Category: Family (page 14 of 14)

With the snow forecast (we got 12 to 14 inches of snow) I unpacked the snow thrower Saturday morning. It’s a 6.5 horsepower gas powered contraption.

Saturday we started getting snow. Sunday morning and afternoon I got to use the snow thrower. Originally I did not want to get one as I thought we did not really get that much snow.

After doing the entire driveway I am glad that we got one. It was very time consuming but it worked. I guess that means I am a fully domesticated home owner.

This is the second snow thrower that we’ve gotten. The first one was an 11.5 HP monster that did not even fit into my Dad’s mini-van. There was an issue with missing parts and eventually we got the monster returned. Looking at the documentation the old one was good for my driveway, the 3 neighbours driveways, and the street.

The one that we got afterwards worked really well but the day was not complete until we heard from my cousin Peter who called to say

“Hey it’s too bad you returned the old one. That’s a lot of snow out there.”

Should have taken before and after pictures.

Happy Chinese New Year! This is the Year of the Dog and we celebrated by visiting Lily’s family in Queens. The kids love abusing their cousins so it was all good.

In reality we just enjoyed the time off. This is the first time in a long time that Lily has really had a day off; this is a very busy time of year for her at work.

I think this coming week we may want to take the kids out to eat but today Flushing and Chinatown ought to be a mad house if you are driving and looking for a place to park. Weekends 11am – 2pm are normally just bad but today with everyone out and about it really would push me over the edge just looking for parking.

December 24th

Saturday night we put the kids in bed at 7pm. We told them they had to go to sleep or Santa might not come to our house.

Naturally as soon as we got them to sleep, Alek and my parents went to the basement and began to wrap presents. I brought from the basement the presents Lily and I had gotten and Lily started wrapping.

Wrapping is too complicated for me, I’m told.

By 11pm we had all the gifts wrapped and placed under the tree.

December 25th

Christmas day was perfect. The kids woke up around 6am and woke me and Lily up. Hearing your kids say “Look, Santa came! Look at all the presents!” when they are 2 and 4 years old is great. The kids tore into their gifts and really had fun. We had the sense to separate their set of gifts from everyone else’s, or they’d have ripped open all the presents. It was great fun and we all exchanged really good gifts.

Every year the whole family heads over to Ed’s house and we all hang out and have a meal with his in-laws. Ed’s family is great, lots of fun, and really good to be with. We had dinner and exchanged gifts. A good time was had by all. The kids love going over to Ed’s place and fooling around with his niece.

Ed shared with us two funny videos from the Internet, Worst Job (warning: NSFW, not to be viewed by small children) and Anti-boredom. We are a bunch of geeks with broadband Internet connections your typical American family.

Today we took out the Christmas decorations and put them up. We waited for the kids to take a nap and then me and one of my brothers went to the basement and brought up the tree and lights.

My brother and I began to put up the tree when my wife (who was handling the lights) asked if we should take out a layer, add lights, another layer, etc. We decided to put up all the branches and then put on the lights.

So much for plans… here is a picture of us putting on lights after I took off some of the branches. My wife handled the placing of lights (too complicated for me). After that the family placed the hanging ornaments and my mother and my sister-in-law placed the silver garland.

The end result was well worth it; the tree looked fantastic. My parents decorated the stairs and the dining room. Everything looks really good.

Last year my Dad setup a bunch of Christmas Caroler statues. He modified the street lamp decoration and replaced the ornament inside with a real bulb. Mounted the whole thing on a platform and put flood lights in front of it. Here is what the statues look like tonight.

Dad also put up lights around the columns. The whole house looks great.