The Best Things In Life

I love Christmas. No matter how much my life has changed in the last year, coming home always brings things that are familiar and pleasant. Sometimes there’s a surprise or two waiting, like your 6’ 4” youngest brother towering over you at the airport, but by and large, the important things never change.

Here's Mikey, our friend Adam who's 6' 7" and Daniel all towering over me, and I'm far older than all of them.

I was extremely relieved to see that unlike Colleen’s neck of the woods, there’s still snow up here. Living in Inukjuak I had forgotten how beautiful the combination of snow and trees could be.

This is just outside our front window. I love trees.

You might think this is just a nice picture, but in actual fact I'm showing off the snowman I made. OK, I guess the kids helped too.

I have to admit that two weeks of relaxing, eating, sleeping, eating and then eating again may have spoiled me a little. Like every other year, my mom has done a formidable job of making every moment of the holidays a gorging opportunity. After the first week I started to feel a little guilty about it, but then again what fun is it starting a new year without the challenge of shedding those extra holiday pounds. To give us a “rolling” start, Daniel, Sonja, Mikey and I have been heading to the gym for some squash and cardio action. Bernie couldn’t join us since he’s busy forming his own German yodeling band. At least that’s the impression he gives dressed in his fine new Lederhosen which were generously given to him by our grandparents and Christine this Christmas.

Yo-de-lay-de-hooooooo.

Of course, when Daniel isn’t at the gym he’s got his alternate workout routine. It’s a complete multi-step program that consists mostly of acting like a jungle-gym for the foster kids. Here’s what the routine looks like:

This is the motivation stage which consists mostly of the kids jumping and yelling at the top of their lungs.

Once Daniel is able to roll off the couch and onto the floor it’s time for advanced upper body strength training consisting of 1, 2 and finally 3 children increments.

Now it’s time for lower body endurance training. For this segment Nala barks to give motivation and encouragement as Daniel struggles to make it to the couch.

Having made it to the couch, Daniel is allowed a brief respite before the screaming motivation has begun anew.

In any case, all of us at the Wolski house have had an amazing break. Unfortunately, all breaks must eventually end and yesterday Bernie had to return to Brandon to start practicing for a concert next week. This meant that we had to snap family Christmas shots in record time before his bus came to whisk him away.

Just us zany kids.

The whole crazy family.

I’ll be heading out on Friday to spend a day with the Dielemans before Colleen and I return to Inukjuak for the next 6 months.

I hope that all of you had just as good a time as we did at the Wolski house, and don’t worry about those extra holiday pounds. We have a whole year to work it off now.

Happy New Year everyone!

Markus