Away for a wedding this weekend, so here are some videos to watch…
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=2938670383203731647&hl=en&fs=true
It may be an odd-looking shuffle, but you’d be surprised at how fast she can get around!
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-611509763464404335&hl=en&fs=true
Abi would very much like Ben to give her his bottle. Ben would very much like Abi to give him all her toys — he outgrew the “Ocean Wonders Playset (from Hell)” months ago, but now that its hers, he wants it back!

Yesterday I went shopping for jeans. All of mine have holes in them, so it was time for a new pair. I hit a couple malls, and went from store to store, trying to find a pair that weren’t ugly, or crazy expensive. Mind you, my idea of “crazy expensive” is more than $50. When I went into Jean Machine, or some such store, I turned over a price tag, and nearly puked right on the spot: $119.95 for a pair of jeans!
Who in their right mind, would ever pay $120 (plus tax!) for a pair of jeans? What is wrong with our society when pre-faded blue jeans, which likely cost around $5 to manufacture, actually sell for over $100?! Seriously, do people realize that for the price of 3 pairs of these blue jeans, you could fly to Paris and back?
And its not like these are dress clothes, or something nice you’d need for a wedding — these are casual clothes for every day life. I can’t fathom ever spending $120 on an entire outfit, let alone the part of it you put on your butt! Where are your priorities if you go out and spend that kind of money on jeans?!
Let me suggest some other things people could do for the price of 3 pairs of blue jeans (plus tax):

• Feed a family of 4 for a month!
• Feed, clothe and educate a child in an impoverished country for a year!
• Buy a computer for a child in a developing country — and get one for yourself too!
• Invest in solar power for your home
• Help support a missionary family for 16 months
• Help a teenager get his life back on track

I solemnly swear, before the whole Internets, that if either of our children ever ask for $120 for blue jeans, I will tan their hide and stick them on a plane to Bangladesh for a week so fast their heads will spin…

Its not reasonable to expect warm summer weather in the middle of October, but it sure is wonderful when you get it. This weekend we hosted our first family get together — Nicole’s immediately family, plus Nanny all hiked up, with turkey and other delicious food for Thanksgiving. Benjamin could not have been more excited.
We worked fairly hard leading up to their arrival, so Monday we decided to just relax. The kids let us sleep in almost until 8:00, and we decided to take them apple picking. This is what Benjamin thinks of apple picking:

But, we beat the crowd there, got a couple bags of apples, and a yummy jug of apple cider. The orchard was about 25 minutes from our house, and the road trip took us through some beautiful countryside and along a river lined with brilliant trees. We rolled the windows down, and breathed in the warm fall air.
When we got home, we decided we weren’t ready to be in-doors yet, so we packed a picnic lunch and strolled to a little park, where we ate left-over turkey sandwhiches and sipped hot apple cider from a thermos. When he’d finished most of his sandwhich, we left Benjamin down to run around and play.
Then we tried to take a few pictures. This is what Abigail thinks of taking a few pictures:

I’m teasing them both. They had their fits, as babies often do, but mostly they were great all day, and there are some good pictures in the side bar. The kids seemed to love the family time, and both napped fairly hard in the afternoon. While they did, Nic played some Viva Pinata, and I messed around with car stereos — with about 80% success.
In the evening we BBQed and ate dinner out on the deck while the sun set behind us. We sipped a glass of wine (spoils from the Thanksgiving dinner) while the kids worked happily on their desert. When they went to bed, almost without complaint, we sat ’round a poorly built fire that smoked more than it burned (it was the paper, I tell ya, it was damp) watched a little TV, then went to bed ourselves, smelling of outdoors, and apples and camp fire…

It felt good to be free.

This is a scheduled post, intended to go live while I’m voting. Today is election day, and I’m happy that I’m home to do something about it. I’ll be voting NDP, not because I agree with what the party stands for, but because I agree with what the local MP (Member of Parliament) promises to work on: fixing telecommunications in Canada, and making sure the 5 million Canadians who don’t have family doctors get one. These things are critical to me, so I’m voting for those issues — not for the party.
In truth, I don’t know enough about Canadian politics to be passionate one way or another. This site has an interesting (although difficult to read, because of the awful color scheme) primer on Canadian politics, but I can sum up some key points for our American readers who may be curious:
There’s a total of 308 seats in Parliament (roughly equivalent to Congress) and a party needs to have 155 seats to make up a Majority government — meaning they can get legislation through on their own, if at least two other parties don’t agree to stop them. If they get the majority of votes, but don’t reach 155, they’re still in power, but as Minority government. I gather that the party with the second highest number of seats is called the Opposition.
Canada does not have a two party system, although the party in power and the Opposition will obviously have the most sway. The other parties still play a significant role in governing.
Although there is a far right and a far left party, as in the U.S. (the Conservative party is the most right, the N.D.P party is the most left) there is a wide spectrum of view points in between. The Liberal party is a left-leaning center, the Green party is fairly left, but is generally less concerned with conservatism or liberalism then it is about being environmentally responsible. And the Bloc Quebecois thinks Quebec should be its own country, and is mostly pretty crazy (as far as I’m concerned.) And there are many, many more (there’s a Christian Heritage Party, a Libertarian Party, a Marxist-Leninst Party and even a Marijuna Party!)
From what I understand, we don’t vote for a Prime Minister (roughly equivalent to a President) we vote for our Member of Parliament, and the Majority government’s leader becomes Prime Minister. His party’s power is dictated by the number of seats they hold in Parliament. Some parties never get any seats.
Our current Prime Minister is one Stephen Harper, a Conservative, and I gather he’s not terribly well-liked. We were living in the States for almost the entirety of his time as Prime Minister, so I don’t know much about him. I do know that there’s a waiting list a mile long for us to get a family doctor, and that Canada is about 10 years behind the States on telecommunications technology, so I feel its time to swing toward a more progressive government.
While a Canadian Conservative and an American Republican may look similar in regards to their social and fiscal policy, I think that most Canadian Conservatives would be shocked and dismayed to find themselves compared to the G.O.P. — if they really knew what that party stood for.
I know I was.

One of the many apartments we’ve lived in was a townhouse. When we arrived, the front door was a little worse for wear, so I decided I’d go out and paint it. I hadn’t got an hour into it, when a voice behind me said “What do you think you’re doing?”
I turned to find a, previously friendly, neighbour glowering at me menacingly. “My door looked pretty grungy, so I’m just freshening it up with a coat of paint” I explained.
“You can’t do that, the condo board has to approve it!” He said.
“Well, it’s too late now,” I said, since I’d already had a good third of the door painted, “I’m going to have to finish.”
He stormed away, and later that day a small crowd of people gathered in the parking lot outside our house. I was sure there was going to be a lynching. Instead, two weeks later, professional painters arrived and painted every front door in the complex.

As I began scraping our garage door last weekend, you can imagine that I was looking over my shoulder a fair bit. But no one stopped me, or interrupted my work. A neighbour did, in fact, come over at one point, though. He brought a can of a substance called “Circa 1895” which is a paint stripper that made the job much easier.
Our garage and front door were apparently given a hurried coat of paint, and we were not terribly happy with the color, or the work done. It was a peach/orange color, done with a dull, flat paint, on top of the existing paint job (which appears to have been yellow) — basically we had the worst looking garage door on the street. I set out, last weekend, with the goal of re-painting before Thanksgiving. An hour or two of slow scraping (after I discovered that sanding just wasn’t going to cut it) and I’d revised my target date signficantly. Once the paint stripper arrived, however, with much thanks to our pretty cool next-door neighbour, I was able to catch-up to my original goal.

Two coats of semi-gloss paint went on first thing Sunday morning, in beautiful, sunny weather. It looks 100% better, although I’m not 100% sold on our color choice. Both Nicole and her sister approve, though, so I guess that’s good enough. I still need to do the trim around the garage door, but I think I’ll be painting the front door to match first.

It was a ton of work, but there’s this sense of satisfaction that comes from improving your own home. Its a wonderful feeling, made all the better by the fact that no one can tell you you’re not allowed to do it…
Supplies and Tools Needed:

• $20 – Used hand sander (that broke just as the project was nearing completion)
• $35 – Circa 1895 paint stripper (owed to neighbor)
• $10 – Gift card for neighbor for saving me hours of labor
• $8 – Cheap paint brushes and paint tray for applying paint stripper
• $7 – Paint scrapers
• $3 – 3 Putty knives
• $8 – Wood filler to fix cracking wood
• $28 – Assorted kinds of sandpaper, trying to find stuff that would work
• $70 – High quality outdoor paint, self-priming
• $15 – Good paint brushes, medium sized roller, paint tray

Total: $204, and one week’s worth of work — with enough supplies left-over to do the front door at no extra cost.

A huge congratulations to Brian and Libby Howe, on the birth of their child, Avery. You can read the saga on Brian’s Twitter page, and see a couple of pre-baby videos on his website. From what we read, it sounded like a very long day!
We distinctly remember Brian and Libby coming to visit us when Benjamin was born. We offered to let Brian hold him, but he had this look of terror on his face, like he couldn’t possibly hold a new born! He’s come a long way!
We’re very happy for both of them!

Gotta lighten the mood around here, so everyone look at these pictures and say “aww, how cute” and hope that whoever ends up in charge down there, these kids inherit more than just our mess…

Abi frequently rides around in the laundry hamper.

Hanging out with Daisy is a little more rare. Usually the cat takes off before her tail gets pulled — Benjamin has taught her well.

She just started doing this, and its wonderful. There was no transition period, one day she just decided she was ready for the bottle — and she prefers to hold it herself… which looks incredibly cute, because her hands aren’t very coordinated yet.

Ben likes to be in the pictures too. This is his big boy bottle — don’t tell him, but its actually a sippy cup (the nipple swaps off)