Monthly Archives: January 2012

double whammied

On Sunday morning the car wouldn’t start. Missed out on Sonia playing piano and/or Christien’s first sports class. On Sunday afternoon the sump pump died.

Total cost: 500. Total value: priceless.

Disney Live

We took the kids to Disney Live last Fri night. It’s the 2nd time for Olivia and the 1st for Christien. Both were enthralled. Olivia dressed up as Snow White as did many other little girls.

The ratio of girls to boys had to have been around 20-1. That’s because the theme of this performance centred around the retelling of Snow White, Cinderalla and Beauty & the Beast. Not typical fare for 6-10 year old boys.

But for a 3 year old boy, who cares! Christien was eyes wide open for his 1st trip to any theater….let alone a Live Performance! He sat still on my lap through the whole performance bombarding me with questions. Olivia sat with Sonia and loved the show. Although there were a couple of scary moments where she needed to shield her eyes with Mommy’s hand. Chrisitien on the other hand was glued to the stage the whole time.
Olivia loves all the Disney Princess stories so this was right up here alley. But we were a wee bit concerned about Christien’s attention span. Well, no worries there! The clincher was that he is a HUGE fan of Beaut and the Beast and was super excited when he found out it was the final story of the show.
He still talks about it to this day. “We saw Beauty and the Beast! Live! On a stage!”. Then he proceeds to retell the entire story.
The night was a success. But there’s always a taint at these productions: the money gouge: An unnecessary intermission to peddle way overpriced food and merchandise. Then, strategically placed kiosks that are impossible to ignore on the way out. Sadly, we succumbed to the cries for a toy and WAYYYY overspent on merchandise. I was not impressed.
Not blaming the Centre since they don’t run any of that. It’s the travelling production itself that puts on a great show but has no morals when it comes to exploitation of the children’s need for instant gratification.

Skiing

We dropped the kids off at the grandparents and did some night skiing at Chicopee last night. Actually used one of those Treasures 2-for-1 coupons so it cost us only 33 dollars to ski for 2hrs.

Because it was relatively cheap we were not desperate to get in as many runs as possible.

With the new, faster, 4 person lifts we were able to do about 10-12 runs in the 1st hr alone. Unfortunately the ‘frontside’ of the hill was closed so our favourite runs were off limits. Meaning really only 4 runs to go down.

So after an hr, we got a little bored and went in for some drinks planning to do about 1/2hr more skiing to close it out.

Since we were skiing for cheap, we canned that idea and went home after the drinks to watch the Return Of the King! Blu-Ray is awesome!

A different New Year’s event

Traditionally we’ve gone to house parties on New Year’s Eve sans enfants. This year we changed gears and decided to go to the city event at town square. It was an outdoor skating party and performers for the kids. It went from 6-9 pm with a new year’s countdown at 9.

The kids loved it and skated for nearly the entire time. Olivia was skating very well even with the fact that the ice was packed with people. It was Christien’s first time ever on skates and he quickly picked up the balance part of the equation but not yet the skating itself. He could even pick himself up off the ice. So we’ll be doing plenty of skating over the winter months I’m sure.

It was certainly a change from past years. I did miss the party aspect with our friends. But the fact that there was no hangover the following morning was a serious perk to keeping this tradition alive moving forward.