Vacation Day 1

You can take the boy out of the school but you can't take the school out of the boy.
Yesterday James declared that we would do 'school' while I am on vacation. And he made a pretty hardcore schedule. The schedule for school only starts at 11am. Which is a really suitable time for school to start.
This allowed me to do the dishes, laundry, vacuum and shop for groceries before school started.
I get to be the teacher and he and his stuffed cats the students.
We started with 'mathematique' and did some pages of math work that he brought home from 'real' school.
Next was 'writing' and the stuffed animals wrote letters to my mom.
Then for 'social studies' we read about south american countries.
Some of the countries talked about a background of civil war. It was a difficult concept for him to grasp that people on the same team would be fighting each other.
So we looked up some stuff on the american civil war, but he is interested in other civil wars if you have any suggestions about a 'good' civil war to read about?
Then we read a bit about world war 1 and world war 2. He likes to read about wars. Especially WW2 as we have to go over the timelines for that frequently.
Then we read a french book 'Marcelle Coquerelle' to round things off.
So we covered a lot of ground anyway.
School did take quite a long time so then I made dinner (pasta), we went out and played soccer, then he sprayed out ant hill with water (ants angry but flowers happy!)
Now he's watching Red Green rented from the library and probably undoing all the work we did :)

Karen's 50th Princess Party in pictures

The birthday girl:



The sparkler was more dangerous than it looks:

After the party, James spotted the rainbow. Can you see it?

James has mastered the art of self-photography

Blackened

The last few days have been such a whirlwind.
Today I am on vacation. James is done school.
Yesterday I attended Karen's 50th princess party. Photos to follow.

4am excitement

At 4am I was awoken by a guy on the street over yelling "fire" and the sound of glass breaking. Then the fire trucks. They didn't stay terribly long so it must not have taken them a long time to put out the fire. In the daylight I walked around the block and saw the blackened window.

Excitement

Brendan and Lesley got married and it was SUCH a beautiful ceremony. Words can't even begin to describe it.

James lost his ball hockey game today which means he plays at 8:30am tomorrow morning in the battle for 3rd place.

After the wedding, I tried to clean up the house for Mike and Heather and their family. (after posting wedding pictures on FB- priorities people!) It was nice to see them again. I think they are staying at the hotel that Zully got fired from. I didn't tell them that. They are only about a 5 minute drive away. Tomorrow they head to Toronto for a few days at Canada's Wonderland. I didn't get any pictures of them as I was all pictured out after the wedding.

James is currently into soccer and Red Green. 2 more days of school for him. 2 more days of work for me- I took vacation for when he gets off school. Not great timing with my work as I'm getting all the July exams printed but as long as I get them all into the printer before I leave, it all should be good.

When life hands you hot pink spraypaint it is time to colour your patio furniture

Pictures of my back garden. I took the first 3, James took the one of me.
The weekend is shaping up to be an exciting one. James has a ball hockey tournament. Lesley and Brendan are getting married and we just heard a day or so ago that relatives Mike and Heather and their kids are coming to town. I don't know where to begin.
My neighbour decided to use the hot pink spray paint that the hooligans left her to spray paint her lawn furniture. It looks nice and bright now!

Drenched

So after the excitement of the earthquake, we got heaps of rain in the evening. Midland got a tornado out of it. If they got both the tornado and the earthquake that must have made quite a day. Some kids left 9 bottles of hot pink spray paint on my neighbours lawn in the rain. Maybe they had been planning on spraying something but then it just was too rainy.
It was still raining pretty hard when I biked into work. I brought a change of clothing with me as I suspected I would not make it to work dry.
James is not getting changed for bed right now so he would like to let you know that he is choosing the wrath of momma. I must go now.

Feel the earth move

Today I had a day off. And for my day off I did some shopping in the morning and then went to RMC in the afternoon to help out with a server problem that they had been having. I fixed the problem easily- they had not switched it on after a power failure a number of weeks ago. Always try the "on" button first, people!
Then I was working with them on some other issues and the desk starts shaking like crazy and the floor is vibrating. And Philip says "It's the rats, they've gotten very big since you left". We decided that it probably had something to do with the construction nearby and didn't realize it was an earthquake until Geoff saw it online.

zoo

James went to the Toronto Zoo today and had a great time. He really liked the tigers because they are cats. He took this great picture of the fish. He was very wet when he returned for being out in the rain all day.

My home is pretty much a zoo as well. Kim dropped off her parrots on Thursday as she was going away for the weekend but she hasn't come back to pick them up. The birds seem quite happy here but it can be quite loud when all of the birds (her 2 + Kassie) get talking.

Karen is going to be 50 on the 28th, maybe I should get this photo blown up to poster size for her present?

The monkey of the house.

Our neighbour across the road is currently watching soccer. James thinks it is great fun to check out if the neighbour is watching the same things that he is! (Though James is currently in bed)

designed to work

The best line of the evening for once did not come from the Bachelorette- it came from one of the commercials during the Bachelorette.
The jeep commercial had the line "It is designed to work". Umm. Aren't all cars designed to work? who is out there designing cars that DON'T work? Oh. I forgot. FORD. lol.

The show itself featured guys wearing matching parka suits in Iceland. It looked really cold.

And the eliminations didn't seem real difficult this time. At least Chris N. got a few words in before he was eliminated.

Next week should be interesting anyway with the phone call from one of the girlfriends of one of the guys.

posting

This morning I checked on the web to see if my July exam schedule had posted correctly to the website (the server was to have picked it up at 3pm yesterday). It did.

Then I looked at the course timetable, just out of interest of what changes had been made to the course I was working with (just because I found the original problems but of course don't let me know how they resolved them). This TT was to have been posted by noon yesterday. It seems not to have worked.

What this means to me is that noone will pay any attention to me tomorrow in the office as they have to deal with this problem. I'm quite happy with this as I have lots to do to prepare for the July exams. On Monday I will send out the course reports to have the instructors check the instructions for the exam.

Today was supposed to be a sunny day and so I did piles of laundry to hang out, but now the forecast seems to have changed its' mind. I'll hang the laundry anyway as it isn't actively raining yet!

Black book

Today I went shopping and got gas for the car first thing in the morning.
Then I biked to the library to return the movies I got last week. One was 'Dear Frankie' that I mentioned yesterday. James claimed it was 'boring' as he doesn't like movies with too much talking. It was about a mother who was pretending to her son that his father is on a ship which is why he is never around. But the truth is he is abusive and they are trying to run from him. The movie does have an interesting twist at the end. I would recommend it if you don't mind a movie having dialogue.

James preferred the other movie I got out called "Yours, Mine and Ours" about a woman with 10 children marrying a man with 8 children or something to that effect. James liked all the hijinx that the kids got up to.

This week I got out the "Red Green story" for James as I thought he minght find that funny and "48 Angels" which I'm quite sure has too much dialogue for James but I hope to enjoy it.

After that I went to Rustle for prayer.

Karen came home with me as James wanted to watch the afternoon soccer match with her. She stayed until 5 and then I made dinner (spaghetti). I tried to clean up the house a bit and then I got sucked into the Ian Rankin book "The Black book" (also from the library) quite a good murder mystery plot- lots of twists and turns to it.

1700

post #1700 :)

I watched the movie "Dear Frankie" today that was set in Scotland. James asked why they didn't speak English?

The last few days have been very busy with the spring exams running. I was surprised at how busy it was for so few courses running.

Marlene brings up a good point about "screening" of the candidates for the Bachelor/Bachelorette. Supposedly they do psychological checks and background checks, but they obviously don't necessarily apply as soon as you have put a person on camera and plied them with alcohol. There have been some psychological meltdowns and some who may still have been in relationships while on the show. These probably shouldn't come as surprises if they did the "screening" that they should.

There was an article in the Whig about a boy who only attended 8 full days of school in the year and he is still being 'promoted' his grade. Probably makes the kids who actually do the work question why they bother?

"I can't wait to see my dogs"

Well another evening of the girl with the freaky flying things on her intro credit. I am not grasping how the freaky flying things add to her trademark page, unless they are a metaphor for something that I'm not quite getting.

Poor Kasey seems to be getting a bit unglued. I'm not sure he would have received the rose tonight if he showed Ali the tattoo. She seemed to want him to not quite be so over the top. The tattoo thing doesn't seem so smart when compared with Chris L.'s tattoo about his mother that holds a lot more emotional sentiment. I can't see Kasey lasting much longer.

At the rose ceremony, I didn't see Roberto get the rose. Did I blink and miss it? Yet, he had one at the end.

My favorite line of the night was from Jesse when Ali let him go. He said "I can't wait to see my dogs!!" And he meant it.

great trip

our trip to cole lake could be called a success. Good fun, good lessons, good food!

biking

I have to say I do like biking on the side streets, but biking on Princess after work is always interesting to see how much faster it is to be on a bike than a car. You can also see rebel boys/ young men who bike in ball caps(no helmets for these guys) on the sidewalk, quite often in the opposite direction of traffic and do not obey traffic signs. If you happen to be biking on the sidewalk maybe you should note that if you aren't on the sidewalk in the same direction as traffic, people can't see you. I see a lot of near misses on Princess as people who are turning right look for cars and pedestrians but not for bikes zipping down.

I went to the library yesterday in hopes of getting some summer reading done. I got a couple of books by Ian Rankin "The Black Book" and Peter Robinson "All the colours of darkness". Mysteries that my dad got me hooked on. I also picked up a book by an author I had never heard of before - Karen Kingsbury. It was called "This side of heaven". It looked like the easiest of the 3 to read so I thought I would start with that. I started it about 8 in the evening and could not put it down until I finished about midnight. It was a jam packed book and really very enjoyable- I would recommend!

soccer rules

James made me promise to wake him at 7:30 this morning so he could catch the first FIFA game. He was up at 7am so I didn't have to. Very excited! I had to sit with him to watch the pre-game show.

Then I went shopping. Normally, James comes with me, but FIFA overruled that.

I expected the grocery stores to be busier but they were still pretty quiet. Maybe it was the rain.

When I got back James explained to me what happened in the game while I was away. One part he said that a guy had got a yellow card for a handball. (in the Greece-Korea game) I thought that was a bit harsh. There must have been something else going on? And we were rather confused about how sometimes when they do a slide tackle they get a yellow card and sometimes they don't? Maybe my bro or my dad or anyone else who may have a clue want to answer that for him?

He also doesn't understand offside but that's probably a bit much to explain.

Nancy has rented the gym at Artillery park for 2pm so James is going there to play ball hockey with his lads.

He has power skating tomorrow.

Also tomorrow Rustle is doing a road trip to Cole lake (James always corrects me and says Cool lake like Al does when I say Cole Lake) Be at Rustle at 9:30am Sunday to catch the school bus out of town!

Excitement

On Wednesday I thought James was about asleep at 9pm but he rallied and stayed up to the end of the Stanley cup game.

I had to write a note in his school agenda that read "James may be a bit tired today as he stayed up to watch the stanley cup game" I wasn't sure in writing this if I was a Good mother or a Bad mother, but at work they assured me it was a cultural thing and in Canada, really, the day after the stanley cup should be a holiday for both children and adults. This same coworker also thought that school and work should be cancelled for the FIFA world cup and the Olympics, to put it in context.

This brings me to the second exciting topic for James- FIFA. He is very excited about all the soccer games and claims that he and Grandad are going to talk after every game. He estimates 70 phone calls. Hopefully, Grandad is as excited about this as James is!

In work action, I had to change the locations of the July exams due to work being done on the location I had booked them in. Luckily, I found a very similar venue and managed to squirrel them into a new location fairly easily.

It was a nice day today and I hung 3 loads of laundry out before I headed to work. The weekend is supposed to be rainy though.

Rights

Monday was exciting because it was B@achelorette night. Lots of the guys cried which was great. That's always fun to watch. Justin is being very well set up for the doom to follow. And they will take off around the world, while trying to sidestep the erupting volcano in Iceland.

Tuesday I hear my brother ran a 10k, so that makes Tuesday exciting.

At 2am this morning James fell out of bed and bruised his arm pretty bad.

Today was pretty exciting at work. When I got in I had an email from a colleague who was forwarding a request from a student to breastfeed her child in a test. I hadn't done this type of accommodation before so I asked my boss what sort of documentation I needed and then got back to the student. I copied the lady who had forwarded it to me and then she called me, upset with my response. She thought I should not have accommodated the student but asked the student to use a pump. And I was all like- whoah- I think it's a human rights thing- if she wants to breastfeed anytime she can. I'm sure she knows a baby would be a distraction in a test, but it is her choice, isn't it?
What do you think?

Amusing

James has taken a liking to the Gummy Bear Song. For my parents and Nat and Karrie- James is planning a song and dance presentation based on this song. It's pretty hilarious, I think- but I may be biased. :)

It is a bit odd with the gummy bear dancing in his underwear. I'm not sure if this is better or worse than Crazy frog who doesn't wear underwear at all!

The weather is a bit perplexing in trying to figure out what to wear! It's looking sunny during the week, but not too warm, so I'm thinking I will stick with pants? My office is not that warm but if it IS warm then I can open a window!

I'm trying to get as much done as I can around the house so I can be free tomorrow to watch my shows!

James wrote on his blog today. It is the first time he actually wrote and didn't dictate to me. He was quite pleased with himself. It is pretty short but it took him about 10-15 minutes to do. If you feel like it, leave him a comment- he appreciates them very much!

Celebrate

I really enjoyed this video. It is a surprise celebration for a bus driver's birthday. It is so much fun to watch his face in the video. He really was surprised! It's all in Danish, but you don't need to understand the words to get the video.

The weather forecast called for a rainy day today but I've been quite pleased with the sunshine- I've got 3 loads of laundry drying in the sun :)

Questions

James asked me when Jesus was alive - 1960?
After I stopped laughing, I explained the numbering year conventions, which he thought was pretty cool.

James and I were playing a game that involved some answering questions on cards.

James got this one:
Describe the vacation you would take if money were no object.
His answer:
To Peterborough!

I got this one:
If you could have chosen another name as a child, what would it have been?
Before I had a chance to think, James answered for me: Bob

Inconsistency

It seems everyone knows that my property insurance is up for renewal in June. I am getting a lot of mail about it.

Also in the mail I got a new debit card with a chip to replace my old card. They told me that I had to activate it before I could use it. They also told me that to activate it, I needed to use the card in a transaction. A wee bit inconsistent.

I am trying to get in a summer routine at work. This is a bit tricky because I have a couple (maybe a billion!?) projects on the go and I am trying hard to prioritize them but I keep skipping between them and I have a lot of cleanup from about 2 years with no exam administrator, so summer is not as much of a downtime as you would think, except I am now able to take lunch and breaks without too much worry. With my bike I can even go downtown during lunch, so overall I would say life is a lot calmer.

Digging deep

Philly is going to have to dig deep now.

I know Clint and Jen are digging deep for little Karis- I have been praying this evening for a safe delivery for both Mom and baby.

I got invited to a proctor event- a potluck. I was a little stunned at the inclusion, but it is nice, I guess. I don't really know what they like to eat so I'm not quite sure what to bring.

The rain is coming down now - twill be good for my already-burned-to-a-crisp lawn.

Last year Tammy and Katie got me watching Eurovision. This year, I see that Jo watched it. I really do like the winning song "Satellite" by Lena from Germany.