We've had the first few real days of snow this week. Kind of dissapioting. I used to love the winter (in high school) -- lots of skiing etc... but now the winter just seems cold. I have been out for my first few turns on skates -- which has been fun.

I'm Working late tonight, there's got lot's going on at work. Today, the CEO of the Calgary Health Region announced that it would be authorizing 250 extended-stay surgical procedures to be performed at HRC. It's been a really big deal here at the office ... we've been waiting for this for the past seven years.

Most of the guys have been spending a considerable amount of time at HRC. Approximately 30 - 40 % of my time has been devoted to working at, or on HRC related projects. The first floor development is coming along nicely. We'll be getting ready to pull the voice and data wire in the next week or so (I've got Mike Gedlaman helping with that).

Erin is off tonight at the cannery doing some "dry-pack" -ing. Lara is watching the kids until I get home. Erin has done a good job as the Relief Society food storage specialist.

We had a terrible time getting Gracie to bed last night. She was so tired, but couldn't sleep. Erin turned on a wind-up music box to distract her, which eventually proved to be trouble. Each time the wind up toy ended, Gracie would wake up and cry out. She didn't fall asleep until I hooked up an MP3 player to some computer speakers and put some music on for her. Erin went and bought a small CD player for her; hopefull bedtime won't be so tough tonight.

Matthew on the other hand, reaches out for his crib when we put him to bed. He goes down gleefully. He's been really easy lately, mostly because he's started to communicate over the past few weeks. He has a vocabulary of about five or six words, and three or four hand gestures. Erin and I have been amazed at what a different child he's been since being able to communicate with us -- even in a small way. As it turns out, he's actually kind of loveable when he's not screaming.