Merry Christmas to all

Wishing everyone a wonderful Christmas 2009
and a very happy, healthy 2010!

As Requested

Mike and Robin are missing the boys, and so have asked to see some photos on the blog. No problem. So...as requested:

A Weekend at Jim and Glenna's

November, Friday the 13th: and off we go to Markham for a visit with our best buddies The Crockfords. We dawdled a bit so we wouldn't arrive too early, and just as well we did. I gather the air was a bit blue, and Jim's face a bit red. Now.....I only tell this story in the interests of saving our friends from a similar fate; not in any way do I expect people to laugh at this! It was a simple mistake. Anyone could have made it. See......Jim and Glenna had decided to clean out their fridge, and toss anything more than 6 years beyond its 'best before' date. So, what does Jim find, but a small jar of granular bread yeast, one that met the 'we should toss this' requirements. And toss it he did, down the sink. Now as he was doing this, he immediately began to wonder if this was such a good idea. 'Yeah, it will probably be okay....especially if I wash it down with a whole lot of hot water.' Hmmmmm. Now, honestly, I would have been fooled by this as well. Hot water....well that should kill the yeast! Not make it instantly expand to 10,000 times its normal size in a matter of seconds. But that is exactly what it did, plugging up the drains in the process. Panic!!! So Jim runs out and gets the strongest drain cleaner on the market. This stuff is pure hydrochloric acid. Pours it down the drain carefully, but of course, since the drain is plugged and the contents still growing, it works it way back up into the sink and manages to melt the finish off a good chunk of his stainless steel sink. Ooooh ooooh!

House full of kids still, visitors arriving in a couple of hours. Call Mr. RotoRooter please. But since Mr. RotoRooter wasn't available a very helpful, non-judgmental, 'accomodating' Sicilian plumber shows up and Glenna was able to charm him into fixing Jim's little problem for a special 'deep discount' price. We like to see people with an entrepreneurial spirit!

By the time we arrived, it was none to soon to start splashing the icecubes let me say!

Anyway, that whole story was just a little bonus to what was a great weekend overall. What made it especially so was we were able to golf. What a great day the Saturday turned out to be for golf. You may notice the jackets, but truthfully, once the sun came out, we played most of the 18 holes in near perfect golfing conditions. Since I don't have any pictures, or audio, of Jim's little kitchen adventure, I will just post some golf pics instead.

Jack's Gets A Haircut

This past weekend Jack had to endure his first haircut. And of course this made it a family event! Poor Jack was not a happy camper, that is for sure. He couldn't possibly have known what was about to happen when his Dad sat him on his lap, and then the nice lady put the big bib around his neck, but started to cry right away. Now maybe it was because she put a bib on him and then didn't feed him - that would do it; but I suspect it was more likely his sixth sense warning him that something not fun was about to happen

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Matthew, who is now pretty cool about this stuff, was very worried for Jack, and at one point went over to him and held his hand and tried to reassure him that this haircut thing didn't really hurt. Didn't help much though. Nothing did.....well....that is until the nasty lady gave him a lollipop. That worked for a while at least.



Afterwards we all went 'real bowling'. Matthew is totally awesome at Wii Bowling, routinely beating his parents and grandparents, but he especially LOVES 'real bowling'. We will never forget his first time walking into a bowling alley: "Poppa, it's real bowling!"

This time Nana was the big winner, and Poppa only just edged out Matthew. Final Score: in the ladies league - Nana got first place; in the men's league - Steve took the honours; and in the kid's league, Matthew was the big winner. But when he was told that, he said " No....I wasn't!". If you don't get a strike, you can't win, and that is all there is to it. That's his view and he is sticking to it. But he doesn't really mind if he doesn't win; it is still 'real bowling'.



And here is the final product - Jack's new haircut.

Historic Buildings Burn in NOTL

October 25th: it finally happened! How many times have we said 'Boy, if one of thes old buildings ever caught fire, it would go up like kindling.'. And sure enough, it happened. The cause has not yet been determined or announced; all that is known is that the fire started in the basement of The Copper Leaf. It spread rapidly up through the building and next door to the building housing Shaw Leather and Sotheby's Real Estate and several residential apartments upstairs. It was only thanks to our local volunteer firefighters and the assistance of St. Catharines and Niagara Falls Fire Departments that the other buildings on the block were not also destroyed. In particular, the Owl and the Pussycat building is adjacent to Sotheby's and is one of the oldest on the street. Here are photos from the morning after, the first being the rear of The Copper Leaf. The other photos are from Queen Street.



The buildings have now been torn down and the owners have said they will rebuild. Although they may be able to duplicate the storefront appearance, they can not replace the lost history. A real loss, but it truly could have been much worse.