creative title here

The kids and I just got back from a trip to Toronto, where seeing old friends and spending time with family reminded me about why I started this blog in the first place:
A) I'm a terrible correspondent, and have to rely on people being interested enough to seek out information on how we're doing.
B) My kids' grandparents, aunts and uncle want to know what's going on in their lives. And see pictures of them.

So, having failed miserably to do much writing here since we got back from Japan, I have decided to forgive myself for not finishing putting up our pictures online yet. And I will not write any more excuses or apologies here for not doing that. I *will* finish that job. Watch this space if you still want to see the pictures. Heheh.

Anyway, we're all doing well here. My dad retired from his job with the City of Toronto last week, and we got to attend his retirement lunch, which was reasonably fun. The lunch was held at a golf club near the airport, so we had some pretty nice views of planes coming in to land. I tried my best to take some good pictures with my dad's Canon SLR camera, which is considerably more high-tech than mine (besides, my last two digital cameras are Sony, I know nothing about Canons. However, I do know about Canons that aren't cameras. Did you know the company Canon was named after a Japanese goddess? The buddhist goddess of mercy, if I recall correctly. Her Chinese name is Quan Yin. We wandered around outside of a beautiful temple devoted to Kannon in the Asakusa area of Tokyo where we stayed at the end of our trip. There is a really sweet anime out there called Kanon (with a K) that is well worth watching, too. It's based on a video game, also called Kanon. There are two versions of the anime, and you should watch the one from 2006 in my opinion. The anime has nothing to do with Buddhism or goddesses, but it's incredibly charming and I loved it. Here ends my knowledge of things related to the name Canon/Kanon/Kannon.)

Another thing that was fun about the retirement lunch was dressing my kids up. I bought Calum an almost-real tie (it had a clever zipper arrangement to loosen or tighten it), and a little knitted vest to go over his tie and button-down shirt. Soo cute! Megan wore some of her Japanese cute-goth-punk clothing and a nifty goth-loli-ish style skirt we found at a mainstream suburban ladies' clothing shop. Sometimes it's worth poking around in such places, cause you never know when you'll find the perfect item to complement your black, cute-goth-punk wardrobe. Or in my case, your daughter's wardrobe. I will see if I can get you guys a pic or two of those cuties in their fancy clothes.

Possibly the big highlight of our trip was last night, when Megan and I went to the Princess of Wales theatre to watch The Sound of Music. The show got a lot of publicity in Canada because the lead actress was chosen via a reality tv show/competition in which Canadians got to vote for their favourite candidate for the part of Maria. She was a great singer, and a reasonably good actress too, though I found her accent a little odd. The children were charming, and the French-Canadian actress who played the Mother Superior was a really beautiful singer who brought a big lump to my throat several times. She really nailed "Climb Every Mountain".

Now that I've revealed to the world just how much of a Sound of Music nerd I am, I'd better get going on finding some dinner. Because if you knew how passionately I love this show and particularly, the movie of the same name, you might suddenly start finding me a little freakish and scary.