Billy has again inspired us. After seeing the unprecedented fame achieved by http://www.oneinagillian.blogspot.com, we had to give it a try,too. This may as well be called the wannabilly blog, but as you can see, it's not.

This opening post gives me the chance to ponder the future of the fledgling campbelloki blog. It could turn out to be like yesterday's trip to Blueberry Park, when we finally convinced the ever-cautious Jerome (who is 6, after all) that he should try to ride his bike without training wheels. This took some doing, and we fielded numerous questions on the way to the park about whether we had remembered to bring his "safety gear". Even after he was on the bike, he was reluctant to give it a shot (I could tell because he kept on repeating "Dad, don't let go").

In spite of his trepidation, I gave him a shove and let go. Lo and behold, his inner ear appears to be functioning adquately, and he just rode off across the vast field. It may have been harder than it looked (Marie heard him muttering "concentrate, concentrate, concentrate..." as he rolled by her), but he was doin' it. Our blog could turn out to be like this - a genuine "why didn't we do this a long time ago?" type thing.

Or our blog could turn out to be like the unloved pumpkin that has been kicking around our house for 3 weeks now. Marie bought it, thinking that we could make a jack-o-lantern for Halloween. This was fine, except that we really didn't have much time before Halloween to carve jack-o-lanterns, and it mostly just absorbed abuse from the kids. Come the evening of the 31st, I got home from work and decided that we should at least set something out that would let the kids know that they could trick-or-treat here. I tried to quickly carve the pumpkin, but it was not to be. The pumpkin isn't the hollow kind, and with a very sharp, expensive, German knife that Aunt T gave us, I can penetrate 1/16" into its surface. Now, our little pumpkin has missed its shot at the big time. Marie is thinking of alternative uses, but mostly it just gets kicked around, and every once in a while Asha posts some graffiti on its surface (where did Asha get the sharpie? Why can Asha always find a sharpie when she wants one? Didn't we throw all the sharpies away after the keyboard incident?). So you see, our blog could turn out to be one of those "well, it was a nice thought, but it really didn't enrich our lives or the lives of our friends and family members" kind of things. Only time will tell - for now, though -
Thanks, Billy!