Reinforcements on their way

Olga is away on business in Malaysia for the next two weeks, having left a couple of days ago. It's a tough journey, flying the "wrong way" through Vancouver to Hong Kong, staying a night there (in a hotel I stayed in 11 years ago), and then going on to Kuala Lumpur and then on to Miri. She's arrived safely, if not entirely sure what day it is. She is 14 hours ahead of us in Airdrie, which puts her seven hours ahead of Lucy in the UK, who is well overdue for the delivery of her first baby. 

Olga posted this photo from her hotel room in Miri..

I was sure I could cope with the kids while Olga was away, but with more thought, and a look at the school calendar for the autumn and winter (no long half term holidays here) we asked Grandma if she had a window in her schedule to come over and help me out and spend time with the kids, so Grandma is flying in to the rescue tomorrow! Hurrah! Lara is beyond excited, and has spent the last few days making plans about what her and Grandma are going to get up to.
Grandma might get to see some exciting weather - we've been having some spectacular thunderstorms recently. They are very localized - there was one two days ago, it rained on our street but 4km away at Dan's nursery the hailstones were the size of golf balls and dented cars in the car park. Here's Lara with one of them:

Today I needed to take the kids and dogs for a walk, Lara chose to ride her bike, which is fine, but Dan's not up to that yet. He's just learning scootering, but to make sure we didn't spend ages waiting for him to catch up, I enlisted Jackson's help to pull Dan along... it worked well until we reached a slight downhill bit, where Dan gained some speed, clipped my heels, came to an immediate stop and tested out his helmet. It worked perfectly, phew:

Later today I took the kids to investigate one of the Calgary cricket clubs. It's not quite Littlewick Green, but it's unlikely I'll find a cricket club as pretty as that again, but the standard of cricket here looked about my level, so perhaps I'll have to make inquiries.. for next summer :-)