Road and Track

Kate went out for her first in car training for her driver's education course and is evidently doing quite well. This is a useful step in our family since we could use more drivers, and less folk who need me to drive them somewhere. Hopefully this whole process will continue on happily and we can then figure out how much extra this will cost in car insurance. Luckily gas has dropped to 84 cents a litre this week too.

My oral skills in French are not quite up to the same level as my reading and written, but I am still astounded I got the marks I did on the Public Service tests. Hopefully I will be allowed to hone my skills in a real job environment soon!

One Game Over

Emily went over to watch a Welsh U16 boys team play against the Scottish Junior team and she was quite impressed by the Welsh lads skills and size (they thumped the Scottish, but I didn't get the score). Em also ended up playing in a Senior Women's game since they needed substitutes, so she has another game under her belt (and she looked very tired for it, so that is good too).

Kate has her first in car driving instruction, so that should be interesting as well.

New Look to His Room

The Thomas motif now has much added motif to it, with painting complete and now a border and stickers as well!



Rhys enjoyed having this change as well:



He of course helped out too:

Candyland continues

Adventures in Candyland continues intermixed with Roller Coaster building with Rhys. He seems to be enjoying the Candyland game and has found a roller coaster building program on the PBS kids web page (it claims it is teaching him about kinetic and potential energy, but he just likes watching the roller coaster run). He also is enjoying watching Kung Fu Panda, maybe that is a logical next step to try out (either that or teach him how to cook noodles (inside joke from movie)).

The grass continues to green in, with the rain we have received lately, so that is a good thing as well (however it does mean I have to mow it a bit more).

Sniffles and Candyland

Rhys continues to have the sniffles from maybe allergies or maybe a cold, or who knows what, which meant he missed the 5 baptisms at Church on Sunday. It felt like I was at a Baptist Church with 5 kids being "done" at once. Quite the marathon session with 5 separate kids, but all with the same grandparents got "the procedure". Whether Rhys could have stood all this we shall never know since he was at home watching Kung Fu Panda his new favorite movie.

We have also bought Candyland and plan on a marathon set of games with Rhys, which should be interesting as well!

End of the Week

The week ends with a lot of rain, which is good for the garden and for the grass too. I leave you this week with a nice picture of Susan.

Busy Canada Day

It was a very busy Canada Day for all of us with Rhys, Susan and I going down to the Carnival and then over for a swim (and Bar B Q and fun) and the girls all going to various celebrations as well. Unfortunately the cameras batteries stopped about 3 pictures in so this is all we have (darn rechargeable things). Enjoy anyhow, we all had fun at least.


Nice fire engine


Riding in the wagon


And relaxing

Rhys had lots of fun, and so did we all.

Happy Canada Day!

Happy Canada Day, or Dominion Day, or Steinberg's Day or Loblaw's Day or whatever!

Enjoy this short video as well:

End of the world

The day before a day where Ontarians cannot shop, which of course means there will be a run on Loblaws, or at least it will seem like that. Hard to believe that 10 years ago folks couldn't shop on Sundays, and now if they are going to miss 1 day of shopping they act like it will be Armageddon if they can't get to Loblaws for a whole day. I mention this rant (again) because Rhianna gets to work the death shift from 5-11:30 dealing with all of these wackos trying to make sure they have enough bottled water and lottery tickets, in case the world DOES come to an end on July 1st.

Interesting stuff to live through that is for sure.

Rhys now enjoys chatting with his Grandma on the phone as well, he will make an excellent politician one day, as he doesn't really answer any questions, or if he does, he answers the question he wanted you to ask (hopefully he won't join the NDP).

Super Sunday

Everyone other than Rhys and Rhianna worked at Church on Sunday, and Susan and I both did more than one job on the day too. These days are quite exciting for the family, but Rhys is dealing with them better these days, and he seems to be calming down a lot more at Church (hopefully getting comfortable). Rhianna instead did her regular shift at Loblaws (she is doing about 24 hours a week or so). Busy day for a Sunday.

Hopefully the rain is coming, as I have thrown down some fertilizer on the front lawn, which hopefully will help green things up (a bit more).

We also got rid of more crap in the house returning clocks and uniforms to the basketball club, hopefully they will stay away this time, but we shall see.

Friday and it's Hot!

It is hot outside, red hot and the Grass is turning brown and it is muggy too. Most of the plants are OK for now, but my front lawn is returning to it's customary brown for the summer. Susan is holding out hope for her garden, we shall see.

Rhianna continues her quest to complete her schedule for her academic year, by staying up 'til Midnight on Thursday night, we wish her luck, but will be sleeping with a pillow over my head to hopefully muffle her cries of anguish and pain. I love "automated" systems that make systems "better" (what is the font for sarcasm).

Rhys & Kate

A picture taken with Rhys' new computer which comes with it's own web cam, he was happy to see that it worked.

Panic in the University Hallways

Rhianna stayed up until midnight last night to attempt to register for her courses for her 2nd year at WLU. The progression of events was quite interesting:

1. It took over an hour to finally get into the University's computer system to even ATTEMPT to register in a course.
2. At that late an hour it wouldn't let her do anything at all, she finally gave up and went to bed.
3. She woke Tuesday morning at 7:00 AM to attempt again, but this time was getting a nasty message saying she was not allowed to do anything.
   
4. This all happened because 3 months ago when she THOUGHT she declared her major, evidently she failed, thus the system was kicking her out because the courses she wanted was for folks with the major she THOUGHT she had. {Insert mental image of 19 year old freaking out}.
5. She then was clawed off the ceiling and finally contacted the registrar office and was bounced around a fair amount, left a message and was finally called back to be told she did not have a major. She managed to get the instructions what she had to do, to declare her major, but had to wait maybe 24 hours until the system let her do anything.
6. By the end of the day all forms had gone through and she was then able to start attempting to pick courses, however, many of the ones she wanted are already closed, so this saga does continue.

At Waterloo it was much simpler, you had very few options, and you simply submitted a list of your courses and you got either your schedule, or your schedule and a list of courses that did not fit, so you needed to fix it.

The fun continues on, as we speak, I am sure!

Computers Going South

A friend I worked with is collecting computers to set up in South America. He is actually part of the group that goes down and installs the hardware and the networks, and since we have bought Rhys a new computer (much to the chagrin of his older sisters), we now have a computer spare which will be going south (it is a reject from the Church so this is a good thing to send to these underprivileged folks). Hard to believe anyone could use the hardware, but if they can, more power to them.

Susan recycled plants by giving away some of her extra plants to a friend, so we are being green and pious all at the same time.