I’m nearing the end of my second week of not going to work. Some people refer to that as a “vacation”, but I have some thoughts on that subject that I’ll save for later this week. All in all, it’s been a pretty busy time, with lots of time spent in the car traveling to exotic locales. To summarize, we:

- visited with Grandpa, Grandma, Lindsay, Riannon, and Meillyn in Ancaster

- attended my nephew Ian’s first birthday party in Kitchener

- watched a big boat travel excrutiatingly slowly through the Welland canal

- spent some time in Niagara-on-the-Lake and decided it would be a great place to live someday (which I consider some undefined future point, and which B considers tomorrow)

- enjoyed quick but meaningful visits with Evan, Ed, Cristina (x2), Patrick, Mark, and Miss

- took the GO train to Toronto and rode the subway

- checked out the dinosaurs and mummies at the ROM

- hiked to Webster’s and Tew’s falls

- went bowling, where I again failed to break 200, causing me to question the value of the 10 years of Saturday mornings I spent at the bowling alley in my youth

- picked fresh vegetables in Gerry and Claudette’s awesome garden

Rather than bore you with the details (if you’re not already there yet), here are a few pictures from the past couple of weeks.

My nephew Ian at his first birthday party. Just looking at this picture makes me start thinking that having a third boy wouldn’t be the end of the world.

A going all medieval at the ROM.

K playing with his Cars toy at his Cars table.

A is the picture of concentration as he tries to master the drum part to Weezer’s Buddy Holly.

]]> http://dearlove.ca/2008/08/20/back-to-our-regularly-scheduled-programming-2/feed/ 0 The Dearlove http://dearlove.ca/2008/02/04/the-wife/ http://dearlove.ca/2008/02/04/the-wife/#comments Tue, 05 Feb 2008 01:59:52 +0000 The Dearlove http://dearlovequartet.wordpress.com/?p=208 Continue reading →]]> B commented the other night that you wouldn’t know she exists by reading my blog. I think she must have missed the 51 previous posts that include at least some mention of her, but in any case, I thought I should devote an entire post to her to make up for any perceived shortcomings on my end.

You know those long-running sitcoms that have two characters who drive you crazy by taking years to finally get together? That was us. We both liked each other for a long time, but circumstances (i.e. other relationships) stood in the way. Eventually we were single, and I started to find ways of getting to spend time with her, including signing up to play in an amateur production of The Music Man (the infamous farting flutist version [EDIT: B asked me to clarify that it wasn't her who farted. She doesn't do that.]). After six months of chickening out, I finally found the nerve to kiss her, and that was all she wrote.

Just six short years later we got married. I wanted to do it much sooner, but B wanted to wait until she was 28, which she considered to be the perfect marrying age.

Over the past few years, our duo became a trio and then a quartet. B was amazing during labour and delivery – you should have seen her in action. Actually, that probably wouldn’t have been good for anyone, but take my word for it, she has the birthing thing down. How many women have woken up at midnight, gone to the hospital to have a baby, and then been back at home by 8:00 am with a new baby and take-out from McDonald’s?

I could go on and on, but my battery is running low. I’ll leave you with a photo I took of B at Winterlude on Sunday morning. She always looks good in pictures, but this is one of those really good ones. Ciao.

A seems to be picking up a lot of information from his friends at school, which has resulted in some interesting questions at the dinner table lately.

“Dad, have you heard of Punta Cana?”

“Dad, have you heard of the Nintendo Wii?”

“Dad, have you ever seen R2-D2?”

“Dad, can we buy a Mercedes?”

“Dad, what’s a bikini?”

This morning, with no prompting whatsoever, he said “Dad, boys don’t have boobs.”. I almost choked on my Cheerios.

It’s hard to keep a straight face at some of his comments. The other night, in the middle of a huge temper tantrum, A repeatedly yelled “This is the worst night of my life!”. B and I both got the giggles, which was not the reaction A was hoping for.

K has his moments, too. The other day, as he was sitting on the toilet, he looked me in the eye and said “Poop is my friend”. I was left speechless.

In all seriousness, I love how inquisitive children are at this age.  They are just so curious about how everything works, and you can see their little brains working overtime to figure things out.

I’ll leave you with a picture of the boys that was taken earlier today at Winterlude.

There are times I regret not having a machine in my house. I have never punched a hooker (Grand Theft Auto III), tortured a prisoner (Manhunt 2), scored the winning touchdown (Madden NFL), designed clothes for a girl (Barbie Fashion Show), or raised a family (The Sims). Actually, I guess I have raised a family, although something tells me the video game version is a lot easier than the real life version.

Over the holidays, I had the opportunity to try my hand at Guitar Hero 3, a little-known video game that was recently released without fanfare. It was awesome. After the first ten minutes, I was immediately reminded of the first time I tried cocaine – that feeling of euphoria, hyperactivity, and gnawing paranoia.

The amazing thing about the game is you get the sense you’re actually playing guitar. Of course, that’s ridiculous, as it takes at least an hour to learn how to play a real guitar while you can be up and running in just five minutes with GH3 (that’s what the cool kids call it). Guitar makers should take note, though, that brightly coloured buttons are much easier to use than those pesky strings and frets.

I would love to play GH3 again, but it would cost about $600 for an Xbox, the game, and two controllers. Call me old-fashioned, but for that kind of money, I think I prefer the real thing.

Rather than regale y’all with tales from the road, I thought I’d post a few pictures from the past few days.

Yesterday, however, a miracle happened. It snowed and snowed and snowed, and the world was forced to slow down. I have this romantic notion that yesterday’s storm changed us from stressed-out consumers to blissed-out children, at least for one day. I marveled at the height of the snowbank in front of our house and loved seeing people ski down our little street. I pulled Aidan around the neighbourhood on a sled over roads that were otherwise unusable, and was thankful for the chance to share the experience with him.

So far, December has been a nice throwback to the winters of my youth, or at least the way I pictured them through young eyes. Sure, driving hasn’t been fun at times, and my back seized up a few times today after I strained it while shoveling the driveway, but I feel so, well, Canadian. Recent winters have been characterized by a remarkable absence of snow and drama, so it’s nice to be reminded of the unforgiving environment that our founding fathers (and mothers) braved when they chose to settle here. There’s the feeling that we’re witnessing something special, a once-every-thirty-years kind of winter that people will talk about for years to come. Come on, Mother Nature, show us what ya got.

I’ll leave you with a couple of pictures of Aidan. In this one, he’s almost hidden by our little snow mountain.

Here’s my little sherpa perched on top of our personal Matterhorn.

Aidan has become a voracious reader. In the past couple of weeks he’s started sounding out lots of words, and he really enjoys sitting down with books and reading to Kieran and me. We already have plans to get him ready for the Scripps National Spelling Bee in 2014. He’s struggling with ‘epidemiology’, but I know he’ll get it soon.

In the past week, Aidan has also had three timeouts for hitting other children. We’re kind of surprised at this development, as he hasn’t really exhibited much aggressive behaviour at home. I’m starting to think it wasn’t the best parenting decision to let him watch WWE’s Survivor Series pay per view, but he really really really wanted to see Batista take on the Undertaker in the Hell in a Cell match. If he tries to chokeslam someone on the playground this week, then I’ll know who to blame.

Aidan came home with his class photos last week, and he looks really cute. I won’t post the pics here as some of you may get one for Christmas and I don’t want to spoil the surprise. I can tell you that he looks remarkably like the adorable kid in the photo below.

O.K., here’s the real Aidan helping me dig out of this week’s blizzard. Check out our three-foot tall snowbank.

Kieran has a new favourite food – he can’t get enough farfalle, or bow tie pasta. He’s having some trouble with the name, though. Instead of bow tie pasta, he asks for “tae bo pasta”. I guess I should be thankful that he’s eating something. His diet consists mainly of Cheerios and bread. God forbid a piece of meat, fruit or vegetable should pass by his lips…

I love our Dairy Queen. It’s been a Manor Park fixture for more than 40 years, and comes complete with a big old-school neon sign. On hot summer nights, it’s usually packed with kids getting a treat after soccer practice. Since the adult video store, the pawn shop, and the bingo hall vacated the strip mall around the corner, the DQ has become my favourite part of the neighbourhood.

Usually I’m on tour when the DQ closes, so I was determined not to miss this year’s final day. On Sunday night, with the temperature hovering around zero, we bundled up the boys and went for our last fix until March. As you can see in the photo below, Kieran really enjoyed his ice cream cone.

While I’m at it, here’s another picture of Kieran, which was taken during Saturday’s Santa Claus parade. Yeah, he’s a cutie.

Personally, I think the Thomas toys are great. I’ve been building tracks for the boys for several years now, and there are times that think I’m doing it more for me than for them. So, when we found out the actual Thomas the Tank Engine was coming to Ottawa, it was a no-brainer that we’d get tickets.

Yesterday’s event was actually pretty cool. As you’ll see in the picture below, there was an acutual train engine that looks like Thomas, complete with a steam whistle and moving eyes. There were six coaches for passengers, and the train left each hour for a 25-minute trip. The only disappointing part was the route – the trainyards are in a pretty industrial part of town, so the view out the window was mostly of strip malls and distribution centres.  Regardless, the boys loved it. In addition to the ride, there were train sets to play with, inflatable play structures, singers, a magician, clowns, movies, and of course a huge retail section that sold everthing from railway sets to Thomas toothbrushes.

According to the local paper, about 16,000 people were expected to attend the four-day event. At $18 a pop, Thomas will probably need an extra coach to haul all that money back to the Island of Sodor.

The boys look like they’re in danger of being run over by a maniacal train.

The boys with Sir Topham Hatt, the dictatorial ruler of the train system. Incidentally, he was originally known as the Fat Controller.

I think some people were pretty surprised to see a giant blue engine pulling coaches through the suburbs.