Sunday Afternoon

Marissa was teaching a class on Sunday so I figured another trip to the Ontario Science Center was a good place to spend a Sunday afternoon. It's really a great place for Aidan to run around, explore and see other children; especially since it's too cold outside to do anything else.

The most interesting thing I saw today was how kids interact when resources are limited. Let me describe it ... There's an exhibit where you connect together tracks to build a "roller coaster". Then you take these rubber balls and run them down the track. The interesting thing is that, there were 20 kids and 6 rubber balls. It doesn't matter how old you are, once the primal instincts kick in it's all for yourself and Aidan was no exception. He'd see a ball, go after it, some kid would grab it and he'd take off to find another, every kid was doing the same thing. Some kids were grabbing balls from each other too. You can imagine how the parents were handling it. At one time Aidan managed to come into possession of 3 balls and protect them for at least 1 minute. I was pretty proud of the little guy :-)

I ended up buying an annual pass because I'm sure we'll be back many more times this year.

Haircut

This is me with my new haircut.

What's new

It's been a while since the last post. I've been busy and didn't have much of a creative mindset. Maybe it was due to the deep freeze but I'm determined to try to increase my blogging.

Last weekend we went on a shopping trip to the Eaton Center. Seems like a blah thing to do but I've not been out for a while so for me it's a big deal. Too bad for me I couldn't find any new clothes but at least Aidan got some new stuff from Gap and Old Navy.

Today Aidan got a very cute haircut which I'll post another time. Later on, we went to the Dr. for his 18 month checkup. He's on track with his weight, height, speech development so that's all good news. The Dr. and intern described him as the perfect patient since he allowed them to use him as a guniea pig. He even gave them a wave when they left the room. I took all the credit for his good behaviour (don't tell Marissa, hehe).

So that's all for now.

Mega Walmart Shopping

A lot has been said about the new Walmat superstore and it's negative effects on Canadian grocers like Dominion, Sobey's and especially Loblaws. We as a family bunded ourselves in warm clothing to brave to -30C temperatures to do our weekend groceries there. I've already been there twice already but it being the size of a football field, it wont be a familiar experience for me until at least the 5th visit. I have not even been to the auto or seasonal section yet.

It's obvious that Walmart did some research on who it's local clientele are, there are some pretty indigenous fruits and vegtables that would surely please the palette of the predominately immigrant population of Scarborough. Bulk okra, choyote and some unrecognizable stuff for example. Some of the meat packaging looks suspect but that may be because I'm used to seeing it packaged in white stryofoam instead of pink.

The clear advantage is that this place is a one stop shopping complex, you can even build a bear and get a hearing aid. The food prices are better (but not by much). There are a different variety of products (sometimes by different suppliers).

However this place won't have everything that are in the isles that Dominon and Loblaws has. It doesn't carry PC products and it doesn't feel like a grocery store.

My conclusion is that it's convenient and I'll be back sometimes. But I recently discovered that shopping at the Chinese grocers are are a better deal. The produce is fresher too. I can cut the grocery bill by 40% by doing so and there alot more interesting stuff there too. BTW there is a TNT opening up where the old Knob Farms used to be on Commisioners Rd. Loblaws used to get $130 a week from us, so I would be worried if I were them.