Christmas Parties 2006

We held the traditional Bourne Family Christmas party on the 16th at the East Stake center. The event was again hosted by Graham and Leah. All the Calgary chapters of the Bournes and Jones were there as well as some Quists and a couple Spackman's. The Ganchar's couldn't make it due to illnesses, which was a bit of a bummer as they're the only ones with kids old enough (or young enough) to participate in a lot of the planned activities. Another damper on the day was the curtain in the gym being locked, so we could not enjoy the whole nasium for the games of skill. Nevertheless we had our food, folks and fun. As usual, we played the pie plate game for our gift exchange and, of course, had the festive pinata for the kids. After everyone Josh and younger had their chance gently poking and prodding the pinata with the stick, it was my cousin Kimmy, who is 10 and the only child in attendance younger than 16 but older than 2, who finally felled the beast. She nearly killed off half of her ancestors in the process, and she would have done it blindfolded. There was a plan to have one of those inflatable castles that you can bounce around in, but due to the lack of kids, it was cancelled. We ended off the night playing dodge ball and shooting some hoops "Bourne style", which means most shots ended up in the punch bowl. Fun times were had and it was great to see everyone together again.

The Ward Christmas party was held on the 8th up at the Chapel in Panorama. The food was worth the wait, Santa came and Emma got some goodies off him, and a program followed dinner. I believe the theme of the program was Christmas around the world and thus the Young men and their leaders were called upon to sing "Six White Boomers". It's a long song that should be sung with energy, and no one sings long songs with more energy than boys age 12-18, so naturally they were the perfect choice. It's good for them though. On a side note, our Stake was also responsible for the Nativity Pageant down at Heritage Park this year, so a lot of our Ward members were involved on some level in that production, including some of our youth. I always wanted to be in that when I was a kid, but we were a bit busy this year, so maybe another time. This was probably the last Christmas party we'll have in this Ward, as we'll hopefully be in Carstairs by next Christmas. It was fun and we really enjoy the people of Coventry.

As far as the Work Christmas party goes, we had the afternoon of Friday the 22nd off so we could head to the Crossfield Community Center for some beef on a bun and a raffle of prizes donated by all our suppliers and sub-trades. I ended up walking away with a $50 gift certificate to The Keg, which I'm excited about as I've never been there before. I don't know how I'm going to eat $50 worth of steak though. I got a bit of a chuckle out of our gift bags that were handed out as we left. I'm not big on company gift bags as they usually contain some fancy bottle of alcohol, or some specialty coffee, or a bunch of weird cheese. I was pleasantly surprised though, as our bags contained a 2L bottle of CO-OP brand ginger ale, CO-OP brand coffee, CO-OP brand chips, a small jar of Cheese Whiz, and various other items from the local grocery store. It was a nice gesture but I think they should have just spent the money on one nice thing, like plumbing facilities in the office.

Photo Shoot

Tammy and her older sisters believed it would be a great idea to get a portrait taken of all the Grandchildren on the Olsen side for Christmas this year. There's seven of them all together and five of those are under three years old, so you can imagine how well it went. The poor girl who worked there, I think she quit after we left. Anyways, this is the best we got which is surprisingly not that bad. I think of the old days when you had to sit still for a long time while someone took your picture and I wonder how parents did it then. The fact that no one is ever smiling in those pictures might offer some explanation though.

December Mutual Activities

Last month we decided to have combined activities every Thursday for the Young Men and the Young Women, each with a Christmas theme in mind. The first week we played Christmas Carol Pictionary up at the church. The name of the game is to try and draw the title of a selected Christmas Carol and have your team guess it before your opponents do the same. You don't get the full points however, until your team sings the Carol. It was fun and competitive, but I don't think we discovered any future Norman Rockwell's, or Pavarate's for that matter.

Week two we went out to see the Airdrie Festival of Lights. Tammy and Emma came on that one, as did most of the leaders kids. I don't think the youth were as impressed with the Christmas light displays as the youngens were, but there was skating, hot chocolate, singing, and camel rides for all to enjoy. I don't think anyone went on the camel ride though, it was $10 for a once around in a tiny fenced-in area, and I didn't trust the look of him anyways.

Week three we had all the youth bring plates of cookies to the church and we split up into groups and delivered them, with a song, to some of the less active members in our ward. Most weren't home but the ones we caught seemed to appreciate the gesture.

The last week of the month we had our activity on the Friday night down at my second counselor's workplace. There's a huge room upstairs with a large presentation screen that we hooked up an Xbox to, so the kids could play some bishopric approved video games. We ordered a bunch of pizza, had chips and pop, and the Young Women's President brought a birthday cake for everyone who had a birthday for that month, which were quite a few. My first counselor and I spent the whole night playing a rematch game of Risk with a couple of the youth, but as most Risk games go, we didn't have time to really finish it. Needless to say, I would have won. I guess that activity wasn't really a Christmas party so much as it was an end of the year, blow the rest of the budget party.

The Young Men always have great numbers for attendance in our ward, and one of our deacons accepted the challenge to bring out our one less active boy, who's been coming ever since. The young women struggle a lot more, but I think these joint activities have really helped a lot of them gel a bit better with the whole group. The end of the year party saw almost every young woman out, which never happens, so some good did come of it all. I continue to enjoy my calling, as busy as it gets sometimes, and it's been a real pleasure getting to know all the young people in our ward.

Going Public

I've decided that the whole idea of allowing limited access to this site is a bit of a hassle, so I've gone and made the site available to anyone in cyberspace. Most readers from the old site don't even know this site exists yet, but a few bulk e-mails should help clear that up.

The Best of Comments

One of our readers brought up a good point about us losing all the comments that had been left on the old site when we switched to this new one, so I'm going to post up my favorites.

Derek - 10 March 2006 4:35PM

I love your site, it's a real winner! I can only aspire to the standard that you've set!

Derek - 28 May 2006 12:20PM

Once again your site has broken the mold! Top Drawer! Brilliant!

Derek - 19 June 2006 11:23PM

Your site is the reason the Internet was created! All hail the King of Blogs!

Fantastic. We hope that this new site continues to be as popular as the old one, and that the comments continue to flow, so feel free to leave a note whenever you visit.

House Plans

Here are the preliminary plans I've been working on for the house we're planning to build in Carstairs this year. I'm going to do some elevations and possibly a rendering soon, but I don't imagine it's going to look much different than any other house on the block. The important thing for us is that it is functional. The architectural controls really dictate what you can and can't do, but we managed to incorporate some key features into the floor plan that we're pretty excited about.

Test

This is a test entry. I'm just fiddling with settings, trying to see what this blogger is made of. I plan to move a lot of the content from my old logisity site to this new one in a "best of" sort of format. Once that's over with, I'll be starting up again with the fresh stuff. This isn't going to be as public a website as logisity was. I'm going to limit the viewing of this website to close family and friends only. If you're reading this now, congratulations on being one of the chosen ones.

Dance Police

It was our Wards turn to chaperone the youth dance this past Saturday night, and with me being the Young Men's President, it was my duty to take charge of the recruiting and the refreshments. We got enough people, despite several last minute cancellations, and I bought $75 worth of Timbits, which will get you 15 boxes of 40. There was nowhere near that many kids there, in fact it was quite sparse compared to the glory days of old, when the running man ruled the floors. I guess that's why they've decided to discontinue weekly youth dances as of January 2007. Instead there will now be a monthly "Multi-Stake Youth Activity" which may or may not end up being a dance. Disco Dan Glenn was the DJ that night, so Kelly came along, and we ran into my sister Sam and Tammy's sister Kimberly who are both youth dance age. I spent most of my time in the coat check room doing stand-up comedy for the kids checking their tiny coats and giant purses, but I did manage to sneak away and dance the last two slow songs with Tammy. Disco Dan dedicated the last song to us, though I can't remember what it was. It wasn't what we requested anyways, I guess he left his Slayer albums in the car.

Blackhawks Down

One of the consultants we work with has season tickets to the Flames and passed a couple along to the office a while back. Since all the other office staff were already going to the game, Paul and I got to take the tickets. Our seats were about 7 rows up from the ice, in the friends and families section, so we had a pretty decent view of the action. Flames played the Chicago Blackhawks and beat them 4-1.

Croup

Emma woke up with a couple coughs around midnight on Monday, and quickly began having serious troubles breathing. It was a little scary for all of us as she was making horrible gasping noises each time she breathed in. She was crying, which only made it worse, so we put on some "Dora" to help take her mind off it and as she calmed down, her breathing started to get a bit better. To make a long story short, after a call to "Health Link" and a trip to the Children's Hospital, she was diagnosed with the croup and given a dose of steroids to help clear it up. When they first told us it was croup, I thought "What is this, Anne of Green Gables? Who's getting croup nowadays?" But I guess it's more common than I thought. They say cold air is good for croup and if you recall it was about -40C Monday night with the wind chill, too much of a good thing for my liking. We finally got her home and settled around 4:30am, not bad for a hospital visit, but still too late for me to want to attempt going work the next day. She's been pretty good ever since, a little cranky about eating and going to bed, but generally she remains her goofy self. Today things went a bit south however, she's been throwing-up and filling diapers like there's major prizes to be won. Doctors say it's a virus (do they ever say anything else?), and it's all part of the croup. Poor little girl, it makes me nervous when she gets this sick, I hope she gets better immediately.