Category: Jamie’s Life

April 30, 2015

Saying Goodbye to Gobo

Today we said goodbye to the sweetest cat I have ever known. He was my furry nephew, my sister Shannon’s constant companion. He was full of love and purrs and friendliness. He was the most laidback cat you could imagine. You could move him around on the floor with your foot like he was a mop. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t mischievous! He’d sit on Shannon’s alarm clock, turning it off, lick her eyelashes while she was sleeping and more than a few Facebook updates were written by his keyboard steps.

I’ll always remember how he would groom my face like I was a cat.

Dear sweet Gobo, also known as “Mr Man” will be missed. We loved him dearly.

February 2, 2015

Celebrating Love

Nothing’s More Important than This

by Alma Siplia
for Jamie & Justin

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Justin and I were married on 02/02/02. I just love the auspiciousness of that date! This year we are celebrating every precious day and the magic that brought us together.

This beautiful song was heart-crafted for us by the gifted Alma Sipila. Working with Alma was a magical experience. We are still overwhelmed with emotion when we listen to our song, it so powerfully and personally captures our story, our hearts, our love. Thank you, Alma.

December 24, 2014

Christmas Eve – Tradition & Change

Since my parents split up a long, long time ago, Christmas Eve has been the time we celebrate with Mom. This is turkey night with all the trimmings. This is brie and crackers, veggies and dip, icy squares and clementines. And Asti, if we remember. This is laughter and good food and family.

This is our second Christmas without Mom. We spent last year’s in an ice storm, thankful for the return of power and eating Swiss Chalet. The storm was so out of the ordinary and so challenging for so many that we were filled with a deep gratitude for the simple gifts of being safe, warm and together.

This year we’re faced with how to go on celebrating without Mom. What feels like “our way” now? How do we honour our memories and traditions and also acknowledge that things have changed?

When I looked through Christmas pictures for this post, I realized that hough my image of Christmas Eve is stable for all of these years, in fact, it’s been so different so many times.

We’ve ordered Chinese Food and celebrated at Mom’s.

We’ve eaten dinner sitting on the floor in one of my first and favourite apartments. That year, Shannon created our Christmas Tree by drawing it on a single sheet of paper. We taped it to the wall and put the presents below.

So we’ve had paper trees and since then small trees and tall trees, wide trees and white trees.