Our love for traveling has most certainly not subsided.
By Magnus’ first birthday
on
August 20 he had done over 20
round trip flights to four countries so we’ve now taken to
calling him
“AirMagnus”. Unfortunately he’s now at an
age where he’s too old to just enjoy sitting on
our lap
enjoying being held but too young to appreciate the
mindlessness of television or video games. The only
thing he really likes doing on planes is running up and down
the aisle trying to make the other passengers spill their
drinks. Flying has become a bit more of a challenge but
we refuse to give up!
Ana returned to work in September after her year long
maternity leave, which she loved. The transition to both
of us working has been much easier than anticipated and we’re
all quite happy with the arrangement. Magnus goes to a
babysitter twice a week, and is at home with Ana two days a
week, where she works from home, and with me at home on
Friday, where we have Man Day. Though he’s young, he can
really hold his own against me in the man activities, though I
can blow way better smoke rings and drink two beers to his
one.
There
were two major highlights of the year, the first was a trip to
Turks & Caicos (Caribbean) in March and a nice long trip to
the Azores in July. One of the advantage of maintaining
your own personal website (www.lifeisgrand.org)
is that we can post pictures and write stories about our
trips, have a look when you can, I’m sure you’ll find
something interesting. If you can believe it, we get an
average of around 7,000 visitors to our site every month.
If anyone has any
suggestions for high margin, irresistible, online products we
could sell,
please send them through,
I promise you’ll get 10% 2%.
Our extend family are also all doing very well. Ana’s
parents are in Brantford busy with work, their friends, and
planning out retirement,
which isn’t too far away now. Ana’s brother Mark is
living in Toronto, climbing the corporate ladder like a
maniac. My folks are in Saskatoon keeping very busy,
even more so since my youngest brother Curtis and his wife
Carrie moved back there from Victoria this summer. My
other brother Marty and his wife Jen are in Ottawa, both
gainfully employed and finally finished with the school life.
Marty has had a couple health problems lately which have
required two surgeries. He is now half man, half
machine, sort of like the Terminator, but with less box office
receipts. My grandparents Gustafson continue with their
hectic lifestyle and are probably busier and happier than
anybody we know.
One of the greatest parts about living in Calgary has been the
amazing network of friends we’ve developed. We’ve had
the great fortune of meeting many extremely interesting and
fun people that has lead to some great adventures. We’re
in a “Dinner Party” club with seven other couples where we
take turns preparing theme dinners once a month. I’m
also involved in a very exclusive “Beers of the World” club,
which also doubles as a “Fly Fishing Club” and triples as a
“Crokinole Club” after we’ve drunk a lot of beer.
Christmas for us this year will be a very unusual one as we’re
not traveling anywhere. There hasn’t been a single year
since Ana and I met that we haven’t traveled somewhere during
the holiday. We will actually be the hosts this time as
Ana’s parents John & Maria will be coming to spend two weeks
with us. They are very excited to see their little
grandson again. The most critical thing we need to do to
prepare for their arrival is find a “project” around the house
or at least a few things to fix so that John has something to
do. Maybe we need a bar downstairs?
How
about 2006? We have a trip to Jamaica planned in mid
January. Another couple and us have rented a beach house
on the north coast of the island for a week which should be a
great break from the Canadian winter. We’ve also started
thinking about a trip in the summertime but haven’t quite
decided where to go yet. Magnus travels for free until
he’s two years old so we want to get as much traveling in as
possible before then. The other project we may do is to
put a cabin on the lot which we bought at Fishing Lake,
Saskatchewan last year. We’ve been balancing the pros
and cons of either moving an existing house onto the lot or
building something new, luckily we have the winter to think
about it.
That’s about it for the Olson update. 2005 has been a
great year for us, full of laughter, love and learning and we
hope you too have had a great year.
Bring on 2006!
Kris, Ana, Magnus
