Showing posts with label Star Wars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Star Wars. Show all posts

3 Dec 2017

The great 2017 car shuffle!

This has been a crazy 2 weeks of change for our over-abundant Seidlitz family stable of vehicles. All 4 of our cars went in for our usual fall oil/filter/snow-tire service. I think I was at the shop so many times that they probably thought I was moving in!

The first major change was that we sold Wendy's beloved Toyota Echo (she had it since it was a baby!) to make way for a downsizing to a single car. She loved the Echo and it was the one vehicle that she was somewhat comfortable driving. At least it went to a good home (family of a co-worker).

Bye bye, Echo!
The next step was to transfer official ownership of Parker's Mini Cooper into his name (from Wendy's). With lots of paperwork and expensive safety certificates (plus three separate visits to the licence bureau!), the car is now fully Parker's.

The next change was a new car for Eric and Wendy. We picked up our brand new Nissan Qashqai SL AWD + Platinum sub-compact SUV in Monarch Orange and are enjoying its many advanced features. Wendy has even successfully reverse parked it into a tight spot with no trouble at all! The 4 or 5 cameras and even more radar sensors might have helped...

Wendy and her new Qashqai

Qashqai in its new home

To continue the domino-like effect, Adam sold his car (a Ford Focus) privately in preparation for moving into his next hand-me-down vehicle. Adam spent a lot of time preparing his car for sale and was happy that it sold reasonably quickly for a good price. 

The final step was the movement of Eric's Scion xB over to Adam. He was quite happy to receive this newer vehicle (in exchange for the money from the sale of his previous car...), and this allowed him to continue with his modifications of the Scion to better suit his needs. The operative word here is "continue", since he had previously removed the old Pioneer stereo and installed a new audio system in the hopes that he would be the new owner.  I think the sub-woofer was already in the car before we took delivery of the fancy new orange one.

Now that the vehicular carnage is over, I think the next thing on the horizon is Christmas. We are expecting it to be very quiet and low key. We do, however, plan to take in our traditional Star Wars movie over the holidays.


25 Dec 2016

Merry Christmas!

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas!

Christmas morning around our house is much calmer than it used to be, although we did have an overnight visitor this year (Maddy's best friend Abby). We were all up at a reasonable time and opened presents in an orderly fashion.

Eric got a number of bottles and a great leather messenger bag.


Wendy got an infinity scarf, hot chocolate, and several hugs from the boys.
 



 Adam was happy to get a video camera to mount on his motorcycle helmet and a torque wrench.



Parker got lots of accessories for his car and a nice robe that fits him. He could not figure out what the silver cylindrical device was for (originally thought it was a pen) - even when the 'pressure gauge' was pulled out of one end, he still had no idea.  We will probably tell him later...


Maddy and Abby got some chewing materials. Here, Maddy licks her lips after tasting her new grey rat. Both dogs remained in the middle of the action all morning.









More photos to come - we will go to Wendy's mom's later today then to watch Rogue One: Star Wars later this evening.




31 Dec 2015

Quietest Christmas since 1995!

This has been the quietest Christmas that we have had since around 1995 (the Christmas before Adam was born). How did we do it?

We got rid of the kids!

This Christmas, Adam and Parker travelled with their grandmother to Charlotte, North Carolina, to visit Wendy's brother and his family. Wendy had to work over the holidays and I was not sure how much time I would be able to take, so Wendy and I stayed home. 

Seidlitz family 2015

We did write our annual Christmas letter but are in the process of emailing it out. If you haven't received yours yet, here is a link where you can download it as a pdf.

 https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwZyqom6DVjOWEtqaHZwY2ZkT2c


With the kids leaving Dec. 23rd, we had to plan our Christmas celebrations for the weekend before the big date. We opened presents and had a big turkey dinner with our friends and family. Here are some shots from our Christmas.

Christmas "morning"
Parker is eager for his birthday to come in 2016! He also got a gaming computer.
Adam is interested in getting a motorcycle
We thought this shirt was appropriate - yes, bushy
Maddy got some Yak cheese.  Yes, it really is Yak cheese.
Marion got a new vase
Wendy got a new iPad

I got a silver chain (a wheat chain)

I also got a case for my watches and some Cessna 172s

Money for his trip!

Early Christmas dinner 2015
With all the Christmas stuff out of the way early, it was time to send the kids packing. After a too long drive down to Buffalo airport, off they went with Marion to the warmer climate down south.

Wendy and I were able to do all sorts of things that we normally would not do over the next week or so. We started by going over to Melanie and Murray's to do puzzles (OK, not what you would expect for our first night of "freedom"), then back the next day for a turkey dinner.

Christmas day itself was started with a luxurious sleep in late thing (until Maddy needed to go out) and the rest of the day was spent doing non-Christmas like things. If you are on Facebook, you may have seen some of these pictures, but I'll repeat them here for you below.

Yes, I needed to trim the lawn Christmas day!! 

We went for a 5.5 km hike in the very warm (for December) weather.

We went to see Star Wars (in 3D with motion-controlled seats)!
I ended Christmas day with some Calvados (Normandy apple brandy)


It was a great day, but we had to get up reasonably early the next morning - we wanted to go Boxing Day shopping! We headed down toward Niagara Falls and shopped at both the new Niagara Outlet Collection and the Pen Centre. It was an absolute zoo with almost no parking anywhere, but we got through it and can say that we have done it. We won't need to do it again next year (the deals were not that great).  After the shopping and lunch out (A & W - we don't have a lot of imagination...), we went all the way to the Falls and went for several hours at the Fallsview Casino.  We only spent $15 (but more than that on parking), but it was fun.

At Fallsview Casino
To wrap up our time away from the kids, we took one day as a pajama day - stayed in PJs the whole day and just puttered around the house. We went to dinner at a great tapas restaurant in Hamilton (Rapscallion) one night, then went to our neighbour and friends' place to play Mahjong (last night).

Mahjong game at Heather and JP's!
Today it is back to real life and back to the Buffalo airport for me to pick up Marion and the kids. Since it is New Year's eve, we are going to head over at Mel and Murray's for dinner (hoping she doesn't get called in to the hospital), we will ring in the new year, Wendy will drive home, then we will go to bed exhausted.

This kid-less thing is exhausting!

Happy New Year everyone.