Monthly Archives: December 2023

Aging, health & fitness, musings, radical sabbatical, Wordsmith

Be Doing Five things for Fun! (Happy 2024)

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I love listening to podcasts when I fold laundry or am doing some other routine tasks. One of my favourites right now is Mel Robbins. I listened to this particular podcast on the weekend. The focus was on six questions you can ask yourself to have the very best 2024. I won’t get into the nitty gritty about what she shared because you can dive deeper and listen, if you are compelled, but I did want to convey that for 2024: I am going to bring the FUN! (And yes, I have a fondness for fine alliteration, so prepare yourselves for this linguistic journey..)

Here are five things that I want to do for pure FUN in 2024:

1️⃣ Fitness : This fall, Sexy Neck and I went back to the gym together for the first time since we lived in Bad Saulgau, Germany. YIKES! That was interesting to think about and realize how long again that was. For my personal fun fitness routine, I want to lift weights three times per week and then have fun adding in walking, cycling, skate skiing and downhill skiing. All just for fun!!!

2️⃣ Have Fun with Friends: I want to host, organize or become involved with a game night or book club again. When I lived in Vernon, I organized a wonderful book club with seven other very diverse, intelligent, fun women. We chose eight books to read and we met to talk about one per month. Once a year, we also met to do a retreat. Moving to KCity in 2013, while having a 2, 4 and 6 year old, plus supporting my mom with cancer, made the book club fall to the wayside. I simply lacked the mental space to continue to organize it. Let’s see what I can make happen for 2024.

3️⃣ Find Fantastic Fiction: I love reading books, but I often bend towards non-fiction as I love to grow myself. This year, I want to find some fun and fantastic fiction books to put into the mix. I already Gael 10 good old “mind candy” books on hold from our fabulous library.

4️⃣ Flourish in the Fine Art of Frosting a Fabulous Cake: My mom always made the best cakes for the boys’ birthdays. Two years ago, my goal was to simply make all the boys cakes from scratch. This year, I want to be able to decorate them well too! (Anyone know someone that could teach me? I don’t want to use fondant, but good old icing!)

5️⃣ Frolic across Canada (Yukon + Quebec) and perhaps even enjoy a far-flung trip to enjoy the beauty of skiing in Japan: These are three trips that are on our radar for 2024, on top of our regular jaunts to Vancouver for sports. I am wanting to do these three trips as JC goes into grade 12 next year and these are places we have always wanted to go together as a family. Bring on the 2024 frolicking!

And that’s it folks. Enjoy these last beautiful days of 2023 and pray about what the future of the year two thousand and twenty-four, since Christ, could bring. Our Heavenly Father loves you so much and has a beautiful plan and purpose to your life. My one ragged, righteous, and radical life is proof of that. I am skidding into the end of 2023 with a smile on my face at all the non-coincidences that have happened this year.

Happy Wednesday and love what you do.

xoxo Joanna

cancer, christmas, Family

Falling Snow and Fluttering Butterflies (10th Anniversary of the Legacy my Mom Left)

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Reliving ten years ago these last few weeks has been a very tender and vulnerable experience for me. I have cried more times than I can count. I have felt so much sadness seeing grandchildren with their grandparents as it has showcased such a profound loss that my sweet boys have endured these last ten years with losing both their Nana and Grandma alongside watching how their Papa’s grieved. I have felt like a failure as I have tried to weather all these big feelings while being a present wife, parent, employee, colleague, neighbour…all while preparing for Christmas. The circle of support around me, again, I have purposely made smaller so that I can show up entirely authentically, just as I am, in this messy human experience that we call grief. (Any other grief sojourners strongly dislike these three words: How are you?) Our golden doodle, Winnie, has been especially close to me, often with her head on my foot (or on my lap when she gets invited on the couch!). 

Today is ten years since I wrote these words below. My mom, aka Super Nana’s, presence is still felt on a daily basis and her legacy truly does live on through our five lives and many others who knew her. For this I am extremely grateful. Thank you to my “salty” friends who have walked these years with us step-by-step in person and with us from afar. You mean the world to us. Thank you to everyone reading my words today, I am incredibly grateful for you.

I love you,

xoxo Joanna

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Crisp fresh fallen snow as I step outside.

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Dad has been by her side throughout.

He watched her last breaths.

Dad greets me at mom’s door.

There are beautiful butterflies on the door. (This is hospice’s symbol that the room is not to be disturbed).

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My big cousin by my side.

We step through the door.

Peace enfolds.

Mom is warm and quiet.

She is wearing a shirt with butterflies on it. (I think I need to lie down with all these symbols of snow and butterflies!)

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Her body is at rest.

Death has come to her body.

Thursday, December 26th, 2013 at 7:00am.

Kisses, kisses and more kisses.

I lay my head in her arm in disbelief.

In peace.

I lap up her presence.

I am enveloped by her love.

Tears slide down my cheeks.

My sister arrives.

We walk to the hospice living room.

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We light a butterfly light.

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Place mom’s special card on the mantle.

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M reads Psalm 23.

Dad talks about his sorrow and gratitude.

The boys arrive to an empty room.

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OC says. “Nana with God.”

A red rose is on the counter.

We say our goodbyes.

On the memory Christmas tree we write Nana’s name and we take an angel home for our tree.

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Then we lace up our skates and head out into the outdoors that Nana loved dearly.

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I love you mama!

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Aging, Boys, Christianity, christmas, God, home learning, teaching, Wordsmith

Be Losing Your Dreams

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I have started dreaming again. 

When the world shut down in 2020, I was in a place where many of my dreams got shut down too. 

It hurt more than I realized at the time. 

Fulfilling a dream to take our family to Japan. 

Achieving a dream of finishing a 3.8km swim, 180km bike ride and 42km marathon run (Ironman triathlon) that I had spent two years training for. 

Living the dream of being surrounded by likeminded, healthy individuals who loved to workout, but couldn’t as the fitness centres and pools were shut down. 

On top of losing these dreams, I have now fully realized that I had lost hope. 

I lost hope for a future for our boys in a world that was moving towards kindness, peace and acceptance. Instead I saw and personally experienced polarization, judgement, discrimination and all out war in families and in the world. 

As I end 2023, I can fully say that my hope and dreams have returned amongst the polarization, judgement, discrimination and wars around the world. 

My dreams now exist more within me and our family.

I love living the dream of being able to have our three boys learn at home for the fifth year.  

I love planning our summer adventures: Our third trip to the Yukon and our sixth Cann-Sharpe Adventure with friends. 

I love my new calling working alongside 15 wonderful, inspiring teachers that support over 450 northern British Columbia home learning students. This group of people are the most heartfelt, insightful, hardworking group of educators that I have ever had the privilege to work with in my over twenty years in education. 

I love simply feeling hopeful. 

Hopeful because of the love and care I see around me through our friends and my work. 

Hopeful that God is working everything out in His timing.

Let go and let God. 

Hopeful of the uprising I see of saints who love people and want to show up louder, with this cloak of love, despite the hurts and harm they have experienced in their lives. 

I love dreaming again.  

Dreaming about what physical feat I will move towards next. 

Dreaming about who my boys are becoming and who they want to be. 

Dreaming about how I can show more love and care to those around me as I move through my own healing journey. 

Love truly conquers all and is the greatest power in our world that brings hope and dreams into the hearts of all who choose. 

More love. 

More hope. 

More dreams. 

Bring on 2024. 

Have an epic Christmas and end of the year folks and love what you do! 

Xoxo Joanna

radical sabbatical

Be Writing a Christmas Letter 2023

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I have ALWAYS sent out Christmas cards. I love the physical act of looking for and purchasing special cards plus writing a personal note as I think of the friend that I am sending the card to.

This year, I was inspired by my friend, Rae Swire, to write a Christmas letter. Last year, I really appreciated reading the update on her family and the highlight from her year.  I believe that everyone has received theirs in the mail now, so here goes the digital Christmas letter.

Drum roll…. the first ever Cann family Christmas letter! I pray it brings connections and community through what I chose to share.

Merry Christmas 2023

Family ~ Change ~ Fun

These are our words from this year!  We have made changes to create more family fun time and we are reaping the benefits as we finish off the year. We continue to love spending winter weekends at our Apex ski condo overlooking the t-bar, summertime around the background pool as well as time golfing, biking and horseback riding at a trailer we inherited from Steve’s family that is on the sixth hole of the golf course at “The Ranch”.   With the age of the boys, we feel grateful to have found the perfect balance of activity and leisure time.  We enjoyed a fifth summer hiking adventure with our good friend’s, the Sharpe’s, who have kids the exact same age. Both Steve and I moved into new jobs this summer. We were devastated by the wildfires in our city, which burned down the church camp the boys have been attending the last few years.  In the fall, we enjoyed a 3 day trip to Disneyland and clocked over 70,000 steps and went on over 50 rides! 

Family Update:

  1. Steve – continues to love backcountry skiing, the Canucks, spending time with the family and is now coaching U14 Club volleyball. After spending time in International Educational since 2004, Steve resigned from his position in Kelowna and now works up the road as a Vice Principal at North Glenmore Elementary School. He even has a song about “Mr. Cann”.   Steve took his last International work trips to Germany, Halifax and Thailand last spring.  He dearly misses this calling, but is enjoying this season at home and working on his health. 
  2. Joanna  – I am in my  fifth year homeschooling the boys and I love every second being able to design their learning. I added on a new role to my work with Heritage Christian Online School  and I am now the Regional Administrator for the north overseeing 15 teachers and 400+ students north of 100 Mile.  I had the opportunity to do a northern road trip with Colby and Owen for work in October.  It’s been a dream come true! With the busyness of all the boys, health has taken a bit of a backseat, but we have joined a gym so that we workout regularly now and we are loving ski season, both alpine and nordic. 
  3. JC (Grade 11)  – attends school at Kelowna Secondary part time doing Math, Science and electives plus HCOS doing online English, SS and other electives he can’t get at the campus school. He played ultimate frisbee at KSS and got his Learner’s license in April.  Since starting Trampoline gymnastics two years ago, Jackson has had incredible success. He competes in all three events: trampoline, double mini and tumbling. In July, he qualified and competed in his first Nationals, which was held at the UofA.  He stayed in my old residence at Lister Hall and competed in the Butterdome.  This year, his goal is to qualify for his first International competition.  In Jackson’s free time he loves making movies, refereeing soccer and hanging out with his brothers. 
  4. CC (Grade 9)  – currently has many diverse interesting including: spearfishing, F1, racing go-carts and doing taekwondo. Colby is two belts away from being able to test for his black belt.  He competed in Trail, Salmon Arm and SFU. This year, Colby started his journey with braces, refereeing soccer, found a wonderful Youth Group, finished his red cross swim lessons and continues to work with his voice teacher, Janel, to write his second album. Colby sang a song live on the radio  and got his first stitches in a ski crash!  Colby continues to learn at home, but this year he is attending a one day class that covers Science and Social Studies. 
  5. OC (Grade 7) – loves Lego building, Star Wars, RCMP, dogs, playing with his brothers, skiing and soccer.  This year, he also tried taekwondo and is playing Club volleyball for the first time.  He also decided to start playing the trumpet and takes weekly lessons.  Owen also loves learning at home and attends a one day in-person class. 

In 2024, 

This summer, we are excited to be taking a trip to the Yukon with our new-to-us 16 foot Hybrid Cubs trailer.   Both Jackson and Colby will be in high school. We don’t foresee any work or school changes, other than that!  

As we move into this new year, we pray that this letter finds you full of hope, peace and love!  As the boys grow older, we truly see how precious each day (and year) is and are really living each day to the fullest!  We are grateful for your friendship in this world we live in.  

Xoxo Joanna + the blue crew. 

Sidenote: This is post 48 of 50 for 2023… Eeeek, I am going to reach my goal of writing 50 posts this year. Thanks for coming along on the ride.

author, blogger, writing

Be Multiplying in Multitudes in KCity

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This summer marked our tenth year of living in KCity. We chose a 1960’s fixer upper home in a beautiful older area of town which is 3.5 kilometres from downtown and the beach. In these ten years our property price has doubled, the traffic has become something you need to plan for/think about and the amount of portables at schools are often more than you could imagine that are allowed as they don’t have water or washrooms in them. 

The last five years in KCity has brought a serious housing shortage and an equal inflation of prices for every home and apartment. Our last two mayors and city councils have had a mandate to try and fix this problem. They have allowed secondary suites in most neighbourhoods and now they are choosing to allow homes morphing into grotesque cookie cutter monoliths called six story wooden framed apartments. (Yup, because of construction practices wooden frame apartment buildings can now go higher than four stories!)  

And this is why I chose to write my thoughts down today: Two years ago, City Council almost gave a building permit to a local chiropractor to change 3 homes, down the street from us, into an over fifty suite apartment building. It didn’t pass by one vote. From 3 homes to over 50!

Last week I saw this article: Enroute to our son’s trampoline gym, four homes are becoming 124 units AND there is a similar apartment building being built right across the street. The craziest part, which I have talked to one city councillor about, is that our city building code only requires 1.5 parking spots per apartment building. I am not sure why builders aren’t required to round up or even what 1.5 cars look like, but I do know the aftermath of this. More cars on the streets and less streets to bike on safely. Yes, as you know, we are a biking family. We love to bike as much as possible and this is why we chose where we live.

I am having a hard time with this city development and parking spot math. Properties are not simply doubling by adding a secondary suite, but they are growing more than 30 times the original vision and planning for our city with its roads, schools and parks. 

Things are multiplying by multitudes in our city, but I am not hearing anything about multiplying our current infrastructure that includes roads, parks, water, sewage, schooling or even how this is all going to impact our recycling program and garbage dump. 

I am concerned.

As one of the fastest growing cities in North America, how is this growth going to envelop and change our dry climate and mountain-bound valley?

How much growth would you want to see in your own city? What do my fellow Kelownites feel about this?

Happy third week of Advent my friends. I pray that God is bringing the JOY into your life. Love what you do.

xoxo Joanna