Family Day

I had Monday off work, so we took advantage of the nice weather and went tobogganing with the Ganchars, Erica and Josh, my Parents, Sam, and Ben. It was Emma's first time on the slopes and she took to it well the first few times we went down, calmly saying "Do again" every time we got to the bottom of the hill. It wasn't until some of the Moms started taking turns that she got a little nervous. I think the screaming led her to believe that maybe this activity was more dangerous than she initially thought. We stayed out there all morning and well into nap time. The weather was nice enough to stay out all day, but kids at this age have to eat and sleep roughly every 5 hours, so we headed home. I was headed for the hurt locker anyways, not enough soft landings from my amazing aerials.

Science Fiction Theatre

A version of Emma from another dimension visited our home a while back. She told Emma that where she lives, bedtimes are only for prisoners, and the only food they ever eat for supper is cookies. We managed to grab a picture of the intruder before we sent her away, but needless to say, our Emma hasn't been the same since.

New Skills

Emma continues to amaze us with her balling abilities. The accuracy and power of her throwing arm has always been good, but it gets better each day, and she's letting fewer and fewer balls hit the ground when she's catching. The past couple days she's taken up dribbling her backyardigans ball around the kitchen, and she's usually good for three or four bounces before she loses control. Her newest trick is palming her orange ball as she walks around the house, as the picture shows. It wasn't a trick we taught her either, just something she must have seen on the highlight reel one night. When we're playing together, she usually requests that I spin the ball on my finger, which is my only basketball skill, and then she tries to duplicate the maneuver. She hasn't come close yet, but that's alright, I'd like her to be at least two before she's better than me at everything.

Valentoon

When I came home from work today, Emma presented me with a card for Valentines Day. The ceremony was brief, as she had a lot of other things to do right then, but it was appreciated nonetheless. Here is a romantic comic for those who didn't get a card this year.

Heated Debate

Due to the cold weather we've been having lately, it didn't take us long to realize that our furnace quit working yesterday. I know a thing or two about HVAC systems, but I'm no expert, so I decided to call one to come and deliver us from our plight. The fellow on the phone seemed really sympathetic and eager to help us out, and within 20 minutes, had someone standing on our doorstep, tools in hand. He quickly diagnosed the problem, our igniter needed replacing, and then he quickly replaced the part and got our heat up and running again. It was so quick, in fact, that I was a little taken aback when he wanted to charge us $390 for the job. The part itself cost $157, and then the rest consisted of labour and the new 6% GST. $210 dollars in labour for 15 minutes of work sounded to me like highway robbery, even though I've never actually been robbed on the highway.

I was given a bevy of reasons for the high cost, ranging from it being a holiday (which holiday it was, is either not recognized in our country, or not in our current dispensation anymore) to the rising cost of houses in Calgary, which seem to have hit the repairman industry the hardest. After some disputing and after being hung-up on twice by the same guy who was so cordial on the phone the first go around, I decided to give in and pay the outlandish fee. All I can say now is, I'm in the wrong business. $840 an hour sounds like a kings ransom compared to what I'm pulling down.

Axis and Allies

Ever since a previous post about a game of Axis and Allies that my brother and I played over new years, my arch nemesis D from "Our Sesame Seed" has been noising threats about how badly he would stomp me in a match, if we ever found ourselves in the proper arena for playing one. It seemed to me like the game was the obvious next step in the natural progression of our ongoing blood feud, but as he's been hiding in Ottawa for the past few years, it didn't seem likely that the opportunity would ever present itself. Thanks to the marvels of modern technology however, the solution presented itself. D found a computer version that you can play online or via e-mail, and after some quick (and free) downloads, the battle commenced.

We decided on the e-mail version as neither of us really had time to sit and play out an entire game, especially with the 2 hour time zone difference. The e-mail version presented it's own series of challenges though, as game play was drastically altered by the fact that the attacker now got to choose which of the defenders units would become casualties. After some debating back and forth about how we should handle this loophole, it was decided that it actually made the battle scenarios more realistic and added an interesting dynamic to the strategic element of the game.

I played the Axis and D played the Allies, and as history has a habit of repeating itself, the Axis was defeated. I tip my hat to my conqueror and his endless barrage of deadly salvos, but I think the game is a bit slanted towards the Allies anyways. The whole thing lasted about a week of emailing back and forth, which seems to be just long enough to become addicted, so I'm sure we'll be scheduling a rematch soon, hopefully adding more players to the mix as we do. If anyone out there in cyberspace is interested in signing up for a game, let us know, no blood feud experience is required.

Dancing and Swimming

Emma's really been dancing a lot lately, even when there's no music playing. This past Wednesday, we were headed out to Grandma and Grandpa Bourne's house and she was standing in front of our full-length mirror, her favourite spot in the house. As I was walking by, I said, "Is there anything else we need to do before we go?" Then she said, "How 'bout this?" and broke out into a goofy little dance routine, laughing at herself in the mirror. It was hilarious.

Emma and I went to the Northland Leisure Centre with Kimberly, Kelly and Dan. I believe that was her first time swimming - she's been to the splash park, but not to the swimming pool. She LOVED it! We went down the toddler slide a few times, then played in the shallow end of the big pool when the waves came on. Before we left, we made sure we spent some time in the hot tub, where she laid her head back on my shoulder and floated on the water in front of me, totally relaxed, even her arms were floating. There was a basketball net near the hot tubs that Emma noticed right away, so she spent a lot of the time watching people play. On our way out, I let her play basketball for a few minutes, but it was getting late so we didn't stay long. I wish Mike could have been there, but he was busy that day working on a house rendering for a friend of his. We'll have to go swimming as a family sometime soon.

Visitors from Afar

I have a feature installed on my website that tells me where in the world people are visiting our blog from. This is the map it generated for the month of January. The big blob represents Calgary, as that is naturally where we get most of our visits from, but it's interesting to see that we do get visits from across the nation as well as from the United States. I can usually narrow it down to who the visitor is from the location given, but some have me stumped. I chalk those ones up to folks who link from other friends websites, or people accidentally finding our blog through some kind of search on awesomeness.

The feature tells me a couple other things as well, like how many visits I get in a day, how many of those visits are new visitors compared to returning visitors, and all credit card information and passwords of those who visit. Just a little joke there, I could tell by your expressions that you were a bit worried for a second, oh yeah the feature also allows me to see you.

Once There Was a Snowman

When we came home from Church today, I noticed that the snow on our lawn was perfect for some serious snowman constructioneering. Emma never turns down a chance to play in the snow, so we changed out of our Sunday clothes, and from the white dust of the Earth, created a snowman. He's probably not the handsomest fellow on the block, but he may be the biggest. We had to enlist some help from Mom (the real brawn of the family) to lift his torso onto his....I don't know what to call the bottom bit, it's not a thorax, it's a globular representation of legs I suppose. Maybe we could get some input from readers on what the bottom bit of a snowman is, or should, be called. I don't know if you can tell, but we tried to fashion him in the image of that snowman from Rudolph. We need some practice I guess, this is our first family snowman after all.

Family Doodle

I came home from work on Friday and Tammy had taped a big sheet of paper onto the dining room table for Emma to colour on. We sat down for dinner shortly after and it turned into a family doodle session. The picture doesn't really capture its brilliance, but this is the end result nonetheless.