september, 2004

happy 3rd birthday toby [who seems like he's doubled in height in the last couple of weeks]

september 22nd

wow, long time no blog. what a busy month. we had a great time with the drake family [photos could be quite sometime coming since i only took one and damien's record on that sort of thing isn't exactly great. see his website for details. oh wait... there aren't any]. it was very weird seeing damien and linda after so long - we've all changed so much and so little. made me a little wistful of bluewave days and bluewavers. it was wonderful to finally meet ethan. the 3 kids played really well together but it was a very very noisy few days!

the weekend consisted of steveston, attempts to persuade them to move here, tours of the area, the mall [for very poor asian food], whistler, attempts to persuade them to move, skytrain, seabus to lonsdale quay, attempts to persuade them to move, lots of blenz coffee, gastown, 80s and 90s music etc. etc. anyway, a wonderful long weekend so now we're holding out hope that the sales pitch did some good and that they might eventually end up moving here.

pete arrived monday afternoon while the children were at preschool [last friday was a landmark day - they finally stopped fighting with each other at preschool and started playing with other children!]. we did walmart twice [once for sascha to buy an x-box since we already have a playstation 2 and he gets a free console with his new job as a development director for EA sports], went to the movies to see 'super babies 2' [not even super babies, but indeed a sequel. i'm assuming there was a superbabies 1] [it didn't seem to be all that popular. half way through toby stood up, looked behind us and asked 'where all the people go mommy?' since we were the only ones in the place], pete went to meet friends in steveston while i took aly to dance class and toby for a haircut and then home to eat and play very silly x-box games all night :-)

now all is quiet[ish] until saturday when my family arrive in town via an alaskan cruise.

aly and toby's school

september 12th

photo gallery: i managed to get toby's birthday photos online along with a few others.

we're pretty sure sascha has a cool new job.. more to follow on that shortly. september is visitor month in the williams house - anyone interested just get in touch and i'm sure we'll squeeze you in! damien and family next week [i know, it's a miracle], pete for a couple of days straight after [and possibly overlapping], and my mum, dad, kellie and kenny a couple of days later. all culminating in some root canal for me the day before my birthday and the day my parents leave :-)

i've just sent rufus a congratulations-on-your-engagement message, dave and octavia a congratulations-on-your-wedding message and am about to send congratulations-on-your-engagement/congratulations on your marriage messages to jonp and steve respectively. the ex-bluewave world has gone completely mad. it'll be niknak before we know it ;p

september 8th

we had a great weekend in victoria. we pretended toby's birthday was on sunday since dani was playing in a couple of soccer matches in the final of a tournament on monday [his actual birthday]. [she won the tournament incidentally]. we did a big family lunch at white spot restaurant [his choice]. he got a candle on a cake to blow out, cards and a present of hot wheels atomix [the beginning of a very long, and very much appreciated, succession of hot wheels stuff]. the atomix thing was cool - atomix cars [for those not in the know about such things] are miniature hot wheels cars. the thing he got was a little suitcase which folds out into an amusement park for the cars. it kept both children silent in the restaurant for a very long time. after lunch we took a detour to a look at a horse nikki is thinking of buying.

[note: this horse is one of the many many animals nikki is thinking of buying to add to her collection of 2 horses, 3 dogs, 2 cats, and a squillion birds. apparently aly NEEDS a miniature horse to ride. also one of her two horses is now too old to ride so that one will feel lonely when the other one goes out on rides so NEEDS a goat to keep it company?! of course, this leaves the other horse without a friend to ride with - hence the NEED for the detour horse] [in her defence regarding the miniature horse, aly is very much into the horses and she, and her beloved auntie nikki, disappear for hours on end doing stuff in the barn. for such a squeamish little girl she doesn't even seem to mind mucking out. we had to make our first horsey-stuff purchase this weekend - stable boots - only $5, but it's a very slippery slope to bankruptcy from there!]]

anyway, back to toby's birthday. we went back to the house for presents [sorry 'prizes' according to toby - a mixture of presents and surprises i think] which was obviously great for toby but a little frustrating for poor aly. it wasn't just the fact that she wasn't allowed to open any presents, but the fact that toby is SO slow at opening presents and then just wants to play with that thing for hours on end before opening the next [which she has been holding under his nose for 10 minutes!]. mcdonalds with a play place for dinner and then birthday cake back at home.

i still have no idea where all these new toys are going to live. i've left half in the car, and there still doesn't seem to be enough room in his room. i see a toy cull coming up.

september 1

toby is back to being 'drinky' instead of thirsty [we went through this a while ago]. words - they're so tricky. sascha's been doing a bit of simple reading with aly - she still needs lots of help sounding out letters, but she's so excited when she gets one - it's very cute. she's also started doing the odd bit of simple math[s] - on her terms of course. we have the cool building block units that schools use for counting - but of course if the pink ones suddenly need to become an ice cream instead of a sum, you've got to go with the flow.

toby and sasch are pretty devastated that the 'limpets' [olympics] are over. fortunately the world cup of hockey has just started much to their relief [hooray]. toby seemed to love every sport in the olympics. i think diving was his very favourite - resulting in a lot of surprise pouncing on people randomly. he was very happy to be able to practice his diving properly in the huge ball pool at ikea last night though.

life is very very hectic in a lazy sort of a way. the children are going to sleep later but also therefore getting up a lot later and are much more manageable in the morning which means we get a lot more sleep than we used to. once the day begins however, we [and I in particular] have a huge amount on. i'm coming towards the end of the recruiting process to find a new executive director for the family place which has taken up a huge amount of time but all for a very good cause. it's also kind of good to get a reminder of what working is like!

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