An end and a beginning...

We're changing our blog address. Update your links and favourites to direct you to the new Margenau Family Blog.

www.margenau.wordpress.com

When we first started blogging, blogger was really the best tool available. Since then, a lot has changed. I am constantly annoyed by blogger downtime, by the photo uploading, but the ridiculous little quirks of the site. Additionally, we are reaching the point where we need to integrate our two blogs together. It makes no sense to have two, especially with the new baby on the way. We can't continue to keep 'baby developments' separate from 'family developments', and the maintenance of both is getting exhausting. Wordpress is a new blogging tool that seems a bit more user-friendly and effective, so for now, thats where our blog lives. Come visit us there, as there will be no more updates here at Blogger....

International meeting organizer, check

I could tell you why I had to organize a meeting for people from around the world. But I would have to kill you.

Thankfully, it is almost over. I have realized over the last few months that A. I really should learn French. B. I should really learn some Spanish as well and C. My limited Chinese, while a fun party trick, is not that useful when everyone is from central America or french speaking Africa.

All in all it has been a great learning experience and I am finally able to sit and enjoy the view of my room in Toronto. The meeting was very successful and for me to watch an international negotiation session take place was very very enlightening. Very cool to be there. I can only imagine how neat it must be to be at a really big meeting like the CBD (that's biodiversity to the rest of you) or Bali (that's climate change). We had almost 40 people speaking in 3 languages with translation. I took 24 pages of notes in 8 hours of meeting. That's typed not hand written.

I suppose that's about all I can say about it I suppose. Regardless, after a 12 hour day today, I got just about everyone taken care of, although I am sure something will need looking after in the morning.

Yep, I organized, the meeting, coordinated the travel for almost 40 people, ordered the food, arranged the hotel rooms and managed the budget. Check that one off.

The food was good, the room was good and I am going to sleep.

Goodnight.

All Decked Out!

I had all these great titles for blogs over the last month.

Hey, wasn't it winter last week?

Followed by

Hey, wasn't it summer last week?

and..

.... a couple of other I have since forgotten.

Yeah, I know its been a month since I updated last. Linds keeps putting up the pics I wanted to post about.

Finally, though I managed to stop her from posting the latest pics. Once again, our development has turned in to Luke's favorite place in the entire world. The trucks are back and we are construction central!

As official community organizer, a title I came into by default, the interlock work we had done was based out of our front yard. Linds actually organized most of the quotes and picked the guy in the end but I would like to believe that it was spurred on by my efforts to get us a fence. The fence though, let me tell you, I can only hope goes as well as the rock.

So bright and early this past Monday a couple 'o big old trucks showed up in front of the house and offloaded a mini excavator. As if that wasn't enough to drive Luke to distraction, they proceeded to drive it into our front yard and start digging at the door! Talk about the happiest little man in the world!

The work went smoothly and being the good neighbours we managed to convince 4 other people to get work done as well. The contractor was a really nice guy and he did what he said, stayed on schedule, cleaned up and did good work. What more can you ask? Oh yeah, he didn't change the price after he gave the initial quote!

Now we have a nice new parking space in the front yard, which is a lot better than the pile of dead grass we had and we also have a great new lanai in the back. the table and grill are back on it and we have spent every evening out there.

Today I managed to lay the left over sod along the edge of the interlock and put all the extra topsoil in buckets. This meant I could, with the help of a neighbour, pull the tarp off the yard so the grass doesn't die.

Now, if only the stupid fence guy could get his act together...

The Duttonation Invasion!

Question: How do you judge a good friendship?

Answer: When a friend who has never flown before gets on a plane just to come see you. Well, we really know they came to see Luke, but he still got on a plane.

That's right the DuttoNation invaded Canada for 5 days last week.

After a short but, as I understand it, enjoyable search at customs the Duttons finally made it into Canada. Seems someone forgot to tell them our address so the nice little man at customs made them go through secondary processing. Shane said no on had made him feel like the customs man had in a long time.

Luckily the weather was great the whole week they were here. It meant we go to do a lot of fun outdoor things that weren't possible even a week before. The snow pile started disappearing pretty quickly and the roads were clear so we took them out to see the hood.

It was a terribly busy week for me at work and for Linds as well so we had to leave Shane and Tiffy on their own for a while. We spent some time at the play area in the mall but otherwise just bummed around the house while they were here.

Seems that while we were thinking how nice and warm it was the poor old southern folk were freezing. To top it off Luke managed to come down with a rip-roaring good fever on Saturday night to go with his cold and runny nose.

The big highlight for Shane and I was the renewal of our longstanding sporting event mandates. I took Shane to go experience a real hockey game in Canada where everyone cheers and the place it packed! It was the last game of the season and the Sens, despite sucking for most of the back half of the season, managed to backdoor into the playoff despite losing. It was a decent game and we had some really entertaining people sitting next to us.

Saturday was the big day out for all of us. We took the Duttons to the Sugar Shack we went to with Heathery and did some more excessive eating. It was amazing to see what a difference 2 weeks makes to the frozen waste of the farm. The snow had melted and the sap was actually running from the maples! Very cool. The food was still spectacular and I again managed to eat too much.

We took it easy the rest of the day, with the exception of me shovelling some snow. I find it crazy that I spent a whole winter building up a 13 foot tall snowpile in the front yard and then spent a week shovelling it back onto the driveway to help it melt. As of today, the pile is almost totally gone but this is what it looked like when I started throwing it on the driveway.

Sam and Luke had a great time playing all week and seemed to get along really well. Except when Luke decided Sam made a good horse!

Sunday morning we said goodbye to the Duttons with talk of planning a trip down there next summer after baby Margenau #2 makes an appearance. Shane made it safely home thus completing his first round trip adventure in a plane! YAY!

Now we are just preparing for Grandma who will be here on Monday!

Eatster

No, not Easter, Eatster. As in that is all we did this weekend!


Aunty Heather was here and so we had to take her out to a sugar shack for brunchfast. No one ate for the rest of the day after that episode. Ham, pancakes, bacon, beans, eggs, fresh maple syrup, hash browns. They gave us maple taffy for dessert too. Check Heathers blog for picks of that day.


Then there was actual Easter Sunday with a traditional Easter ham for dinner and we capped it all off with an Easter Monday brunch with Jo and Rich! Eatster indeed!

It was such a blessing having Heather here. Anytime there is another set of hands to pick up and legs to chase after Luke it makes our lives so much easier. Lately Luke and gone all mommy centric and won't do anything with me. I think it is a backlash from the 8 months I spent being SAHD. Fortunately, Heather is just as good as mom and Luke was happy to drag her, literally by the finger, all over the house. This was nice because Lind is still recovering from her mauling by Oli and resulting trips to the ER. To be fair it wasn't Oli's fault, but that is a story for another time.


So here are some pictures from the weekend along with commentary. Yes, I am off of the writing long blogs. I write all day at work and really am less interested in it than normal. My wrists are also very sore from breaking up the ice dam that is the bottom of our driveway.


Easter Monday brunch was served in bowls made by my dad, which elicited many comments! Including some new mugs we got in the mail! And what a feast it was!
"Mom, my mouth is SO full of chocolate and I know there is more in these eggs!"



A big Easter egg hidden in the neighbors snowbank. All winter! Yes, that is a VW.


"Oh, look another egg! Who put that on my high chair?"


"Are you serious? More eggs? You guys have to come over and see this!"


"I hope this is the last one. My arms are tired! But the real question is should I put it in the basket or not...?"

And finally, two more videos of the Easter egg hunt. No more complaining for a while grandparents!

Back when I was 30...

...it snowed so much that we had a good chance to break the all time record! In fact it snowed 51cm this past weekend. It was a good one! I think we finally found out how much snow it takes for the city to not be able to keep up. The side roads are beyond belief, less than a single lane in places and even the main roads are terrible.
Well, it begs the question if there is that much snow what do you do with it? Some guy made a 2 storey snowbank in front of his house, but we decided on a much simpler idea. Dive in it! Sorry it is sideways. I will try to fix it later.




Then Linds had the great idea to dig down to the grass in the backyard and stick Luke in it. "He will love looking at the picture someday" she said. Someday wasn't Sunday. In fact he started screaming as soon as I put him in it. Probably because it was a good foot deeper than he was tall.

Well, some day he will appreciate it. When he gets done with the counselling.

The snow really was fantastic. At one point I got up in the middle of the night and realized I couldn't see across the street!

This is what the opening of the garage looked like.

Here is the mazda and night and then the next day.

The front door.

Me standing in the hole I dug for Luke.

In the end there was so much snow that I broke one of the shovels we have. It just cracked under the pressure.

Six more weeks of winter and the weather people tell us that we get 25% of our snow in March!

Blizzard of 2008

No, I am not talking about the massive snowstorm we are in the middle of, although I will eventually.

I am talking about the much more personal blizzard.

It started like this...

Continued with this...

...and this...

and finished like this!! With a blizzard of hair dropped into the bathtub.

Isn't there some show about losing ten years in ten days? Well I did it in ten minutes! Geez I look like a kid!

Of course Luke wanted to get in on the action. He wasn't even freaked out by the new look dad.

So what prompted this? Amazingly it wasn't Linds and she is having trouble getting used to it. After all it has been almost four years since last I shaved! I had just been thinking about it for the last couple of weeks and wondering what I would look like without a beard and especially since losing all the weight. Well now I know! I don't plan to stay clean shaven for long. Just a few weeks. I hate the thought of having to shave every day too much to want to stay this way for long.

Hair raising stories aside it is snowing like mad today. We are supposed to get as much as 40cm (I'll believe it when I see it) by tomorrow morning. So far we have about 15 I would guess. Pretty exciting all in all. At this point there is so much snow most people are getting tired of it but there is a core group of us who are excited that this could be the snowiest winter of all time. We only need about 85cm to get there and we still have 6 weeks of winter left. If it is really good we will post some more pictures tomorrow.