Well, not on a permanent basis. Small flakes were falling today in downtown Regina. Unbelievable. If Al Gore was here, I would shove a copy of "An Inconvenient Truth" straight up his wazzoo.
Last night I attended Dave Pettigrew's going away event at the Royal Regina Golf club. A lot of retirees, and old time Regina IBM'rs were there to see Dave off and roast him. It was an enjoyable evening.
Today, Marie-France came home from work a bit early and we picked the boys up and headed to Costco for supper.....something we do once in a while to get our fries and poutine fix. Everyone is tired today and the weather is cold again, so we headed to bed early. Hopefully the weekend warms up and the sun comes back out but this crap cold spring we have had (following a bitterly long and cold winter) has me down.
Facebook is great, but unfortaunately, doesn't permit you to put in words your life quite the way the old website did. I realize I probably have nobody reading the old website any more, but I may use this for my own personal use instead.
Nathan has started kindergarten at WF Ready school. Connor also attends the daycare there at the Ranch Ehrlo society. It was with mixed emotions that we pulled the kids out of Ecole Monseignor de Laval back at the end of July. We had been on the WF Ready waiting list for nearly 2 years, so it presented us with a dilemna. The location is much closer to us in Windsor Park, and it allows us to drop the kids off much earlier (7 am) which is better for work. Although we are sacrificing them learning French, we believe the programs are much more structured and the kids will learn more. Over the last 2 months we have gotten to know most of the staff quite well and have become involved with the school, including me going along on a bus trip with Nathan's group to watch a Rider practise at Taylor Field before the Labor Day game.
Nathan's kindergarten teacher is Mrs. Harmon. He is on the young side as the age of kids go, and since his maturity has been a little slower to come along he hasn't learned quite as much as some of the other kids in terms of shapes, letters numbers etc. He has always wanted to play, and the fact that he was in unstructured daycare probably hasn't helped much. Marie-France has been great working with Nathan at home to learn some of these things, and we spend more time with him doing "homework" now. He actually kind of enjoys it and is responding to the "token" system wherein we provide stickers for him to collect.
Connor adjusted very well to the new day care too, and adores one of the younger care providers (Tamsen). He seems to love going. In an ideal world, mom and dad would not have to go to work during the day and could stay home and play with the kids all day long!
Nathan likes Scooby Do, Transformers, Bat Man and Spiderman. Connor likes these too and both kids enjoy watching shows on Treehouse and the Disney Channel. Handy Manny, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and the Little Einsteins are popular choices!
Summer is waning into Fall and we are getting cooler weather now.
Well subsequent blogs should have a little more detail on a daily basis. I want to resume it but will see how well I stick to it. I can't believe its been 5 1/2 years since I started the savante.nefirms.com website!
On May 1, 2008, we celebrated the 1 year anniversary of the move into our new house in Windsor Park. Many people are already starting to ask us if we are planning our next move yet. This isn't likely at this point as I am still in the process of finishing up the yard and I have some more projects still to do, including the garage gyproc and basement bathroom/bedroom. The yard is pretty well complete, down to the underground sprinklers which just went in last week, so now the focus can move to the garage. I had insulated it last year, but want to gyproc it and clean it up, including getting some nice metal shelves/cabinets, and workbench to finish it off.
The kids will love the new back yard once the weather gets nice. We have it all closed in so can send them in the back without worrying about them escaping. Currently, all activity has to be supervised as they are playing mainly in the garage with their bikes and riding up and down the driveway and sidewalk. Nathan only goes a few houses up the street, but it still makes me nervous.
Neil, Cyndi and Davon dropped by on Sunday (Mother's day) for a visit. The boys all play together pretty well so hopefully we'll still get together once in a while after they move out to Balgonie.
Connor was quite sick a few weeks ago, so we took him to Dr. Datta who prescribed some Athsma medication and a Nebulizer. He took that for 10 days, but has now moved off that to his puffer. We hope he doesn't have Athsma, but will have to carefully monitor his breathing. Nathan has been healthier than a horse since getting his tonsils and adenoids removed 2 months ago.......what a trooper he was for that. He is eating more now too, and has already gained about 7 pounds since then. The kids are growing so fast. The fact that I have posted so infrequently in this forum is a testament to the time and energy it takes to raise two boys. Facebook has also taken its toll on my desire to update this website, but I have too much invested in it to ignore it completely. Hell...........I even missed talking about our trip to Las Vegas! Life is in overdrive now........really spinning along fast. I can't believe the savante.netfirms.com is over 5 years old now.........was around well before Nathan.
I can hardly believe it has been almost a year since we moved out of our house in Wascana View to temporarily occupy a condo while our new place was being finished. May 1 will mark the 1 year anniversary of this latest move. What does this mean? Is it time for us to start thinking about moving again?
Well, the yard is pretty well done; we rushed to complete that last fall, getting it all fenced in so we'll be able to ship the boys out into the backyard as soon as the snow disappears in the back which should only be a few weeks away.
We have noticed that Moose Jaw has almost lost ALL of its snow and always seems to be about 3 - 4 degrees warmer than Regina on any given day, so we packed the boys up and headed there, via Rouleau on Sunday. Nathan wanted to see where they made Corner Gas so we drove past the set in Rouleau (aka "Dog River"). After the 30 minute drive, he seemed slightly less than impressed when we drove around the boarded up set. We headed on up 39 highway to Moose Jaw, and stopped in for donuts and chocolate milk at the Tim Horton's beside Mac the Moose. We strolled around Walmart, and then drove through the new parts of Sunningdale before heading back to Regina.
Further to my last "First" blog of 2008. I had to pick up an old loaner server from Kindersley Transport in Saskatoon last week. I was going to cancel the trip since Nathan was still at home from pre-school after his tonsilectomy, but I decided he was well enough to travel with me.
So, I loaded him up in the van and we headed up mid-morning. The server pickup at the customer only took about 10 minutes, and I wasn't just going to turn around and drive back to Regina. I had told Nathan if he was good on the drive up, we would stop by the university and see the dinosaurs they have on display at the Geology building. It was reading week at the university, so hardly anyone was around. Nathan liked the exhibit, but was hungry so we grabbed a quick bite at the A&W in Place Louis Riel, and then walked through the +15 tunnels over to the Agriculture building and then into my old stomping grounds, the engineering building.
This was a very surreal feeling for me, almost as if I had slipped into a time warp and gone back in time 18 years. Nothing has changed much at the university. All the same displays in the hallways in the Agriculture and engineering buildings (which were brand new in 1989 - my first year) were still on display! I retraced the walk through campus I had taken to class so many times over my four years of mechanical engineering study, and strangely I felt exactly as I did then.......except that now I was carrying my 4-year-old son on my back, and passing by students that looked MUCH too young to be going to university. In truth, this phase of my life was HALF my life ago! An eternity ago, and yet in some other ways, not so long ago.
I walked through the dark corridors of the engineering building, past some of the classrooms I had spent so much time in, noting again, nothing looking like it has changed one iota since 1993, other than, I suppose, much updated computer technology. The artwork, the displays, vending machines and even the tattered old furniture where we had all hung out between classes was still there. I wandered around for a while with scenes from those old days playing back whenever I peered into a lab or classroom where I could remember a specific event. Nathan started to get a little bored (could you blame him?) but then I found the graduating class photo from 1993 on one wall with all the engineering grads and pointed out to Nathan a younger looking man that he still recognized as his dad. I looked at all the other people that had been my closest friends at the time and realized that I have not kept in good touch with any of them.......not one! I never would have guessed it at the time that when I walked out of the last set of exams with those guys, it would be the last time I spoke to them. And now suddenly its 15 years later. I feel like I'm a totally different person.
It is truly one of the strangest feelings I have ever had, bringing Nathan with me that afternoon and exploring my past. It was as if he was an anchor to my new life while I sailed around in my old one for an hour or so. He seemed so small, distant, and almost like a bit of a stranger, but I realized it was because I was seeing him through the eyes of my old self, a young man who had no idea what it would be like to have a son he could show around his school one day. I just had to watch him laugh and run ahead of me in the sun on the path ways outside the building to be brought back to the present, one in which this place that had been all so familiar, was now the strange place.
The drive back home seemed to go faster than usual. I will look back on that day fondly for a long time. In another 15 years, Nathan will be old enough to attend university.......I wonder if he decides to go into engineering if they will have updated any of that old furniture and displays?
I decided after 8 months of pseudo-blogging on Facebook, that I would re-open Savante.netfirms.com and start posting updates again. I missed updating my old site, but now will have to get my faithful readers looking back here again after posting no updates since before Christmas.
Oh, this is also a test blog for thediary.org. We'll see how good this site rates for ease of use.
