Unfortunately, based entirely on what you would find on this site, you would determine that Warren has been reading. A lot. Enough that I haven’t really updated the website a whole lot. My backup team — Tamara and Tristan — have had to pitch in.

Oh, I started out with a bang, talking about how in January Mother Nature managed to whip up a snowstorm that left us housebound for a week. The kids went to school for all of three hours that week.

It was at about this time that my writing fervour completely dried up. Pity, too, because we had this awesome trip to London to visit family friends — our first big trip outside the country with the kids — but I was just too busy/tired/whatever to manage to sort my pictures out. Good thing the backup team was out in full force, posting pictures, commentary, witty repartee, etc.

With spring behind us, the kids had a few measly weeks of school left, and then it was into full-on summer. (Oh! Wait! I did write a few posts at this time, mostly abortive ones describing the art classes I was taking at the time. I even wrote something about the week-long figure drawing class I took. Boy, I must have had a bout of spring energy at that point…)

Summer picked up and the kids got pretty busy with all kinds of stuff. They were both in several summer camps. Tristan had a week-long cooking class: every day a different cuisine. He spent a week at Sail Sand Point, sailing across Lake Washington every day, having waterfights with his sailing compatriots (incentive to go fast), and jumping off the dock while waiting for Mom to arrive and pick him up. (And you have no idea how hard it is to be locked in a big air-conditioned building looking out at the clear blue skies thinking “my kid is sailing across Lake Washington right now. Drat.”) For an encore, Tristan spent a week of robot-building with Lego Mindstorms (and his friend Clarissa) during which he came home every evening and showed off some new bit of code and what he could make his robot do.

Pascal had no less of a packed summer. There was a week of rock climbing — Pascal decided he really liked it, and is now taking climbing classes every week. Then, back to back, a week of playing soccer and practising basketball with the Harlem Globetrotters. Pretty cool.

Not only that, but Pascal was accompanied to the soccer and basketball camps with his cousin, Ella-Matisse, who made a special trip all the way from France just to spend a couple weeks hangin’ with her cool cuz. (Well, not really, she was here to practise her English. But she did spend a bunch of time with her cool cuz.) They had a blast too: the week was capped off with a truly incredible multimedia extravaganza dance presentation that Ella-Matisse and Pascal co-wrote, co-directed and co-starred in. Awesome.

In between all that camp activity, we managed to squeeze a trip to Mt. Rainier (there was still snow). And we finished up the summer with a week at Saltspring, where it was cooler than usual. I had to break out my sweater. In August.

Tamara finished out the summer by getting her knee fixed up. She’s now plotting her return to her preferred activity: rowing.

I almost wrote a post about how dry the summer was — about 12 weeks with just a trace of rain. I would have described how the actual summer — like, the part in July and August — actually was pretty miserable and rainy, and that the nice, warm, dry summer kicked in just in time for the kids to return to school and the fall nip to set in. Summer after summer. It was awesome. Not.

Tristan and Pascal had a pretty great year, all things considered. They focused on activities where they could go fast (boyz, yaknow). They had their first experience on skis with Grandpa directing, and came home all in one piece. Then in August Grandpa decided a day of innertubing the kids might enjoy as well. Grandpa knows his grandkids.

Halloween was very similar to last year — Tristan went as a red angry bird, and Pascal went as a black one. I have no idea what the special powers of red versus black actually are. You’ll have to ask them.

So that’s what we did. Of course, I didn’t write a jot on any of this during the year. I was busy elsewhere. But Tristan — well, Tristan got tired of posting posts on the regular old boring DAD blog, and decided he wanted something that he could write on his own, and staged a pitched battle with Dad before I finally relented and set him up with his own, personal blog. He now returns home from school every day and writes up a blog post, and I’ve been relegated to IT support and staff photographer (I’m sure he’d take that over too if he could figure out how to get action shots of himself).

So if you really want to know what happened this year, ask Tristan.