No More Monkeys Jumping On The Bed

Well, we are hurtling towards Christmas at record speed this year. Things seem to just keep happening one right after the other, so I apologise for the lack of updates here.

Earlier this week we received some very unfortunate news. Jays grandmother passed away, peacefully in her sleep, at the age of 100 years. Despite the fact that she was long lived and it had been expected for some time, it's still been very difficult for him, and for me. The kids are too young to understand yet, which is probably just as well.

Due to the timing, I'm not going to be able to go with him to the funeral this Friday. It's in Regina, and since we've already booked tickets for Alberta on the 28th, it seemed ridiculous for us to all trek out to Saskatchewan, then come back, just to fly back out a few days later. Also, most flights are sold out and it was hard enough to get a ticket for just Jay, let alone the kids and I. Admittedly I am rather upset at having to miss it. We have no one to watch the kids though, since everyone is trying to get ready for Christmas. Jay was asked to be a pallbearer, and his Aunt Reta and mum and dad and Brian are going to be there, so I am sure he will manage.

He will get back very late on Saturday night, so I intend to distract myself with the last minute Christmas baking and grocery shopping while he is away. I have also been entrusted with checking on the pets of a friend I made recently through the gym while she is away at her parents for a week. She and I became friends a couple of months ago and she has a couple of cats and rabbits and small rodents. The kids and I get to go over and feed and water them twice a day, which they are really excited about. I don't mind helping her at all since she was able to watch the kids for us the other morning, on last minute notice, while we did our first walk-through of the house.

Speaking of the house, they are actually working on it at a fairly good pace these days. We got a new site supervisor (I think our third or fourth since the house got started) and he doesn't waste any time. As I mentioned above, we did a walk-through with the electrician last week, and everything seemed to be going well.

We have another walk-through tomorrow morning, and I am going to ask Sarah (my new friend with the pets) if she would be able to come over and hang out with the kids again while we do that. Apparently there was an inspection of the framing this week and our house failed. I kid you not. The site supervisor claims it was just a few minor things that needed fixing, but it doesn't give me a lot of good feelings about our builder.

They want to start insulating and so forth next week, so I suppose that's good. I am starting to believe we actually might make it in by January 31st as they promised. More pictures are coming.

On an additional note about pictures, you may have noticed something about My Daily Photo on the side of the page there. I decided to create a separate page on which to post my photos not related to family/house/etc. Every day I put up a new picture I have taken, so I hope you will take a look. Yesterday I received a bit of an exciting e-mail in regards to one of my photos. It seems that a picture I took of the Peace Keeping Monument in Ottawa is being considered for part of an online guide to Ottawa. The photo will include credit to me and will be linked back to my collection of photos on Flickr (the photo hosting service I use online).

Here is the photo in question, snapped in August during our visit to see Tina over the summer:



I won't get paid for the use of my photo, but it's still very flattering, and who knows what other opportunities might come about as a result.

Tomorrow is Lincoln's school Christmas concert. He is playing a lamb apparently. I will be taking the camera, and I will attempt at least a few clips of video. He has been very secretive about it all, which is very cute.

Last weekend we picked up their final gift, which I have to say I might be more excited about then they will be. We decided (or rather I decided and then prodded Jay into agreement, HA HA) to get them a hamster from Santa. Since we are going to be going away right after Christmas, I went and got the cage and food and all the hamster related stuff one needs, and Santa will leave it under the tree with a note about picking out the hamster themselves with Mommy and Daddy. That way we don't have to worry about having someone look after it while we are out west. I know they are going to be thrilled.

Most of you heard about the big dump of snow we got last weekend. Jay figures just over a foot of it fell here, and it seems to be staying, which means we will have a white Christmas. The kids are quite enjoying having snow to play in, and I'll admit that as much as I dislike the cold, I prefer to have snow for Christmas than dead grass or slush.

I can hardly believe that Christmas is only 6 more sleeps away. Where has the year gone?