march, 2004

march 25

nothing much to report. same old same old. the family place website is almost ready for launch. hooray! i'm still having nightmares about the DNS not switching over, but anyway.

speaking of nightmares, in just the same way that aly suddenly started having nightmares one day, toby's imagination has obviously just kicked in. his nightmares are about all the things which are important in his life. for the first one, i thought he was screaming 'mommy, mommy', but when i got to him, he was in floods of tears, sitting on his bed shouting 'money, money. lost the money'. next it was ikea and cars, and then back to money again. no mention of family members or monsters or anything!

we've started taking them both to the driving range just a few minutes from here. although aly is great at hitting, she really doesn't have the golf mentality and gets bored after a few shots [who could blame her] - preferring to sort out the balls and distribute them etc. etc. toby on the other hand is perfectly happy to hit through an entire bucket of 50 balls one after the other and is starting to get the hand of his iron which is really a bit heavy for him. he also LOVES the putting green and would basically play there all day. being the noisiest child on the planet, he's surprising quiet at the range (fortunately), but he does insist on saying goodbye to every golfer on his way home so we're working on figuring out when then quietest periods are!

we found a great 9 hole golf course and putt putt centre right next to the new scrapbook store i've started going to, so i'm dreaming of the day when aly and i can go spend the afternoon in the scrapbook store, leaving toby and sasch to golf the day away. not to mention the fact that both are just a short distance from the biggest ikea i've ever been to in my life.

speaking of ikea. it finally occurred to me the other day that when toby is potty trained we'll be able to drop them both off at the child care centre there and do exciting things such as have a cup of coffee in the restaurant in peace and catch up on what's happened in each others lives over the 4 years since we last got a chance to talk in peace!

i'm not really wishing their lives away. in fact, because i know i'll probably be working at least part time by the end of the year, i'm appreciating the time i have with them more than ever. the fact that toby starts preschool in september is a very weird thought.

march 18

my life is CHAOS. but good, organized chaos. i ended up co-facilitating a BIG playgroup today (40-50 people). as i pointed out to marcia, singing and reading to such a big group is far too scary - give me grown ups and an email address any day.

to add to the panic in my life, i'm being interviewed about the family place website at the end of this month, which i guess means it needs to be ready. i'm actually not so worried about the things which are in my control ie. all the content and images! it's more the dns switchover which always worries me. anyway, 12 days left for it to happen so nothing could possibly go wrong ;-) i just hope the client isn't reading this or she might be on the phone tomorrow! i have to say, they've been the most wonderful client. i'm sure the doing-it-for-free-thing helps, as does having a single point of contact, but they're all so nice and grateful about everything, it's lovely. free work is definitely the way to go!

i thought since i'd been so bad about putting up photos lately, that i'd stick some of the children's artwork in for you. so here it is....

butterfly by toby

one of toby's first people

one of toby's first smiley faces

of course, he still likes to scribble an awful lot! he's also loves to draw parallel lines and shapes. he's a very structured sort of a child. aly, on the other hand....

aly: "daddy, this is what you should look like. you should take this picture to the man at the glasses store and show him what you want to look like"

aly asked me to draw her a butterfly and then she drew herself underneath. when i asked what she was doing she told me she wanted to catch a butterfly.

'aly' by aly

aly can now write her name and is also very proudly spelling it out loud to everyone (that's EVERYONE) she meets.

march 12

it's a nice sunny day today. it's been looking very nice but really windy for the last few days. wind here never seems to be quite so dramatic [or warm] as in california. i haven't even seen a single tree branch down. in california there would be palm tree guts strewn all over the place by now.

in aly and toby news, aly has learnt to spell and write her name and toby has suddenly started drawing the cutest happy faces - scanned images to follow.

we all dropped sascha at work yesterday and we've decided that aly really doesn't get out enough. she was worried out the writing on the walls [graffiti]. she decided that maybe blue's kitten friend, periwinkle, had been naughty and should clean it up.

talking of sascha's job. they get the best building memos [he's currently working in the harbour tower - right in the heart of one of the world's cheapest, and therefore most popular, filming districts]. for example:

Hi, everyone. This is to let you know that we've received notice about the filming of a TV series by Lexington Films called "Touching Evil" which will take place at 540 Beatty Street on Monday, February 23 from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. The scenes involve a 'sniper' with 'simulated gunfire' who will apparently be hanging out of a 5th floor window of that building, so please don't be alarmed if you see someone with a rifle who looks like he's shooting at people on the street. There will be VPD officers on site.

march 6

well, my mum has left :-( but i can't be too sad since she's back in 2 and a half weeks. i can't say i provided much entertainment in her last week, since i was ill for most of it, but she did have the opportunity to look after me and the children - what a great break :-)

aly is coping better with her leaving than usual. i think probably because she knows she's returning with grandad very soon. in fact, she already has plans.

'i can play with grammy. toby can play pirates with grandad. daddy - you can go to the bank and mommy can uuummmmm.. do some laundry. so i'm looking forward to it greatly. i'm hoping that maybe i'll be allowed to go to the bank with sascha and perhaps make an evening of it.

we've finally taken some photos of the almost completed mural in aly's room. we're just waiting for a visit from colin for a few touch-ups:

exciting news - krispy kreme doughnuts have arrived in canada [exciting, of course, because the canadians eat more doughnuts per head than the rest of the world - which you already know if you pay proper attention to my useless facts at the top of each page] so we went to visit our local one which has just opened up in delta. it's about the same distance from home as the one we used to visit in california but we were met with a 45 minute line to either get in the store or wait in the drive-thru line which wound its way around much of delta. we couldn't see the children being prepared to wait that long - or indeed me - since my wheat-free, dairy-free, egg-free diet doesn't take well to doughnuts. needless to say, we settled for some good old canadian tim ho's instead.

poor old martha eh? i'm intrigued to see what she'll come up with to ingeniously make from the toilet seat and bars from her cell for the martha stewart living show each day :-)

march 1

kellie arrived very late thursday night so the children were very happy to wake up and find her there and showered her with kisses. it was great to see her. and boy did we show her the sights...

friday was ikea [where i bought even more shelving units in a determined effort to get our garage into some sort of order - kellie was roped into helping me build them and fill them (with, amongst other things, my 27 monopolies)].

saturday we went on a public transport extravaganza to vancouver. it's just a shame the buses don't come every 2-3 minutes like the skytrains do. it was a bit of a gloomy day - so no glorious mountains like normal - but enjoyable nonetheless - especially when we got to pretend to be the monorail drivers! by the time we got there, the children were pretty tired, so we just had a quick lunch at the pacific mall and then headed back - stopping briefly at the park on the way home. next it was daiso (japanese $2 store) in the mall they opened without finishing it - still only half a parking garage, one restaurant in the food court, shed loads of plastic coverings and bits of wood and only 10% stores open so far, then walmart after that.

sunday was roast dinner and then scrabble while the children napped a little! the excitement never stops around here. she was very nice and said it was worth coming for the weekend though!

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