The McKenzie’s Blog…

While looking through the US version of the Nick jr Website looking for interesting games and stuff to add to Lisa’s computer I came across a very cute little character called Kai-lan.  Kai-lan speaks Chinese and English. The show is a like Dora The Explorer, but teaches kids Chinese instead of Spanish.

Meet the cast of Ni Hao, Kai-lan! .. from left to right:

Tolee (a Koala), Hoho (a Monkey), Rintoo (a Tiger), Kai-lan and Yeye (Kai-lan’s Grandfather).

Kai-lan is obviously the star of the show, but her yeye plays a very important role as well in guiding her through life.

Rather then me try to be creative and just write what’s already been said by others, go and read an interesting article HERE from the NYTimes.

Now, if only the UK version of NickJr would get the show on here.   The girls just love the show, but for them to watch it I’ve got to get it the hard way ..

This story happened on Mar 25 and outlines exactly why stupid people shouldn’t be allowed to have guns, and as Bill Engvall says “Stupid people should have to wear signs”

From KCTV5.com comes this story:

Man Shooting Hole Through

Wall Kills Wife

Deepwater Man Fatally Shoots Wife While Installing Satellite TV

DEEPWATER, Mo. — Officials are trying to decide whether to file charges against a Missouri man who fatally shot his wife while trying to install a satellite TV system in the bedroom of their home.

Patsy Long, 34, of Deepwater, died after being shot in the chest with a .22-caliber handgun on Saturday. Her husband, Ronald Long, fired the shot from the inside of their home after several unsuccessful efforts to punch a hole through the exterior wall using other means.

Henry County sheriff’s deputies said the woman was hit by the second of two shots fired by her husband.

Read the full sad story by CLICKING HERE

Then, come back and watch Bill tell it how it is!

These are just some random pics of the pics.. there are more in the GALLERY.

The face painting was done today at the Ladybird Pre-School Easter Egg Hunt today.

Well, it’s Easter, another holiday drummed up by big business to get people to part with large sums of currency in exchange for over priced coloured folded paper and fattening Chocolate in all shapes and colours. 

We didn’t bother with cards for the kids but we did get some chocolate for them.  As we did last year, we hide the eggs around the living room and had them run around to find them.   They had a great time doing it too.. Emma did it last year but enjoyed it much more this year.

Some pics from the day

Check out all the other pics and the video .. they’re in the GALLERY.

It also snowed today, which is a very odd thing to happen in this part of the UK .. check out those pics in this ALBUM.

We measured the kids today .. Lisa is now 108cm and she weighs 19kg. Emma is 86cm and weighs 12kg. 

The girls are both off school now until April 7 for the Easter/half term break.  The school is putting on an Easter Egg hunt party on April 26 and the girls will be going to that with their school mates and Yuki.  It should be good fun for them, hopefully Yuki will get some pics and we’ll post them to the blog.

There is a story in the news today about how Starbucks has been ordered to repay $100m US it stole from it’s employee’s tip jars.  This is a practice that’s done by companies around the world.  Basically, all the tips that staff get in the course of doing their jobs all go into a collective pot then at some point (daily, weekly, monthly, whatever) the money is the “divided” between all staff members, including the management/supervisors.  I have 2 problems with this practice, 1) the management/supervisors shouldn’t get any share of an employee’s tips, unless it’s given to them by the employee’s; 2) the idea of pooling all the tips and dividing it “equally” between all staff members isn’t fair to those that truly earned those tips verses the slackers that did nothing to earn anything.

The story in the press can be read here:

   BBC News - Starbucks must pay $100m in tips

   CNN News - Starbucks ordered to pay $100m in back tips

This sort of practice goes on all the time here in the UK and it’s disgusting and despicable to say the least.  Years ago when I use to work as a busboy in restaurants I use to make very good tips, all given to me by the waitstaff for helping them out.  The waitstaff would tip the cooks, busboys and bar staff based on how much they help they gave them in doing their jobs.  This is a fair system.

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Today we went to Parkside Pools today with the girls.   Everyone had a great time.

You can see more pics by popping into the gallery .. there is also a video from the pool as well in there, you can see Lisa swimming under water, she’s actually quite good.  Just need to get her a snorkel and mask. The video is a bit of a mix of very short video clips taken in the pool.. sorry.  I just couldn’t be arsed to to do a proper mixing of it all to make it look better :)  Maybe later haha