We have two kids, all three of them teenagers...

Our international student, Stanley, moved in last night and is getting settled in his new bedroom.  We wanted to welcome him to our home and hope that adjusting to the new environment will go smoothly.  Term 2 starts for him tomorrow, so he will be experiencing a lot of new things in the coming days.

I guess it is also going to be interesting for us to get used to having three teenagers in the house!  Glad we upgraded our internet plan.  Think of the bandwidth we'll be able to use!  :-()

Mad dogs and other things...

Not too much happening this week, but we did get to meet Stanley, the high school student who will be living with us starting next week.  Wendy and I picked him up and brought him to the high school to get him registered for second term courses.  He is so polite... hoping it rubs off on our other two teenagers...

I was able to snap a photo of Adam's new Warrant Officer 2nd Class badge for his cadet tunic. He says he will get some photos from a fellow cadet of the night he was promoted. We were not allowed to attend (we are just the parents), so hopefully the pictures will be OK for our scrapbook. I'll try to snatch a picture of him in his uniform before he leaves for cadet's this week.

Warrant Officer 2nd Class

Maddy has started to act a little weird on the stairs lately.  She goes up part way, then stops - frozen, unable to proceed.  It is like she gets half way up then forgets what she is supposed to do.  Sometimes she whimpers a little to get our attention, but we have been mostly ignoring her.  I think she just wants us to pick her up and carry her the rest of the way.  Not happening, Maddy!

Maddy - stuck on the stairs

Now, if there were a treat upstairs, she would be up there in a flash!  My guess is that she must have slipped on the stairs while we were at work, and now she gets a twinge of anxiety when she realizes she is actually on the stairs.  Perhaps the hair on her feet is getting a little bushy and is making her lose her grip (happens to us all, eventually).  Ummm, the grip part, I mean...

Promotion!

Adam came home from air cadets last night with great news - he was promoted!

He moved up from Flight Sergeant (FSgt) to Warrant Officer 2nd Class (W02), which is the highest rank currently assigned in his squadron.  As soon as he sews his new badges on, I will try to sneak a picture for the blog.

We have a new door and can actually open it!

We got our brand new garage door installed today (www.hamiltondoorsystems.com/).  It doesn't appreciably change the look of the house (same colour, slightly different style), but it will make the garage a warmer place in the winter. It is a sectional door that slides up to open, while the old one was a solid one-piece steel door that swung out to open.

Our new garage door

The old door was bent from Adam's previous interaction with it, and this bend created huge gaps all around the door where the cold could come in.  It was also not insulated. The new door fixed both problems at once and is both insulated and seals out the weather.

This is the old door in the closed position - notice the gap all around.

This is the new door - look, no gaps!

We also got a new garage door opener, and this one is actually much quieter than the Chamberlain Whisper Drive that we had previously... the one that stopped working just after the 3-year warranty was up. Grrrr!

A feature that I think I will really be able to enjoy is the self closing timer - after a set amount of time with no activity, the door will close on its own.  No more forgetting to close the door, and no more waking up in the middle of the night and wondering if it is still open. 

No more texting the kids to open the door for us as we come home. Best of all, we can now drive into the garage without: 

1. getting out of the car
2. unlocking the front door
3. walking through the house
4. going into the garage
5. pushing the wall button
6. getting back in the car
7. driving into the garage
8. getting out of the car
9. pushing the wall button to close the door. 

Phew!  I'm exhausted just writing about it!

Ok, it's cold.

Yes,  we are experiencing a bit of winter here in Dundas.  It is hovering around -17C with a wind chill closer to -30C and I think it was a lot colder overnight. All the piles of slush generated over the last few days have frozen into what feel like mountains of ice on the roads.   Not terribly slippery, but treacherous all the same.

This picture shows the hinge on the inside of our front door (i. e. the warm side!).   Guess we need to deal with the weather stripping... well, maybe when it warms up a bit.

Looks like it is going to be around +5C and raining this weekend :-( so it will be oh so pleasant to walk around outside, especially when taking Maddy out in the back yard.  Yay, winter!

Adam got his first suit...

We took Adam to Michigan just after Christmas for some outlet mall shopping.  He got a suit plus several shirts and ties at a very good price.  He modeled them for us today.