Vacation Mode

I'm not sure I've blogged about this yet.  Maybe mentioned it here and there, but anyway.  We are going on a one week Vacation this weekend.  Where you ask?  The beautiful Caribbean?  Or Florida?  Nope, none of those - we're going to the PEG!  That's Winnipeg. Or Winterpeg, if you will....  I usually get a chuckle whenever I tell anyone where we're going.  It's not typically a place you associate with vacation, is it?  lol  With it's reputation of cold weather, mosquitoes and rain/flooding... we're praying to get nice weather!
We're going mainly because Marn's Grandma is turning 90, so we're going to the celebration and then spending the week up at Lake Winnipeg at a family cottage.  It's actually a very gorgeous location, right on the water with white powder beaches (almost like the kind in the Caribbean), called Victoria Beach. (Lake Winnipeg is very big - about the size of Lake Ontario/Erie).  We were there once before, before we were married (the weather was gorgeous that week). Nancy and Drew are driving, we're flying, and they may join us for a day or two at the cottage. Friday the 25th is the big Birthday party.

We are really looking forward to it because this will be our first real sort of vacation since before Violet was born when we went on the 2 week Cruise with the Asbury's (yes, we did go to Vancouver for a visit last year in March, which I suppose counts as vacation - but there were no beaches, or rustic cottages to be seen anywhere!).
For me, this will be the only extended vacation time I'll have this year because I'm trying to save a week when the new baby comes, a few days for around Christmas, and a few days when Adrienne comes for a long visit.  I may make up a few days when doing upgrades, etc. on the systems here over weekends, but I never know when that will happen (I'm finding it very hard to give up my weekends to do system upgrades these days!!).

New webcam

I've had a crappy webcam for years and years, and with our new(ish) computer, it hasn't worked very well.  It's just too old.  So, this week when Future Shop had one on sale that I had been eyeing for a little while (because it's "out of the box compatibility" with Linux), I picked it up.  It's still a cheap webcam compared to ones that can sell for over $100, but it's perfect for us.
Some of the reason I wanted one is so that we can start using Skype again.  I tested it out with Adrienne last night, and it worked pretty well!  We ended up chatting for 1 hour and 20 minutes.... the call started at 11pm eastern time!!  Anyway, it's my hope that we can Skype with Adrienne and the kids so that they aren't as much of strangers to Violet when they come for a visit in August.  I really want Violet to know their names by just seeing them.  Hopefully it'll also make her less shy when she sees them.

I haven't used Skype in a while and there's a new cool feature that lets you share your desktop, or an area of your desktop screen so that the other person can see it.  It's not "two-way" sharing, though, so I can't take control of the other desktop.  It just lets you view it.  So we tried that out and showed each other pictures that we hadn't seen yet, and Adrienne browsed to some sites to show her kitchen design plans to me.... so cool!

Our Skype name is "amrolt", if you've forgotten, or want to try it out!