ICE CREAM CONE DAY - A DELIGHTFUL WAY TO HONOUR MY DAD

Jayden better known as JJ

All of us except Cari the photographer

Ice Cream Selection March 8th, Dad's B-Day

We did it. We honoured Great Grandpa Edward Unruh. Died 3 years ago, Today would have been his birthday, No. 96.


He was an ice cream cone lover and he taught us enjoy it too. One cone was never enough.

This is cone number 8

Ryan took the prize. Ice cream was the main course today, and then savouries, following by, you guessed it, DESSERT.

Kadence is the youngest -

Kadence has tiger tail in her cone.
 
Kailyn is her older cousin and she teaches Kadence many things. 

Kailyn is the oldest G-Kid

 

Nana and Papa and JJ, Kadence, Kale, Ryan, and Kailyn

Papa topping it up for JJ

My Dad, Edward Richard Unruh

Dad, we loved remembering your Birthday tonight. We thanked God for you, and we sang happy Birthday to you.

And best of all, my brother Murray and his family and grandchildren did this in St.Catharines, and my brother Neale and his family did this in Dorchester, ON

Yours Truly

A Cross Canada Celebration!

ICE CREAM CONE DAY

Heh, dear family, welcome to Ice Cream Cone Day.

It's a tradition in our family. My father, Edward, was 93 years old when he passed away three years ago. following the memorial service my brother Murray gathered us all at his home. He and Diane spread ice cream flavours across the table. My dad's children, grandchildren and greatchildren helped themselves to cones of ice cream and more than one. That became the start of our now annual tradition. My grandchildren have been excited for weeks waiting for this. For our evening meal in Western Canada, we will begin with Ice Cream, as much as we want, and then we will enjoy some savories, and perhaps a dessert cone after that.

Grandpa Unruh was an established ice cream lover. One small cone always tasted like one more to him and if we were with him, that became the biggest treat - a gigantic splurge of pleasure. Having more than one cone today is playing by Grandpa's rules as my daughter put it.

So, today, although I and my two brothers and their families live in Surrey, British Columbia, St. Catharines, Ontario; and London, Ontario, we are all filling our cones and lifting them in a salute to Grandpa Unruh. I loved you very much Dad, even more than the ice cream.

New Zealand and Australia and South Pacific Islands

Christine and I have just returned from a trip of a lifetime for us, exploring parts of New Zealand and sampling Australia and visiting islands like Fiji and Vanuatu. We count ourselves privileged to have been able to travel around the globe, specially into the heat of summer down under and away from the cool of our BC winter. I bring back hundreds of photos of exotic places and splendid people that I will enjoy turning into paintings on canvas. Ours was only a three week trip but it has brought us much pleasure.

HIGHLY REFLECTIVE

Vermillion Lake-Mount Rundle reflection

I am highly reflective these days. Not nostalgic as much as contemplative. My age is partially responsible for this, as well as retirement. When I was actively employed, the daily routine and the full agenda restricted meditative time. Now the hours of each day are generally my own, to wake early and to read and to blog and to paint and to walk and to have coffee with a friend, and to hang out with a grandchild, and to watch TV and to nap. Moreover, now that my parents are gone and I am the eldest in the family and I am the grandparent, the senior, hopefully a long way from being a patriarch, I think a great deal about legacy, passing on the story, remembering the past. The urgency of recollection is driven by the realization that I have killed off a load of brain cells in recent years. Five years ago I suffered a grand mal seizure and certain short term memory connections blew out. I am no longer the bright star of trivia games. I am deeply grateful for life itself and for the life I have been permitted to live and to enjoy. In my faith understanding of the world and my place in it, I see myself as a recipient of so much that is undeserved. Well, maybe all of it. With the exception of academic degrees for which I worked my buns off, I have been accorded blessings, opportunities, privileges and honours that had virtually nothing to do with me. Good and responsible parents with high standards for relationships and work and morality. Their examples and affection bound me voluntarily to a code of conduct that was ultimately good for me. That's what I received right from the start. Some natural, latent and developed talent and ability in some areas stirred my interests and moved me forward in life on a good track. Interested and thoughtful encouragers in young adulthood stimulated my involvement in numerous activities and service that steered my life. Finding that the girl to whom I was attracted, also like me became the superior blessing of all. She married me. She and I grew a life out of innocence and naivety into a family of two children, five grandchildren, decades of good service to others in churches and organizations where we worked. And now the work is history and the family goes on, and it turns out that the relationships are still most rewarding. I draw a dinosaur with my grandson. I snuggle with the tiniest granddaughter. The oldest granddaughter lets me put my face against here face. The two middle grandsons spontaneously, unexpectedly come to hug me. Friends still surface from times spent up to fifty years ago and it is deeply satisfying. All of it is by grace. That's the way I look at it. Unmerited. A good gift, greatly appreciated.

ONE DAY AFTER NEW YEAR'S DAY 2011. IT'S JAN2

Today was a gloriously sunny cloudless sky which in spite of a coolish temperature, begged for Christine and me to take a drive to the ocean, cruise down Marine Drive at White Rock beach and then on the Crescent Beach. It was top down weather for part of the time. We have a great walk at Crescent.

This was the day to take ornaments from the Christmas tree and set the still fresh specimen outside.

I put finishing touches on a painting of a red bicycle set against a fence at the ocean. It front basket is filled with yellow wild flowers picked nearby. Christine likes the composition. I will take a photo of it tomorrow and post it on my art blog. It will ready for my March Open House show in March.

Well Dear Friends, I am trusting that 2010 was not unkind to you and that as you say goodbye to it with its fine memories as well as with its challenges, 2011 will emerge with realistic resolutions and numerous encouragements for a life of contentment, hope and trust in the trustworthy One, our Father who is in heaven, and his son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Advent Wreath

Almost universally the Christian church marks each Sunday during the Christmas Advent season in preparation for and in celebration of the birth day of Christ with the lighting of a symbolic candle. Yesterday, Nov 28^th the Candle of Hope was lit.

Candles are arranged in Christmas Wreaths, usually four candles in a circle and one white candle in the center of the circle. The wreath itself is assembled with evergreen tree cuttings. Traditionally on each of the four Sundays preceding Christmas Day, one outside candle is lit until Christmas Day, the anniversary of the Birth of Christ, when the central candle is lit. Each of the four outside candles carries a symbolic meaning, hope, love, joy, peace. Three of the candles are violet in color and the fourth has the color of a rose. The Christ candle at the center is white.

REMEMBRANCE DAY - WE VISITED JUNO BEACH MUSEUM IN NORMANDY

Insignia of WWII Royal Canadian Air Force

VETERANS' WEEK/REMEMBRANCE DAY

Edward Richard Unruh, my dad fought to preserve us from outside oppression.This was particularly unusual given the family, heritage and town from which he came. His parents were immigrants from the Mennonite colonies of Crimea, Ukraine near the turn of the century. He was born in 1915 and in 1941 he was going to war to defend the freedoms upon which his birth country was founded and governed. Hepburn, Saskatchewan was largely settled by Low German speaking Mennonites who established a town of shops that provided all necessities and some amenities. Most families were farmers and most citizens attended church. Dad was slow on connecting with faith in the supreme being and perhaps that was one of the factors that resulted in his decisions to break with the pacifist conviction of his family and peers to join the Royal Canadian Air Force. While the town would support the war effort through prayer and labour, he would fight, albeit as an Air Force maintenance mechanic. He was a new generation Canadian and proud of his homeland.

My wife Christine and I spent two months in France in 2009 and our travels moved us to Normandy just before the D-Day anniversary. We stopped in Arromanches where we booked in at Room #6 in the Mountbatten Hotel. We walked the beach and toured the Musee that celebrated the accomplishments of June 6, 1944. This was the beach town to which the remarkable floating concrete piers and barges were floated by night across the English Channel from Britain and anchored well off from shore to create a docking area for great ships loaded with tanks and war equipment with which to mount the victorious assault against the Nazi German Army. Remains of some of the barges lie still visible in the crashing surf.

 On a rainy and foggy day we went to Juno Beach and the Canadian Museum that honoured the Canadian contribution. Veterans years earlier realized there was no monument to honour the Canadian War Effort so they began the recruitment of funds. The City of Courseulles Sur mere donated a former camp site for the museum location. The museum was highly informative about immigration, about WW1, about the 1929 stock market crash and economic depression and then the confusion about Germany and Hitler's intentions until it was necessary to declare war against him. From six thousand soldiers to one million by war's end, most were volunteers like my father. Forty-five thousand Canadian soldiers died. Museum guides were mostly young Canadians on duty for four months. At the Canadian Museum we met one guide, a 21 year old McGill student whose grandfather perished while storming this beach, and while he may have said it many times to visitors, he told us, " I would not be here had it not been for his sacrifice." I was very proud to be Canadian that day.

When the war ended, my father came home in 1945.

My Uncle Les is gone

My Uncle Les Willems died yesterday. He was 87 years old. That's a long life. He had been unwell for some time. His wife Helen, was with him at the end just as she has been there through all these years, a one man woman for a one woman man. They have two sons Dean and Peter and grandchildren in both Britain and Canada. He resided in Ontario, the province I left twenty years ago to live in B.C. In all those years I have seen him and visited with him only on family occasions like my parents significant wedding anniversaries and then at my parents funerals three years ago (Mom) and two years ago (Dad). Uncle Les was a tall man. When we were children his height and his deep voice mesmerized my brothers and I. He had a quick wit and a good sense of humour. When I wanted to go to college, he traded a 57 VW Beetle for an oil painting that I painted of an old Russian peasant woman. He held on to that for many years, returning it to me when I was already a middle-aged man. He thought that I should now have that painting. The car was long gone. He was a man of faith, so leaving was not a hardship for him. We however know he is missing from our family. His nearest loved ones miss him very much.

Memorial Service held Wednesday, November 3rd at 2pm, at Tallman Funeral Homes 3277 King Street SS1, Vineland, On L0R 2C0 phone# 905-563-8223 .

ACCIDENT

A write-off, bent frame etc

Three of my grandchildren pictured below were in their daddy's car when minutes ago, it was struck by another car - not critical, for which I thank God, but daddy and youngest taken by ambulance for observation. The other two have some cuts.

These three sweet ones are safe

Sunday news: All appear OK, sore and traumatized and we will wait to see their progress.
Wednesday news: The car is a write off. human body Scratches disappearing, and some bruises appearing.
Wednesday one week later: Everyone is AOK. They must purchase another vehicle. They certainly have confidence in the Honda because no door panel or hardware entered the passenger area.