Monthly Archives: October 2007

So, I was wandering through Facebook, and noticed that Heff has a web site selling his latest CD!  Heff is an amazing guitar player and  friend of my brother Joe, who we were lucky enough to have play at our wedding (on really short notice too).  Paula and I got to see him live in concert this summer and it was great! He is definitely worth seeing if you get the chance!

Anyways, for a selection of neat music like no one else, try Heff.

P.S. Sorry to those who noticed that I missed posting the web site address. It is now attached. Continue reading →

Willard Wigan’s work has been called the “eighth wonder of the world”. I don’t know if I’d go that far, but it’s pretty incredible. His subject matter has ranged from the Wizard of Oz characters pictured above to Marilyn Monroe on a diamond, Rhodan’s Thinker on the head of a pin, or, recently, the iconic Lloyd’s of London building on a pinhead. This last item was sold for 94,000 pounds! I wonder what that would work out to dollars to weight of the art… His work is scheduled to begin touring the UK this month with the USA and Canada next on the agenda. Viewers use a microscope to properly see his work!

Check it out…http://www.willard-wigan.com/ Continue reading →

So, around this time of year, family starts asking what the kids or us want for Christmas. So, in an effort to provide a better answer than “I don’t know” or “I haven’t thought about it”, we started throwing a few ideas out there. There is a link on the left menu for “Family Christmas lists” and we will try to update it as we think of things… Please keep in mind that these are just meant as helpful suggestions, and we are definitely not trying to say anything like “you need to get this”, but rather “if you need suggestions, here are a few”. In the end, just go with your heart.

Of course all we really want is a happy time with happy family (and maybe to sleep in a little). Continue reading →

Last weekend, Mark and I decided to put up our Christmas tree. Well, treeS to be more specific. We put two trees up on the ledge above the door where Emma can look at them, but not get into them. She loves them! She immediately learned the word “tree” and says it constantly as she looks at them with amazement and wonder. She also says “cute” and “pretty” alot in regards to the trees. She has no idea what Christmas is. No clue as to the religious significance — not that there is any at our house. No inkling as to the materialistic insanity it has become in a culture full of unfulfilled people on a quest for more, more, always more. No idea about Santa, or the lack thereof, or the great conspiracy of all adults to pull a fast one on the little ones all for the sake of buying more and more, to get them even more excited about an occassion filled with sugar and long nights. No thoughts of the love or familial association linked to the occassion — the visits, the shared cocoa, the sled rides, the going to the zoo to look at the lights, the hugs, the relatives from out of town. All she sees is pretty trees. Can you imagine??? Erma Bombeck said “There’s nothing sadder than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.”. I’m sure Emma will be ecstatic when she realizes there is more to it than the trees, she loves just the trees so much. I can’t wait for Christmas!

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This won’t be released until after Christmas though…maybe a pre order would be best! The world’s coolest pepper grinder. Comes in two colors, blue/white classic edition (R2D2) or black/gold edition (R2Q5). My favorite part is the illustration showing you how to use a pepper grinder, in case you’re completely incompetent and are unsure how the device operates, I guess. Marketing geniuses, I tell you! Maybe we’ll get both of them and put different pepper corns in each…

http://mgrsti3030s.seamlesstech.biz/templates/frmTemplateR.asp?CatalogID=14149&SearchYN=N&subFolderID=177 Continue reading →

While the thanksgiving turkey was cooking, we headed outside to Grandma and Grampa’s side walk for some chalk expression. Grandma and Emma drew beautiful clouds, sunshine and flowers. Kris drew…a demon. Oh, teenagers! Continue reading →

Every day we go to the park across the street. There’s no play ground there, just a big green area with hills, trees, bushes, a stream (when there’s water) and usually a bunch of people. Last night we saw seven different dogs at the park! We’ve noticed this strange sort of neighbourhood subculture that has developed at our favorite park. Dog owners, dogs and, well, us. Dogless. At least we don’t have to run after Emma with a bag of poop in our hands like the other adults at the park do. There’s rarely any other children there, just Emma and her band of happy puppies who stop to lick her, show their bellies to her, and let her pet them with loving eyes. Maybe we’ll never have to get a dog of our own! Maybe, just maybe, my shoes are safe!

We’re learning everyone’s names…Mason, Zoom, no idea what their owner’s names are. Just as I’m sure they have no idea that Mark and I actually have names. You just hear resounding “There’s Emma” calls when we arrive for our daily stroll. This one time it was just Emma and I out for a walk and Mark stayed at home to work. I hadn’t joined in the walk for a few days and when I got to the park, all these strangers were talking to Emmy as if they knew her! Super bizarre when someone knows your baby’s name and you’ve never seen them before. I try to go with them everyday now. Sometimes more than once a day…sometimes everytime we leave the house! The half hour to an hour walk around the park sure adds to the commute time some days! Continue reading →

This guy is hysterical. He is, or should I say WAS, a teacher. That’s right. A teacher! This is the sort of person that we want molding our children. “Stan Murmur” is not his real name, shockingly! I hear he’s got videos of his um, “creative process” on YouTube. I think I’ll pass on watching that. I’m not sure I’d care if this guy turned out to be Kris’ teacher, he was an art teacher after all. They’re supposed to be creative and eccentric aren’t they? He’s suing for being fired, of course. It’s just so, so, so funny! I love the story I listed below about how he started out too. This guy is a genius! Absolutely love it!

“A few years ago I had a painting assignment. I was told to find an organic item to use as a stamp. The stamp was to be brought into class with a finished art product. The art product had to incorporate a stamping or stampings of our organic item. We were to present the finished product to the class for a critique. The class was supposed to guess the organic object used.

It took me a couple of days to come up with an organic item. I finally decided to use my buttocks as a stamp. I rolled latex house paints onto a rubber mat. I sat on the mat and then a piece of rag paper that I had painted gray. I stamped the rag paper twice overlapping a black print with a white one. The day that the project was due, we were instructed to hang our art products on a wall. The entire class took turns guessing the objects that were used in each stamping. Once an object was guessed we discussed whether the finished product was successful as a piece of art. No one could figure out what my organic object had been.

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Kristopher
-clothes size S Mens, Jeans 30×30
-shoes size 10!

PC Games:
–Empire Earth II & III
DVDs
–Austin Powers 2 & 3
–Monty Python — has Holy Grail, Life of Brian

CDs
–Monty Python

–Electric Tooth brush

Emma
-clothes size 2 — especially want overalls and sleepers that do up the back so she can’t get out of them. Have found her nude more than once recently!
-shoes size 8
-doll in a hard car seat with a belt she can clip and unclip– she just loves these!
-magnadoodle
-loves jewelery
-Leapfrog Counting Maracas (bought these for a friend and Emma just adores them!!!)

Mark
- Extension tube for macro photography for a Canon Rebel XTI
Cool tools are always good.
- dress shirts for work – size L
- maybe even a nice tie?
- Emma sized power tools (i.e Home Depot has a line of toy power tools) would also be fun. She loves the few hand tools that she has. Maybe even a toy workbench.
-Jamie Oliver by T-Fal frying pan really deep with a glass lid (duplicate of the one Dale got us last year. Love it, love it, love it!)
–nice, reliable, good colour printer

Paula
-Queen size sheets (purple/lavendar)
-black or white crocs size 7 1/2 ladies
-fur lined crocs — look super cool! Winter crocs! Look on Ebay. I really, really love these!!!!
-ladies Vans sneakers size 7 (skate shoes, any color)
-locket necklace that I could put Emmy’s first hair cut hair into
-tiny MP3 player for at work — preferably loaded!
-nice bag to carry file folders in — maybe recycled plastic bag (cleancalgary.org)?
-clothes steamer
-new water bottles for everyone (kids too!) that are stainless steel — my mild phobia of plastic has turned into complete paranoia (NOT NALGENE BRAND, they were recalled from MEC!)
-new travel mugs for me and Mark that preferably are not plastic (maybe metal or ceramic…starting to develop a major league phobia of plastic at the moment)
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The kids make me constantly re-evaluate things and I am often amused by the ways that I am becoming my parents (and occasionally visa versa). I now find myself doing things that I fought with my parents about, such as enforcing a bed time, or homework, or making Kris do chores. I will be having a discussion with Kris and get this deja veu feeling that I have had the same discussion before, but from a different point of view, and all you can do is hope that you can make your point and not have it seem to bad. Suddenly, what I was so sure was a grave misjustice at 13, is now a life lesson (or at least helpful) from my current point of view, and I find myself once again regretting arguing with my parents about a variety of things. Even funnier, is that when I talk to my Mum about it, she is now sometimes still on the other side of the fence, and now she is arguing on Kris’s side and I am arguing for what she always told me.

A good example is reading after going to bed. No big deal. My Mum did it, I did it, and Kris was doing it a bunch for a while. We had to crack down on it because he would stay up to late and be exausted the next day. I remember my parents checking up on me (although now I find that apparently Mum figured that it was all part of the game and was not really trying to stop me despite what it seemed like to me at the time). Now of course, Mum is full of stories of when she stayed up late reading, and encouragement for Kris doing it, and I am left arguing that he needs his sleep. It always seems kinda humerous to me…

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