Back in the saddle

Well, as you can tell by my long absence from my blog, it has been a very busy holiday season! I’ll try my best to fill you in on what’s been going on over the past little while – now that everything is started to get back into the old routine, I will have time to post much more regularly again – woohoo! I just jotted down all the things I wanted to talk about in this post, and I came up with a list of 14, no 15 topics (sorry, none of them are weird websites this time). It looks like this is going to be one long post, so sit back and make yourself comfortable. I just typed that last sentence in MS Word, and it recommended that I change the word “yourself” to “you” – so much for Grammar Checkers.

Okay, so what has happened over the past little while? Remember a few weeks ago, I said that I was now officially bilingual? Well, it appears as though I jumped the gun a wee bit. I looked again at my file, and I still need to improve my official writing mark before I can earn the “bilingual” badge. I’m scheduling a writing test for early in the new year to confirm that I know how to write well enough in French.

Today was my first day of work since December 23rd. It’s been wonderful having so much time off! I can’t remember when the last time I took so much time off. It was well needed and well appreciated – Work wise, November was a busy, busy month, and before the holidays I had never fully recovered from it. Now, I feel like I have.

During my time off, Katherine, Jacob and I kept VERY busy. We had a wonderful Chanukah party my mothers house with her and about 30 of her closest friends. It was a pot-luck type party, and everyone was asked to bring one of their favourite dishes. I brought Katherine. Actually, we stopped off at the Ottawa Bagel Shop and brought three dozen bagels. Believe it or not, they were all gone within an hour. I guess people just can’t get enough bagels. Jacob has been opening his Chanukah presents every night after we light the menorah. Family members all over the globe have sent him presents -- some of the highlights include gelt (money), books, trains, and clothes. Thank you to everyone who has sent gifts. Katherine and I really appreciate it, and so does Jacob. His favourite time of the day lately seems to be opening gifts.

In fact Jacob has been doing a lot of gift opening lately -- what with eight days of Chanukah and one day of Christmas to contend with. For me, Christmas morning is still relatively a new phenomenon. When I was much younger, I had a few pseudo Christmas mornings at my fathers house, but they always seemed wrong, and made me feel sick. What Katherine and I are doing with Jacob feels a lot more comfortable to me in every way. The only reason he might feel sick is because he’s had too much chocolate. Neither of us are denying, hiding, or skewing our own beliefs, we’re simply exposing him to what we both believe in. For Katherine, that means presents on Christmas morning. For me, that means a present every day of Chanukah. For Jacob, it means a whole wack of presents, and exposure to two of the world’s great religions. I’m pretty sure that it’s a win/win/win situation.

During Christmas, Katherine’s “aunt” and “uncle” (Bob and Murrilla) stayed visited from Prince Edward Island. Katherine’s grandmother was very happy to have the company of her nephew and niece – I’m pretty sure that they played cards for the entire five days of the visit, and I’m positive that more alcohol was consumed during the five day visit than is usually consumed all year long. Oh well, I suppose that’s what the holidays are all about.

The day after Bob and Murilla left for home, Katherine’s grandmother walk walking from the bathroom to her chair in the dining room (where she spends most of her time reading), when she lost her balance and fell over. It was a pretty scary time for everyone in the house at the time, but thankfully she seems to be okay. She has a rather large bandage on her arm where she scraped herself on a chair leg, but other than that she’s fine. When she fell, I was entertaining (or trying to, at least) a friend visiting from Toronto. In the time it took me to peer around the corner, Katherine and her mother had already zoomed to grandma’s side to help her up. Thank goodness for those two!

On a brighter note, Katherine and I decided to take a day to ourselves a few days ago – we brought Jacob to daycare, and then headed over to Wakefield to the Edelweiss Ski Resort for some… you guessed it: Tubing! If you’ve never gone tubing before, I highly recommend it – you take a chair lift to the top of a ski hill (one with no turns, that is), and go down the hill on an inner tube. Depending on the hill, you can pick up some pretty good speed. In total it takes about 15 seconds to get to the bottom of the hill (I timed it), and about 15 minutes to get to the top. Those 15 seconds, are definitely worth the 15 minutes, though – and besides the view on the way up was wonderful, and the company was even better.

The whole time we were at Edelweiss, I was feeling guilty about leaving Jacob at the daycare, and Katherine was feeling VERY guilty. We kept reassuring ourselves that it was okay to have a day to ourselves. And besides, we’re paying for the spot in the daycare, Jacob might as well fill it. Right? Right? Well, near the end of the day, when Katherine was in the washroom, she saw a little girl who looked at her and smiled. Katherine thought the girl was someone from brownies until she asked “Where’s Jake-y?” Well, it turns out that the girl was actually someone from Jacob’s daycare centre. Boy did we feel guilty! To ease our guilt, we kept him out of daycare the next day, and we all spent the day together.

That evening we decided to empty Jacob’s piggy banks and roll up all the coins. You would be surprised how much loose change adds up over time. In two piggy banks, we rolled up over $130. That is money going directly into Jacob’s bank account.

Hmm, what else? Today was my first day back a work, did I mention that? First thing this morning, saw my pay clerk in HR, and they gave me my November overtime check. Thank goodness for overtime – I’m finally going to open that ING direct account I’ve been wanting to – and I’ll be able to do it with a nice round number. Yay!

Tonight Jay and Chris (my brother and sister in law) are going to visit, and we will play a game of Trivial Pursuit. It should be fun. We were supposed to have dinner with our friend Gen .. err.. Genevieve, but the timing is horrible given that we need to get Jacob to bed for seven o’clock, and I didn’t finish work until five. Hopefully, she’ll stop by for a quick visit anyways before she heads back to Toronto.

This Saturday – New Years Eve -- we are spending the day with my mom (as always), and will be having dinner at a restaurant near our house. They are having a kids New Years Party with a countdown at 8:00 instead of midnight. Apparently, they’ll also be passing out ‘champagne’. Jacob should love it.

Then, on Sunday, is the traditional New Years Day brunch at Myrna and Morrie’s house. We always look forward to spending time with familiar people, and eating some wonderful food.

Monday is another day off at work, and then everything gets back to normal. Or almost normal, that is. Katherine’s schedule is changing for the better – but more on that later. I really should sign off for now.

Happy new year everyone!