Memories from Gregory Drive

I'm about to sum up as many memories as I can from my 9 years at Gregory Drive Public School. This should be fun!

Kindergarten and Daycare:

I don't remember much from Kindergarten except these few things:

• the cubby closet where you hung your backpack, coats and shoes
• the alphabet around the top of the classroom
• painting with smocks
• the water/sand table

Michael and I started school the same year, he in J-K and me in K. He got to play in the room with the jungle gym with Mrs. Cummings and I had the cranky Mrs. Saddler.


There was a YMCA Daycare attached to the school I went to.We used to go to Daycare before and after school. We had our own separate playground with really cool triangle seated bike thingys that you have to move the handles back and forth to make the contraption move. I think they're called Roller Carts, but I can't find a picture of them anywhere online! The water table was fun to play on.... I remember teaching all the cool boys how to braid! We used to sit at the tables and I taught them all how to braid with embroidery floss. I don't think any of those boys are married yet, but one day their wives can thank me! One of the worker's named Linda I think was our favourite. Sean McLaughlin's mom used to run the day care. Daycare did introduce me to one of my favourite meals... cream of mushroom soup with rice in it!

Things I hated about daycare:
The bathroom had a window in it, out to the main room which seems sooo wrong, but I understand why they had that sort of. Eww. Also they used to make us dip banana's in strawberry yogurt and then in coconuts! I hate yogurt and coconuts.... Ewww to this day I still have a hard time eating banana's! I remember hating nap time, but now I wish we had those ugly green canvas cots everywhere and that naptime was still mandatory. That must have been during the summer that we had to take naps.

Grade 1:
I had Mrs. Simmons. I don't remember much from her class, but I remember after that year or right before the year was up, she moved to New Zealand. I also had a best friend named Chrystal who also moved Down Under that year...  Several years of school I remember we celebrated the 100th day of class by bringing in 100 somethings... (100 pennies, or marbles, paperclips etc.)

Grade 2:
I had Mrs. Peach. She was sweet! I liked her a lot.  I remember that year I was put in Mrs. Powells class and then I was taken out of it. I was told it was because Michael, Jacqi and I were all in the same class (it was a 1/2 split) and you can't have that many relatives in once class, but in all actuality my mom wanted me to spread my wings and fly and not feel like I had to take care of the youngins (I was a typical big sister). I was mad though because you see Mrs. Powells class was the coolest because she would bring in eggs and raise ducks! I thought I missed my chance because she only taught Grade 1, but then she got a split class!  Oh well I'm pretty sure I learned to love reading in Mrs. Peach's class!!!

Grade 3:
I had Mrs. Flannagan. She was my favourite! I still see her from time to time, run into her at the mall or something.... I think I saw her at a church function one time. She still remembers me. I'm pretty sure it was in Grade 3 that I had my tonsils out, January 28th and also that was the year Matt Laird's dad, whom I now affectionately call Phil came in and taught all about Bread. He brought in a ton of different kinds of bread and we got to try them all! That's when I fell in love with Pumpernickel Bread. I also think that was the year we learned to tell time. I know I think they learn that in Kindergarten now.

Grade 4:
I had Mrs. Sharp (appropriately named). I hated pretty much everything about this year, except that's when Mandy showed up on the scene. That was the year, I sneezed really loud (like I always do) and a substitute male teacher made some rude comment and hurt my feelings. I was embarrassed. I also had to start going to science class and NO one liked the science teacher. Girls felt weird around him. A lot of the girls I grew up with ended up in his homeroom class in grade 7, I'm SOOOO glad I didn't! I do remember we read James and the Giant Peach that year. We also had Mrs. Mitchell, the best Substitute in the city for a significant period of time that year! She had a smiley face system that could get you treasures from the treasure chest! She died way to young about 6 years ago...

Grade 5 & 6:
I had the same teacher: Mr. Robertson. I didn't like him, he was weird. He loved art though I got good grades in his art classes which I remembered loving his art class. He also was a computer geek and I learned a lot from him, although all that stuff I learned is completely obsolete now!! As weird as he was, he was the teacher who teacher who made us watch Les Miserables for the first time! I am grateful for that for sure!!

Grade 7:
There was 1 teacher who everyone loved! He was the one you couldn't wait to have and he taught Grade 8! The last teacher before High School. However he ended up teach a Grade 7/8 split the year that I was in Grade 7 and I was luck enough to get him! (sad that it wasn't my last year though - best to go out with a bang!) Mr. V or Mr. VanKesteren is still my friend today! I remember we had a Euchre tournament, and he taught us how to make and paint wooden birdhouses. We also had an assignment in his music class to bring in a song we like on the radio and to dissect the words of the song. He was a Christian man who taught his values in the best way how in a public school. He wanted us to realize, that though a song my be catchy the lyrics that we're subjecting to our minds may not always be the best. He was in a men's quartet that sang together at church, not our church but I did get to hear him sing a few times! He also was one of my favourite customers at Gospel Text!


Grade 8:
Mr. Rehl was a new teacher at our school and I had him his first year teaching there. He was an older gentleman and got sick halfway through the year and was out almost the whole rest of the year. Sadly I don't even remember who filled in for him.

The rest of the things I'm going to write about, I can't necessarily pin to one year, or I know they spread across several years.

Remembrance Day Assemblies: We used to have amazing assemblies... they would take up half the day, we'd watch a war movie, we'd have my vets there representing, the Town Crier (Mr. Simms) was our principle so we got special perks and were featured in the newspapers a lot!

Mr. Simms - was our principle my younger years along with Mr. Beatty! They were great! They were sooo much fun! Mr. Simms got us all kinds of perks because he was our Town Crier - which no town has anymore but he would get all dressed up and yell stuff in  parades and at big town events! He was also just really fun. Mr. Beatty was a sweetheart. He had a goofy Christmas sweater with lights in it the light up! At an assembly when I was young, it must have been a talent show, Mr. Simms did a rendition of Achey Breaky Heart.

Colour Guard - This is something I'm soo glad I got to be a part of! I did this probably when I was in Grade 4? There were 13 of us that would carry around the Canadian Provinces/Canadian flag in formations and in goofy red and white windbreaker-like outfits with white gloves! I got to be in a parade and attended other cool events like when the Snowbirds came to town for an airshow! We got to meet the pilots on several occasions too!

"Elmer the Safety Elephant - knows just want to do, Elmer the Safety Elephant says to me and you, I am the Safety Elephant here we go again, I'm Elmer the Safety Elephant, I will be your friend. verse 1 - when you walk across the street......." He is a blow up costume that goes around to schools and teaches about being safe in all kinds of places in song!  Constable Lauers was the dude who brought Elmer to all the schools! 

choir - Mrs.Geneau the french teacher taught the choir. We would practice at lunch time, and we sang at assemblies and in nursing homes. We sang a really cool song for Remembrance Day, apparently it's by Simon and Garfunkel. I also remember the other music teacher, Mrs. Wellington was sick once and we had Mrs. Linklater as a substitute. I remember singing out of a red or green hard cover music book. My favourite was something to do with a covered wagon. Mrs. Geneau was our French teacher, and to this day I'm still kind of friends with her daughter which is cool because she didn't go to our school. She didn't have her own classroom, she had a cart that she pushed from classroom to classroom and a closet to keep it in. But she had this Green puppet, Dimoutu (sp?) (pronounced Deem-wa-two).  We also learned about Bonhomme de Neige, the snow man.

Recess - Everyone's favourite class of the day, what ever happened to that concept of required play time! Well when I was in Grade 1 we used to spend recess after recess building castles in the snow, not like a sand castle, these were huge and consisted of making paths that were like walls. We'd have rooms upon rooms in these castles. Some times when there was enough snow we'd build up walls, sometimes we just made pathways.  We also would get married to other kids at recess. Pretty much like how they show it on TV... then getting mad when the person  you were supposed to marry, would marry someone else instead.... crazy.
There was also this brick wall around the Air conditioner unit that was close enough to the wall of the building that we could walk up the wall into a planking - horizontal position! That was fun. We did that around Grade 6 or 7. My friend Sarah and I used to speed walk from the front to the back of the school yard and talk, yep when all the other kids were playing games we speed-walked.

Grade 7 & 8 - I've always said that I think Junior High is stupid! I think we're already awkward enough at that age, why would you take them out of a comfortable environment and put them into a new one.... any who I was still a typical Jr. Higher and there are things I did as a stupid tween that I never want to relive! All of us though, had a crush on this kid named James who was actually a year younger. I remember in Grade 7, my desk was set up where I could actually see him in the room diagonally across the hall! He had the same hair cut at one of the N-Sync boys.



Fundraisers - all schools do fundraisers, we sold Chocolate bars, they were delicious chocolate bars. We had a secret up our sleeve, so every other year Michael and I would switch so when we won our class would win the class prize! My uncle Eldon would take the boxes of chocolate bars to his work, at the Chrysler plant and sell them on his breaks! We won almost every year! One year I won a 10lb chocolate bar, one year I won an electric pencil sharpener, which I still use to this day!



One year, maybe around Grade 5 or 6, Lauren Sparks who goes to my church, got the chance to ride in a  Hot Air Balloon, in our school yard! She had been really really sick and almost died and I think it was a make a wish wish kind of dealio. I remember the whole school went out to watch! It was very cool!

Who were my friends? I was Friends with Jessica Isherwood most of my young days. She called me B and I called her J. Us redheads stuck together. She was friends with Katie Poredos, so I was by association. She was also good friends with Laura Goulden so I got to be her friend too! I love that girl to death to this day! Sarah Mayes moved to our school in the later years, and I remember she couldn't open a bottle of water because she was too weak, so we would do it for her. In Grade 4, Mandy arrived on the scene, new from out of town! She was going to be my new best friend. Her family started going to our church, but she refused to go to Pioneer girls with me, even though her mom became a leader!  Anyways I shared my juice box with her, because she had to take this medicine that tasted GROSS! She had run over her arm with a toboggan and lost a lot of skin and needed fancy antibiotics I think.... So there were a few of us that would share our drinks with her so she could take the medicine without tasting it. Over the next 4 years though we became best friends and we biked to school together everyday! She was at the border of taking the bus, but most of the time she would bike or roller blade or walk to the park behind me house, and then we'd go together from there to school, stopping to pick up Katie, then Jessica at their houses on the way! She would often roller blade and I would pull her on my bike! If the water was low enough we would cross the creek on the rocks and logs that were at a crossing point instead of walking all the way down to the bridge and then back. One time she roller bladed down the hill, the steep side of the hill. She also used to fall over a lot, and I was always there to catch her. Funny the thing we remember. One day we found a hurt squirrel and named him Ezekiel and tried to take care of him! When she had to go home, we talked on the phone for like 3 hours that night, I would report how he was doing.... "oh his leg moved."

I don't wanna grow up - Beth Townsend and I used to sing this with each other when life was getting stressful!

There was a talent show every year. One year Mandy and I did the Lip Song from Veggie Tales, she was Larry and I was the Shrink! I still have most of the song memorized! I also did a backstreet boys song with the chair dance.

I was a Crossing Guard for 3 or 4 years, I want to say 4 which is like the most you can be. We had these ugly reflective belts and vests to wear, and we got to go to training every year (which was really the reason to do it). The training was at St. Paul's church for all the crossing guards. We learned how to put on the belts, we learned all kinds of safety stuff.We got out of school for a day, and got free food! Fun! You would get divided into how many years experience you had, and you'd get training specific to that. Carrie did it too, so I got to see her at the training which was sweet! I had to be at school early or stay late depending on the schedule to help all the little ones cross the street! It also meant I got to hang out with Elmer more than the other kids!

Also the crosswalk was in front of Art & Verla's house. Art is my Grandpa's cousin and those 2 couples were best friends! They're more than distance relatives to us. We used to stop in and say hi or climb in their tree. One time while I was hanging from the tree, there was a bat in the knot whole in the tree....

Grade 8 Graduation was a big deal, bigger than it is here in America. I wore a black dress that I got a Sears, and the day of graduation I got my hair cut! I chopped off like 8 or more Inches! That may have been the first time I donated it... I think. It was crazy because I hadn't had my hair that short in like 5 or 6 years and didn't know how it was going to turn out! Can you say Risky!?!? I graduated in 2000.


I'm sure there is more and I will add to this as I think of things....

The Colours of My Room

The room I grew up in was my room my whole life. Although the 4 walls never moved, the room changed looks a lot!  When I was just a wee baby, my mom decided to paint the light grey carpeted room a "dusty rose" however either someone mixed the paint wrong or named the paint wrong because it came out HOT PINK!!!! So I had a very pink room for the first couple years. I barely remember this so I must have been young when my mom turned my room into a Victorian magazine. The bottom third of my room was thin stripped pink & cream wall paper, with a very florally border above the stripes. I want to say the top of the room was also pink?? Mom correct me on that??

Then I got old enough to make my own decisions and that's where it got crazy! I was still in Public school so I was probably 12 year old, when I told my mom I wanted to paint my room lime green!!! She just about had a cow!  However the amazing parents that I have let me do it! I got really creative! That might have been around the same time as the "Floor Incident".

What is that you ask? well that's a whole other story but I will tell it to you anyways!

My parents were having the hard wood refinished that was under the carpet in the living room and the old wide pine hardwood that was in the kitchen/dinning room replaced to match it. We went on vacation and put all of the furniture in my brother and my rooms. The fridge happened to be in my room! In that fridge the floor workers stored their lunches....also in the fridge was a pitcher of red Kool-aid that one of the workers lunches pails accidentally caught on and spilled all over my light grey carpeted floors! AND HE DIDN'T TELL ANYONE! Crazy right??? So we get back from vacation to a beautifully hard wooded house and one big deep red stain in my Victorian bedroom.  Once the owner of the flooring company learned of this, he offered to replace the carpet in my room or re-do the hard wood that was also under my carpet. My parents left it up to me to decide! I wasn't crazy I did grow up in a classy house so I made the right decision and picked the wood!

Back to Lime Green!! I, being the grown up that I was at 12 years old picked out 3 colours that no one in their right mind would put together today.... lime green, pastel purple and a pastelly-blue-almost periwinkle. I came up with this crazy idea, that who knows where it came from, because Pinterest wasn't around then.... heck the internet was barely around then! I painted the bottom the light purple with a darker shade of the same purple sponge painted over top. The Top 2/3rd of the room was the Lime Green and the border is where it got crazy!  I had 4 of my best friends forever come over and we painted the bottom of our feet, rolled around on a computer chair and placed our feet wherever our initials were on the wall.

I remember I had a sophisticated sticky-note system: something like: KP - P, MK- B, JI - G, etc. which stood for Katie Porados -Purple, Mandy Kenney- Blue, Jessica Isherwood - Green. I think the 4th person was Laura Goulden but I sadly can't even remember!! I'll have to go back and look at pictures! I'm still friends with Mandy and still sort of friends with Laura, Jessica was my best friend for YEARS and I should write a whole blog about that.  Katie was a really "cool" girl thought she was best friends with Mandy, but that is iffy, again a whole other blog!   I was the 5th set of feet around the room and I also put 1 hand print on the back of my door surrounded by 1 foot of each girl! I remember that if I could remember the order of the feet pairs I could always figure out who's were who's because Mandy had the biggest gap between her big toe and her next toe, so I would find hers and go from there!

notice the hand print on the door

The next transition of my room came as the final transition. I wanted the room to be empty for wedding pictures of me in my dress in the big amazing floor to ceiling mirrors, but I wanted a rich colour on the walls and I promised my parents I would do all the work!! However sadly due to immigration stuff I had to stay in the USA up to my wedding so they ended up packing up my room, and painting it (every parents worst nightmare).

My brother was moving in so we agreed on a colour that would work for the rich wedding pictures as well as make him happy to live in that room until further notice.... We decided on a burnt orange, and after the wedding he painted all the trim a tan colour!

Ode to Move-In Day

I started blogging post University, so I need to blog on here about some of the memories I don't want to forget - so here are a few pictures from the Move-In Days of past.....
This is me leaving my house for the first time! This is the outfit (with Jean variations) that I wore on the first move in day and every move-in and move-out day whilst at SAU and I even wore it when I moved into the Pollak household.... I might have worn it one of the days that I moved into the house that Nick and I moved into our house...

This is the only picture that I have from move-in day Sophomore year. Even though it's actually of Mel.... and it might even be of the 2nd day.

These are pictures of my stuff moved into my room of Junior Year!!!

Mel's stuff was moved in a few days after mine... I got to move in like a week early because I was an RA. I spent the week decorating the floor and learning out to be an RA:

This is technically "move-in day" and these are pictures of my girls moving in:

Kate and her mom

Our room again with Mel's stuff... we wanted it to look homey- so that the girls would feel welcome to come in have a seat, and take a cookie off our table!

Our next door neighbours: Kaitlyn & Anna (and Anna's mom)

That guy in the hallway is the President of Admissions... on our floor!

The following pictures are from my senior year! I was the Director of Communications for the Student Government so I was documenting the move-in day Parting at the Plaza ceremony!

All those green people up front are the student leaders for the year, I was supposed to be there, but I got to be on the roof instead, filming the event!

Yep my brother was participating in the events because he had enrolled at SAU - as well as Elise (Kevin's cousin) soo I got to take this sweet picture!

This is the Parting at the Plaza part... The new students are given a piece of the blue ribbon as a souvenir and then are separated from their parents to begin their new lives as college students!

Getting My Driver's Licence

Now since I remenisced about my 16th birthday I feel like I should recount the driver's license experience.

The day I got my actual driver's licence, like the one that let me drive without anyone else in the car, my parent's were in Chile on a Mission's trip and they hadn't put me on their insurance yet so I couldn't even go out driving on my own. But when they did, I went crazy! I picked up Mandy - who didn't have her license yet and we went to Tim Horton! Yep, that was it! That's what I did the first time I could drive anywhere!! Lol!!

PS. I posted 3 post's today so scroll down - keep reading!

Surprise 16th Birthday

I want to tell you all about my 16th Birthday.

It began on a band trip and ended with a bunch of boys locked in our clubhouse!

I'll expand: My actual birthday was in the middle of my high school band trip to the East Coast. On the trip, was my friend Carrie as well as Matt & Dave Ostropolec and as chaperone's were Meg and Pete Ostropolec. We were all over the East Coast Provinces, at one point we were in Quebec and Carrie and I found birthday streamers that said Bonne Fete (Happy Birthday) but for my actual birthday we were in Halifax, Nova Scotia. That day we weren't performing, but we were going to a dinner theatre. That was exciting - I remember the cast of the theatre singing Happy Birthday. We were on our own for the other meal of the day and Carrie and I went to Swiss Chalet. We felt soo cool, we were growing up; eating out together, in another province, getting their by ourselves! Soo cool!

But the cooler part of the day was first thing that morning, the night before Carrie and I had decorated our hotel room with the streamers, but I was "rudely" awoken by the Ostropolecs. Meg and Pete had been sent on a mission during this trip. They pulled me out of bed by my feet!! And then proceeded to give me 16 presents from my parents!! They were all small gifts, but still they told me that it had taken up like half of their suitcase! I'm so lucky to have amazing parents, and amazing friends who would sacrifice like that to make my 16th birthday special! I don't remember all of the gifts, but I do remember there was like a magazine, there was chap stick, there was probably nail polish etc. My favourite was the Frog Mug!! It had feet and little bumps on it's back! Probably the coolest mug I will ever own in my entire life.

2 Weeks after the band trip, when I wasn't expecting it at all, my parents through me a surprise 16th birthday party! My whole youth group was invited as well as close family members! I remember I worked that Friday night at Gospel Text until 9pm. Dad picked me up from work and on the way home, I innocently asked if anyone was at our house... you see often Steph would stop over randomly, or other random family members... I was feeling like I wanted some company that night... well Dad just said, I'm not sure... I believed him! Since we live in front of a park, everyone had parked in the parks lot so I didn't see their cars. When I opened the garage door, there was Kerry McCord crouched down with a camera ready to take a picture! I was not expecting that! I slammed the garage door and hid in the garage... Someone, I think Mandy came and got me out! I was shocked!!! The funny thing was my brother was showing all the guys, just before I got there, that out clubhouse in the backyard had an upstairs... they didn't believe him so he herded them inside and then locked them in there.... so I didn't even know there were guys at the party until a few minutes after all the girls had yelled surprise!

There were a lot of people there, there were lots of gifts, there was lots of good food! I should find pictures and upload them sometime to this post, because I have an album of them somewhere. The one thing I remember was that the Millard boys had given me a Happy Mother's day card... instead of a happy birthday card! I also remember that there were purple, green and I think turquoise balloons? It was a great night, and a great memory.