Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Hope you are all well, welcome to the Loakman-Johnston year in review.

Andrew finishes “Shut Up and Write Me”… almost. This is Andrew’s film about Children’s literature and trying to pen a Children’s book whilst being a hands-on father. It was filmed throughout 2002 and 2003, and he went into editing early this year.

The first rough cut has been completed, but it’s not where Andrew really wants it.

Meanwhile, Andrew continues to write Children’s stories. The first chapters of “Sir Trawberry Moose” went to a prestigious publishing agent in London, as did the new stories “My Little Monsters” and “Do you have a Bat?” Plans to ship them out to other publishers and agents is in the offing…

Whilst also, fixing up our real estate empire. We had a few hiccups with our previous home that we rented out to students. (Never Ever Again!) They ripped up one carpet, damaged another, painted the walls badly and left a terrible mess. Andrew had to go in and put in laminate floors, fix the damage and with the help of a painter, make the house presentable. We lost a month’s rent but finally found a good family who are our present tenants.

Both Tigerlily and Toby are doing well. They took swimming and gymnastics lessons this year. They get on very well and whilst sometimes the sibling rivalry gets a bit tiresome, the sibling revelry is deliciously rewarding.

Tigs is now 5 yrs old and in Senior Kindergarten at the school across the road. Next year is grade one (a year later but the equivalent to the UK’s year one) and her school is a “bilingual alternative”, teaching in both English and French and run in association with a parent council as well as the local education board.

For Tigs, Dolls and dresses, whilst important, come second to books and crafts. She’s really very focused in anything artistic and she has an observant nature – preferring to watch and wait and she’s not the type to want to “star” in anything either. Her ambition is to be an artist and a cook… too much Food Network TV I’m afraid.

Toby is 3 yrs old and in Pre-school at his daycare. He’s finally out of diapers and what a relief that is. (It’s now a whole new world for me!) He’s keen to have his independence and like his mother, prefers to put things together without being given instruction.

He’s a real extrovert and right now, he’s into being a Prince and killing dragons. We gave up on trying to ban swords – everything became a sword so we got them both foam batons that they can bash the cats with.

Toby’s got lots of energy – loves swimming, loves mucking around in Gymnastics and loves romping around with his friends. Thank God we have a garden and the school playground across the road.

I started a new production company with a fellow producer - Sally Blake. Chocolate Box Entertainment has been doing very well considering this is its first year of operation. So far, we produced MOC DOCS, “The Great Canadian Ad Challenge: HOT SHOTS”, we now have a couple of documentaries and a couple of entertainment series in development. And we just finished filming the pilot (test) episode for one of our series – GROOMED. We also traveled to the Banff Television Festival this year – Sally won a mentorship there and I won the CTV Fellowship to go to the Festival – so we went for free!

And the film ANNIE ONG:LOST AND FOUND premiered on national Canadian TV and went to a handful of festivals. The documentary follows me as I try to deal with both my adoptive and newly found birth mother. Made in 2002/2003, it got great reviews in the TV magazines and went to film festivals in Vancouver, Seattle and Montreal. Annie Ong, my birth mother, came over in May for the film’s television premiere. The film is going next to the San Francisco Asian American International Film Festival Spring 2005.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to get fit and be fabulous. Okay – not really all that fabulous. I got a mild dose of Hand, Foot and Mouth that Toby got this year and subsequently lost my appetite for a couple of weeks. I lost weight and decided to this could be a good time to get into shape. I’ve been jogging on and off as well as working out occasionally – whilst it doesn’t really show that much, I feel much better.

Sorry we didn’t get to see so many of you this year – our Summer holiday plans were scuppered due to our rental renovation on our old house. Instead we had a very pleasantly mild summer here in Toronto at Dufferin Grove Park playground – splash pad, huge sandpit, lots of climbing equipment – all with tons of shady trees and a coffee and snack cart to boot.

Other news:

We bought yet another house. This one’s a bit bigger than our others and strictly a “business” decision. We close on it in early Jan 2005, and it’s a bit more of a gamble for us.

We hope to visit the Caribbean and Europe next year. Andrew’s Dad has gone a bit potty and bought a property in Romania (!!!) and some land in the Dominican Republic. He’s building a house in the DR and we’re hoping to runaway from the bitter climate here in the next couple of months.

We missed going to the UK and Europe this past summer, so we intend to make up for it in 2005. France and Italy – here we come!

Our 19 yr-old cat, Jack, lost a couple of lives this year. He disappeared one Saturday night and didn’t come back! It was very sad and then four days later he was found. He’d been slumming it with a neighbourhood lady. We were overjoyed (although we had to do some explaining to the kids after they’d accepted death, they now had to come to terms with resurrection). Then he did it again! Now he’s back and under house arrest.

And Nonny visited! We had a lovely visit from Andrew’s mum for 10 days in October.

As always – Our house is open for visitors. Anytime you feel the urge to come and visit Toronto – we have a spare room and plenty of maps and tourist information. We’d love for our friends to come and see us – we’ll feed, water, and house you! Sometimes, we even have an extra house or apartment as well.

We’re going to host Christmas this year and considering the daytime temperature is currently –27C with the wind chill factor, I’m bloody glad we’re not having to go anywhere else. I’d really like some snow this time – it makes it feel really Christmassy and we can give the kids something to play with…

All my love, keep well and do keep in touch!