november, 2005

november 21

hooray, i finally have a new FTP program that allows file names with more than 8 characters.

the weather here has been very erm.. interesting. a week of cold. a week of rain. a day of brilliant sunshine where the bright white mountains were suddenly unveiled for all to see. a week of fog. and [rumour has it] some sunshine at the end of the long, extremely foggy tunnel. i've never seen fog like it. in england and california it always seemed to clear at least by mid-afternoon, but this has been an all day everyday fog. i'll probably get a migraine when i can finally see again!

toby was sick this saturday but made a miraculous recovery by sunday. i was so so happy to see him well and hear him back at maximum volume; not just because of my vomit phobia, but because he'd been so sad on saturday. it really got him down and he cried and cried and cried.

my peculiar husband announced that he was happy to put the decorations up on sunday. this may not seem that strange - perhaps just a little early. however, this is very significant since he refuses to enter into any sort of discussion about planning for christmas, christmas presents etc. until it's almost december [usually when US thanksgiving is done]. apparently christmas has arrived early this year. i had suggested that we put up shelves in my scrapbooking room, but i was happy to trade them in for 2 christmas trees. the huge tree we had for our house in california miraculous fits in our living room due to an arch down the middle of the room. i think being decorated for christmas has made me feel more at home here than i have been. i love the house, but i don't think i had quite felt moved in fully. anyway, christmas HAS arrived :-) [as has the xbox 360. i should probably try sascha's game - NBA Live 2006 at some point - i've been too busy playing project gotham racing which isn't even an EA game!]

november 13

we just got back from a very relaxing long weekend in victoria. friday i spent much of the day scrapbooking - letting the rest of the family head of to a hockey game in the evening while i carried on scrapbooking. saturday i managed to squeeze in even more scrapbookings with just a trip out for dinner and to visit nikki at the bookstore. today was aly's first riding lesson. she seemed to do well and she had a great time. i'd love to tell you more about it but it's all so far above my head that i haven't really a clue what she did!

last week, smallville was being filmed at the theatre behind our building at work. it made for a very entertaining few days. shabniz and i giddily played star spotting from behind the blinds and saw superman TWICE! we also saw his dad [guy from the dukes of hazzard]. best of all the location manager made a nice donation to family place for the inconvenience.

it was parent conferences this week [parent-teacher night]. it was a little inconvenient because they seem to always be held during the day which meant that i had to ferry aly to and from kindergarten for 2 days and the kids had to go to a different school in the mornings. the parent conferences were interesting. toby seems to be a different child in his 2 different schools. one of his teachers would like to move him to one school for the full day, but unfortunately, the only school where he can do this is the one he's having issues in [not with the work, just with focusing - it might be due to being tired because it's the afternoon school or might be because it has 3 times as many children or even because it's a very open hall where it's hard to resist running around!]. his other teacher thinks the 2 schools are better for him because he actually gets more of a rest that way. i'm just plain confused.

the most strange thing of all was that aly and toby seem to reverse personalities when they get to school in the mornings: aly is very much the follower instead of leader and toby is the opposite. VERY strange. it's so weird that they have their own little lives outside of our family bubble.

aly is doing really well. i still have to sort out a parent conference with her kindergarten teacher because i'm not available during the days this week. with parent conferences being this week she has early dismissal at 1.30pm just to throw another spanner in the works. i'm pinning my hopes on the montessori being able to take her early.

i'm started to get excited about florida at the beginning of december. the weather has been pretty dreary for a couple of weeks [it's the earliest skiing season since 1994 apparently] which makes florida look even more appealing than usual. having said that, last time we went to disney in january it was the year of freak frostiness.

wow, i've whinned a lot. i'm happy really! i've thrown a couple of random photos into this entry because it's been so long since i've managed to put any on the site!

harvest time at the sharing farm.

november 2

i hadn't even realised it was a new month for some reason. my blog updating has been pathetic but i've been all out of sorts since moving house. i haven't been keeping my calendar up to date and have been missing appointments and bills and leaving everything to the last minute. i think i'm finally starting to get on top of things though. the calendar has been retrieved from a pile of paperwork and i've started to write things in it again. i also hadn't realised how much stuff needs to be written down with 2 children at 3 different schools - not only parent conferences and school closures etc. but also pac meetings, fundraising deadlines [so far we've had a book fair, book order, 4 different photograph orders, avon, cookies [which i wanted but missed], christmas gifts catalogue, bottle drive, magazine subscriptions and natural disaster collections]. the teachers in bc were on strike for 2 weeks last month and all the public schools were closed so it's even worse than ever now they're trying to catch up. i quickly came to the conclusion that i have to ignore most of the optional stuff otherwise i will go completely insane. for example, i opted for halloween treats just for one of the 3 classes the children attend rather than all 3 and i've put off my friday snack provision day until the end of november when i might just have everything together.

this week is passport panic week. we finally booked our tickets to florida last night [we're going from december 2 to 11 with my parents and sister]. now we need a passport for aly and could really use a canadian citizenship card for toby. today i had the photos taken, tomorrow i need to get them to a guarantor [difficult when they have to have known you 2 yrs and we've barely been here that long] then off to the delightful passport line [i already went today to see whether i could just get her passport renewed - NO was the upshot].

halloween was insane but good fun. the children went completely hyper which bodes well for how they might be this christmas i suppose! our neighbourhood is amazing for treat or treating.. the roads are absolutely full of kids because we have a neighbourhood fireworks display at 8.30pm so everyone ends up trick or treating between 7 and 8.30.

my phobia therapy [EMDR] is very strange but might be good. i'll keep you updated. at worst, even if it doesn't make a huge difference to the phobia i think it will be really beneficial in other respects.

so what else?.. toby has decided that we're trying to poison him or something so there have been food battles every night. sascha seems to have come up with a good strategy of getting him to write down all the foods he knows he likes which aren't junk food. i might back it up with teaching him some things about a balanced diet which seemed to work really well with aly. aly is going through a wonderful phase. she's always the first one ready in the mornings [unlike toby and i], she's good about going to bed, eating, and helping around the house a little. in fact i'm starting to regret saying all this - i might jinx it!

i have some photos to put online but am having ftp issues - namely that i'm too cheap to actually pay for a decent ftp program. it won't be long until i breakdown and buy something decent though...

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