Someone asked me last week if my husband and I have weekends away. My answer was, no, our weekends are full of hockey for our kids.

From September pretty much through June, including Spring hockey. I was thinking back to when I was a kid, and my parents would take my sisters and I for weekends at different places around the Island (Vancouver Island). We did lots of day trips too, touring around and seeing the sights. We actually talked about how glad we weren’t tied to competitive activities like some families we knew and had the freedom to decide how we would spend our weekends.

That seems funny now as both of my boys play hockey, and every weekend is dictated by that schedule. The thing I didn’t expect was that it does involve weekends away. The sport takes you to areas you may not travel to as a destination. If it has taken us to Vancouver for tournaments, we would try to plan to see a Canucks game during the weekend. Even two years ago this month, we were in LA, as our younger one played in a tournament that was put on by the LA Junior Kings with the Beijing Junior Kings. Our hotel was covered for that event and we made a holiday out of it and stayed longer and went to Disneyland (the team is pretty sure we all had Covid in that february of 2020).

We have gone to Kelowna for hockey as well, and my son and hubby went to Edmonton for a tournament at West Edmonton mall. So although it does seem like it’s this hectic and demanding schedule, which it can be… it also provides some pretty great opportunity for some family time and adventure. Owen’s spring team plans to go to Toronto in May. We don’t get to pick which weekends are the travel ones, but we do make the most of them. And then we enjoy the home weekends that much more.

With Owen on this ‘travel’ team this year, we have family and friends to thank for contributing to his bottle fundraising efforts to cover some of the fees. He has worked hard on and off the ice and there isn’t anything he loves more.

People that I work with talk about romantic weekends away and their plans and sometimes I think, wouldn’t that be nice? 😂 But they are only little once. When the hockey is over and the boys have grown up, we will miss these days and going from arena to arena. In fact, we will wish we had them back.

Sending Love,

Devon