One more wedding picture before I continue

cause I love this one so much and I forgot it before. Isn't he just so yummy?










After living in a tiny apartment it was time to move on. We looked at houses but they were still a bit out of our price range. This was back in the day when you had to have a much larger percent to put on as down payment. Instead we decided to buy a townhouse condo. They had just recently been renovated, the whole complex so inside was brand new. As an added incentive, we got a year’s membership to a golf course that wasn’t too far away. I had never tried golfing before but Ron had done some. My mom was also a golfer so she gave me her old set. I actually quite liked golfing, especially the very rare times I beat Ron. Not too long after we bought our condo, we decided it was time to add more than a cat to the family. I went off the pill and I think I got pregnant the next day. I know you are supposed to wait for a while before getting pregnant, but I think Ron was secretly thrilled that I ‘took’ so quickly *grin*. I however, wasn’t! You know they say a pregnant woman has a glow about her? I didn’t. I hated being pregnant. Not that I didn’t want kids, but I was so sick. I wasn’t actually sick that often, it probably would have been better if I had been, but instead I felt sick all of the time. Before long all I could eat was pancakes and Dairy Queen ice cream. It had to be Dairy Queen! I think we went there almost every single day. Ron didn’t understand the craving, but he took me anyway. Then when I finally got over that, it was summer, a hot summer that year, and I swelled up like a balloon. Between the wanting to throw up all the time and being a water filled balloon, I didn’t feel like doing what got me in that condition in the first place. At all! So Ron golfed. And he golfed and he golfed and he golfed *grin*. Good thing we had that free membership otherwise it would have cost us a fortune in green fees. I remember the night I went into labour. It had been going on for a while before Ron and I finally left for the hospital. I think it was about 5:00 in the morning – and he was planning on going golfing. This was long before the days of cell phones. I wasn’t sure what to do. I was already 2 weeks overdue – but he did need to relieve his ‘stress’. But luckily he hadn’t made it out to the course. Ron sped the whole way there. I think he was half hoping he would be pulled over so he could proudly tell the cop that his wife was in labour and he had to get to the hospital right away. He hung around until around 11:30 when they told him he might as well go get something to eat as it would be hours yet. After he left, I went into distress and they had to perform an emergency C-section. When he came back to the room, I was gone. He asked the nurse where I was and she said he would have to talk to the doctor. I guess he totally freaked over that – the nurse told me later. He thought something bad had happened. In those days, because it was a distress C-section, I was put out completely so Ron got to meet Brent before I did.
We discussed me going back to work. Ron wanted me to stay home and I wanted to stay home too so we were in perfect accord. I wasn’t making all that much money and by the time you factored in day care, transportation, clothes allowance etc., we wouldn’t have been be that much further ahead. My mom had stayed home with me and my sisters and I wanted that for any kids we had.






Brent loves this picture and when he saw it the other day, he wanted it included in the picture collage we did at the funeral.







So we settled into the next phase – that of parents. We still saw our friends, especially Paul and Anne. They also had a little boy so we would just take our son’s over to whoever was hosting the canasta night. We were slowly loosing touch with Serge and Marg though. They moved to another part of the city and we only got together on rare occasions.
We loved being parents. We loved it so much in fact that we decided to do it again. A year and a half after Brent was born, I was pregnant with Ryan. Things went much smoother this time. I wasn’t nearly as sick as I was with Brent. Ryan was born right on his due date – which ironically was a holiday here in Canada. Labour Day. Nancy, my youngest sister was staying with us that night – just in case. I didn’t think he would be born at all since Brent was 2 weeks late. When I thought I was in labour in the middle of the night, I woke her instead, just in case I wasn’t really. She got a bit frantic with me for not waking Ron up. Well, more than a bit frantic. She made me finally wake Ron up to go to the hospital. I think Ryan could have used that extra two weeks in the ‘oven’ though because he was a wee little thing when he was born. He only weighed in at a whopping 5 lbs, 14 ounces. Again I went into distress and they had to do an emergency C-section. Ron was able to handle it much better the second time around and again he was the first one to meet the newest little addition

We were happy to have two boys – well, I really wanted a girl, but accepted it was not to be. Ron, rather proudly and (obnoxiously to me LOL) said it was only because he could produce boys. We were happy with two healthy boys.

But the storm clouds were slowly starting to gather strength between us.

to be continued

PS - It's my birthday tomorrow - well - I guess it's today now and I'm dreading it. It will be the first one in over 30 years without Ron and I just want to sleep through the whole day. In years past, he hated that I read romance books but in the past few years, while I don't know if he was completely happy with the fact, he did get me rather large sized gift certificates from Chapters - knowing what I would be buying.