COLVIN.CA

Kind of depressing but the backyard rink is taking quite the beating right now with this warm weather. I left it unshovelled from the last dump of snow hoping it would insulate the rink a bit more but it appears to be still taking a big hit. I know it is to cool off again so given the thickness of the ice I know it won’t be a problem getting it back up to snuff. But any more days of this it could spell doom for the current ice and we will have to start again.

Things have been going ok this week. Connor and Carter are actually going to bed around 8 lately which is a shocker as we have previously had pitched battles to get them in bed by 9! So good for us in some ways but the ‘sucky dad’ in me likes the extra little time with them sometimes as we don’t get to see them during the day. Catch-22 situation.

And who could have a post without a picture? Here is a shot of Connor with the largest strawberry he has seen in his life. At $4.99 per box I hope they are this big!!! The boys are eating us out of our paying the mortgage off that is for sure!

Ok … back to bed … one more day left of work and I need my beauty sleep. Take care everyone.

Well, this is my final day of relaxing for the Xmas holidays before I head back to work tomorrow. Big sigh. Not really too thrilled about getting back to work as I really enjoy hanging out with the boys and having no worries. Tomorrow the day will start again with making lunches, convincing the boys to get to school/daycare and then picking them up. I know the boys enjoy going to school/daycare but for me it seems too much for such little guys. I am such a suck!

Anyway, just as any good movie will do to work in the title of the movie into the dialogue, here goes my reason for the title of this post.

For those who don’t know we have been finding that the central vac is less powerful as the days go along. It was to the point where it couldn’t move a grain of rice on Wednesday which was kind of funny really. I at first thought it could be a loss of suction due to the piping etc but after some reading on the internet I discounted that. (basically the garage outlet was fine with full power … it definitely pointed to a pipe blockage of some sort.) I went out to Home Depot and bought a pipe snake ($25 for a 50 foot snake!) and attempted to clear some of the pipe. Well it worked fine but only would go so far downstairs (15 feet) before stopping (a bend in the pipe perhaps?) and on the main floor it only went 4 feet! I gave up but then the next day had some more ‘go get em tiger’ thoughts and went to a vacuum store on Richmond Rd where I asked them what they do. Well he told me exactly what the websites I found told me to do. Get a portable vacuum (preferably a shop-vac) and reverse suck anything out of the pipe. Well we had done that already and nothing happened. Then he told me what no site mentioned … you have to disconnect the pipe to the central vac canister in the garage (or wherever it is located). It made sense the minute he said it and recharged I went home.

Well, I followed all the instructions and sure enough on the main floor the results of the pipe blockage.

• 1 Hot wheel car. This was a known entity in the pipes as I had seen it dangling one day when I was vacuuming but someone who will remain nameless attempted to grab it and it went down the pipe.
• Hair. Hair. Hair. Hair. As part of the blockage, the Hot Wheel car was causing quite the backup as it was catching all of the goodies we vacuum up. Yuck.
• Another Hot Wheel car!!! CARTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That boy is too funny. Apparently this is Carter’s new garage in the house.

The vacuum is now full power and I successfully scratched off a to-do item for the holidays! Yay!

Ok … sledding bonks. Connor and I went sledding yesterday and we had an accident of sorts. We were having a great time going down the hill at Dovercourt for at least an hour and then the accident happened. Basically I was coming down the hill and Connor was already down at the bottom. As I approached him he lunged at me thinking I had ESP and would catch him. Umm …. wrong. My cat-like reflexes did prevent serious injury but his cheek hit the ground really hard and well … a picture is worth a thousand words they say.

Connor is fine today but he does look worse. There still is quite the mark on his cheek but he soldiered on today and we had great fun on the backyard rink today.

Last thing on this Sunday night as I want to go watch West Wing …. the cats sometimes are friendly now a days. We have spotted them sleeping fairly close together on Carter’s bed which is refreshing. There still are pitched battles on the stairs between the two of them but those aren’t too serious we hope.

G’Night.

Well the backyard rink is going full bore lately on this last week off here in Ottawa. Barbie and I really hit a home run with the rink as the boys love going out there all the time. The weather last week was frightful (I always wanted to say that) but this week has been great. Below freezing temperatures and tonight we got about 7 cms of snow which is nice.

Here are some shots of the first couple of times out on the rink.

Carter got into the act as well. He isn’t as solid on the skates as Connor is but he sures loves smacking the puck around that is for sure.

Daddy has been playing goalie as well. My spectacular saves have been all the buzz in the neighbourhood let me tell you.

Carter was defnitely getting tired with all this crazy hockey stuff though. Here is a shot of him taking a break on the ‘bench’ (our steps on the deck).

Thank you … thank you very much. No really. No applause necessary. Seriously I am getting embarrassed now.

What is all the fuss about?

Well let me tell you. I finally fixed my Xbox!! Yes that is correct people. I am now officially back in the game. After months of Carter bugging me about the ‘X-ke-Box Broken’ all the time I finally had a moment of clarity and did some fancy footwork around the motherboard and c’est voila! It works. Man was I happy.

So of course I went out and got some new games and have been playing it every once and a while to make sure it works properly. (Like any good tester would. )

I did have to dig up my old original Xbox hard drive in order to reset something on the mainboard (a trick that I found on an obscure web site) and then I reseated the chip with a new screw and bolted it to the mainboard. (not recommended for the squeamish.) I powered it up and it worked. Oh man was I happy.

Anyway … nuff said. I am also going to post some pictures of our rocking backyard hockey games we have been having the last couple of days. The rink is awesome!

Chat later.

Just a quick post to say Happy New Year to everybody.

I will update everybody on what went on here in Ottawa tomorrow but in the meantime a picture of Carter and Barbie snuggling on the chair is a good start to the year.