Close to home

We just found out last night that the son of a fellow ministry family here was one of the soldiers involved in the recent axe attack in Afghanistan - he was actually one of the solidiers who shot the attacker. He has also been very close to some of the roadside bombings that have been occuring. I knew in the back of my mind that he had been deployed to Afghanistan, but hadn't been putting two and two together as various incidents there were reported on the news. Knowing that someone we 'know' is actually there, in the midst of things, makes it seem all the more real - you can bet I will be listening to the news with different ears from now on.

This man's name is Kevin Schamuhn, and he's a Captain in the regiment stationed in Kandahar. He's quoted quite a bit in various news articles, and although we aren't able to watch the news, apparently he is often on the television news as well. Here are a few recent articles that talk about him: CTV - soldiers tell harrowing tale of Afghan ambush, CNews Canada - Afghanistan blast misses top general, and CNews Canada - Afghan villagers won't identify attacker.

Please pray for Kevin (as well as all of the soldiers currently in Afghanistan) - his parents have already lost one son in an accident several years ago. They are understandably very concerned about his safety while he is over there serving our country.

Got milk?

The other night I had my first full glass of milk in probably two weeks or more. The milk we buy at Superstore (where we buy all our groceries) has tasted gross to me lately - this has happened occasionally before, but all of the last several jugs of milk have tasted slightly off. I will admit that it is just me who has noticed it: Greg thinks it tastes fine, and Gavin of course loves milk so much I think he would probably drink it even if it was bad. But it has tasted sour enough to me that I've only used milk for my cereal and in tea for the past few weeks.

I know it can't be totally in my head because I have heard other people complain about this same thing. My parents in Edmonton don't buy their milk at Superstore anymore after a similar problem, and as I've been complaining about it to different people, I've found that I'm definitely not the only one to have noticed this. I have no idea why one store would consistently have 'funny' tasting milk, but it does.

We ran out of milk on the weekend so I ran to the IGA down the street to pick some up and I was thrilled to actually drink a big, cold glass of milk that tasted good! Happiness is. :) Mind you, this glass of milky goodness cost me $4.79 a gallon (vs. $3.09 at Superstore)...so I think I need to come up with a better solution than buying all our milk there!

And a few pics of our kids...

I managed to snap off a few pictures in the few hours we actually had our camera here for! ;) Here's Abby showing off her new trick - standing by herself against the couch (she can't pull herself onto the couch yet, but she's pulled herself up by grabbing onto one of her toys - yikes!), Abby crawling (she does the same army-crawl thing that Gavin did, although she does get up on all fours sometimes), and her waiting for dinner.


This is the only one I managed to take of Gavin - he moves too quickly to take pictures of!! You can't see it in the picture, but he's actually playing 'pool' with his hockey stick and hitting balls with the end of the stick (you can tell he hangs out in the youth room too much with the pool table!).

Somehow I forgot to get a picture of my quilt, but I'll take a picture of it with the regular camera and then I'll just have to scan it when I get them developed. You know, the old-fashioned way. :)

Pictures of the cousins

A few of you have asked me to post pictures of Daniel and Mischa (Farrell's sister's kids), so here you go! It's ask and ye shall receive around here. :) Daniel just turned five on March 12 and Mischa is four months now. Gavin and Daniel have a great time playing whenever they're together, and hopefully the girls will be good friends as well.

Camera update

Good news so far on the camera front. I went online to find contact information for their repair department, but couldn't find a specific name, so I emailed the general manager (whose last name is McBain, so I figured that was a pretty good bet). He emailed me back within the hour and asked for all the details and indicated that he would look into it immediately.

I received a phone call from the regional manager a couple of hours after I replied to the email, and he was extremely apologetic. He has offered to reimburse us part of the repair cost (he's not sure how much yet) as well as give us a free memory card or case or other accessory. Unfortunately, he needs to get the camera back to replace the screws, so I'm packaging it up and will be sending it back again today (the postage cost will also be refunded). He is concerned that if the screws were missed something else might have been as well, so he said he would personally check it over after it came back from the Canon service center.

We're definitely pleased with how quickly our complaint was responded to, and as long as we are refunded a reasonable amount (i.e. not $10 on a $150 repair!) we will be satisfied. I'm pretty disappointed that we're going to be without our camera again for a few weeks, though. It makes me want to just go out and buy the new camera I've been looking at just so I have one to use! (And so I would, if only I had $1000 floating around in my pocket!)

Customer service rant - McBain Camera

While we in California in December, our digital camera suffered a four-foot fall to concrete and did not fare well. The lens would no longer retract all the way, and although it still took pictures, they were often blurry due to the lens not being able to adjust the focus properly. So when we were in Edmonton over Christmas break, we brought it to McBain Camera to be repaired. I don't know much about the camera stores up here, so I thought taking it to such an established and as far as I know, reputable, company would be the best bet to get it fixed.

Things started off well - we were called within a couple of weeks of dropping it off with an estimate, and we gave the go-ahead to proceed with the (rather expensive) repair. Weeks passed and we didn't hear any more from them. Suddenly it was March already, and as it had already been significantly longer than the 4-8 weeks we were quoted, Greg called McBain just to ask how things were going. Their response? "Oh, yeah, it's been ready since January 17." Wow, really? We never received a call. "Well, it says here that someone called on January 18 but there was no answer."

Right - clearly nothing further can be done if a customer is not home the first time you attempt to call. Relax, your customer service obligation has undoubtedly been fulfilled if you made one brave attempt at contact (and obviously only let it ring three times, since we have voicemail on both the numbers we gave them).

I had to ask my parents to pick up the camera and send it to us, since we're not planning to be down there any time soon (although we've been there twice since January 17...). We received it today and yes, the lens is working, but the three little screws on the bottom that hold the camera body together are missing, as if they forgot to finish putting it back together after it was repaired.

Needless to say we have not been very pleased with the whole transaction. I've emailed the general manager and have already received a response that he will look into it immediately, so I am hoping I will be able to post back soon and let you all know how wonderfully this was resolved and that I can whole-heartedly recommend McBain Camera again. Stay tuned...

Date night - almost for free!

Greg and I actually got to go out last night - we've been saying for a while that we really need to start leaving Abby with a babysitter, so we finally went ahead and took the plunge. We had a high-schooler come over straight from school, showed her everything she needed to know, and then off we went.

And what did we do on this great date, you ask? Grocery. Shopping. Yep, you read that right. Give these two parents a night out without kids and we lose all sense of decorum and head straight for Costco. Ah, what our life has become.

In all seriousness, though, we had a great time! We did some shopping at both Costco and Superstore (grocery shopping without having to stop and visit with the live lobsters - amazing), and then headed to Earl's for a leisurely dinner without screaming, spit-up, or spills. Um, alright, there may have been just a little bit of that last one, courtesy of yours truly (come on, try to look surprised).

And the best part of the evening was that it was practically free! Greg had won a gift certificate for Earl's at youth pastor's retreat, so the dinner didn't cost us anything, and we used gift certificates for gas, Costco, and Superstore as well. Granted, we did have to purchase those gift certificates at some point, so it wasn't really free, but it felt like it! And something in me feels some sort of perverse satisfaction knowing that there is no record of any portion of our evening - no credit card company can look at our transactions and say 'oh, looks like they had a fun night on the town.' Take that, Big Brother! ;)

The children were nestled all snug in their beds when we returned, and apparently both kids both behaved well. I guess that means we'll get to go out sans kids again sometime soon!

Guess who is who!

Some of you have already seen this, but to fill the time until we get our camera back (it's on the way!) I thought I'd post this for the rest of you to see. (Click on the picture to enlarge it.)

A month or two ago we were discussing if the kids looked alike or not, so I got out Gavin's baby scrapbook to check out Gavin's pictures at a similar age. I was flipping through and Greg walked by and exclaimed "wow - our kids are identical!"

I grabbed the camera and set up pictures of Abby in the same poses so we could compare them more easily. Here is the result - the bottom two are Gavin and the top two are Abby. Pretty similar, I think!

Who gave her permission to grow up?

We lowered Abby's crib mattress this afternoon. She's not pulling up on things yet, but if you stand her up by the couch she'll hold on and stand for several minutes, all the while pounding the cushion with her little hand and squealing with delight at her cleverness. It's only a matter of time before she figures out that she doesn't have to wait for one of the big people to put her into that position. And knowing my tendency to lie awake at night worrying about things that could be happening in the children's bedrooms, we thought it best to lower the mattress now before there's any chance of her catapulting herself over the edge.

How did she get big enough for me to worry about her jumping out of the crib? Didn't she just come into our lives a few weeks ago? She's getting so big Gavin's starting to worry about her outgrowing him ("Mommy, when Abby grows up and is one and I am four will she be as big as Daddy?"). :) And she's actually quite a bit smaller than Gavin was at this age! She just seems so big and strong these days.

But no, I am not ready for another one yet. ;)

I give Chef Woo one big boo

Have you seen the billboards advertising 'Chef Woo' oriental noodles? They caught my eye last time I was in Edmonton because they are advertised as 97% fat-free (as opposed to the regular Ramen or Ichiban noodles which are about 97% fat-full). Seriously, have you ever looked at the nutrition information on a package of noodles? (I'll apologize in advance if you haven't...you'll never look at them the same way again.) There is something like 29 grams of fat in a single package of instant oriental noodles! I used to love those things - I must have eaten caseloads of them when I was working at the theatre - but ever since I inspected the nutrition label in a moment of insanity, I just can't eat them without feeling terribly guilty.

Enter Chef Woo. I picked up a package at our local grocery store the other day, noticing right from the get-go that the price was significantly higher than the 25 cents a package of regular noodles sells for. I'm not sure how they get away with selling something that has all the fat taken out of it for more, but whatever. I finally got around to taste-testing Chef Woo tonight. Results: 97% gross. I admit it is possible that I overcooked them (I poured the boiling water in, covered, and then got distracted with something else), but I don't really think a couple of minutes less would have made much of a difference. The noodles were mushy, tasteless, and sort of stuck together in a gummy ball as I started eating. Apparently they even smelled bad, as Greg came into the kitchen and wondered what I was making that stunk!

I was very disappointed - I know the likelihood of anything 97% fat-free tasting comparable to the original is pretty low, but still I held out hope. In fact, I'm still hoping that someone will comment and tell me that it was, indeed, just my overcooking that was the culprit and that Chef Woo truly does magically taste like the fat-laden original. Anyone?

It's finished!

Well, there's one thing off of my to-do list! I just finished sewing the binding (edge) on my quilt, and it's now in the wash to get rid of the chalk markings I made while quilting it. I'm a little nervous about washing it, I think I'm afraid it will magically unravel in the washing machine or something.

I'm very pleased with how it turned out and am looking forward to curling up with it tonight (or tomorrow if I can't stay awake long enough for it to be washed and dried!). I will post pictures of it when we get the camera back.

What's up for the weekend?

It's a pretty normal weekend here at the Clark's. Greg doesn't have a youth group event tonight, but is out for the evening with a group of his youth leaders; kind of a bonding time I think. Tomorrow we have nothing planned during the day, although I'm hoping it will be warm enough for Gavin to play outside for at least a while. Greg's out tomorrow evening again - the men's Sunday School class has started meeting on Saturday evenings for a movie and hanging out.

Sunday is church of course - I'm not on worship team this week so that means I don't have to be there until 10:00, which is nice. Greg has a board meeting in the evening and then hockey at 8:00. Monday morning we usually go to town for groceries and other errands (Monday is Greg's day off) and then come back home in time for naptime.

I've got a few things I'd like to get done this weekend: sew the binding on my quilt (this one is actually for me, so I'm quite anxious to get it finished and be able to use it!), work on taking the wallpaper off the walls downstairs (I'm hoping to paint the basement sometime in the not-too-distant future), and I've just started the big project of organizing all the music files at the church. No one is particularly in charge of the music filing/organization, so it's quite a disaster. There are currently three main binders for all the songs the worship teams use, but some songs are missing because they've been borrowed and not put back, some songs have multiple copies, and there are a lot of the newer songs which aren't in there at all. I'm starting by cleaning out all the duplicate copies, and all those which just have the words (no music or chords) since we no longer need those with the words being projected on the back wall now. After that, I'm not quite sure what's next! Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Abby's baby dedication

We had Abby dedicated in church on Sunday, March 5. Farrell's parents were able to come up to
be there with us as well. Here are a few pictures of the day!

Welcome!!!

Well, we've jumped on the bandwagon and have set up a blog for our family. We wanted to be able to keep our far-flung family and friends a little more up-to-date on what's going on with us, and share pictures of the kids more easily with all of you.

We hope you'll stop by often! Post a comment (there's a link at the bottom of each post) and say hello!