Some notes just to record them for posterity. Who knows, one of us may be famous someday. (Well, more famous than me now. Grin)

Ilaria, we are TRYING to remember to take a picture of the back yard and front yard every day or every two days so that you can see the progression of the seasons. The back yard is already carpeted with fallen leaves in shades of red, orange, gold, pale green and pale brown. It's quite lovely until you remember that some one has to rake them all up.

Any way, we think it will make an interesting series of pictures about Canadian seasons and a nice record for when we actually do move from this house for the rest of us.

Everyone, just in case someone doesn't know, Sarah will be having surgery on Monday 25th September to, we hope, correct endrometriosis.

Rachel had her first day of school on Friday, September 15th. Apparently it went well, Rachel seems to have taken on some of Matthew's uncommunicative characteristics. We deduce, only from the absence of symptoms indicating otherwise, that the first day of kindergarten went well. We have no other record of the event; as well as keeping her own counsel, Rachel refused pictures.

Love MOm

Houston, we have a problem . . .

and like NASA, it's going to be expensive. Purolator will charge $253 !! to ship Matthew's first box (air is the only option) and Canada Post will charge $85 !! to ship it surface.

So, Matthew, you can pay for that, or you can tell me what in the box you ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY need and can't replace there (for less than shipping it to you) and I'll repack and ship a smaller box of necessities.

And plan a really small, light Christmas present...

You would have to have a heart made of stone to not just melt at this picture. No one tell Matthew, but I think I might just frame this for him for Christmas.
Most of the time they are great friends. But even if they are getting on each others nerves, they still have to be right next to each other. Lately, Sam has been copying Rachel. Rachels response to this has been to screeched 'SAAAMMM, don't do the same thingsssss!!!' 

Hmm... What shall I do with the rest of my day? Things have gone quite well so far.
Eating is such hard work.
Look everybody, it's me and Jeremy! Jermy is my friend, we make funny faces!
This is a picture that Rachel drew a couple of months ago. It is a picture of her family. Rachel is in the top left corner and Sam is in the bottom left corner. Mommy is between the kids. Daddy is beside Mommy, and Matthew is on the far right with the REALLY LONG legs. 

OK, so I think that more pictures of my kids is always a good thing......

Well, that was easy, but now I realize that I don't know how to do more than one picture. Please stay tuned for a short technical break. 

Robert - I am very sorry. that cd must have been from i dunno when, or a DIFFERENT Sarah. I loathe country music, shania pain in my ar*e - the pixie sticks - all of it! Always have, always will. I suggest the big magnet trick. Just grab a really big one, like the ones we used to find inside radio speakers - and wave it all around the cd shelf. Take the CD one by one and rub them with the magnet, if the magnet doesnt work the scratches will. Do a voodoo dance, wave it some more, and heck - just knock em cds on the floor and dance on them! If they ask, you are working on a square dance!! If they ask further, cross your eyes and say in a wavering voice " ohhhh the shanias in my head told me to... hmmmmm yes shania, ok." do a slight twitch and just walk away. Mom and Dad will either a) buy it or b) be so confused, they really wont know how to react.


Matt - Good to know you are ok and there safe and sound. Send us some pictures!!! Did you figure out your debit card etc... (you doedoe! ;p )!!!!
Let me know if you need anything for the computer, I'll try and send it through. Music, movies, you name it.

OXOXOOXOXOXO

G'nar


the laundry calls.......................

Hello all,

I didn't think that Andrew would have an email address, so I didn't ask anyone to forward that last email to him. Someone, please do so if he does have email. If he doesn't, make him get it.

And now, for the humour of it, I will pretend that this French keyboard is an English one for the remainder of this post.

I do hope everyone is doing zell in Cqnqdqm becquse things here qre just q dqndy ) o: The residence Im, stqying in is aiuite nice: Therems q poolm nice bed 9too short0 qnd ,ountqins everyzhere: Itms qctuqlly auite i,possible to get lost in this toznM therems ,ountqins to the north, differently shqped ,ountqins the the eqst, other differently shqped ,ountqins to the zestm qnd nothing ,uch to the south: Hilqrious11111 I cqnmt get lostm unless Im, in the old toznm zhere qll the streets qre terribly confusingm qnd the biuldings qre too tqll to see the ,ountqins:

Ilqriqms ,isses ,o,s ,uffins: Qlot: She ,isses qll of you too:

I hqve to go noz, I ,iss qnd love qll of you,

?qtthez

Hello everybody,

Someone please forward this to Robert, I don't have his address.

I am here, everything is ok, except a few things. Firstly, the keyboards are all different: the q,a,z,w,m, ; , : and comma keys are all in different places.

Also, Air Canada, bless their souls, left my bag in Toronto, which is just dandy. It should arrive here on tuesday or wednesday.

My address here is:

Matthew Fournier
Residence de la Houille Blanche de l'INPG
2 Ave des Jeux Olympiques
Chambre C298
38029
Grenoble, Cedex 2
France


The town is beautiful. Other than the little dfficulty with my bag, everything is OK. Paris is huge. The train station that I went to, Gare de Lyon, is bigger than the Ottawa Airport. Grenoble is small, I can walk across most of it in about one and a half hours. The mountains are spectacular.

I got to go now, more later. Love you all,

Matthew

June 1989, The Clothesline Pole

We had just moved into the new house in Waba at the start of May (Tina and Andrew should document the move!) and now that the truly desperate priorities were satisfied (electricity, stove, refridgerator, places to sleep, ...), we turned our attention to the B list priorities.

With 5 kids right at the top of that list was some way to dry clothes without spending ourselves into hydro-bankruptcy. We needed a clothesline, and a clothesline needs a pole.

So I asked your mother how long a clothesline did she want? "If it rains, I can have 5 loads out there before it all dries. I need a five or six load line."

Hmm, five or six loads, in the rain soaking wet, in the wind, maybe a thunderstorm. A couple of hundred kilos at least. Better get a BIG clothesline pole. has to be far off the ground to account for stretch in the line when loaded."

So that Saturday off we go in the van to Baba's house to get the poles. I pick
a shortish stout one for near the deck, and a very tall straight one for the other end of the yard. Cut and limb, tie it on with Marc's help, and off we go home.

The hole for the deck pole was already dug about 5 feet deep (1.75 meters). And that's as far as I could dig that one. So depth won't guanrantee stability ... better something a little extra. So I spiled the pole, mixed a big load of cement, and filled the hole with concrete after carefully placing the pole. After 17 years, that pole is about 15 degrees off true, so I guess it worked. I plan on selling the house before it needs replacing.

At the other end of the yard I managed to dig a very deep hole, maybe 2.5 metres deep, so the the very tall pole would be well seated. But, having a pole in earth just isn't going to hold five wet loads in the wind without shifting the earth around. What to do? Of course, dig another hole and fill it with concrete "logs", failed attempts at making a concrete border for the driveway the week before.

So everything is ready, off we go to get the tall pole.

I lifted one end, with difficulty. Catherine tried lifting the other end but cldn't manage it.

"Peter, it's too big, we can't move this."

"Oh sure we can, come over and hold this end. It's already off the ground."

So she did.

Now "Tina, come over here, grab the pole just behind your mother. That's the way!"

"Peter, this isn't going to work!"

"Sure it will, Andrew, get in here behind Tina. Now lift!"

"Sarah, Matt, your turn, get in there behind Andrew! Now lift!"

"Jon, you to! get in here and help us lift!"

"OK everybody now let's walk, SLOWLY. We must not drop this thing, it's way too heavy!"

So off we went from the front of the yard to the back, everyone protesting at first that it couldn't be done, then getting excited that we were moving it, and finally really enjoying it. This was a very big wet log. Moving it was an amazing thing to do!

And even the smallest made a difference (Sorry Jon, mostly I had to hold my end a little lower so you could reach but carry that log you certainly did. I could feel the difference when you got your back into it, even though you were only 18 months old ... not much of a differnce but for you it was a big deal.)

We put the pole in the hole, lifted it up (almost lost it on the way up before it thunked down to the bottom), tied it off to the concrete logs, and filled it in.

Overall perfect, amazing feat, all things considered.

Then you mother noticed that I had forgotten to put the pulley on ... and that's why there are boards nailed laddderwise up that pole, just high enough to hang on to precariously while I do an overhead, one handed screw in of the eye link to hang the pulley onto.

And the lean on that pole after 17 years of five load days ... about 20 degrees.

Now, if any of you find yourselves thinking "Why can't I do that?", this may be one reason that question comes to mind so easily ...

Speeding Driver Blames Lack of Goats!

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyid=2006-09-06T165435Z_01_N06196400_RTRUKOC_0_US-GOATS.xml&src=rss

Oh Sarah, what have you unleashed upon us?

I'm writing this from the office while some sort of screechy violin banjo country music drifts in from the living room. The story I got from Mom and Dad was that they were reorganizing the CD collection, and stumbled onto a mixed CD that SARAH mailed to them some time ago. So, (horror of horrors) they decided to see what kind of country was on said CD, and by the time I entered the kitchen a discovery had been made. Mom and Dad actually like country music. And I subsequently realized that I am now outnumbered, and as a result this musical heresy could be remarkably hard to quell. I hope you're satisfied with what you've wrought, Sarah, because there's no telling how far this could go.

With clenched teeth,
Robert

Bad Joke Time:

So, if one were to round up all those guys that drive by women on the street and yell nasty things at them, and put them all in a camp in the bush, and then kill all those guys, would that be a Hollercaust?

OK, OK, you have to understand that when your mother uses the word "win" it may be just a little too strong. In fact "win" doesn't describe the event at all since I wasn't aware of the possibility of "losing" per se, so "win" cannot apply. However, she did make a good point, a very good point ...

Anyway, that's settled and understood! You mother doesn't "win", largely because I don't "lose" and I am not, even in the smallest particular, competitive, especially with your mother.

Some proposed rules:

1. Photos should be uploaded in an orientation that prevents the temptation of picking up my nice flat screen thing and rotating it so I can better apprehend what it is I am looking at. Screens are like coffee -- "fall-ible".
   
2. Life is too short to spend it all on a blog, so we should all restrain our overwhelming verbosity and participate in a reasonable fashion and not neglect other duties.
3. We do not keep a record of mistakes in grammar, spelling, or remembering the real names of movies.
   

A proposed project:

1. On January first we used to do a family journal/record of what happened during the last year. I propose that we all record the year and month and a short description of whatever it is we remember, when we remember it (!) so as to eventually reconstruct that family journal.

Hey, everybody, I "won" another fight with your Dad last night. He was trying to defend his "killing aliens" X-box games as harmless, and I was arguing that death should never be impersonal, that I didn't mind Harrison Ford killing the bad guy in "Firewall" with a pickax because he was defending his family, there was a specific, personal reason for killing that specific person, and that I agreed with Father Bob's analysis that part of the decay of Western society dates back to the mechanization of death in the First World War. Dad was splutteringly holding his own until I brought in the fact that Japan kicked the Westerners out of Japan for, like, 400 years because firearms were so against their warrior code, that they considered long-distance death to be dishonorable AND understood that it would lead to a total disruption of their society, that he rolled his eyes and walked away . . .

Hey Dad,

1 - 2 - 3 ..... scatter! Ring any bells?

Love it Tina!

So here we go.....

So, I don't remember if the words came out of Mom's mouth or mine, but the idea of starting a blog that we could all contribute to was tossed around while Matt was doing the last of his packing. I like the idea. Instead of tossing it around on the phone and seeing who would make it happen, I just decided to do it. I am going to make Mom, Dad and each of us kids administrators. That means that we will all be able to add posts including pictures, movies, mp3s and links. We can also invite others to view the blog and they can post comments. Since we will all be administrators, that also means that we can delete things and change templates and stuff, that won't happen, will it?

So, here we go, and I am sure that the ride will be just as exciting as getting 'lost' after Mass. Right Dad?