Eat your heart out, Napoleon!

Preston's thoughts on choosing to get married

A Christmas Concert Sampler

This week was the week of Christmas concerts at the school Monday night was the Jr/Sr. High band concert and Thursday night was the elementary Christmas concert. Tomorrow, Alyssa plays a piano duet at a casual style recital in Lethbridge.

This is the Grade 8 band. Alyssa is in the second row playing the Alto Saxophone. She is wearing black and has her hair up. The Grade 8 band played 3 numbers. This is their third, about the magi.

At the elementary school, each grade performed a number. This is the kindergarten (all 3 classes) doing "Must be Santa." I know the video is too fuzzy to pick out Preston, but he is in a white shirt and tie next to a kid in a red sweater on the end of the first row on the higher stage near the right hand side of the screen. Through most of the video, the lighting pole cuts him in half. This number was quite a crowd pleaser.

I've been trying, unsuccessfully, to get the video of Austin to load, but apparently, I accidentally switched my camera to high quality mode when I videoed him. Because of that, the video uses a lot of memory and won't upload very well. Austin's grade played hand chimes for various carols between each of the other numbers. About 15 kids performed at a time. He participated in Jolly Old Saint Nicholas and Jingle Bells.

The elementary concert more than packed the Tom Karren Gym. Apparently the audience was in excess of a thousand people....the band concert wasn't quite so packed.

The Grade 6 Zeniths Season Opener...highlights and interviews

On Friday, December 4th the Magrath Grade 6 Zeniths played their season opening match--a scrimmage between blue (the handsome devils) and yellow (the more handsome devils) at half time of a game at the Senior Boys tournament. Coach and referee Jeff Jacobs led his team to success in the brief match up.
It was a hard fought game with many willing hands ready to accept the pass. At this moment, I believe Austin was calling out, "over here, I'm open under the basket."
Quick breakaways were the story of the game, but strong defence (read: airballs) kept the score down. Final score, more handsome devils 6, handsome devils 4.
Coach Jacobs plans to introduce new concepts to the boys before their next match up. One such concept is "the pass."

Stay tuned for post-game interviews from All-stars, Austin Doig and Mike Runquist.

Tires (v), tires(n) and more tires (n)

To tire, conjugated, she tires (top ten definitions)

1 piano solo practiced and performed

2. home basketball tournaments

3 sharing times in 4 weeks

4 am phone call to babysit for a VTee having a baby

5 Christmas parties

6 am runs at the gym m-f

7 loads of laundry (today)

8 christmas ice cream rolls (5 successes and 3 failures) for a baking exchange

9 online Christmas gift orders

10 homecooked meals since nov 1....or has it even been that many?

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Tires (n) definition #1

We got winter tires on our Mazda car in late November because the front tires were worn out and we thought winter tires would be a good idea. Price tag $550.

Tires (n) definition #2

Last Friday, Preston and I went to Lethbridge to buy food for the concessions at the Senior Boys home basketball tournament. On the way back, the van got really loud. I was about 1 km from Welling, so when I got to Welling I pulled over and took a look around the van. Turns out, I had a completely flat front driver's side tire. I called Rob, and started looking at our owners manual. I had to move the whole back full of pop to get out the spare tire. Then Rob left work and drove over to Welling to change the tire for me. It was very hard to jack the van since the wheel chair conversion makes the floor really low. It was also -17 with the wind chill. Anyway, after quite a while he got the van jacked up and put on the spare.

We were just ready to caravan back to Magrath when Rob got out of the van having noticed that now the spare was also flat! He had to again jack the van up and remove the spare. I moved the concession food to the car and we loaded the two flat tires in the car and left our van at the side of the road.

Meanwhile, Alyssa had taken the special needs bus home with Mark and was babysitting the boys since I wasn't there when school got out to meet Mark's bus and take care of the boys.

Charlie, the mechanic at the Magrath Co-op, blew up the spare, which just needed air, and we went back to Welling and brought the van to the Co-op. As you might have guessed, I completely wrecked the flat tire by driving on it, and so we decided to get winter tires on the front of the van. Charlie, who was very busy that day, arranged a special tire delivery to his daughter's house in Lethbridge and installed the new tires at 10:00 that night after a long day at work and an evening at his daughter's. He is so awesome! Thank you Charlie!

Today we had the back tires replaced with winter tires too. Total price tag for van tires $665.

Today I was driving the kids home from school and two vehicles in front of me were spinning their tires, having trouble on the ice which had fresh snow on top. I just drove on like it was the first of July! Considering my my past experiences with a terrible icy road car accident and the anxieties I always feel on bad road, I'd say the feeling of satisfaction was worth the $1200!