our weekend

It's 12 degrees outside, warm and sunny for a change but the kids and I are feeling kind of under the weather. So we gave up on our usual busy days and are spending time sitting around. It's kind of nice, actually. Calum is shooting stuff in an Xbox game, Megan's re-reading the Percy Jackson series and I'm sitting here considering whether I should work on my programming assignment, or maybe just go take a nap.

Anyway, while I contemplate my options, I figured I could update you patient people who are actually still checking or reading this blog.

Lately our family has taken to hosting weekly game nights. It's a really fun tradition which I wish we had started sooner. We've invested in some nerdy card and board games (Bang! and Carcassonne are the current favourites) and almost every Saturday evening we'll have a friend or two or three over to eat snacks and play games until we're all basically too tired to think straight. I'm quite enjoying the novelty of being able to socialize with adults again in a non-kid related context; for years, having people over equalled setting up a play date for one of the kids. Megan and her friends are an enjoyable addition to the gaming nights, while Calum has become mature enough to go to bed so the adults can stay up late.

This past weekend was particularly fun - it started on Thursday when a friend and I decided to spend the afternoon exploring Granville Island, with a view to purchasing lots of art supplies (she's a talented artist and aspiring manga author, while Jeff has an ongoing need for paint and other supplies to help him with his gundam-building hobby). I managed to score a really beautiful new purse from a vendor there who specializes in the use of Japanese fabrics to make bags; not only did she give me a discount on the purse I bought, she even wrote down directions to a really good fabric store near Shinjuku station in Tokyo. Squeee! I better bring an empty suitcase with me to stuff full of Japanese fabrics.

Friday the kids had a day off school, so I decided to skip my Computing Science lecture and sleep in, then Jeff, Calum and I got haircuts while Megan got an early start on her Friday ritual of meeting friends at the mall. Calum and I ran some errands, I booked our flights to Japan, and invested in a nicer DSLR camera so we can take good pictures while we're there.

Saturday, we had the usual insane rushing around to get kids to and from their various activities (right now we have four different things going on each Saturday) and then our gaming night began. Megan has a friend who is an eager cook, so I suggested that this week maybe she and her two friends could take over dinner-making duties and we were treated to a lovely Greek salad and pasta with homemade pesto. YUM. Afterward I managed to actually win our game of Carcassonne, which is a real feat since Jeff is the King of strategy games around here. It helped to make up for my miserable death early on in our game of Bang!. Some deputy I turned out to be.

Sunday, Megan and I and three friends went downtown with the intention that I could get some instruction on better picture-taking from a friend who splurged on a new Nikon D40 the day before. He and I toted our cameras around a sunny but cold Stanley park getting shots of ducks, seagulls, and crows. We wrapped up the weekend with a visit to our favourite Sushi joint. Yumm.