A General Family Update ~ Feb. 26 - Mar. 15th

Any of you who have ever had a high school student working on a big presentation can appreciate that last minute stress of helping your child pull all the details together. Thomas was involved in a Heritage Fair (pertaining to Canada) and chose an interesting choice in James Cameron. (Apparently being born in Canada is enough of a claim to influence our heritage?) Let's just say that the kitchen island was covered in paper scraps, and I spent too long scouring libraries for resources the morning of the deadline. In general, Thomas was very creative and pulled off a great project. I'm not sure if his real motivation was to be able to watch all of James Cameron's movies, but that concept didn't go too far. :)

 

Lewis is at the piano fairly often, preparing for piano exams in June. Not that he's excited about that, but rather prefers to make up his own songs. Either way, we enjoy listening. :)

 

Mom and Dad Karpiuk celebrated a special milestone in celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary. (Good things they give us reminders!) Congratulations to a beautiful couple... wishing you many more years ahead. :)

 

Many of you know that my Dad, Art, was waiting for prostate surgery. He was able to have it on March 13th, and is recovering well. The surgeon was optimistic that the cancer was successfully removed. We are thankful to God for such good news, and appreciate all of your well wishes and prayers on his behalf. He will hopefully be home on the weekend to continue his recovery. (Sorry, no pictures about that! ) Nora was a little hesitant about our hospital visit this morning. On further discussion, she seemed to feel that the "night-gown" was the strange thing about her first impressions. :) And, she told Grandpa that she doesn't want to be a nurse... Here's some twisted surgical humour, that fortunately didn't happen to Dad.

 

 

Our week was also preoccupied with getting Charles off to Guatemala with a suitcase weighing less than 50lbs. He is part of team of 24 students and 3 teachers from his school, to make a service trip there over Spring Break for 12 days. He was able to upload his status to facebook yesterday (Mar. 14th) that they made it to Dallas, TX successfully. We later heard his flight to Guatemala was delayed, but eventually they arrived late at night and went home with their host families. We don't expect any correspondence with him, which is fine, but there may be the occasional update on facebook by the teachers. You can follow on the SCS Guatemala 2013 page if you are interested. We anticipate hearing fully about the experience after his return. We greatly appreciate all the support he's had in fundraising the trip, and for your prayers for health, safety and to appreciate the impact of all he sees and experiences. Meanwhile, we're enjoying Nora trying to pronounce "Guate-mama" and wondering how she knew to ask him to bring her back a gift?! :)

 

 

Scott and Thomas are off to Las Vegas at Spring Nationals right now, as Scott had a mid-term taekwondo testing for his seventh degree black belt. Thomas is planning to compete over the next two days also. So we're having a very down-sized family version right now at home... I keep doing a head count subconciously. Spring break plans are minimal as I work 6 shifts next week, which I am truly dreading as I've never done that many shifts in a row. Hopefully our second week off will be restful as we anticipate Charles' return and Easter. Sending smiles your way, the Karpiuks :)