{"id":731,"date":"2022-01-30T16:06:22","date_gmt":"2022-01-30T21:06:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/?p=731"},"modified":"2022-01-30T16:06:27","modified_gmt":"2022-01-30T21:06:27","slug":"brooke-aka-shannon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/?p=731","title":{"rendered":"Brooke AKA Shannon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ever since I was a little girl, I knew my daughter\u2019s name would be Brooke.\u00a0 Whenever I would spend time with my brother Ricky\u2019s family that he married into, I often saw my sister-in-law\u2019s sister, Brenda\u2019s family.\u00a0 Wow, what a complex explanation!\u00a0 We all grew up together in Manotick so Wendy\u2019s family was very much part of our family.\u00a0 Brenda had two children, Chad and Brooke who I often babysat and I swore when I grew up I\u2019d have a daughter named Brooke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Brooke and her namesake Brooke Thompson<\/em> as a Jr Bridesmaid at her cousin Tasha’s wedding.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A funny thing happened when Brooke was born.  Her dad wanted to name her since I had named Blain.  He said, \u201cI want to call her Shannon\u201d.  I agreed since he lost the battle in naming his first-born son after his own name, Alexander.  Well, long story short, when he left the hospital I simply filled out the birth certificate and ta-da, we had a Brooke Shannon!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even from the day I brought her home from the hospital, I knew I had a girl who knew who she was.\u00a0 She slept through the night at just a few months old and this was her fuel to be the busiest little person!\u00a0 She was always marching around the house with some project on the go.\u00a0 I never had to spur on her imagination about the list of activities for the day as it seemed like she woke up with a plan of what she had on her to-do list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Always determined to learn new skills. <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Her athleticism was a brought to my attention when she was about 7 years old.\u00a0 Growing up with a mom who worked in recreation, she was often at work with me.\u00a0 That meant she swam a few times a week, did endless sport camps, ultimate frisbee, competitive tap dancing and karate to list a few.\u00a0 While at the park one day while she was playing she did a complete inverted shoulder move.\u00a0 One of the moms pointed out that Brooke had double jointed shoulders and incredible strength.\u00a0 Off to gymnastics we went!\u00a0 This competitive program didn\u2019t last long because it took her from the variety of other activities she did during the week and she missed her friends.\u00a0 I\u2019m so glad we made this move because I see in her now, a very well-rounded woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As she moved through high school, she joined her brother working in the Georgian Bay Area every summer at their dad\u2019s home.  This was a great opportunity for a lot of reasons.  They could spend their summer in a resort town on the water, live with their dad and make money where there was nowhere to spend it.  This taught her at a very young age, how to make money in the service industry where she learned the skill of working hard to make extra money in tips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Brooke hit grade 10, I dropped all curfews and nagging of homework or working.\u00a0 I felt at that age she knew what she needed to do to get what she wanted.\u00a0 She worked at Wendy\u2019s all through high school and when she graduated, she went into the Bachelor of Design program at Algonquin. It is known to be the hardest program by people in the industry.\u00a0 She graduated all while working at Tommy\u2019s restaurant and living on her own all while being a fur mama to TJ and The Fonz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While trying to find her way between working and going to school, Brooke decided to go to India to achieve her certification as a yoga instructor.\u00a0 This was a huge and scary undertaking as she was flying for the first time alone to a remote area of India, but she wanted to be in Rishikesh to learn.\u00a0 She left and did her 200 hour training in one month and she returned with much growth, grounding and vision of who she was, is and was going to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It was at this time that she had found the love of her life, Charbel.\u00a0 I could write a blog just about their meeting!\u00a0 I have known her husband longer than she has, so he was quickly approved when they started dating.\u00a0 He is a fierce believer in family and has a great sense of humour, which is much needed to be in our family, but most importantly, he cherishes Brooke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In her career she started off with business suits and sales.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t her cup of tea and she then accepted a position as a building inspector in North Dundas.\u00a0 She traded her business suits and heels for a Carhartt workwear and steel-toed boots.\u00a0 Within 1.5 years she was promoted to Deputy Chief Building Inspector and has now joined the City of Ottawa for the prospect of more career growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Deputy Chief on the job!<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What I cherish most about Brooke is the fact that we are so close.\u00a0 We text all day, compete on our Apple watches to keep each other accountable, and can spend endless hours together.\u00a0 Anyone who knows Brooke, loves her.\u00a0 She is caring, extremely funny, a wonderful hostess and always has her friend\u2019s back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hug those daughters, my friends, as they are a true blessing!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ever since I was a little girl, I knew my daughter\u2019s name would be Brooke.\u00a0 Whenever I would spend time with my brother Ricky\u2019s family that he married into, I often saw my sister-in-law\u2019s sister, Brenda\u2019s family.\u00a0 Wow, what a complex explanation!\u00a0 We all grew up together in Manotick so Wendy\u2019s family was very much Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":734,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-adoption-story"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chriswagg.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/img_1650.jpg?fit=640%2C1136&ssl=1","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=731"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":735,"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731\/revisions\/735"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}