january, 2006

january 23

we had a lovely, busy weekend. friday night we went to see hoodwinked at the movie theatre which was great. saturday, toby and i went to a gymnastics birthday party while sascha and aly went ice skating. on sunday sascha and toby went to sports class, while aly and i began to wade through 3 school classes of valentines [approx. 60]. i learnt my lesson after last year's last minute panic when i found out the protocol was for every kid to send every kid a valentine [and we only had one class to worry about last year]. we also squeezed in some shopping, a trip to ikea and a meal at white spot [we were going to do a drive IN [not drive-thru] but were worried we might have to keep the windows open for the trays and the rain was a little too heavy]. any way, this weekend reminded sascha and i how great our little family is and how much easier life is now the kids are a little older.

last week i found out a big advantage to keeping a blog. after reading my last posting, my mom decided i sounded so miserable that she should send my dad out this week to take care of us all!! [don't tell her i'm all cheered up now]. he arrives thursday for 2 weeks. i can't wait. sascha's taking me to see coldplay on thursday, then friday i'm scrapbooking, so he'll really be in at the deep end on the babysitting front!

we've only had one rain-free day in about 6 weeks. the novelty wore off quite some time ago. it's nice that it hasn't been too cold, but really, a sunny day or 2 would certainly help cheer the place up. the one good thing about the rain here as opposed to england is that it doesn't tend to be so dark when it's raining - it's usually fairly bright. also, we pretty much get rain out of the way so that the summers are dry. it's around this time of year when i really start to miss california though!

we seem to have a new prime minister in canada tonight. out with paul martin and in with steven harper. harper seems to be a bit of a george bush fan unfortunately [speaking of george bush, there's a very funny skit of a text-based adventure game about his term in office if you like that sort of thing]. i had a bit of a soft spot for paul martin myself - not that any of that's very relevant when you can't vote.

january 14

sorry - my jan 7th update just went up. i've been having server-is-full issues.

NOT a good week - toby had a fever and cold on sunday and was only ready to go back to school on tuesday by which time aly had a fever of 103.2. tomorrow [friday] will be the first full day back for everyone including me. sascha managed to take 2 half days at the beginning of the week but i've had to take 1.5 days off work and make up the rest in the evening and whatever i could manage during the day. i'd forgotten how sad it is to see your child crying because they are just so fed up of feeling so ill. poor little things. i've had a headache, ear ache and fuzzy brain for a couple of day but i've been pounding back the echinacea and vitamins in the hopes i can avoid the full blown version.

needless to say we've done very little this week. i had to cancel my phobia therapy session this week which is a shame because i really need it after the traumatic flights to and from florida - i'm still a bit of a wreck.

so we managed to find series 2 of arrested development and watched the whole thing as quick as we could ready to rejoin series 3 on monday. we were horrified to find that it has suddenly dissappeared off the schedule with no sign of it returning. there are rumours of it being cancelled. just TYPICAL. we get all excited about a show only to have it pulled. doh! [if you are desperate to sign a petition to save it - there are many available such as http://www.petitiononline.com/arrested/petition.html]

i also finished reading the neaderthal parallax so now i only have my addiction to harry potter goblet of fire on the xbox to keep me from doing something useful with my life.

hmmm... still no sign of any exercise then..

january 7

new year's eve was quiet - lots of games and watching fireworks across the valley from the warmth of the house. new year's day saw me agreeing to play golf at a local 9-hole course in victoria. the fact it's called 'the ridge' should have been my first big clue to the fact it was going to be very very cold and windy! toby seemed to enjoy it despite shivering the entire way round. the flags were bent double and dani's ball blew right off the tee on one of the holes. hmmm.. i think i'll go back to being a fair weather golfer [although the hot chocolate at the club house ALMOST made up for it].

whilst in victoria we started watching the arrested development dvd's kellie had got us for christmas ages ago. we had watched the odd episode here and there but it seems the key is to watch them in order - which is exactly what we did - all 24 hours of them! actually it took 3 or 4 days and lots of late nights so we're very very tired and ready for lots of sleep this weekend before we can track down series 2 to stay up all night watching during the next work week. [thanks kellie!]

through borrowing books from nikki's extensive library in victoria [every wall downstairs is a bookshelf], i have recently become a huge robert sawyer fan. he write sci-fi which i haven't read much of for years but it's really great philosophical stuff. he's a canadian author so i'm not sure how well known he is outside canada. i'm in the middle of his neanderthal parallax having received books 1 and 2 for christmas. i now need to dash out and find the last book. maybe i'll find it in the same place as the elusive 2nd series of arrested development.

we came back from victoria on monday. we took an earlyish ferry since we knew we were returning home to at least one flat tire on a bank holiday [there was glass in a parking spot sasch had tried to park in and although he switched spots he could hear the tire going down as he headed for the ferry]. fortunately only one tire had gone down. UNfortunately, i had inadvertently taken the wheel lock key out of the car mistaking it for something else. fortunately we are members of CAA so we called them. UNfortunately there was no where they could tow us to that was open on a holiday so we had to pay extra to find somewhere. neither CAA or the tire shop could do anything without the key to the lock so i ended up taking the kids home then out to meet them at the tire shop to finally get the thing fixed.

i'm having an ongoing conundrum about toby's education at the moment. he's just started going to one montessori instead of 2 which actually seems to be working out well, but it's time to register for kindergarten next year and i don't know where to register him. i guess i'll register at aly's school on monday but we're thinking of going into the lottery for a place at a montessori public school [public in the US not UK sense]. i'm also wondering about french immersion for aly because i think she'd love it. decisions decisions. i'll probably just end up leaving them both at the local school here and seeing how it goes. [it's a wonderful school incidentally - i've just got too many choices!]

toby and i were reading a very dull [for me] book about the history of basketball together yesterday and it had some dates about when it was invented and when it was first brought to canada - a couple of dates in the 1800's and one in the 1900's. toby suddenly said: 'after the 18's and the 19's did they think the olden days were over so they made up the 2's for the natural* days?'. it took me a while to figure out what he was going on about, a minute to stop laughing and then a good 10 minutes to count through the 1800's, 1900's [and who from our family was born and when] and then move on to the 2000's. i think i did finally explain sufficiently why the 2000's were invented! it's very very weird that my kids think of anything older than the year 2000 as being olden days. personally i think i'm still stuck at around 1990 in my brain. 1990 still seems quite exciting and new.
*aly and toby use the word 'natural' for what everyone else would call normal or regular. it took sascha and i ages to figure out what they were going on about and they both use it a lot and back each other up about what it means. it's difficult to convince them otherwise when it's 2 against 1. i've still got no idea who came up with it originally.

right, i'd better stop waffling now or i might receive a 'you're self-obsessed' email from an anonymous reader like poor lara [who honestly isn't smug].

january 1

what a very nice christmas. peter [sascha's brother] and hitomi came to stay on the 20th. we made a fantastic trip up to grouse mountain with them. unfortunately the sleigh ride was closed due to rain but there was enough snow around for a quick snowball fight before visiting santa in his workshop and prancer and dancer outside. inside we watched a very nice movie and followed it with a great meal before heading back down from the clouds [in the older blue gondolier because it was too windy for the modern ones!]

on the 22nd, colin [sascha's dad], dani [sascha's niece], tonya [sascha's sister], britt and cyd [nieces] arrived. the children all played so well together. there are 2 years between each of them which seemed to work out really well.

on the 23rd, nikki [sascha's other sister] arrived complete with 3 dogs and the house was officially full! that night there were 4 hockey tickets available for the canucks/flames game so 4 of them went off to the hockey game while the rest of us headed to the local nature park for 'nature comes to light' which was very nice. the inner pond path was all lit with christmas lights and scenes and inside the nature house, besides the usual activities, the children got to meet and talk to santa.

on the 24th there was just time for even more emergency shopping and some grocery shopping before the grand present-unwrapping just after santa had been at 6pm. the opening lasted for over 3 hours [with only a quick 5 minute bathroom break!] the williams family don't like to do christmas by halves!! everybody did very well. my highlights included a diamond ring from sascha and an ipod from peter/hitomi/dani. toby's favourite presents were his 9 cars [all names/makes instantly catalogued in his brain] and a PS2 golf simulator [a joint gift for him and sascha]. aly loved her huge cuddly pony [now named emma after her real pony in victoria] and her beautiful wooden stables set complete with everything under the sun. besides the golf simulator, sascha has had a lot of fun with the train set he and toby got as a joint present.

christmas day saw a giant and delicious christmas dinner cooked by dani [NOT me!] and lots of games. boxing day was of course shopping day and was also the other flames/canucks game. while the others [including toby] were at the game, the rest of us had fun ice skating at the local arena. we have all since bought ice skates in the sales and vowed to make full use of them in the coming year.

the fun couldn't last forever and people started to leave on the 27th/28th. having said that, we did squeeze in more family ice skating and a trip to science world and we're now in victoria for new year's celebrations. besides the family ice skating resolution, i have decided i really need to get some proper exercise this year since i'm no longer at home all day chasing around after small children. feel free to email and nag if you see no mention of any sort of exercise in the new few months!

disney photos are up by the way..

happy 2006!

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