Ramblings..

With no specific topic in mind...I thought I'd begin this post with something that has been happening here in a place called Barrie, near Toronto.

About two weeks ago, a fifteen year old boy had a fight with his parents because he had been playing with his Xbox day and night, until it had became an addiction. He was playing online with friends as well as with strangers, and his behaviour at home had changed to the extent that he would break things whenever his parents confiscated the Xbox.

He ran away from home on Thanksgiving day. He has been missing ever since. The day before yesterday, his parents said they would give five thousand dollars to anyone who has any information on the missing teen. Today, after the parents kept adding to the amount and made it 25 thousand, Microsoft Canada added another 25k making it a total reward of 50,000 dollars.

The police suspect that someone who had been playing the online version of the game may have lured the boy away for 'whatever' reasons. Because of the reward money ,people from hundreds of kilometres away are driving in to Barrie to help find the missing boy. (I have to say that many people are also joining the search, not for the reward, but because they just feel like helping)

Microsoft is looking at the boys Xbox to find out who the online players were. So far the Xbox had about two hundred online tagged names. The police are now looking at that list to look for leads. His bicycle was found in a ditch, which was not good news.....anyway, will keep you posted.

But why I brought this up was to warn parents who are reading this about the dangers of kids playing games online. Stranger Danger is out there....so please make sure you know what your kids are doing online!!

Driving around today we noticed many houses with pumpkins, skeletons, spider webs and scare crows outside...............which can mean only one thing here..........Halloween!


Speaking of Halloween, we decorated the outside of our house today too! With a fake spider web going across the wall outside the house, to a cute halloween sign hanging from our doorway. This is so that kids know they can come to our house for candy. (will put up pictures by tomorrow) Homes with no decor means that there is no candy being given away there. Both my kids are very excited and have already planned to go to all the houses on our street.

Here's wishing everyone a HAPPY DIWALI!! Firecrackers are on sale here in stores but so far don't know if you can actually burst them on the street in front of your house or not. Will wait and see what others are doing and then write about it here!

It was down to minus two degrees with wind chills of minus ten this last week and snow is predicted for Tuesday. So it looks like winter is about to begin..........something I'm not sure I'm looking forward too!!

Until later............

take care!