I'm afraid I won't know what floor to get off on

Charlie was worried about our trip tomorrow as he doesn't remember which floor nana is on

All I want for Christmas is …

Charlie got to meet Santa with Aidan at the shopping center (Dec 15, 2010 now). Charlie was pretty excited to meet up with him and was thrilled to let him know that all he wanted for Christmas was an electric blanket and an Xbox kinect.

Those are two funny requests because the other day Eileen mentioned an electric blanket and he asked me what that was. We didn’t think of it after that.

Also, Charlie has played with the kinect in 2 places, once at the Microsoft store then once at the Bose store. It did make an impression on him, obviously.

As for Aidan, well, Santa is just too big and scary right now. This was the same thing with Charlie at this age as well.

Santa at 1 years old is a bit scary

Joffrey Ballet–Nutcracker–Christmas 2010

Eileen and Charlie went to the ballet tonight and both enjoyed it.

Eileen mentioned that the seats were awesome and to keep track of them for the future. They were up in Sec: Dresl Row DD and Seats 510-511 for $75/each.

Charlie was not interested in going to the ballet by time 2 o’clock came around after playing in the snow so much in the morning. Then I explained to him that all his cousins have seen this and Memere goes every year to see this. He must see this since even Kevin Allan has seen this. That was enough to get him to get his boots and jacket on and head out with Mom.

Aidan was still in bed but woke up just a few minutes after they left. We had a showing right at 2 p.m. so I dressed him and fought the galling snow white winds to the corner store where we hung out and had snacks for 45 minutes.

Here are a few pics that Eileen took with her phone while at the theatre which was at the Auditorium Theatre at 50 E Congress Pkwy.

Charlie's first ballet turned out to be fun and he enjoyed it better than the symphony the other day. Eileen mentioned the skittles at intermission helped him along the second half as well. When he arrived home he was most excited about the real tall man in the show.

Ticketmaster sidebar:
I’m not sure why but this is typical of Ticketmaster. First they charge a $10 convenience charge (their website sucks and I told them in a follow up survey) then there’s a 50 cent tax on top of that convenience charge and then they round it off with a $3.30 order processing fee. The tickets were printed on old ticket stubs because the back of them said we had a 20% off at the local hotel that expired Aug 31, 2010. Nope I double checked that date, 4 months ago. Now that, in a “nutshell” is Ticketmaster. Thieves.

Tintin update…objective lune

Charlie is starting to pick up reading in English. It’s odd but in kindergarden they don’t start to learn to read French quite yet but the English teacher who they see daily except for Wednesdays is moving along. He' actually read an entire 30 page level 1 book with Eileen (ok. helped a lot by Eileen) 2 nights ago.

Even now as I read Tintin he’s trying to figure it all out like why the “in” in French is like an “ain” instead of “inn”. But he’s pretty darn excited about reading and its really neat to see.

What drives it home was I saw a piece on the news where the Afghan military are mostly illiterate and kinda thinking of that while he’s sounding out words and then we’re realizing even in English there’s plenty of rules around words.

Anyways, we’re now at “objective lune” in the Tintin collection and out of the grand total of 24 books in the collection we have 7 left. It’s been a long journey but an absolute delight for both him and I. The stories are awesome and actually riveting at times. Eileen’s favorite thing to do is when its 7 p.m. and time for bed she lets us finish the page then rips the book out of my hands, not knowing what is about to happen. The layout of the books are really well done. I think every book is 62 pages and crafted for page turning suspense. Who would have known. Charlie loves it, and without a doubt his favorite is Mr. “mille sabord” Haddock.

Our first book we read was “on a marche sur la lune” then “L’or noir”, then “L’affaire Tournesol” before starting from the top and working sequentially; highly recommended because the stories do often intertwine.

The book we just finished yesterday night called “Coke en stock” was really well done but would have more fun had we read it in the Quebec French version called “Colocs en stock”