Well, I thought this was a creative way to use the fidget spinner!
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It was December 31, 2016 and we were spending the rest of our Xmas holidays up at our family cabin (located at East Barriere Lake) and the multi-generational New Year's Eve party was in full swing at the Jensen/Coulthard cabin, which has now become an annual event of sorts. The gin and sodas were putting me in what I call a "yes mood"..." yes kids, you can have more sugar", "yes Greg, your going to get some action tonight", "Yes kids, you can stay up with us till 2 am"!
This gin inflicted "yes mood" I was in is the only reason I was a participant in the Whistler Tough Mudder 2017 this past weekend!
As I recall it must have been about 11 pm when Linda "life coach" Hamilton, who is the world's happiest drunk ever, suggests that we "the ladies of the lake" should do a Tough Mudder team this spring!! I in this moment truly believed that this will be a life changing, spectacular idea!! I respond with...
"FUCK YES Linda, best idea ever, I'm in"!
Now as you would all suspect in the morning I was thinking drunk Linda will probably forget all of this crazy talk about doing the Tough Mudder! Because now that I'm sober, the idea did not appear to be so "spectacular" anymore. I was hoping come work day January the Third, she (Linda) will be back to help others organise their lives to personal perfection and all this "let's make a lake team shit" will pass, right? Drunk talk, never plays out in the end...ever!?
Yay, clearly I underestimated the life coach.
By 1 pm on the 3rd of January, I received the email, my dreaded gin induced obligation that I signed with soda, lime and a fuck yes had come to life. She, life coach Linda had the whole thing laid out. Groupon info, where we would stay and the timelines etc. SHE REMEMBERED, of course, the freak'n life coach would remember and be committed!.
I think my exact reaction after reading the email was.
F U C K. me. Fucking gin!
But I don't take my drunk commitments lightly or real ones for that matter...so I thought, how hard can it be! Within a matter of an hour, it was official, I Dina (a very unfit Dina might I add) would be doing the Half Tough Mudder in Whistler on June 17, 2017.
Then I forgot about it.
Like ignoring the reality kind of forget about it, you know put the blinders on, fingers in the ears chanting "BLA, BLA, BLA" not thinking about this event period, till my brother in Victoria (in March) did the shoulder shake "wake the sis, you need to get in shape. This event isn't a joke!". He was right. It's not!
The fear set in, I was really out of shape. So the next 50 weeks was a blur of lifting weights, workout dates with friends and mindful eating for the most part. All documented on youtube to keep me honest.
FINALLY, some of my muscles found their way back to my arms and so did my confidence that I will not leave on a stretcher by days end on the 17th because I could actually do the eight monkey bars at my kid's school, barely, but I could do them! Winning.
There were 17 of us participating, ages ranging from 16 to 64! Our only true connect the dots connection was EBL (East Barriere Lake) and FOMO (fear of missing out!). We stayed in two cabins side by side and the night before we reviewed strategy, personal fears, drank a little and laughed a lot. Some of us worked out for this event others did nothing and a few were in the middle of the two.
The morning was tense (at least for me!), the best way to describe it was me on "crack" nervous!
The event from the start to finish was a battle and a victory for everyone. For me, I learned that being short was a blessing and a hindrance. I also ran (way too much) and I knew better I shouldn't have as I have a runner's knee injury that flairs up and boy did it ever! At about the halfway mark of the race, it started but I pushed through the pain and ended up with a pretty painful hobble (think Terry Fox) for about 45 minutes of the race which now made me unable to stay warm (by running). That was the next big lesson I learned was how quickly one's ability to perform mentally and physically is affected by being chilled to the core! With fingers and toes numb, muscles tense, totally soaked with no sun and lots of wind, it was a HUGE MENTAL MIND FUCK but I (and we) did it!
As we hit the finish line, I walked up and grabbed that white terry towel, made in China hand band, probably worth 50 cents and slapped in on with champion pride! Ate my one free granola bar, danced on one leg while waving the our "finisher" grey tee shirts in the air...WE DID IT!!
Our last task was to choke back a FREEZING cold beer because that's exactly what a pack of almost hypothermic women want to do, lol. I only got down three sips as my hands were shaking so badly and well, most beer tastes like ass to me anyways (no love lost there). Now had that beer been a Strongbow there would have been some glug, glug, glug down the hatch kind of behaviour hypothermic or not!
Never has warm clothing ever felt so good, boy what a shit show in the parking lot I tell ya. Our ass's and bras were hanging out everywhere, it was as though we had given birth again and you just don't give a dam who see's what! All we wanted was to remove the cold wet layers and stop the ability to cut glass with our nipples. I personally got trapped by my sports bra in the oh so awkward arms up position, thank God for Catherine's usable hands, like a mother freeing her toddler from a tight tee shirt, I was saved!
I even took a picture of my boob to text and prove to Greg (hubby) how cold it was! Because my nipples never get "cold". He asked if I was drunk? I said nope. He then asked if I could send a picture when I was drunk, I said nope. He also asked if he could save this image on his camera roll? I also said nope (clearly I wasn't drinking gin)!
Our evening was spent eating and drinking after we emptied out two townhouses worth of hot water tanks from all the showers and laundry! Bruises and wounds were compared that night and we even told Life Coach Linda that we were no longer angry at her for roping us all in, some of us would even do it again!
So what started as one common connection (and FOMO) has ended in a true female bonding experience, full of personal & group victories and boatloads of inside jokes. I personally would not change a single thing that happened this weekend, not one! Thank you, EBL ladies for a helping my check off another bucket list item I didn't even know I had!
The pictures you see during the actual events during the course were taking with my camera, edited by me but were completely captured by Michelle J ! SHE NAILED THE EMOTION AND THE MOMENT of these images, I'm so impressed and I'm so incredibly grateful that herself and Karen M was there to support us and help us with our gear. You ladies are truly fantastic, thank you. Go pro footage throughout the event was captured by Life Coach Linda and Karen B.
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I know some of you will have a hard time believing this and that's ok but for us, this is very real.
Over the weekend we had a soccer game in Mission, Greg was out of town and I was on deck! I thought it would be fun to make the day of it if we were heading out that far. Our last stop before heading home was Golden Ears Regional Park. It was a well spent few hours, exploring the woods and hitting up the lake (which was FREEZING!) and by 5 pm we were home and prepping for a fresh week of school.
later that night, I sat down to edit my images from the day we had horsing around and as I was scrolling through some images of Amara on top of a HUGE dead old growth tree I stopped and thought, well that looks odd?? Really odd? There were what appeared to be highlight bursts in her hair and on her arm. It was so dramatic I thought I must have batch edited them by accident and used a highlight brush or something. when I looked a little further that would not be the case. The images were unedited and straight out of the camera. Untouched and shot as is.
I got shivers, like grow the hair back on my leg kind of shivers. There is NO explanation of how these "orbs" would be formed and I mean that. There was no catch light, no reflective surfaces as I was in the tree stumptaking the photos. My camera doesn't even have a flash and these images are right out of the camera.
The images were taken within seconds of one another. I never saw any light reflecting in my lens. I'm dumbfounded on how these would have been formed from "real life".
Here's the thing, if you've followed any of my past posts your aware that Amara lost her best friend Sophie to meningitis in kindergarten. This rocked her family, us and our community really hard. We miss her every day.
Being a believer in "signs", we've had quite a few butterfly and rays of light encounters since her passing (read about it here) and recently DIMES (finding them that is in strange places). Dimes seam to be what she gives to her own family all the time as a sign.
These "orbs" have no explanation that makes sence, other than I truly believe she is near us. She is with us. She hears us and that gives us a huge sense of comfort.
#sophie
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