2012 – A New Beginning
Well, only a new beginning of sorts. And only where this blog is concerned. I am going to try and update this much more often than I have in the past. Yet with Facebook, I am not quite certain what the purpose of this blog would be as I post so much on my Facebook page. And still I keep thinking that actually updating a blog such as this could be a lot of fun, if not for any particular reason.
So for this reason, and this reason alone I will attempt to update this much more frequently.
Starting off with first day of the New Year of 2012 seems like as good a day as any for a fresh start. I refuse to call this fresh start a New Year’s Resolution simply because, like most people, I have not had much luck (or rather fortitude) in the past at keeping those resolutions. So we shall just call it a fresh start and leave it at that.
The first day of 2012 started off with a much different approach than in previous years. I hate winter. I live in a winter city. The two don’t usually mesh. So this year I am going to try and embrace aspects of things I don’t like and enjoy them despite of my natural aversion. Which means that today the girls and I put on our snowsuits and decided to go tobogganing for the first time in a long time. Did I mention I hate snow?
On your mark get set slide!
The weather wasn’t too bad, as it was only about -9C but the sun was out and with the proper attire it was quite pleasant. When we got to the hill, really a large field at College Heights Secondary School, there were not that many people there, but considering it is such a large area, there was plenty of space for the 4 of us to do our own little bit of sledding. And it certainly didn’t take Kaleigh long to take off. Shannon and I simply gave her the word and she was off like shot giggling and laughing the whole way down the hill. Shaelyn wasn’t too far behind her. And from that point it was slide down the
My sledding girls
hill and climb back up it only to go back down again. All the time with much glee and laughter. And of course it wasn’t just the kids having fun with it, Shannon and I didn’t put on our snow suits only to stand around watching. No, we jumped on the sleds with the kids and joined them in the fun of sliding. We even tried going down head first with one of the girls on my back. That was fine until I hit a bump, and then it wasn’t so fine as the sled didn’t have much padding for the landing and when lying on your stomach the landings can be somewhat painful. We were out for about a couple of hours before we headed home to warm up with some nice hot chocolate and get our of our wet clothes. We had a lot of fun, so much so that I hope we will actually go back out again soon and try it again.
Of course the family time didn’t end when we got home. After we had our hot chocolate Kaleigh wanted do some Star Wars stuff with me, so we sat down and began to build one of the Star Wars models I actually got last year that have been sitting around gathering dust. We did one before, Darth Vader’s Tie Fighter, so this time she wanted to tackle Luke Skywalker’s X-Wing fighter. This one was a little tricky because many of the pieces on an X-Wing are actually quite flimsy – namely the laser guns on each of the 4 wings, but they are also so important to the model overall, so you
Completed X-Wing
have to be very delicate when putting them on and putting on other pieces once they are all together – especially on a model so small. I believe these models are about 1:144 scale, but they could be smaller in fact. Regardless of the size it is great to watch Kaleigh focus so hard on making sure she does it correctly. The way she delicately handles the pieces, to the way she reads over the instructions and gets excited to see it take shapes, takes me back to my own youth and the hours I spent putting models together. I get a great deal of pleasure out of watching her make these models, maybe even more than she gets out of making them.
After the model was completed, we decided to play a bit of Star Wars and we plugged the disc into the Wii to play Star Wars Lego. Kaleigh and I have been playing this over the last few weeks and we finished the Phantom Menacetoday and got started
Puzzle makers
in on the Attack of the Clones series of levels in the game. While we were downstairs building models and playing video games, Shannon and Shaelyn we busy upstairs putting together a puzzle and generally just having a a good time of wind down time, not to mention some nice mother-daughter time.
After awhile we all got hungry and decided it was time for food. I say “food” and not “dinner” or “supper” because previously we had told the kids that we would be having fondue. None of seemed that hungry at the time, must have been all the fresh air, so just a meal of mainly fruits for the chocolate fondue became the main course for supper for all of
Chocolate fondue
us. That is until we looked in the fridge. Shaelyn and I found some leftovers we wanted – turkey and chicken wings – so we had some of that while Kaleigh had a plate of raw veggies and some ranch dressing. Then we dove into the chocolate fondue.
To round out the evening we all sat down and watched Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring. I got the bluray edition with the extended version for Christmas this year and I thought now was as good a time as any to introduce it to the girls. Unfortunately I forgot how long the original movie was and now the extended version has made it even longer! The girls didn’t get to bed until well after 11pm – this after Shannon and I agreed to get the girls to bed earlier tonight. When we watch the Two Towers I think we split it into 2 showings. With the extended versions on bluray this is easy to do as the movies come on 2 separate blu ray discs already divided.
And that was how we kicked off the new year for 2012. If the rest of the year is half as fun as the first day was, it is going to be a great year!
