COLVIN.CA

Well, things here have been crazy to say the least. We have been gearing up for the big guy’s appearance all month and tonight is finally the night.

Carter has been working out and stretching to get ready for his big day tomorrow as well.

Too funny. That kid cracks me up. Here is a picture of Connor, Carter and Ashley making gingerbread cookies at our house after Connor caught the bug at school for making these. All had fun making them although any structural failures of the houses caused some necessary grief counselling by the parents.

We have started to build our backyard rink but the weather hasn’t been cooperating too much with us since we started. The weather has been warm during the day for the last 2-3 days so Connor and Mom have been busy flooding whenever we think it is a good time to do so. Hopefully it will stay cold so we can get a good base on the rink so we can start skating outside! The canal isn’t open either yet and they don’t anticipate it to be before New Year’s Eve as the weather hasn’t been conducive to building ice. (the canal was at 5 cm thickness when it needs 25+ cm’s).

The Christmas tree has been a big hit for the boys as well as Koke. Being a kitten well let’s just say she has enjoyed her new cool smelling addition to the house. Here are the boys absolutely losing their mind in these pictuers as we asked them to say cheese. Well look how wide open their mouths are … boy were they excited!!

Ok … so this parenting thing sort of takes getting used to (it’s been 4 years of pure learning) and I should know better but hey we were in the egg nog at the time. Everyone was wondering what the boys were doing upstairs in Connor’s room but we were enjoying the quiet time. Well Connor comes downstairs wearing a new shirt and we thought that was kind of odd. Then suddenly he came clean and lifted up his shirt!! Yikes!!! Pen marks all over!! Then Carter came ripping downstairs (there is no slow speed on that boy) and sure enough he was covered front and back! (thanks to Connor getting those hard to reach spots.) As of this writing they are still for the most part marked up!!

Finally tonight we were ready for Santa to appear. Milk? Check. Carrots for the Reindeer? Check. Cookies for Santa? Check.

I hope everyone is doing well and keep on tracking Santa out there in cyber space. He is on his way.

Night!

Well, I had a brain surge the other day and thought that Connor’s room needs a definite makeover.

We had never completed the final painting in his room since we moved into the house if you can believe it. (Well you can for those that know my famous procrastination abilities.)

Hmm … what to choose? Animals? Nah. Flowers? Nah? Cars? Maybe. Hockey? YES! Oiler theme! Wow! Great idea. Well to get this done I need the heavy hitter in the family. The creative genius that is the Eastern most Colvin family. Yes … her name is Barbie!

We ordered Edmonton Oiler border online from Sears and then got the official NHL paint from Home Depot. We painted the Oiler blue on the bottom of the room plus the white everywhere else. It looked fantastic. The piece de resistance was the creation of the Oiler logo which was done on Sunday. I went to work to get an overhead projector (mind you I had to blow dust off of it because they aren’t used anymore) and brought it home. We then projected the image on the wall and started tracing. The big thing was to keep the boys out of the room which we managed to do.

Well I think it looks great. Here are a couple of shots of Connor and his new room! Looking good buddy!

Anyway … have to run. Take care everyone!

Well after waiting since March, the U2 concert finally happened on Friday. I was pretty pumped up about it actually. Kind of the ‘cross of the list before you die’ sort of thing with me.

Barbie and I both had dreams the night before about Bono. Mine was a bit weirder then hers (big surprise) but goes like this. I was at a school auditorium with Craig watching U2 perform (one song!) and then we left. As we were leaving the auditorium and entered the parking lot, Bono walked by and I said in a loud voice “Hey Boh-no (phonetically).” Well Bono was so mad he just stormed away and said he would never play here again *ever*! More importantly, Craig then replied that he too would never talk to me again. Nuff’ said … when Craig won’t talk to you then you know you screwed up.

Barbie’s dream was more capitalist in nature. She simply found out that the drummer was sick and filled in for him on the world tour. Needless to say she makes a lot of virtual money now with many men groupies following her around. The funny part for me is that she doesn’t even know the name of U2′s drummer. (Larry Mullins Jr. for those playing at home.)

Anyway … concert review. We went for dinner downtown at Pancho Villa’s with Stef who was on her way to a spa treatment. Food was good as usual. We left around 7pm for the Corel Centre and got there in about 20 minutes. (more on the time thing later!) The warm-up band was The Arcade Fire from Montreal which have been getting rave reviews everywhere (I had never heard of them before.) Apparently, U2 plays there most popular song “Wake Up” right before they go on for the current tour. This was the first night they opened up for U2 and I have to admit they grew on me. They are about 7 members and are absolutely frenetic on stage. They are actually one of the Must See acts for 2005 on Entertainment Weekly. I grabbed their disc and in fact they have grown on me.

Around 9pm, U2 took the stage. Pretty amazing setup. Our seats were awesome. Here is a shot of the band on stage playing.

The stage was quite simple in design but complicated in what they can do. They had these ‘beads’ for lack of a better word that allowed them to do light effects around the band. Here is a shot of what I mean.

Lots of the time I was watching Edge on guitar as he is just amazing. He seems to be constantly tinkering around with the songs that I am sure he has played hundreds of times.

The middle of the concert, U2 played Love or Peace or Else which has kind of become their signature song during this tour. At first I didn’t like this song for some reason. When I saw the Hurricane Relief concert from MTV a couple of months ago, I changed my mind. At one point, it is just Larry Mullins Jr on drums with Bono singing and then Bono takes over on the drums. Very cool.

U2 played for over 2 hours. They played 22 songs with abou 8 of those in Encore format. The encore was pretty fun (all 3 of them) as towards the end they went pretty much acoustic with Edge and Bono singing “Stuck In a Moment” together.

The final song for the night was “40″ which of course is a very cool song. As the song winds down, each one of the band members stopped playing or singing and then saluted the crowd and then left the stage. When it got down to the drummer only (Larry Mullins Jr) he played for about 4 minutes with the crowd singing and then he left as well.

All in all very fun. Except for the apres concert where it took us 1 hour to get out of the parking lot. Oh well … I am over it now.

Night

Thanks to Barbie’s fantastic photo abilities, I managed to cobble together a new banner for the site. I hope you like it. Comments appreciated.

It might slightly change over the next little bit, as our picture has a nice colvin.ca text in the corner but for some reason it isn’t showing up in the banner. Oh well … I will have a look at it some time this week I hope.

In the meantime, here is a couple of pictures of the boys from this weekend.

We took out Koke again for a ‘walk’. This involves strapping her onto a leash and taking her out back. Boy does she ever want to get away. In this attempt Connor managed to pin her down into the pile of leaves we were getting put away! Great fun!

On Saturday, we did a lot of crafts. Here is a picture of Carter showing me some crayons I think it was at the time.

Finally, we left Carter upstairs to play and when I went upstairs he wasn’t there. Looking around in Connor’s room was the following evidence of his presence.

Carter likes to take his socks off a lot and in this case the socks just so happened to stay upright … too funny!

Hope everyone is well. We had some thundershowers and lightning (hide Mom … hide!) and some heavy rain later this afternoon. Maybe it will be snow soon … bring it on!!

G’Night.

Well it was quite the day for Halloween this year. Connor and Carter both dressed up as Spiderman and were looking pretty cute.

Both had lots of action poses in them while they were waiting to go out and get some loot.

Carter managed to stay out with Connor for at least 1/2 hour as the weather was pretty darn good last night. After that time, Carter got dropped off by Mommy and they went back out for some more Halloween excitement. Mom and Connor came back about 45 minutes later and boy did they hit the big time! Dad was also very happy as lots of chocolate could be found in his loot bag! Yay!!

Carter meanwhile during this time hung out with me and we proceeded to give out the stuff that we don’t like (heh heh) to the kids. Everyone at the door thought Carter looked pretty cute in his Spiderman costume until he started slowly stripping (as he does anywhere) down to his diaper. At one point I was in the bathroom with Carter and the doorbell rang! Trick or Treat!! Well I had the same thought … do I scare the kids with a half-dressed Spiderman? Hmm … ok they can wait. So I took him out with his face paint and half dressed much to the enjoyment of the kids (ok more the parents). For his reward, he munched on chocolate for at least two bars worth. For those scoring at home, he doesn’t like Oh Henry! bars but loves Kit Kats. (good choice Carter.)

Carter then mini-crashed for about … hmmm … two minutes.

The rest of the night was pretty quiet.

Ha ha hah … I must have just lost my mind! Carter and Connor were bouncing off the walls with chocolate surging through their veins. Have a look.
Surprisingly enough they went to bed around 9pm or so. Pretty impressive considering the ‘drugs’ they were on.

Connor’s day at school was pretty cool as well. He went with his class to Saunders Farm for some pumpkin picking and to see the animals. Mommy went with him on the bus as a volunteer and had a great time. Connor did too.

Here are some pictures of the class at Saunders Farm enjoying the beautiful Halloween Day.

What possibly could they be talking about I wonder?

Connor and some friends taking a break from their hectic and fun day!

Snack time for the kids!

Finally it was time to get some pumpkins. Here are the kids getting the low-down from one of the volunteers.

Anyway … all in all a great day. As a final shot, here is my crazy mom at home in Kelowna scaring the living daylights of all that came near her!