It finally arrived!

We finally received our amazon order. I've been stalking it (using the track package feature at Canada Post) for days, have even had to call the 1-800 # as it appeared that it was being delivered but it wasn't. Finally it came last night.

Inside:
Story of the World 3 (text)

Story of the World 3 (activity book)

Story of the World 3 (audio CD)

AND....

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (audio CD) - this is the BBC Cover to Cover production, read by the brilliant Stephen Fry. I have been coveting these for ages and when I saw this one on sale, I grabbed it.

It's particularly opportune as we've only just started reading the Harry books to the kids a couple years ago. Two years ago, it was book 1. The following summer, book 2, and now we're ready for book 3.

It's been a bit difficult going this slow with the kids - esp. since I'm reading the books as they come out, and they know there are more available. So there's the inevitable "can't we read the next one???" - but I believe that the books are too mature for young kids. When we read the first one, Amelia was 8 & Hugo was 5 and that was barely OK. My kids lead sheltered lives - no news, no commercial TV, carefully pre-screened videos. With Harry getting a year older in each book, I find the stories get more complex and frankly scary and quite sad. So we're going at our snail's pace, a book per year.

Last summer, we re-read book 1 and then read book 2. This summer, we started with audio books of #'s 1 & 2, but all I could find at first was the Jim Dale ones. Well, Jim Dale is a good reader. I liked his Around the World in 80 Days a lot. But I really think that Harry Potter is meant to be read by someone English, and Stephen Fry is fabulous. Of course the only problem now is that I'll want all the Stephen Fry versions.......

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In other news, we had a fire alarm last night, just past 11 pm. When you live in a highrise, you get a fair # of them. We once went through a spell of having tons of false alarms and finally one night we didn't go down. But we both felt so crappy about that - even though it was a false alarm - that we've always gone down since. (Even though we're low enough down that the ladder truck could reach us from the balcony)

Yesterday was not a false alarm though I don't have the full scoop yet. We had 9 fire trucks out here at one point, 2 ambulances and the police. On our way down the fire escape stairs, you could smell a bit of smoke. Rumour has it that it was somewhere around the 18th floor and it definately was a fire.

The crews ended up putting it out with their extinguishers but just after the first team went in, the rest of the crews started unrolling the hoses & hooking them up to the water, so they were prepared to do a big fire fight.

We were down there with 2 sleepy kids and the cat in her carrier. Luckily it wasn't raining but it wasn't terribly warm and we had not brought down a blanket. I was saying to Roo that maybe I need to run through the fire drill a bit since I saw others with blankets and purses and looking a bit more organized; but of course we got all we needed - the 2 kids and bonus points for the cat (hammie was left to fend for himself). When I think of it, there isn't actually anything I'd bring. I hear it's good to have your insurance policy, and I imagine it would be a lot less hassle if you had a wallet with ID & money, but really? Get yourself and the kids out. Period, full stop.

(my crazy Scottish neighbour - with whom we swap cat-sitting services - meanwhile was obsessing because he didn't bring his bagpipes down; "The heck with the cats," he bellowed, "I should'a brought me pipes!" Which would have been good as he could have played some rousing tunes. We all like the bagpipes.)

It will be a bit of a sleep-deprived day for us today as we didn't get back in until about 1230.

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I've updated the Ballycumber (right hand margin) and the Ballycumber Archive.