gelatto for dessert. It was scrumptious. Then I came home and decided I really had to finish "Harriet the Spy" so I did just that. I can see some similarities between Harriet and myself (more on that here). Anyway, now I can move on to one of the many books I got for Christmas. We'll see how much I can accomplish in the next few days. Wow, for doing nothing and apparently having nothing much to say, I sure said a lot. Allow me to apologize once again.

Q&F game night

This morning I:
-woke up late
-missed Sabbath School
-got to church in time for our Christmas program
-performed in the program
-heard and wrote down a great quote
-got my foot caught and almost fell down (nearly knocking Ty's cello over) during the closing hymn
-talked to a friend from way back in Gr. 1 who I haven't seen since summer
-had a pleasant conversation with our pastor
-nearly froze walking to and from the church in a skirt

I think that's quite a few accomplishments for one morning, despite the few setbacks included in there. (Apparently despite is my new favourite word. I'm using it all the time these days.) If you're curious about the quote, here's the background story as well as the quote:
For our church service, the elder in charge did some announcements after the song service and then said the program would proceed as planned after the prayer, scripture reading and opening song. When the opening song was over, the song leader said, "Now the Q.'s will play. I'll let them introduce their song." We were just planning to set up and start playing, but I thought that would be just a bit awkward after he said that we'd introduce our song. So once we were set up and tuned I just said, "I'm sure you'll all recognize the song." Then we played our song. My friend, Shannon, played a flute song next and before she played she said, "I don't think this song needs much introduction either so I'll take a cue from them (point in our direction)." I almost burst out laughing right on the spot because of her little cue/Q pun, but managed to contain my glee to a quiet, muffled guffaw. A classmate of Ty's who was sitting behind me giggled, so I knew I wasn't the only one that caught the joke. After church as we were eating lunch I brought it up and my mum said she thought it was pretty good, too, but I don't think the rest of my family got it. Maybe it's not even that funny or maybe it's just one of those things you had to be there for. In any case, it amused me for the rest of the day.

For lunch we all pitched in to make raclette. My mum had left church early to go spend some time with my Auntie Beth at the hospital and so Ty directed the rest of us in the raclette-making so that it would be ready by the time my mum got home. She came in the door just a few minutes before we were done the preparations so it was pretty good timing. It was an awesome meal to finally eat again. I'm so happy we have a raclette grill!

Tonight my friend, Julie, and her family came over for a game night. We each wrote down on a piece of paper one game that we wanted to play and put them all in a Santa hat. Then we took turns pulling pieces of paper from the hat starting with the youngest person. The first game was "Smart Ass," a game Ty had seen when he and Bryn were shopping at the mall and told her he wanted. She went back and later and got it for him for Christmas. It was actually a really fun game and when my dad eventually won, I was sad that the game was done. (I was also annoyed that he won cause we had been sitting on the very second-to-last square of the board until he got that last question right and moved to the end.) We played crokinole next. Since we had nine people it was rather complicated but Julie's mum sat out and kept score and then we played in with partners (two people on each side of the board) so there were four people per team. It was a little confusing at first to remember who's turn it was to shoot, but eventually we figured out the pattern and it was fine. I was on a team with my dad and Julie's dad and brother and we won 110-0. Then we were going to play 7-Up (the game with Rook cards, not the game kids play in elementary school), but we couldn't find our Rook cards. My set are at my apartment at college and my mum said she thought our other set was in our 5th wheel down in storage there until the end of the school year. Our pizza came right around then so we took a break from games to watch the last movie in the "Love Comes Softly" series. Those movies are aggravating. They are so drastically changed from the book series that it really bugs me. I decided to just think of them as a whole different storyline and then they're not so bad. Anyway I pretty much called the entire plot, which is fun to do sometimes. After that we played Careers, which Bryn had just bought me for Christmas. Our family plays it with my grandparents and so we know the rules down pat, but it took a bit of explaining to teach Julie's family how it works. Finally they got it, although on some turns it took three or four people to help Julie play. It was pretty hilarious. Bryn ended up winning that game, but several of us were close to winning. Then my mum took some pictures of Julie and I and we said good-bye to her. She's flying out to NYC tomorrow night and then going to GYC for the weekend before heading back to Andrews for her last 8 months of PT school. She made me promise to come visit her at school sometime before the end of March when she'll be gone to other parts of Michigan doing more clinicals. So I guess I'll be going to Andrews in the first couple months of the semester. If any of you want to come with me, let me know.

In hockey news, today Team Canada beat Team Latvia 16-0 in the first game of round robin play in the 2010 World Junior Championships. That is the most goals Team Canada has scored since an 18-3 win over Poland in 1986, according to CBC.ca. It might look like a cruel score to you, but CBC.ca explains, "There is no mercy at the world juniors, where goal differential in the preliminary round can be a key tie-breaker to reach the single-game elimination stage next week." There's a lot more stats from the game I'd love to tell you, but you can just read them yourself if you're at all interested. Also, the Canucks beat the Edmonton Oilers 4-1. Bryn's friend and her husband were at the game in Vancouver with seats three rows back from the Canucks bench. They were so close to the ice that they made it on CBC's "Hockey Night in Canada." I'm jealous (of them being at the game and sitting in those seats, not for being on CBC). I kind of wanted to watch the game since it was the only time during break that I'd get to watch them on HNIC (which only happens on Saturday nights during the regular season), but I'm still glad we got to have game night. Hockey is just a game, friends are more important.