Blair's Blog

It’s been a busy couple of weeks around our house during February. On the Family Day long weekend, we had four of our nephews over for three days to give Ronny and Carla a bit of a break. The boy/girl ratio was pretty lopsided for Alyssa, but she managed to hold her own for the most part with being the only girl amongst the 7 kids. It did wear on her after a while as she eventually snuggled up to Brenda and asked to have her hair brushed. She normally resists getting her hair brushed, but seemed to welcome 10 minutes of ‘boy-free’ time with her mom.

Following Family Day the kids had the week off school, so the normal schedule was out the window for them, even though I had a normal work week. One of the highlights for the kids was getting to see the brand new stingray exhibit at the Calgary Zoo. The rays had been acquired by the zoo only a day or two before, so the kids were pretty excited to be among the first to see them.

This week we’ve had Barry and Breana (Brenda’s brother and sister-in-law) and their 4 kids staying with us. Barry has work in Calgary this week and the whole family decided to come down from the Rocky Mountain House area, where they live. So, we’ve had 7 kids running around the house again this week but this time the gender balance has been a little more even – 4 boys and 3 girls, so Alyssa isn’t quite as stressed and doesn’t mind having tangled hair.

To round out the month we’re looking forward to having friends from Edmonton come to visit us this weekend with their son. It has been really nice to have the basement all finished – there is lots of room for our guests and we can send the kids to play Wii in the basement and manage some brief moments where the adults can pretend that we are having a grown-up conversation!

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We finally have joined the 90’s and have purchased a game console. Well, more accurately, we made the kids save up their allowance and some gift cards that they got back at Christmas time until they had enough cash (or equivalent) to be able to afford the Nintendo Wii that they had their hearts set on. Of course, Brenda had to do the hard work of phoning around each week to try to find a unit in stock somewhere and, worse, had to get up at 5:00 am yesterday to line up to get one! Steven set his alarm and was up in record time to make sure that he and Brenda were to the store in time.

The kids are really enjoying the Wii and can already clobber me in all the games. Well, if I can’t beat them, at least I can have the warm parental feeling of knowing that I can threaten to take away their access to the Wii if they misbehave!

As for Brenda, she is a bit of worry – she’s promised to punch my lights out later … I hope that she’s talking about Wii Boxing!

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