Aylmer Express "MoHo" Extravaganza 2006

consanguineous \kon-san(g)-GWIN-ee-us\, adjective:
Of the same blood; related by birth; descended from the same parent or ancestor.

When we were in Chicago, well, actually a very nice middle class suburb of Chicago called Skokie, we had the pleasure of meeting some neighbours of our friends Jim and Susan. One of them was an 11-year-old girl named Nina who ended up joining us for Jim’s official “Maivald tour of Chicago”. Nina is a fun and interesting young lady with a great sense of humour and during this tour she had mentioned a funny little saying which was a take-off on the now famous MasterCard commercials that end in “Priceless”. Her version was something that she and her friend had made up and written out for a classmate that was trying too hard to be “cool”. I thought it was hilarious but couldn’t remember the details so I asked her to send it to me and now I would like to share it with you. Imagine a 5th grader delivering this to a classmate:

A new dew rag:10$
Some shiny bling bling: 40$
Over sized gym shoes: 100$
Then realizing that you live in Skokie: Priceless...

Today was the day that the kids have been waiting for since we left. Today was the day we went to the West Edmonton Mall (WEM)! We tried to plan it to take place on a day with less than ideal weather conditions and since today was looking like it might be a little cool with some rain, we pulled the trigger on WEM. We started off checking out some of the stores for some important things that we needed. You know, important things like … Frisbees, swim goggles … essentials. We also managed to squeeze in another visit to Ben and Jerry’s which just happens to be in the mall too. And when we stepped into one of the up-scale jewelers to get a closer look at some of the Rolexs we ended up getting a bit of a sales pitch for their Jaeger LeCoultre line of watches. The person who approached us was very nice and was obviously a cognoscente but even he must have seen the humour in pitching a $14,000 time piece to a family of four wearing shorts, sandals and fanny packs. It was actually quite an interesting discussion and I did walk away with the knowledge that a watch that has achieved the Master Compressor rating is much more prestigious and robust than a watch that has only met the mere Chronometer rating. A regular old watch did not enter the discussion.

Then it was off to the water park! Yes, for those of you who don’t know about the WEM it is the world’s second biggest mall and has a skating rink, an amusement park, a water park, and even a couple of submarines! What can I say … this place rocks! The water park was 10 times better than the water park we went to in Regina. And I think we all had 10 times the fun too. It not only had huge water slides but it also had a wave pool, hot tubs, a concrete beach (?), and even bungee jumping. And the slides themselves were fantastic. They were long, very fast, and lots of different types to choose from. My favorite had to be the SkysSreamer. It is basically an almost vertical drop for about 30 feet … to get you up to speed. By the time you are horizontal you are moving about 50 MPH! You can’t keep your eyes open because of all the spray being shot up from the bottoms of your feet plowing through the water on the slide. Whenever a person came down they would create a rooster-tail from their feet up to 10 feet high depending on their size! Very cool. A great adrenalin rush for sure. He kids had a fabulous time going from waterslide to waterslide as well as the wave pool. As you can see in the video, the wave pool was pretty crowded. If you look closely you can see Morgan, near the right-hand side of the screen, who is wearing his new silver goggles as well as Chantal, closer to the middle, who is wearing a blue bathing suit.
At the end of the day a nice gentleman from the UK took the picture of the 4 of us in front of the slides. While talking with him I found out he is planning to immigrate to Canada, Edmonton in particular. I asked him why he would want to move from north of Manchester to Edmonton. He told me that Edmonton was much less crowded, a lower cost of living and better employment opportunities for his kids. I asked why he was thinking of Edmonton in particular. He said that he had been here a few times and he liked it. I then asked if he had been here in the winter. He replied with a “No” after which there was a pregnant pause during which neither of us knew exactly what to say. I guess some things are better left unsaid.