Category Archives: Family News

Mundane Ramblings Retrospective – 2003

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On January 7th, 2012, this blog turned 9 years old.  I thought I would do a little retro round up for the next little while to go back and bring forward some of the older content just for fun.

In the beginning the blog was on Blogger.com, mainly because I had no inclination to learn real HTML at the time, and the family website was too hard to update by hand.  A peek at what the blog looked like back then can be found on the Internet Wayback Machine here.

There is a real conversation in the first 6 or 8 months or so between some folks here, not necessarily staying true to the intent of a web log, but it was fun.  If you go back that far now, due to the platform switch from Blogger to Movable Type, (which was the thing to do among discerning geeks at the time), most of the posts look like they were written by me.  It’s very confusing actually, so don’t go back that far.  Instead look here for some of the more memorable posts of the first year:

Duck Meets Rink

Just realized that Ali ran a 50-min 10K back in 2003 with 15% body fat!  Holy crap.  Well done, I realize now that’s a very decent time, and way faster than I am at the moment.

Nikki responds to my trash-talk about being able to drink more than her.

Quinn has toe surgery (the first time)

One of the first news-related snarky posts by me in something like the tone that would soon become commonplace on the blog.

The basement reno is pretty well documented, at least in text.  The inspection post is the most amusing one of the bunch.

Herring farts.  Yes, a whole post about that.

One of many funny rants from Ali, who was a regular poster back in the day!

Nikki’s (and the blog’s) last post of the year.

So there you go, a year’s worth of retrospective.  That was fun, going back through the old stuff, and I might even do a summary for 2004.  That’s what has-beens do, they release a greatest hits album to generate interest again.  I got eight more years to go through, let’s see if we all can make it through eight more posts like this one.

Anyway, without getting too maudlin (I am turning 40 this year and I would rather NOT dwell on that, thank you) reading stuff from 9 years ago makes me realize how really lucky I am.  The friends and family I have are second to none.  You guys are amazing, amazing folks.  Nikki, you are my absolute best friend, and this little tour through memory lane makes me realize for the nine-hundredth time that you are the MOST important thing in my life.  Lord knows I have messed some things up (we will no doubt get to those blog posts later on), but marrying my best friend was the best decision I have ever made.  Wow.

So, with that, I will get back to work and still be thinking of you all.

Cael’s Greatest Hits

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I had been saving a few choice Cael-isms up for a future post, or for use in another way, but it never happened for one reason or another.  So here is a list of some of Cael’s better moments.  To say that the kid has a gift is probably an understatement, he’s only 7 and regularly cracks us up.  So, without further ado, some raw unfiltered goodness from the man himself:

Cael on music:

There is no rock and roll in Arnprior, it’s just a bunch of singers and banjos.  A bunch of honey bunnies  and slow motion singers.

Cael on Arnprior, again (perhaps a tad harsh?)

Arnprior is just like a village where no one has water, like in Rango.

Cael once mentioned about how we don’t have cable TV anymore, and when he does get a chance to watch it there often doesn’t seem to be anything on…

Daytime television is just a bunch of “So Barbaras” (pronounce that phonetically and you get “soap operas”)

Cael on getting kisses from Nikki before leaving for school in the morning.

He comes flying into the bathroom doing some serious karate chopping and fancy footwork going Hiya! Hiya! and I laughed and he says, “I’m the LOVE NINJA! – here for my lovin’s”

Cael on how amazing his beautiful mom is:

You smell like when unicorns existed.  <looks around> Don’t tell anybody, it might get out of hand…

Cael after Trick-or-treating for little while, starts to feel a little tired and asks:

How long have we been hitting the sacks, anyway?

Cael on putting on his precious hockey team toque for the first time:

Ahh, it still has that new toque smell.

Cael got into trouble last year with his teacher, and she was going to punish him and call us to tell us about it.

Mrs. C – “I’m calling your mother”

Cael – “No, I’ll make you a deal”

Mrs. C – “Ok,”…..

Cael – “I’ll give you 50 pushups if you don’t call my mom”

Mrs. C - ”I’m calling your mother”

…. and she did

Buddy, you are just the frigging best.  Don’t change one bit.  If you know one I have forgotten, by all means comment and remind me.

You are as old as you think you might be, kinda

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Recent breakfast conversation:

Cael: “Would you say I am basically 8 years old?” (Cael turns 8 in January, and is rather eager to do so)

Dad: “Not yet, buddy.”

Cael: “Am I mentally 8 years old?”

Quinn (choking down a spoonful of cereal to answer immediately): “You can just decide how old you want to be mentally, you can be 35 if you want.  Jeez.”

I hope this translates well to the web, I laughed myself silly about this one.  It was Quinn’s semi-outraged, authoritative tone that did it to me.  My god, I am raising him into an exact replica of myself it seems.  Hopefully without the teenage acne though.  And finishing post secondary school would be good.  There are other traits that he could also do without, but that’s another post.

Vallentyne Boys Septic Hilarity

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I love the way that life shapes our kids.  Forget all the parenting crap you ever read, all of the tactics and approaches you try.  In the end, the biggest influence on your kids will be their lives and experiences.  Sure you can hope that the experiences are positive, but even if they aren’t, they can prove to be useful in learning.  A good example would be the fact that we have had a poop composter in our backyard for a couple of years now, the guys are very used to that.  In addition to that, some close friends recently replaced their septic system, so needless to say they have lots of septic-related experience recently.  Sure, not really experience that would really make or break their success maybe, but who knows, it might come in handy someday.

For instance, the other day there was a big windstorm at our place, and it happened to be the night before our garbage pickup day.  As the boys and I were walking to the bus in the morning there was a garbage can lid laying on the grass near the edge of the road at the park next to us, blown off somebody’s garbage can.  Cael noticed it and said “Geez, I never noticed the septic system there before?”  I chuckled, and then Quinn jumped right in with all of the swagger and authority of an older brother and scoffing he said “No Cael, it’s a poop hole.”  I loved the fact that my two kids immediately and unquestioningly believed that this garbage can lid could be either of those two things, and in fact they have had direct experience with both things recently, and both are equally valid possibilities in their world.  It also leads me to take great heart in the fact that I am completely messing with their realities, and that years from now they will both reflect back and say to each other “What the heck was with Dad and those poop holes?  Man, that was messed up.

Yep, happy to be the guy doing this to my kids.

Camp Smitty Finale

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So, we finally got the kids home safe and sound today.  It was a great day, incredibly hot but wonderful and fun.  We got up early and headed down with Ben G to get the kidlets at camp.  We were greeted with huge hugs and big smiles and sunburnt faces, so that’s exactly what we wanted to see.  We got a few pictures of the campers together before they all left for their respective homes, and then it was just the few of us left, the parents and kids that didn’t take the bus.  Finally it was time to ask Quinn about the letter.

I took him aside and asked him about the letter he sent.  There was some confusion since he had sent a letter, but it was handed to us today, and didn’t come in the mail.  No, I said, the letter you sent that said “you do not like it”.  Quinn’s forehead crinkled in confusion, and he said he didn’t remember sending anything like that.  I asked him again, and told him exactly what was in the letter, and that it came in an envelope with his name on it, because Nikki had thoughtfully pre-addressed and stamped 8 (optimistic) envelopes that had the kids names on them so we would know which kid it came from (she’s adorable like that, there’s just no other way we could have known which kid sent which letter).  His eyes did register some recognition at that, and he slowly recalled that Cael had stolen one of his envelopes and his paper.  My eyes widened as I realized what had happened and I slowly turned to Cael and asked him if he wrote the letter and signed Quinn’s name.  His trademark smirk and mischievous eyes told me he was guilty.  He said “I might have accidentally taken one of Quinn’s envelopes….”  At this point I stopped him and said, no, it wasn’t an accident, you did that on purpose.  His grin grew wider and he stammered a bit and said “No hard feelin’s eh?”  What can you say to that?

So, in the end, Nikki and I got pranked SO BAD by our 7 year old son that we were calling the camp director to make sure everything was ok.  In hindsight it makes us even madder that we overlooked Cael’s rather, ah, carefree penmanship when compared to Quinn’s careful letters.  He got us, and he got us good.  I am busting with pride over the sheer genius of the whole thing, and I’m not afraid to tell you about it.  What a kid.

Anyway, camp was a huge success, they all want to go back, we are heroes for sending them, and life is good once again.  Having the house full of sleeping kids just feels right, there’s no other way to describe it.

Camp Update

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As promised, an update on camp time.  Nikki and I have discovered that coming home after work to an empty house sucks.  As a result we have been avoiding doing that, and have been eating out a LOT more than usual.  There is no way to avoid the quiet when we do get home, but at least the lack of dinnertime bustle isn’t so obvious this way.  We had a great weekend, took Friday off to enjoy ourselves a bit and do some hiking in Gatineau Park (which was awesome).  We were doing pretty well overall, until last night when we got a letter from camp.  This is our only letter from the kids to date, mind you.  There was no date and no way to tell when it was written, it was from Quinn and it only contained 7 hastily written words:

 

Needless to say, we called the camp to make sure that Quinn was ok and not having a miserable time.  The director called us back to reassure us that he had in fact been playing basketball with Quinn recently and he did in fact seem to be having a great time, something that his counsellors agreed with.  So the reason for this letter is still unknown, but it seems for now that he got over whatever it was that made him write this.  Nikki and I are burning with curiosity to know what happened, though.  It could have simply been a moment of homesickness, or maybe something didn’t go his way.  It’s hard to tell until we get them on Thursday, really.  Not exactly the camp letter we thought we would be getting, but hopefully something we will have a good laugh about on Thursday.

More to come!