Skype Skypedy Skype Skype

This is a bit delayed, but better late than never. It's about Elizabeth's second birthday, which was two weeks ago, and I know I already wrote about her birthday, so if you're done with that topic, feel free to 'x' my window.

So obviously we live in a different country than our immediate family, making a family-birthday party a challenge. Not so, my friends, not so! Matthew's Mum (Susan) is a professor of distance education at Athabasca University, and she has access to Adobe Connect, which is like a Skype conference call. So we had a singalong party with my sister Kathryn, her husband Dave, and Elizabeth's 3 cousins, my sister Suzie and her boyfriend Adam, my bro Chris, Matthew's Mum Susan, his Dad Holger and his dance partner, Anne, Matthew's aunt and uncle, Lorraine & Rainer, and Matthew's aunt Jolene. Our great pal Nikki was here, hence the fantastic photography of the event. (Note: This paragraph gave me anxiety over oxford commas...)

It. Was. Awesome.

There was one *minor* drawback - no one (except for Pro Star Susan) had headphones on, so everyone was using their computer's microphone system. Which meant that the feedback was horrendous and also hysterical. In Suzie's words, "It sounds like we're on a submarine". Then they sang Happy Birthday to Elizabeth, and it sounded like an evacuation alarm on a submarine. That made us all laugh, and there was no distinguishing laughter from terribly frightening and deafening alarm sound...  which then made us all laugh harder, and didn't help the terror-noise screeching out of the computer.

Elizabeth, somehow, was completely unfazed by the terror-noise - she will be excellent at fire drills.

Susan managed to communicate to everyone, via typed messages and charades, that we should turn off our mikes. It was much calmer after that. Less adrenaline-pumping-anxiety-increasing-submarine-alarm-sounding-hilarity, but much calmer.

 When we lived in Edmo, we would sometimes say, "We're having dinner with the CheeseyBaboSiuks" - clearly referring to my side of the family - or "let's go see the "FerrHawkGowdas" - obviously, the Ferri-Hawkeye-Gowda household. The Petersens and the Moiseys are pretty much single-family-namers. But what do you call them when they're all together and at one event? CheBaMoiHawkFerGowGarwasErsens? That's just too much.

We put 1970's family blending sitcoms to shame.