november

toby and aly playing in the leaves at richmond family place

as you can see sascha has very kindly been helping me add some video clips to the site. there are other more recent videos of aly skating and of toby at the pumpkin patch and there are a few old ones linked from the year 2000 scrapbook index. some have sound and some don't.

november 27

happy 1st birthday sarah :-)

i'm aware of how pathetic my website updating has been. oh well. our news is that we've traded in our jetta and got a new[ish] car [well, more of a truck really - a jeep grand cherokee] so we can go to california to pick up the rest of our stuff. kellie is moving to santa barbara in the new year since she has just got a new job there, but this means they won't have room to be our storage locker facility anymore [a relief i'm sure!] this is going to be news to all of my californian friends who read this since i haven't had a chance to mention it to anyone. i can't wait to see them all again. we'll be leaving around dec. 5th and will be back 17th-ish in time for christmas in victoria with the entire williams clan [the first time they've all managed to get together in years].

second piece of news is that we've signed a lease on the brand new townhouse we've been looking at for a while. it's still in richmond but in the other end of the city. we'll probably move most of our stuff before christmas and then move ourselves at the end of december - in true williams' family style.. CHAOS!! :-) i can't wait to get settled in properly. the past 6 months have been a little like camping at times and none of us have had a proper chance to feel at home here, knowing this apartment was only temporary.

in child news.. the children have definitely both stopped napping except the odd 20 minutes here or there - usually in the car. booo hooo.

i'm pleased to announce that things have improved for aly since sunday when she announced to sascha 'today is the worst day of my life' :-) apparently there had been a succession of mishaps. first she was woken [very unhappily] from a nap to come and collect me from a scrapbooking open house. on the way out of the door in the rain, sascha made a move to stop toby from jumping in a big puddle outside the door, aly grabbed hold of his leg, toby fell in the puddle, sascha tripped over and then she had to wait while sascha changed all of toby's clothes!

i take that back, maybe things aren't looking up for her. as i'm writing this, toby has just given aly a kiss better after some sort of eye injury and she said 'i don't like kisses because that one was very wet.' he has also been crashing 2 of his toys cars together and making one kiss the other one better. [he has an owwy on his finger today so i guess injuries are on his mind!]

finally, i've borrowed a photo of david thompson wearing a delightful bonnet from marcia's wonderful family site because it made me brightened my day and i felt it needed to be more widely viewed ;-D

november 18

happy birthday for yesterday dad!

so when i picked aly up from preschool yesterday she looked at me very carefully and said 'you're not gorgeous mommy'. it later emerged that this was due to me having my hair tied back. since i have it tied back every day i can only conclude that i'm never gorgeous. oh well. maybe i should consider my annual haircut soon.

i have a new job - well a pretend one anyway - i help out my creative memories consultant with admin and page ideas etc. in return for product - hooray! unfortunately this means that scrapbooking my own stuff is falling behind. i have a heritage album to complete, this year's album to get up to date [i'm at about may at the moment] and then i need to start going backwards from july 2001.

november 12

to save on byte transfer and in order to ensure everyone stays sane, i've moved the 'aly and toby playing in the leaves' video onto the november 2003 blog archive page.

dani was right, i didn't put up photos from aly's preschool halloween party, so here they are.

we spent a lovely, but short, weekend in victoria and walked on the ferry instead of driving which was interesting. i'd love to go on and on about bc ferry issues but i won't for the sake of those not living in bc! of course the fact that these boats have 3-4 restaurants, 1-2 playrooms, arcades, a shop etc. etc. should really make up for the [many many] downfalls and expense [CAN$100]. we went over for a late/early thanksgiving dinner depending on how you look at it [late for canada, early for the US] and had spaghetti [?!]. the williams family have definitely opened my eyes to breaking with tradition. i'll never forget the onion soup i had for christmas dinner a few years ago when everywhere in town was booked up except for the local seafood restaurant!

ever since he sorted out the website videos for me sascha has given way too much attention to unblog and has now sufficiently guilted me into making the navigation a little more user friendly - which of course is something i really shouldn't ever let slip. i notice he's not actually volunteering to change it for me :-) so if something [eventually] looks different, you'll know why.

aly has suddenly become a lot more interested in letters recently and will now sit down and copy a few quite successfully as long as she's in the mood.

her drawings of people have moved on from last month's hypnotic eyes phase and onto much better proportioned people suddenly.

happy face [the hypnotic eyes phase] - october 2003

more proportioned face - november 2003

toby's sentences have recently become a lot longer and he asked his first proper question on the ferry over the weekend 'daddy is that spongebob movie?' [going into the dvd player], and after sascha said no, 'daddy i want spongebob movie peeeeas'.

november 5

happy bonfire night brits!

i've added some new halloween photos to the site.

our big exciting news of the day is that toby spent his first night in a 'big boy bed' last night. he was a little confused when we converted his crib and he had trouble settling after waking up from a bad dream [monsters as usual] when he found he couldn't snuggle in his usual corner. he was, however, VERY jubilant coming in all by himself to wake us this morning [with all of his bedding under his arm]!

we seem to have turned a very handy corner where the children will go and play upstairs together for 20 minutes at a time [without requiring intervention] - they've even played for the odd hour here and there. i think i'd be going insane having lost naptime if it wasn't for this. their favourite game is 'party' where they put all the blankets on the floor and apparently have a party. unfortunately toby likes to shout 'party party' which, in toby talk, sounds a lot like 'potty potty' which causes much confusion and results in me running up and down the stairs even more than usual.

fyi, potty training is NOT going well [no surprise there then].

november 1

well that was a strange experience. true to normal form, canada seems to fall right in between US and UK traditions. halloween was a perfect combination of the UK's bonfire night and the US's halloween. basically, it seems to be a toned down version of the US - with very few people decorating their houses but still pumpkin patches, trick or treating and jack-o-lanterns BUT with a big focus on fireworks which doesn't happen in the US.

we went to a great halloween party at the family place on thursday. instead of the usual crafts there was a table full of worms [cold, blue spaghetti], blood [food colouring] and eye balls [big refrigerated gelatin blobs] to play with, halloween cupcakes for the kids to decorate, party food instead of the usual crackers and then off to the back yard to play with the 125 carved pumpkins we'd made for the weekend fundraiser.

for the 31st we went to a halloween party at our local community centre at lunch time and then, after a quick trick or treat in our apartment complex, went to one of the smaller firework displays [we chose the smaller one since neither of us was convinced aly would stick it out for more than 5 minutes. as expected she hid in the stroller, covered by my big fleece and listened to her CD!]. toby had mixed feelings about the whole thing - alternating between being worried and not wanting to miss anything. his christened a new word for 'fireworks' - he called them 'red, green, blue's.

toby has also finally decided to name himself. he's now 'boggy' [not to be confused with 'bogey' which is what aly called him when he was a baby!].

finally, i know the california fires have been no laughing matter, but kellie very kindly sent me this quote from the ventura county star:

'The largest blaze, at 80,000 acres, destroyed the [six] homes and damaged eight others in the cities of Moorpark and Simi Valley. The only injuries reported were to two firefighters involved in an accident involving cactus.'

sunset from our apartment
[the 2nd photo was taken 10 minutes after the first]


they do a good sunset around here :-)

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