Friends With FOP

Posted by Karen

We’ve been having one of those great early summer weekends where the weather is nice, there’s cool stuff to do and all is right with the world.  The kind of weekend you remember fondly when you’re older as “the good times”…  The concerns of Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva barely registered on us this weekend (which is as it should be).

The fun started on Friday.  I had to do a thing for work (boo!), and since that’s usually my day off, Pete took the day off instead to look after Miranda.  He decided to take her on the Skytrain to Science World, since Owen had been there the day before with school and had really enjoyed it.  Sounds like they had a blast – Miranda came home later on raving about the beaver movie she saw on Omnimax, plus various science-y things she got to see and do.  Since Pete topped it off with lunch for the two of them at Triple-O’s (the burgers-only arm of BC’s fave restaurant, White Spot), what more could Miranda possibly want? 

That evening was the night of our local elementary school fair.  This is our son Owen’s school, and Miranda will be starting there in the fall, so of course we wouldn’t miss it!  The fair was really great for kids.  In the gym, they had a bunch of different games where the player throws a beanbag in a basket, throws rings on pickets (like croquet), shoots a hockey puck into a mostly blocked off net (Owen’s fave), etc, and at EVERY game the player would win a little prize.  This was SOOOO up Miranda’s alley – she just loves collecting “stuff”, so was delighted to get a couple of plastic jumping frogs, a colourful eraser, a sticker, a colourful bead necklace and more!  (Oh yes, and there was mini-golf, which both our kids loved.)

Miranda playing mini-golf.

Around the front of the school, the weather nicely cooperated to permit a “small kids” area with a junior-sized bouncy castle, a box with sand and toys, mini-bowling and face painting.  Miranda is young enough to enjoy this kind of stuff, so we spent some time there too.

Bouncy Miranda in the castle...

Probably the highlight of the school fair was the Cake Walk, which was awesome fun…  Here’s how it worked – there was a table set up in the middle of a classroom, and in the middle of the table there were a bunch of cakes donated by parents (some home-made, some store bought).  There were also stickers with numbers placed about 2 feet apart from eachother on the floor, and the room was decorated.  A DJ then started up some energetic dance music, and everyone had to start dancing their way around the table.  When the music stopped, a dancer was chosen to pick a number out of a hat.  The number was read out loud, and whomever was standing on the number got to pick a cake from the table.  When we did the Cake Walk, the game organizers decided to pick Miranda to draw the first number.  She did so, and picked her own dad’s number!  Since he is a nice ole’ dad, he let Miranda pick the cake our family took home – and surprise surprise, she picked chocolate cupcakes with white icing and sprinkles on top.  We left that room with big smiles and cupcakes in hand. 

The kids with our cupcakes (Owen wearing vampire teeth, one of his prizes, and Miranda with kitty-cat painted face).

The next day, Saturday, was “Hats Off Day” in our city of Burnaby.  Basically it was the Hastings Street area’s version of a spring fair, with a parade, food kiosks and fun stuff to see and do.  We got there a bit late so missed most of the parade, but that was fine – the 15 minutes or so we did see was enough for our kids.  The weather was still cooperating (!!), so we just walked around for a while and saw what there was to see.  One cool thing was that the local fire station had fire trucks out for kids to look at and climb on, and both Miranda and Owen got in the thick of it.  We had to boost Miranda up into the truck due to her very limited arm reach and strength (stupid FOP), since she couldn’t climb up on her own, but that was fine.  For lunch, the kids got hot dogs while Pete and I had fabulously yummy food from the Indian restaurant (best samosas EVER).

Miranda in the firetruck!

Still not done for the weekend, next stop was to hop in the car and drive up to Deep Cove in North Vancouver, where Miranda and Owen’s farmor (grandma) Kirsten was taking part in an exhibit hosted by the Greater Vancouver Weavers and Spinners Guild, of which she is a member.  We looked at some beautiful weaving for a while, and then headed off for ice cream cones to take down to the waterfront area.

When we got home, we decided to invite our friend Doug and his kids Tim (age 8 like Owen) and Emma (age 6, a year older than Miranda) over for supper, since we had run into them at the Hats Off Day fair and Doug had commented that his wife was out of town on business.  The three of them came over, and we had some burgers, barbecue chicken sandwiches, corn on the cob and fruit. 

After dinner, Pete and Doug took the kids out to the front of our house to play on the street while I washed up the dishes (Pete had cooked the whole meal, so fair is fair).  OK, here FOP interfered a bit in the fun, since Miranda just can’t go running about on the street the way the other kids can – just too risky for tripping, injuring and stirring up the FOP beast.  Result was she spent a bit of time playing by herself on our postage-stamp sized front lawn.  However, before long, Emma and another neighbour girl became interested in working with Miranda on drawing chalk pictures on the street, so all was well.

The whole weekend was really terrific.  How could it have been better?  Summer time, and the livin’ is easy…  FOP was almost irrelevant.