back from our vacation

we're back from a week long camping trip at little bear lake. It was great to get a chance to visit with family and the kids had a great time playing at the beach, and going boating. Well Hannah really enjoyed the boating anyways, Sara fell asleep. Hannah was actually pretty unwilling to go into the water mostly because it was too cold, but nothing could turn Sara away, she ventured in every chance she got. The only problem we have now is that every time we drive by a lake Hannah decides she wants to go play at the beach. And funnily enough Calgary is full of little lakes. I showed Sara how to pick blueberries on our last day, and as we were packing up, she sat in a blueberry patch just munching away. Perhaps I will post a few pictures when I track down our camera.

Since we got back I have been slowly packing, unfortunately it is going slower then I would like, thankfully next week I will have a some help looking after the kids. I got around to getting our utilities switched today, and if anybody wants to hear a long rant about incompetent people just ask me about that. But for now lets just say it took two hours, and not because I was on hold the whole time, and I still have to phone back in a couple days to confirm that the gas will be hooked up for sure. We're debating whether or not we should switch to Telus when we move, because it is cheaper and we can get a plan that is a little more attuned to what we need, but unfortunately we have had some very back experiences with Telus in the past, so if anybody is currently using Telus and can give us their opinion on the service, please do leave a comment. In particular we are wondering about their internet service and the new tv programing they are offering. (we are currently using shaw for everything).

W bought a house!

Well we actually bought it two weeks ago, but I have been shockingly lazy the last little while with posting stuff, but anyways it is a three bedroom two storey house in the Coventry area of Calgary. It was built in 2005 so it doesn't have a finished basement, or a finished back yard. So I guess we're going to have a little bit of work over the next few years finishing it off. We're moving on the 25th of August, so if anybody is available that weekend and wants free food, we would really appreciate the help.

In other news, Sara is almost walking she will take 5 or 6 steps away from furniture quite often, she is also becoming my climbing dare devil. She can climb up the slide part of the slide in our back yard all by herself. I find this a little scary, since Hannah has difficulty accomplishing this, while Sara can get up there in a matter of seconds. Well anyways lots has happened in the last few weeks but I am feeling a little lazy today so maybe I will write about it some other time.

Happy Birthday Sara

I can't believe it has been a year already. Every time I look at her she is changing in some way. She started crawling up the stairs a couple of weeks ago, and has been cruising around furniture for about two weeks. She has more and more sounds, and is starting to communicate what she wants quite effectively. When I watch her play I am always amazed by the new things she is trying. Today she put the rings onto the pole of one of her toys, last week she started stacking blocks. But her favorite thing is to rock her favorite doll. She gives it a nice hug puts it in the rocking chair and then goes off and plays, but she always comes back to check on her doll every 15 minutes or so.

happy thoughts

Today I have decided to write about two things that happed this week that made me glad to be a mom. I could probably think of more then just two but two is a good start. The first one was when I picked Sara up a couple of days ago and she gave me a big hug complete with patting me on the back. The second was yesterday when I was walking down some rather steep stairs with Sara on one arm, and holding Hannah's hand with the other. When I trip and started to fall down the stairs, in an attempt to not smash Sara's head into the concrete floor I caused myself to fall backwards onto my butt. Unfortunately this caused Hannah to fall down as well, and severely twisted my ankle. As I had pulled on Hannah's arm rather hard I fully expected her to start crying, so I turned ready to offer my comfort, when she looked at me quite earnestly and said "Oh no! Are you alright" she then promptly offered me a hug and kiss, and asked if I was all better.

Well those two things made me happy this week and I wrote about them because I am actually having a rather bad week this week, but I'm afraid if I write about how miserable I am I will continue to be miserable. So here is my best attempt at remembering why this was a good week. And of course it is promising to be a nice relaxing weekend here in Calgary with beautiful weather, so hopefully that will go a long way to improving my mood.

Dork

I can admit to being a dork, I read the owners manual for our van from start to finish. I may have quickly scanned a few areas, but in general I read every word. And to be honest I think it was time well spent, I would recommend it has a good read for everybody who has a relatively new vehicle. I found out some really interesting things about our van that I never would have known otherwise. For example

- you can roll all 4 windows down/up using the key and the drivers door lock.

- you can also roll all four window down using the remote

- you can program the auto lock/unlock

- if you hold down the eject button for a couple of seconds you can eject all six cds automatically

- the same applies to loading

- the auto defogger uses A/C - even if your using the heat

- so yes you can have both the A/C and heat going at the same time

- Our window wipers are speed sensing

- The auto scan button 0n the radio remembers your hometown stations so you can autoscan when your away from home to set you preset stations, and then go back to your original settings when you get home.

- The passenger airbag turns off if somebody who weighs less then 60 lbs is sitting there. - and there is a light that tells you it is off.

- Our seatbelt indicator is really annoying, if either you or your passenger doesn't put on their seatbelt it beeps every 15 seconds until you do it up

And that is just some of the things I found out from reading the owners manual. I'm sure some of those features would have taken me years to figure out, if I ever did. The only problem I have now is that my head is full of so much information about the million buttons in my van that half the time I don't use them because I can't remember what does what. But I'll get there eventually. For now I'm enjoying playing with the auto open doors. I get great fun in opening the doors to the van from inside the house.

"NO, me do it"

If you come visit me, I'm sure you will hear that screeched at you at least a dozen times. I am not liking this new phase. While I'm glad Hannah wants to be independent, she is trying my patience. And I think I have pretty good patience, so if I'm starting to lose it, you know it's bad. The simplest thing takes forever as I first have to convince her she wants to do it, then I have to wait while she does it herself. And yes watching her try to put on her own diaper for 20 minutes before bedtime is really frustrating. But god forbid if you should attempt to help, as this will bring on instant meltdown. The type of meltdown that takes 5 minutes of hugging to recover from, then another five to convince her to put her diaper on, and then your back to 20 minutes of watching her try to put it on. and that is just the start, she has to do everything from getting dressed, to climbing into her carseat, turning off the tv, to putting her own diaper on all by herself.

If anybody has some spare patience lying around they should send it his way because I am very much in need of it.

A fond farewell

As many of you know, we have been nursing our `95 Ford Windstar along since shortly after we moved to Calgary. No really serious problems, just a frustrating string of small problem after small problem. The most disturbing of which has been an intermittent stalling problem that has come and gone with the summer heat. The most likely culprit is a slowly failing fuel pump. Last Saturday it had a really bad stalling episode on the first really hot day of the year. This after we had just had it serviced a week or so ago... With both kids in tow, we made the decision that perhaps it was time to let go. So on that note, it with a heavy heart that I must announce that, with 239237 Kilometers on the odometer, our first baby has been retired...

Now for the exciting news, photos of our new baby:

Here you can see a couple of our favorite features:

• Dual power sliding doors
• Sliding door windows that roll down
• Onboard DVD
• Power moon roof

Here's a head on view of the new addition to our family (Please pardon the bugs, we've already taken it for a highway joyride).

And yes, it is a Honda:

We looked at the different North American models, I really tried to convince myself that they were just as good.... But the GM vans (Montana/Uplander) didn't have the towing capacity that we were looking for, the Grand Caravan interior just didn't line up with the price tag and while we really liked the Ford Freestar (no surprises there), Ford's announcement that they are dropping out of the minivan market after the 2007 model year does not bode well for long term maintenance...

So at that point we started looking at the big players in the import market: Toyota and Honda. The Toyota Sienna offered the option of all-wheel-drive for a steep price and I wasn't terribly fond of the body styling, which left us with the beautiful machine that eventually selected...

We did it! We did it!

Sing the above title to the theme song at the end of Dora, and you know what the inside of my head sounds like right now. For the first time since me and Dan got together we actually filed our tax returns on time. Of course the only reason we got it done on time this year was the threat that we might actually owe money. But we didn't so Yippee not only is it done on time, but we actually have some unexpected money coming!

Last Weekend

I know it has taken me a week t write about last weekend, but I think it is worth posting about so here it goes a week late. Last Saturday Dan's parents came down so me and Dan could go out for supper and then to the opera. We went to a restaurant called "The Belvedere" It is rated as one of the top restaurants in Canada. And I now know why. The food was so good, I can't even adequately describe how good it was. I have never had anything that even compares. The only dilemma I seemed to be faced with now is that I feel completely uninspired to do any cooking myself because I know it wont even register on the same scale. But I guess we all have to come back to reality eventually. After supper we went to the opera "Carmen" We had a great time there as well. Before going to the show my knowledge of the plot was that it was a tragic love story. And while that describes the plot in one sense it really doesn't do it justice, so there as actually some surprises in the story line. They had a screen at the top of the stage that translated what the actors were saying so it was just like watching a movie with subtitles. So that was our night out.

My kids have good taste in clothes

Easter holidays

Well we are back. From a week long holiday to Saskatchewan. We did a tour visiting family, eating turkey and collecting baskets of chocolate. We started our trip in P.A. visiting my Mom, Hannah had a great time playing with Crystal and Arianna, and Sara decided that Hayden was a great prop to help her stand up. Hayden was not impressed. We went to a rec center and tried out bowling and bumber cars. Everybody enjoyed bowling, and Hannah loved the bumber cars. She had absolutely no fear. She sat on my lap, and there were times I felt things were getting a little rough, but she just laughed. We went to Choiceland next to visit Great Gramma and Grampa. And I'm sure Gramma and Grampa had a blast visiting with all three of their grandchildren at once. From there we headed back to P.A. to visit with my Dad. Where Hannah continued her tirade on Angela's poor dog Gizmo. Hayden started trying to crawl to keep up with Sara, and his progress in one short week was remarkable. Our last stop was back to Saskatoon where we went to a consignment sale. Both me and Angela entered items into the consignment sale so we could get tickets to the presale. And I have to say I will never waste my time attending a public sale again. Absolutely everything worth buying was gone within half an hour of the presale opening, and main sale open to the public wasn't even until the next day. I bought Hannah a tricycle ($15), a Snuggli (like new $10), a toy bar ($7) and 12 outfits ($50). I got some awesome deals, and the best part is that I probably made at least 50$ selling my items, so the stuff I bought is already paid for. Next time I go to something like that I will definitely bring somebody with me though. I found some great clothes for Sara but by the time I got to Hannah's size, all the great stuff was gone. Well anyways I think I am going to go play our new Wii ...

Happy Birthday Dan

In honor of Dan's birthday today, we had some friends over for supper last night. It was a very enjoyable evening, with good food (thanks to me) and fun board games. Okay the board games may have taxed some of our brains a little (he he). Today has been a pretty quite day, so far we went for breakfast this morning, and then Dan went and picked up an outdoor play gym that a co-worker was nice enough to give us. Hannah had great fun until we dragged her inside for nap time. Unfortunately our yard isn't really designed for a play gym, because it is a rather steep hill, so I keep on thinking the poor thing is going to fall over. Oh well, we may have to do some work later this spring to level the yard a little. Well anyways, Happy Birthday Dan.

Eject! Eject! Eject!

So I went skiing at Sunshine Village with some friends from University this weekend...

It was a whole lot of fun and really good exercise for me.

There was a good mix of black, blue and green runs (at least for my taste) and we even did a little bit of glading (Skiing in the bush). We also developed a fun little slingshot maneuver to help Jen along flat spots - Kip and I would let Jen get ahead of us, then as we would go zipping by, she would grab our outstretched poles and get a sudden burst of speed to help her along...

The best wipeout for me had to be when I just about killed my good pal Mike (Kip) Kehler. The picture below was taken from the position where Mike stopped after I nearly ran him over. Jen (the girl in the right hand side of the picture), is holding up one of my skis from where they stopped. I was skiing between the trees on the right (only one is in the picture) looking for good powder and sweet jumps while Kip decided to go around the tree in the picture through the nice big opening visible just behind and above Jen. Apparently Kip saw a flash of my jacket and heard a quick curse as I slammed on the brakes to avoid running him over. Due to the foot of powder I was skiing in, my skis stopped a little too abruptly and ejected me from the bindings. This is where things get a little fuzzy for me. As near as I can remember, I clipped Kip's backpack as I was thrown from my skis. How I wound up face-first with my head uphill from my feet is completely beyond me.

If anybody knows how to do 3D Modeling and is looking for a fun side-project, I would love to see how this would have looked since Jen was too far back to witness the accident and Kip was too busy trying to stay on his own skis.

Me generous?

Apperently I had a generous streak I didn't know about, as in the last 24 hours I have donated to over 25 different charities amounts ranging anywhere from $500 - $1200. I have complained a few times about Visa locking down my card when I have had transactions that vary from my usual pattern, but I was thankful today when they locked my card down after a mere $3000 dollars was charged to it, in a matter of minutes. The remaining transactions remained in limbo waiting approval from me. Of course poor Dan was stranded in Banff with no Visa. So anyways after going through a very lengthy list of purchases to confirm what was mine and what wasn't Visa will be refunding us for the approved transactions, and then investigating how this happened. So now I know why fraud protection is so important on a credit card, and I will never complain when my card gets locked down again.

Update!

I apologize for my lack of posting but it has just been one of those weeks when nothing interesting is really happening. But I figure I will catch everybody up to speed on how Sara and Hannah are doing. First off Sara had her pediatrician appointment on Monday and she weighed 22 lbs and was 27 3/4 inches long. She was perfectly healthy and developing normally. She has been crawling for about a week now. She can go from her back to her stomach to her butt without any help. She does crawl around the room now, but she is still pretty slow about it, although I'm sure it wont be long and she will an expert crawler. She has got two teeth, both just poking out a little bit. I just noticed them yesterday, and was surprised that they had both already come through. Hannah seemed like she was teething forever before she got her first tooth. Where as I barely even noticed that Sara was teething. She had really red cheeks, and she was waking up a few extra times at night but otherwise she has been pretty relaxed. Hannah is learning new words like crazy, and starting to really enjoy more physical activities like running around in circle, and throwing and kicking balls. She loves going out for playdates, and gets excited whenever I mention that were going to visit our friends, or that our friends are coming to our house. Hmm I think that is about it, Maybe something interesting will happen this weekend.

Nap time

Now being hosted in a basement near you:

I have officially delved into the web hosting arena (well, on a small scale anyways).

I have just begun hosting my sister in-law's photography website on a server in my basement!

For those that are interested in the technical details it's not much of a server:

Processor:	Pentium II 333Mhz
Memory:	512MB RAM (Motherboard maximum)
Operating System:	Centos 4.4
Space:	18GB maximum non-redundant storage 2GB mirrored storage
Network	Single Dedicated NIC with a manual failover

For those not in the "know", CentOS is the publicly distributed, freely available repackaged edition of an Enterprise Linux distribution (I don't know if I can actually make the direct reference, so to be safe, I'm leaving it out...)

I have been running multiple OpenBSD boxes crunching SETI work-units for a few years now and have recently become somewhat experienced with setting up Red Hat Enterprise Linux through work so the actual install wasn't too tricky.

The only hurdle that I had to overcome turned out to be an overzealous attempt to max out the memory in the machine. Apparently the motherboard I'm using can recognize more memory that it can reliably use. As a result, whenever I loaded more than 512MB of memory into the machine, the memory read/write performance would tank - and yes, I did run a memory test using the tool provided on the CentOS installation media. This took me three days and a few phone calls to associates to figure out... Thanks Dave!

As a side note, I will be building a second, fail-over server that will be nearly a mirror image of the first (only with less memory and disk space....) so that any hosted sites don't remain down long in the even of a catastrophic hardware failure.

Not too bad for the low low price of $0, if you ask me... Everything is either retired personal or hand-me-down hardware, or discarded equipment from my days at 5D

P.S. Sorry for the crazy linking, but I'm hoping that I can boost the blog's Google rating and thereby improve Angela's new photography website's rating - Anybody that has ideas/suggestions on how else to do that, please leave a comment, Thanks!

Shopping Spree 2

I'm afraid we are off to buy more pedialyte. Hannah started puking again on the way to her dentist appointment. So we're back home and watching cartoons.

busy, busy, and more busy

It has been a busy week for us. On Thursday I hosted a playdate here. And it was lots of fun, started at 9:00 and went until 1:00pm. It was another full house with lots of kids running everywhere. Then Friday afternoon we headed out for a playdate. It was at a house we had been to before, and there is a really big dollhouse in one of the bedrooms upstairs. I had to hold Hannah back so I could get her shoes and jacket off, and then she just made a beeline for this dollhouse. It was rather cute, as usually Hannah makes a beeline for the food. Then Friday evening we headed to Edmonton, Saturday we went to the Mom Pop and Tots show, Hannah got to take a ride on the ponies, and bounce in a bouncy house. She had a great time. Sunday we went to the shriners circus. And then a barbecue before we headed home. But it doesn't end there, on Monday Hannah, Sara and I headed off to the zoo for the morning. I think that pretty much sums up our week. What did you guys do this weekend?