Oh pants!

So if you read the earlier post about Charles being in a snowball fight then this story will be of interest to you.

About three hours after the snowball fight, Charles returned home in a frenzy. I asked what was the matter and he turned around and pulled up his sports jacket to show me trousers that looked like this:




So somewhere during the snowball fight, Charles ripped his trousers across the bottom. All of his pants (underwear) were showing and he had walked around campus for the past 3 hours. But the biggest questions still remain:

1) Had the students and fellow faculty whom he had spent the last 3 hours with noticed, but decided not to comment? Are the British really that reserved?
2) Did his coat actually do the cover up job nicely so that no one noticed?
3) Did everyone notice and have already plotted their blackmail pictures (Friday Flyer etc.)? Only time will tell.

Well, anyway, the junior lecturer who was silly enough to go to the snowball fight is now mourning the loss of one of his favourite pair of trousers. Those Silly Americans! :)

It's snowing in London

There was a song that was popular (or kind of popular) about six months ago with the main line being 'it's raining in London'. I never understood what was so noteworthy about it raining in England. Well, today's weather is worthy of a song because today it's snowing in London! Not just kind of snowing, but seriously snowing. We went home to the US for 6 weeks and didn't get any snow worth reporting and then return to this. Very unpredictable indeed.

Jack, Theo, and I have already been out in it. I have included a few pictures. The students here arranged a snowball fight on the main football pitch at 10:45. The boys and I didn't make it, but apparently Charles did. He came home with snow all over his sports coat and trousers but was all smiles. He told us that he was the only faculty member to show up so he was a hot target - and the snow on him showed it.

Schools, buses, trains, etc are closed. People of all ages are so excited. In fact, I am not sure I have seen Londoners more excited - maybe when they won the Olympic bid for 2012 but that may have been because they beat the French! I was hoping that Oak Hill might have a snow day today, but Charles reminded me that this is one of the downsides of having a residential campus! Well, anyway I am going to go look out the window because it is still snowing...

Our Fix-it Man

One of Jack's favourite games is to pretend that he is the maintenance man at college, Reg. We are very blessed to get to call on Reg to help us out. I have this suspicion that our family may call on him more than others due to our incompetency in home repairs! But nonetheless, we have developed a great relationship with him and he has easily become one of Jack's heroes.

So Jack loves to pretend he is Reg. Tonight he came into the kitchen with his toolbox as I was cleaning up and asked what was broken. I told him that the toilet was broken (in hindsight probably not the smartest thing on my part, but a 3 year-old loved the idea). He asked what had happened to it. I told him that my 3 year-old son had tried to use the potty and had fallen off and broken it. He said he would go off and fix it. He came back about 10 minutes later and told me that it was fixed and that he wanted to show it to me.

Here is the picture of what I saw:

And here is a video of 'Reg' explaining to Charles what he did to fix the toilet:


Unfortunately, it looks like Jack may have inherited his parent's ability to fix things! Oh, and just so you know we washed our hands and the tools afterwards!

Wacky Saturday

Jack got a book for Christmas called Wacky Wednesday by Dr. Suess. The main point of the book is to spot what is 'wrong' or 'wacky' throughout the different pictures. We have had a good time with it, although sometimes we have trouble identifying all the wacky things.

Well, today on a whim we decided to play Wacky Saturday as a family. We told Jack to leave the room and we would arrange certain things in a wacky way and then call him back to the room to spot the wacky things. It was a great hit. Even Mom and Dad (okay, I admit especially Mom!) enjoyed the game. Jack really got in to it. We took turns on who was to leave the room. We played the game in our playroom, which made the game more exciting because there are so many items, and it is not that unusual for things to look a little unorganized or 'wacky' in that room anyway.

Two things that were really interesting to Charles and me:

First, some of the most obvious things to us were hard for Jack to identify as wacky. For instance, we put an extra nappy on Theo on the OUTSIDE of his jeans. I was particularly proud of this one, but it took Jack ages to clue in on it. Or I changed my jeans to be on backwards with the zipper in the back, and he never really got that one (maybe in a couple of years!).

Second, when it was Jack's turn to make things wacky he could barely contain his excitement. When the person returned to the room, he would say 'Look, look, the clock is upside down.' instead of waiting for the person to identify it. He was so proud of what he had made wacky.

It was a great time. I would highly recommend it to anyone with kids over 3ish years. A great rainy day activity indeed!

Here is a picture from the game. Even Theo was included!

It is the end of the world as we know it...

Last night at 6:52 pm the world changed forever. My dad, Mike Abbott, purchased a cell phone. We never thought this day would come. After years of resistance (and persecution) he has taken the plunge and entered the 21st century albeit 9 years late! Better late than never seems an appropriate personal motto for my dad. In fact, by Dad's standards, 9 years late isn't too shabby! Now we just have to teach him how to answer it.

Here is a picture of him returning home with his cell phone.