Father’s Day

by Mom

Fathers Day 2026
Of all the Father’s Day celebrations our family has had, this one goes down as the best, at least in my books. I think it was the sheer joy I felt at completely surprising Kelvin. I’ll never forget the look on his face: a bit of confusion mixed in with big smiles and waving his arms up and down. I have not been able to truly surprise Kelvin since we got married, over 37 years ago now. The truth is, Kelvin is the type of guy who always seems to find out what’s going on in the house. It’s almost impossible to surprise him, so I gave up on the idea. In the end, I think Jen, Nate, and I enjoyed the moment as much or even more than Kelvin did.

There was a fair bit of planning that went on leading up to our big weekend. First of all, making sure Nathan could even make it (Nathan now lives in Calgary). Secondly, sneaking Nate into the house without Kelvin knowing. That was solved by me telling Kelvin I saw a moth fly into his closet. Enough said. We used up enough time hunting for our elusive moth for Jen to let Nate into the house, Nate to crack a beer, and Kelvin discover him relaxing on the living room couch. We pulled it off perfectly, despite Coleman letting out a few slips: saying while Kelvin was in the room, that we could save the Michelob beer for when Nate came home was one of them.

Nate got back around 5:30, so the timing was perfect for us to sit out on the patio, have a few laughs, and sip back a wobbly pop. The weather was perfect too, like 20 degrees. Cole came home from work around 10:00 ish. Kelvin and I stayed up a while longer before calling it a night.

Saturday, was the day we all did our own thing. Kelvin and I went to Stanley Park: me to swim and Kelvin to run. Nathan caught up with cousin Leyland and another friend. They went to watch a FIFA World Cup game at Hastings Park. Cole pulled out another shift at Burnaby and Jen stayed home. Cole picked up Nate at Seymour’s Pub, on the way home from work, around 7:00, and took Leyland home. They came home around 8:30. We all sat outside for a while, and then went inside. Kelvin and I headed to bed, while the kids watched a movie, played Cole’s game, and opened up Pokémon packs Jen pulled out of her inventory. I must admit, one of the highlights of the weekend for Kelvin and I was seeing the kids all have fun together, and enjoy each other’s company.

Fathers Day started out pretty quiet. Kelvin and I went for a walk up the power lines, while the kids slept in. We had a reservation at Little Bird Restaurant, a reincarnation of The Flamingo, our long lost favourite Chinese restaurant. Who could forget the mapo tofu and crispy skin chicken, best of all, Auntie Mary being there, always prepared with an array of scratch tickets. Our reservation was for 12:00, and we needed to drop Nathan off at his friend’s house, so he could pick up the white BMW, so we left our house around 11:00.

The lunch was dim sum style and Little Bird had a number of vegetarian options, which was right up Jen’s alley. I’m not sure how the craft beer title fit in; they maybe had five choices. The portions weren’t huge, but that suited us, because we could try more dishes. Just being there conjured up a lot of old memories of The Flamingo and Auntie Mary. It was a fun time.

We headed home and spent a couple of hours doing whatever. Nate and Kelvin were busy on the computer, mulling over Nate’s AI program for his job. Around 4:00 we walked up to the waterfall at Mosquito Creek. Surprisingly Nate had never seen it. He was the only one brave enough to go behind the debris catcher to get a closer look at the waterfall. The rest of us were quite happy to stand on the opposite bank and watch. Before we headed back, we detoured onto the bridge, and resurrected a pastime from years ago: throwing a leaf into the creek and seeing whose would go the furthest. Believe it or not, mine was the only one that got past the rocks and twigs.

We couldn’t let the day end without a few rounds of badminton. As per usual, I was the worst; although I have to admit, my knees are not what they used to be. The two fiercest competitors were Nathan and Cole, with Cole prevailing in the end.

After working up a sweat, we naturally convened on the porch, and broke out the wobbly pops. Jen and Cole were looking for a place to order pizza, and discovered Bella Pizza, another one of our family favourites, was back in business, now located on Imperial Street in Burnaby. They managed to surprise not only Kelvin, but Nate. We ordered a vegetarian, Masterpiece, and Capriocosa, Kelvin’s longtime favourite. What I liked were the heart-shaped balls in the middle of each pizza; although I have to admit the pizza was not as flavourful as I remembered it.

What already was a fantastic day, was about to get even better. Jen surprised everybody with a game of Jeopardy, where we used our phones as the button pressing mechanism, and the TV presented us our questions. It was a lot of fun. What shocked me was Kelvin won. I expected Nate or Cole to win. In the end, Kelvin beat Cole by one point: a true nail-biter. Even though Jen included a few categories tailor-made for me, like music from the 70’s, I still performed badly. I used the excuse that my fingers were too slow, but the truth was I simply didn’t know the answers.

The day wrapped up with Kelvin opening his gifts. This wouldn’t be complete without Kelvin getting something in denim, which I obliged him with, along with a rubber mallet, to hammer back rocks into our wall. Cole couldn’t pass up a closing out sale at Sport Chek, where he managed to find Kelvin a flannel shirt style jacket, unfortunately missing a back on one of the snaps. As Nate put it, Jen’s gift blew everyone else’s out of the water: she made Kelvin a mosaic address sign out of glass, complete with butterflies and flowers, truly a work of art. Nate’s gift was a hummingbird feeder and himself. We all considered Nate flying in from Calgary as a gift, it got the ball rolling on a Father’s Day weekend I don’t think any of us will forget.