Kid City

Our good friends the Ballesty's came up from Pennsylvania late last week. Dan and Joyce had a weekend in Ottawa planned putting Jo and I on duty with a house full of 7 kids. We had a great time and we're pretty sure all the kids did too but it was a lot of work. I don't know how Joyce and Dan handled our brood when they had them for 4 days last year. The weather was really nice which allowed us to make the most of outside activities, foremost of which was a long walk along 16 Mile Creek not far from our house. With one car, 7 kids and 2 adults everything was going to be a local affair. Now that I have bought a new video camera I've told Jazz that she can use the old camera. She's expressed a real interest in taking shots and editing them on the PC so she and the other kids took turns taking video and still shots throughout our walk. When we got back I transfered the data to the computer and Jazz edited the footage together, she did a decent job for her first attempt and I only helped her a bit with some minor cleanups and timing changes. I'll put it up on YouTube later this week so you can all see for yourself, it's a bit of fun and nice that it's all footage from a single 3 hour walk.I had promised the kids that we would set off Cam's model rocket but unfortunately both Saturday and Sunday proved too windy. Since the rocket is supposed to go higher than 500 feet I didn't want to risk it coming down on someones roof, or even worse the major highway a few hundred metres away. So instead we took advantage of the wind and flew a couple of kites while the other kids and I played some baseball and threw a gridiron ball around. The park across the road is getting really busy now that the weather is good and the sun is up much longer, the baseball diamond is in use a lot and the basketball court is being pounded until after the sun goes down. Anyway is was a busy but very enjoyable weekend, the Ballesty kids are good people and get along with our mob like a house on fire. We love seeing them and having kids going mad all over the place. The only downer was Abs got quite sick on the Sunday morning after a party/sleep-over the night before and ended up spending the day in bed after barfing all over the carpet upstairs. Luckily is was just a 24hr thing so she's back to her best today.Last year everyone in Jazz's class had to write a speak and deliver it to the class. The best 3 speeches, as adjudged by the teacher and popular vote by the kids, would then be delivered to all the grades in a number of rounds as they whittled down the contenders and arrived at a winner. Jazz had done very well last year, even considering she was competing out of her age group and some of the other kids had obviously had a lot of help from others. Jazz's chosen subject was mythical creatures whereas some of the other kids had gone for more serious topics like bullying. Anyway it's on again this year and Jazz is once again a strong starter out of the blocks. She received a 92/100, the highest in her class, for her first run through and is delivering her speech to all the grade 5 classes today to see if she can progress further. I'm so proud of her, she seems to have a real knack for both the writing and deliver aspects of it. Her first draft, on the subject of TV violence and it's impact on young kids, was fun, interesting and well researched. I can't believe that she's doing this in grade 5... go Jazzy, give em hell.

Andy, out.