and so another week passes...

...without me writing much of anything on my blog.

It's been pretty busy around here. We've added some new elements to our weekly routine with Tae Kwon Do classes for Jeff and the kids. Megan also starts Guides this Thursday. She's taken a three-year break from guiding, but has decided she'd like to give it another try this year. I wonder if she'll be too busy with homework to try and get four years' worth of badges before next summer.

This was also the week when I started to really come to terms with these food allergies I am saddled with. I spent well over an hour wandering around a large supermarket on Tuesday evening, reading labels on absolutely anything I thought I might be able to eat to find out if it was OK. The answer was usually "no". It was kind of depressing to have to walk past the entire "frozen treats" aisle; even the soy ice creams have corn starch in them, so they're a no-no and I'm just not desperate enough to pay $6.50 for a teeny tiny carton of Haagen Dazs sorbet. I had better luck yesterday at one of the many natural foods grocery stores in Vancouver, where I finally found a brand of salt-and-pepper potato chips that I can eat. Meanwhile, since Jeff and I both have problems with wheat I decided to completely eliminate it from everyone's diets, and that's a big ongoing project.

We've been on a reading kick lately. Megan's been signing tons of books out of the library, and trying many new authors. Even Calum is branching out; he's been re-reading the entire Captain Underpants series over and over for weeks, not showing much interest in anything else, but on Thursday Megan convinced him to try Roald Dahl's The Twits and he liked it so much that he read it three times. (Unfortunately, when we put George's Marvelous Medicine in front of him, he threw it across the room so I guess Captain Underpants is going to be a staple around here for a while.)

It is so, so nice that my active chattering busy little guy will sit down with a book and be quiet for a reasonably long stretch of time. I always suspected he'd be one of those people who wouldn't have the patience for fiction, and would only read for information purposes, but sometimes it's good to be wrong! All this extra quiet time I've gained has made it possible for me to do a bunch of reading, myself. Check out my book blog if you want to know what's been on my nightstand lately.

We've been trying to plan Halloween costumes early this year, at Megan's insistence. She wants to dress as a character from her current favourite anime, Mobile Suit: Gundam Seed. And I'll give you three guesses which fictional superhero Calum wants to dress as.

I've got a midterm coming up already for my precalculus class. Everything we've covered so far is making sense, but it's a lot of information to cram into my brain and I need to do some heavy review before Wednesday. My study break is over; time to get back to work!