Al: Mom, could you do a web search for me?
Me: Sure, what are you looking for?
Al: I wanna do a contest. Could you type in "contest" in the google box? I wanna win a prize.
Me: You should be more specific, there are tons and tons and tons of prize sites on the web. Tell me what kind of contest you want.
Al: Ok. Ummm... type in "kids can win". No, type in "win big bag of money". Yeah, I want to win a big bag of money. Type that in the google box.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Every Gadget Geek Has His Day
A little over a week ago my husband brought home the latest object of his affection, a 42" LCD flat screen TV. And oh, how he it has captured his heart! Over the last week I have watched my husband fondle the remote, gently caress the shiny black casing, repeatedly go through the menu/setting screen, and of course warn the children of the dangers of the workhouse they'll be sent to if anything happens to the TV.
My husband has always been a new-fangled gadget guy. He loves having the newest, latest, fastest, biggest electronic doo-dad. But the last 5 and a half years of parenthood has matured him to a gadget window-shopper forced to wait and save until we can afford the latest gizmo giving him palpitations (poor man recently found out there's a new bigger iPod and is forced to suffer through life with his puney 80 gigs).
I had already agreed that when we sold our condo we'd use some of the proceeds to buy a new ginormous LCD TV. And so it was with great delight that while we were out buying new living room furniture (an absolute necessity) my dearest husband bought the TV of his dreams. Well, not quite. He scaled down a bit in size for my sake. He really wanted the 60something" TV but knew I'd be all huffy about the ostentatious size and ridiculous price tag, not that our TV was cheap. But I tell you, the pure joy dancing in my husbands eyes as he gently removed the new precious TV from its box, the giddy glee as he asked me for the 156th time "Isn't the new TV great?", his gentle tutelage of our boys as they began their training as future gadget geeks, makes every penny we spent on the TV worth it in my opinion. And yeah, turning out all the lights and pretending we're all at the movie theatre is pretty cool too.
And so, the following is dedicated to my man and his new gigantic TV:
My husband has always been a new-fangled gadget guy. He loves having the newest, latest, fastest, biggest electronic doo-dad. But the last 5 and a half years of parenthood has matured him to a gadget window-shopper forced to wait and save until we can afford the latest gizmo giving him palpitations (poor man recently found out there's a new bigger iPod and is forced to suffer through life with his puney 80 gigs).
I had already agreed that when we sold our condo we'd use some of the proceeds to buy a new ginormous LCD TV. And so it was with great delight that while we were out buying new living room furniture (an absolute necessity) my dearest husband bought the TV of his dreams. Well, not quite. He scaled down a bit in size for my sake. He really wanted the 60something" TV but knew I'd be all huffy about the ostentatious size and ridiculous price tag, not that our TV was cheap. But I tell you, the pure joy dancing in my husbands eyes as he gently removed the new precious TV from its box, the giddy glee as he asked me for the 156th time "Isn't the new TV great?", his gentle tutelage of our boys as they began their training as future gadget geeks, makes every penny we spent on the TV worth it in my opinion. And yeah, turning out all the lights and pretending we're all at the movie theatre is pretty cool too.
And so, the following is dedicated to my man and his new gigantic TV:
Monday, March 3, 2008
Ah Crud!
So I thought I'd get into blogging, I mean really get into blogging, and join the NaBloPoMo challenge of writing a blog post every day for a month. Yeah, it seemed a bit much but I felt I was up to the challenge. I signed up and registered my blog as a post a day for March participant. Heck, I figured I could at least try. See just how big my creative cahonies are.
Well apparently my cahonies are shriveled nuggets that I seem to have forgotten at the bottom of the diaper bag 'cause it's March 3rd, three days into the challenge, and I totally forgot about it and have not written a blasted post all month. Bah!
And now I am left with having to look back over the last 3 days and examine just what the heck I was so busy doing that I didn't put together 2 other blog posts... laundry, grocery shopping, cleaning the floors, playing video games, driving monkey children here and there, complaining that I'm too sleepy, going on a family hike, fantasizing what I'd do if I won the $1000 a week prize on my scratch and win lottery ticket.
Well apparently my cahonies are shriveled nuggets that I seem to have forgotten at the bottom of the diaper bag 'cause it's March 3rd, three days into the challenge, and I totally forgot about it and have not written a blasted post all month. Bah!
And now I am left with having to look back over the last 3 days and examine just what the heck I was so busy doing that I didn't put together 2 other blog posts... laundry, grocery shopping, cleaning the floors, playing video games, driving monkey children here and there, complaining that I'm too sleepy, going on a family hike, fantasizing what I'd do if I won the $1000 a week prize on my scratch and win lottery ticket.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
5 Year Old Wii Trash Talk
Says Al to his animated video game opponent:
"You're going down like a skunk in a stinky truck!"
"You're going down like a skunk in a stinky truck!"
Friday, February 29, 2008
The Old School Dilema
This week was school registration week here. And it of course got me all in a twitter.
Currently, Al is enrolled in the French Immersion Kindergarten. Before moving to Vernon, Al had been attending Vancouver's public Montessori school and we loved it. But the public Montessori doesn’t start here until grade 1, so we had some deciding to do re. schooling. And ultimately we decided to take our first tentative steps into "regular" public school and try out French Immersion. I am so far unimpressed.
I'll be the first to admit I've got some real issues when it comes to schooling and educating my kids. Let's blame it on my own childhood trauma. My sad little story of childhood whoa is pretty unremarkable, common even. I went through several grades with an undiagnosed learning disability. And by the time I was officially tested and diagnosed with a learning disability I'd heard that I was either slow or lazy from too many adults and I'd given up. I became a huge advocate that school sucked. The day I graduated from high school was one of the happiest of my life, not for the accomplishment, but because it meant I'd never ever have to go back. I hated school.
Now I'm the grownup, and it's my kids reaching school age, and I of course spend hours upon hours weighing the pros and cons of every educational option. Probably not the healthiest of approaches but I am what I am.
So, no we're not happy with our French Immersion Kindergarten choice. It's great that Al's getting some exposure to the French language, but all in all, he's not getting a whole heck of a lot out of it. Al of course loves the movies that he gets to watch sometimes in the 2 and a half hour class, like Dora in French (!) and an animated version of the beloved book Corduroy (a bedtime favourite here for years, but I guess his teacher would rather show the movie), but he complains that class is boring, that the teacher talks too much, that the other kids are always disturbing his projects, that he feels frustrated when the teacher ends reading time too soon. And the French seems to be more annoying to him than anything else. Like it gets in the way of getting the information he really wants.
The end result of all this is that we're taking Al out of French Immersion come grade 1 and were putting him back into public Montessori school. It'll be a much better fit for him, and hopefully I'll be able to relax for a few years before I start to obsess over his future high school choices.
Currently, Al is enrolled in the French Immersion Kindergarten. Before moving to Vernon, Al had been attending Vancouver's public Montessori school and we loved it. But the public Montessori doesn’t start here until grade 1, so we had some deciding to do re. schooling. And ultimately we decided to take our first tentative steps into "regular" public school and try out French Immersion. I am so far unimpressed.
I'll be the first to admit I've got some real issues when it comes to schooling and educating my kids. Let's blame it on my own childhood trauma. My sad little story of childhood whoa is pretty unremarkable, common even. I went through several grades with an undiagnosed learning disability. And by the time I was officially tested and diagnosed with a learning disability I'd heard that I was either slow or lazy from too many adults and I'd given up. I became a huge advocate that school sucked. The day I graduated from high school was one of the happiest of my life, not for the accomplishment, but because it meant I'd never ever have to go back. I hated school.
Now I'm the grownup, and it's my kids reaching school age, and I of course spend hours upon hours weighing the pros and cons of every educational option. Probably not the healthiest of approaches but I am what I am.
So, no we're not happy with our French Immersion Kindergarten choice. It's great that Al's getting some exposure to the French language, but all in all, he's not getting a whole heck of a lot out of it. Al of course loves the movies that he gets to watch sometimes in the 2 and a half hour class, like Dora in French (!) and an animated version of the beloved book Corduroy (a bedtime favourite here for years, but I guess his teacher would rather show the movie), but he complains that class is boring, that the teacher talks too much, that the other kids are always disturbing his projects, that he feels frustrated when the teacher ends reading time too soon. And the French seems to be more annoying to him than anything else. Like it gets in the way of getting the information he really wants.
The end result of all this is that we're taking Al out of French Immersion come grade 1 and were putting him back into public Montessori school. It'll be a much better fit for him, and hopefully I'll be able to relax for a few years before I start to obsess over his future high school choices.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
There's No Place Like Home
I often forget that people actually read this blog. That there are people out there who want a sort of conclusion to events. So to satisfy those of you who have been asking what's happening with our house hunt, it's been postponed.
We did put an offer on a very sweet little house a week or so ago but it fell through because the seller didn't want us to have the qualifier that our townhouse had to be sold before we officially bought their house (we own a yet-to-be-completed townhouse in Vancouver and are now selling the yet-to-be-an-actual townhouse, ain't real estate grand?!?). So after talking to the major players in our confusing and dizzying real estate interests we decided to just call the whole thing off until the town house is actually sold and money is in the bank. It'll all be a whole lot less stressful and scary that way.
It sucks to wait though. I'm no good at waiting. I become paranoid and imagine future scenarios where all the good houses are sold and by the time we're ready to buy all that'll be left on the market will be mobile homes and a darkened fixer-upper wreaking of cat pee and stale tea formally owned by some cranky old shut in who died watching TV. Yes, I'm obsessing.
So now I wait. Wait for someone to buy my piece of paper that says they get to buy a Vancouver townhouse whenever it is that they finish building the darned thing (again, ain't real estate a hoot?!?). Wait for the right house to come along. Wait, wait, wait... and try not to obsessively go through the real estate listings looking for proof that our perfectly wonderful family home has been scooped up by some other lucky couple and we are now relegated to living in milk cartons.
We did put an offer on a very sweet little house a week or so ago but it fell through because the seller didn't want us to have the qualifier that our townhouse had to be sold before we officially bought their house (we own a yet-to-be-completed townhouse in Vancouver and are now selling the yet-to-be-an-actual townhouse, ain't real estate grand?!?). So after talking to the major players in our confusing and dizzying real estate interests we decided to just call the whole thing off until the town house is actually sold and money is in the bank. It'll all be a whole lot less stressful and scary that way.
It sucks to wait though. I'm no good at waiting. I become paranoid and imagine future scenarios where all the good houses are sold and by the time we're ready to buy all that'll be left on the market will be mobile homes and a darkened fixer-upper wreaking of cat pee and stale tea formally owned by some cranky old shut in who died watching TV. Yes, I'm obsessing.
So now I wait. Wait for someone to buy my piece of paper that says they get to buy a Vancouver townhouse whenever it is that they finish building the darned thing (again, ain't real estate a hoot?!?). Wait for the right house to come along. Wait, wait, wait... and try not to obsessively go through the real estate listings looking for proof that our perfectly wonderful family home has been scooped up by some other lucky couple and we are now relegated to living in milk cartons.
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