The Comic Book Family

Olympic day!

posted by Jen @ 11:15 PM 3 comments

The world keeps on spinning

Tyler's started night school a few weeks ago. He is taking the Math course that preceeds his third year apprenticeship course. I think there's that sense of relief of moving forward with his schooling again. The apprenticeship course starts in...April, I think.

Jade, Quentin and I took a night to take an Indian cooking class at my school. We have an acclaimed chef (best-selling cookbook, on Global on Friday nights with her own show) teaching at our school. She taught us how to make paneer, paneer pakoras, (no)butter chicken, yams and cauliflower, and the recipes for a couple of other dishes. It was all quite tasty. The kids had fun, and entertained the other teachers.

I've started another semester...get this...in the same school I taught last semester!!!!! Isnt' this amazing? I might actually stay in the same school the entire year next year!

I have some pretty amazing classes. I have a grade 11 class that is actually excited to come to class. Even when we're correcting sentences for days on end. Strange, strange students. We're doing Lord of the Flies as a class because so many students wanted to read it. Okay, okay, I'm a little to blame. I told them it was like Lost in that people landed on an island and had to fend for themselves. I've never seen Lost. They're still excited anyways.

We went to see part of the torch relay today. A group of students at my school was one of only ten groups (from schools) across Canada picked for carrying the torch. I'll admit, it's a pretty amazing group led by a pretty amazing teacher. The kids were happy to see the flame. I'm quite certain Tyler wasn't that thrilled because he spent too long on Monday and Tuesday with one of the flame celebrations at the Peace Arch. The thing that thrilled the children the most was getting the blinking plastic flame from the City of Coquitlam. Quentin spent the rest of the day "lighting everything on fire" with his Olympic flame. The ground was on fire, the rain was on fire...

We're excited to see if we can find my dad in the opening ceremonies tomorrow night. We're going to short track speed skating on Saturday. It should all be great fun!

On a sadder note, the world lost a wonderful woman the other night. Tyler's Great-Grandmother, Verna, passed away. Not unexpected entirely. She turned 100 on Christmas. We've been very blessed to have had her in our lives for so long. We've been very blessed that our children were able to know their great-great-grandmother for long enough to remember her later in their lives. She was truly an amazing woman who will be missed by many, many people.

posted by Jen @ 11:08 PM 0 comments

Coming to a close

The year, not the blog. Not that you'd notice a difference with how little it gets updated! :) (Sorry for no pictures right now, but I'm on the laptop.)

It's been a good year. I got my continuing, so no more random paycheques, yay! Next year, I should have my own classroom from the beginning. Yay! Quentin is learning how to read. Yay! He said that he'd rather watch tv, or play on the computer, but if he can't do those, reading is a good thing to replace them. He discovered that he loves to hip hop dance and is willing to do so in front of people. Yay! Tyler got put back as floor manager for a bit, but he got them to put him back in maintenance. Yay! Jade is cute and adorable as always. She's turning out to be quite the little mathematician. Yay! She adds and subtracts faster than her brother. (Don't tell Quentin.)

It's been a crappy, crappy year. Lots of stress trying to get the continuing, then battling payroll yet again on how much they should be paying me. Jade got an infected front tooth from bumping it too many times. It had to get pulled. Which, by the way, she's quite happy with. She's thrilled she's not in constant pain anymore, and she thinks she's much cuter without it! She also, poor girl, managed to scoop up some flesh-eating bacteria in the water around Tofino this summer. Be aware that it's around if you go there in the summer, and watch out if you get a rash appearing anywhere! It's mild, but your scars won't go away as well as Jade's did. I had a super-stress filled summer school. I was teaching two classes instead of one, and there were a large number of issues with the students lives that affected a lot of us. And, well, cheating was rampant and that always annoys me. We decided to finally get our roof fixed and sealed, and ended up having to paint the house as a result. I picked up H1N1 in the fall, and passed it onto my children. My second placement for the school year has been filled with a ton of mess from the last teacher's assignments. I broke my tailbone. And Tyler, well, he's had to take care of us and deal with all the fallout from everything. And that's not to mention health and other issues with family members.

Next year. That should be good, right? Everyone will get better. Tyler starts his third year at school, finally, and is hoping to challenge the fourth. Then I get to look to doing my masters. (So excited!) Jade starts Kindergarten, so she'll be in the same daycare as Quentin which is right in their school. I get my own classes, somewhere, where-ever, teaching whatever. Stability. My best friend from my young years is back in my life, and getting married! I get to go celebrate with them next month. My first time ever away from my babes. :( I'm sure they'll do much better than I will about it. We've got a real vacation planned. Not bought or reserved, but planned. Getting away from everyone and everything. Yay!

So, happy new year to you all. I hope that you take some happy memories from this one, and move on to big wonderful happy things in the new year. Much love to all from all of us.

posted by Jen @ 11:45 PM 2 comments

Fundraising time!

We love our elementary school. It's tiny, which means that it is incredibly supportive of the children that attend it. It stays open pretty much solely on the support of the parents and the fundraising that our PAC does (not that they're allowed to buy things for educational purposes, of course). We have Entertainment books for sale right now ($46) and Values books ($20 - the smaller version which is mostly family oriented coupons...none of the fancy restaurant stuff). We can even sell them to you for any region of North America that you happen to live in (with varying prices). We also have Dominoes Pizza coupons. (For $10, you get a 'free' medium pizza, plus a bunch of other coupons that are mostly two for one.) If any of these sound appealing to you, please let us know and we will gladly let you know how to purchase!



Thank you.

posted by Jen @ 9:59 PM 0 comments

Summer Update (with plenty of pics!)

Summer school was incredibly stressful, but it's over now - yay! We discovered that Jade has my hair - we put her in curlers overnight right after a shower, and there wasn't a curl to be seen when the curlers came out! Quentin had a birthday party in July with the hopes that lots of his classmates could make it...we got less than half, but they had a lot of fun. They decorated their own goody bags and sun hats and had a blast! We took a week to go to the Island to visit Victoria, Tofino, and family (in Crofton and Campbell River). Jade made friends with a 'statue' in Victoria - long conversation one day when we didn't have a camera on us. We visited him the next day during busy time for the picture and got him a ton of business with everyone else getting their kids' pictures taken too. He was really nice so we were happy to help him out that way! Both children loved the museum (and the frozen mammoth slobber!), got followed by tv cameras at the petting zoo, and thoroughly enjoyed staying in a 'fancy hotel.' While we had fun camping and at the beach, Jade picked up the bacteria from Tofino that's been there a few years now. It's a strain of the flesh-eating type. She's felt fine and happy the whole time, and antibiotics cleared out the bacteria, but she's still got scars from the rash which we hope will disappear over time. Quentin turned six when we returned. We went to the Aquarium for our annual birthday trip and saw the second baby beluga. I got my wisdom teeth out - complete with dry sockets and migraines (which I had never experienced before). I got a job teaching Chemistry for two months, and teaching English for the eight months following that at a different school. So far, so good. Quentin has enjoyed his first week of grade one, although we're not positive who his teacher is at this point. There are fewer Kindergarteners this year than last, so they've had to split up the grade ones. Hopefully we'll find out very soon whether he's in the K/1 class, or the 1/2 class. Jade cannot handle the wait for when she gets to go to Quentin's daycare and school too, even though she does like her daycare. I chopped my hair again to donate another ponytale to make a wig for someone suffering from cancer. (It takes seven ponytales to make one wig for someone, so if you haven't dyed your hair and would be willing to cut off an eight-inch ponytale for a good cause, please consider it!) We sprayed the stucco on our house in two goes during the summer. Tyler replaced the carport ceiling, and when he finished that, it got painted and we rolled paint on the stucco in the carport. This weekend we're finishing the trim on the house. It's looking fabulous, if I say so myself! I'll post a picture soon. In the meantime...

posted by Jen @ 1:06 PM 1 comments

Cuteness and other pics

Promised pictures. It takes awhile (it's the editing down to size that is the issue, really. Although I haven't checked lately to see if I still need to edit the size...)

Bike riding on the driveway (our street is slanted towards the corner, so the long driveway is where they practice.)


Quentin bringing his bike back towards the house, and then Jade's option!

posted by Jen @ 1:06 AM 0 comments

Utter cuteness

She tried out at Playland on Saturday. Quentin refused. She sang one of the four lines. She's been singing it repeatedly since we got home - in its entirety. We may have to record her and send it in to the website ourselves.

Band-aid jingle.

Enjoy.

(And yes, pictures are still coming. LOTS of running around the Lower Mainland was done today.)

posted by Jen @ 1:07 AM 2 comments