Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Today was a stay-at-home day, but it was still a busy day. Our day started with a call to our boys (and Terri-Ann and James :-) We used a great computer program called 'Skype' which allows us to see and hear whoever we call via the computer. We had emailed Terri-Ann yesterday to ask her if she could get on Skype today around 7pm her time. When she logged onto her computer and into Skype, we could tell and then were able to 'phone' her. Soon we were looking at her on our computer screen and then soon came Colin and Caleb into the screen. It was awesome to be able to see them and talk with them! We will definitely get a lot of use out of Skype when we are here and they are there.

It was so cute watching Colin sticking out his tongue and talking with him about school and his friend, Devon. Colin says he likes school which makes me happy since I always love to hear that a young child loves school. Hopefully that feeling will stick with him for a long time. He shared a french song with us (Bonjour Mes Amis) - one that I remember the girls singing when they were young and attending french immersion school. Caleb was trying to talk with us, too - thank goodness Mommy was there to translate for us. I asked Colin what he would like us to bring him from Australia and he said 'a train' - seems he is still really focused on trains, so I am going to have to do some serious looking in the next couple of weeks. :-)

The boys soon left our conversation to continue playing with Daddy and their grandpa (James' dad) and so Mike and I were able to have a long conversation with Terri-Ann. It was great to be able to see her and talk with her at the same time. We talked for over an hour and finally we had to say goodbye cuz we could see that Terri-Ann was tired and it was time for her to go and have a rest. James and his dad were going to put the boys down to bed, so Terri-Ann could go and just take care of herself.

After our chat on Skype, Mike and I began putting my journal from our cruise and the photos online. We had no idea that it was going to take so long. I thought it was just going to be a matter of cut and paste, but it has turned out to be so much more. What we have decided to do since this is a one-off journal (just about our thirty day cruise from San Francisco to Sydney) is to write the journal backwards starting with the day of arrival in Sydney. When it is completed, the journal will then run from our first day to our last as when you write a blog, the latest entry is at the top. We first have to upload the photos which means we have to go through all the photos that we took on that day (sometimes there are over a hundred or more per day). Then, we have to write captions under each of the photos that we have chosen. Then, we copy and paste my journal from the computer. Then, we have to publish it and see where we need to adjust the formatting. And just when we think we have it down pat, something happens and we have to spend a lot more time fixing an entry.

We spent most of today working on it 'til almost 7pm, stopping only for lunch and supper and a few games of cribbage. So far, we have only completed seven days which means that we have 23 days to go. It's going to be great once it's done and I want to print it out when we get back to Canada and make it into a book, but it's going to be a very time consuming exercise. Good thing we have all the time in the world right now, eh? :-)

We watched a video after supper tonight called 'About a Boy' starring Hugh Grant. I am glad that we only paid 99 cents to rent it from Blockbuster. We did end up watching it right through just to see how it ended, but it's not that interesting a movie. It's amazing how you can read the back of a dvd case and think it sounds really good and then it turns out not to be. Anyway, we have five more dvds to watch from Blockbuster, so we are hoping that they are better than this one was.

After the movie was over, we turned on the tv to watch 'Criminal Minds'. It's one of our favourite shows. Last night, after watching another tv show (Lie to Me), we talked again about how we don't want to watch tv just for the sake of watching it. That show is okay, but it's not one that we really like, so we have renewed our plan to only watch tv if it's something we really want to watch. I feel like I wasted my time last night watching that show and I don't want to do that. There are other things we can do like playing games and reading that would be a much better use of our time.