I actually got up and going earlier today. My mum and I went out to do some errands in the late morning/early afternoon. We started with dropping by ICBC so I could renew my driver's license. It expires on my birthday next month, but I won't be around to renew it then and I kind of want to still be able to drive throughout this coming semester so I'm glad I remembered to take care of it now. Then we stopped at several other places before finally going to the hospital to visit Auntie Beth for a bit. She is not one bit happy to still be stuck in the hospital (yesterday was two weeks), but her breathing is still quite atrocious. My mum keeps explaining to her that the doctors aren't keeping her in the hospital just for the fun of it, but because they want to make sure she's all better before she goes back home. She seems to understand that while we're around, but by the next time we come in she's wanting to come home again. When my grandma came in to see her this morning, Auntie Beth actually asked her who was keeping her in the hospital, my mum or Sandy (the lady that runs the care home where she lives). Anyway we tried to make her more comfortable and happy, but she seemed to be in a blue mood today and still was when we left.
We stopped at Subway on our way back home and there was the strangest man in line behind us. He must have never been to a Subway before in his life. He kept asking the weirdest questions and then when the lady was going to toast his sub he said, "hey, well I want some fixings on there, too!" She looked surprised, but put on the veggies that he wanted. He also told her he wanted "salad" and the lady didn't understand what he meant until my mum translated "lettuce" to her. Eventually all the "fixings" he asked for were put on and she toasted the sub. The "salad" looked hilarious when the sub was done toasting, but that's what he asked for so I guess he couldn't complain.
(*If you don't care about hockey, skip to the next paragraph. I'm just so excited about what transpired tonight that I have to write it all down.)
When we got home I went to check out what was on TV and saw that the Canucks had just started playing so I sat and ate my sub while watching the game. Things went downhill quickly for them. At one point in the second period they were down 3-0 to the St. Louis Blues, but then they stopped taking bad penalties and started to play like they actually cared about the game and then they scored 4 unanswered goals to win 4-3 in overtime. An hour after that game started, the WJC traditional New Year's Eve game of Team Canada against Team USA started. Right from the opening puck drop I was scared for Canada. The boys looked pretty nervous and kept making bad passes that got intercepted. Team USA also looked faster and seemed to be making smarter decisions with the puck. Canada managed to open the scoring a few minutes into the first period, but the U.S. equalled it back up with a PP goal a couple minutes later. Then in the second period the U.S. got a shorthanded goal (was, I have to admit, was a beauty). I almost gave up on my team right then and there, but they managed to get another one soon after and the score was tied again. Canada was fortunate that the score was still tied after the U.S. had two great chances to widen their lead. One was a penalty shot that was shot wide and another was an open net after a breakaway. Then the U.S. got another shorthanded goal to finish out the period with a 3-2 lead. They got another goal at the start of the third period and after that it was all Canada. Our boys managed to get a goal halfway through the period and then we got a shorthanded goal of our own to tie the game at 4 apiece. With two minutes left in the game, Canada got another goal, but it was called off because of a player in the crease. Regulation time ended with the score still tied up so the game went to overtime. Those five minutes did nothing to solve the game so it went to a shootout. All three of Canada's first shooters got goals and so did USA's first two shooters, but our goaltender stopped the third shooter and we won the game!! The whole building erupted in cheers and Team Canada's bench exploded as players launched themselves onto the goalie. So now the U.S. has to play in the quarterfinals against Finland while the Russians take on Switzerland in the other quarterfinal game. Canada joins Sweden with a bye to the semifinals to take on the winners of those two games. I'll keep you updated.
Right near the end of the game I got a phone call from a GYC attendee, which was awesome. I have to say that I'll be pretty glad to get back to school on Sunday. Break has been nice, especially since we got some snow, but I'm ready to return for my last semester. Now I'm going to go let my mother take pictures of my siblings and me and then maybe we'll play a game while we wait to ring in the New Year. Our family's December 31st tradition is to watch the Seattle Space Needle fireworks, which is amazing. I hope someday I can actually be in Seattle for the celebration and watch the fireworks live. Happy New Year's Eve everyone!
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Snowmoboarding
Once again it was a sleeping-in, lazyish morning for me. I read for a bit before finally getting out of bed and getting ready for the day. I went checking my e-mail a little bit after noon and Ty came into my room to tell me that our high school English and French/choir teachers (they're married) had come by to drop off some tithe for my dad and wanted to see us. So I went to talk to them for a bit. It was nice seeing them again and getting all caught up with each other. They were in Alberta for Christmas and said they were quite happy to get back to the milder BC temperatures.
In the afternoon our family and Tyler's friend, Isaac who lives just across the border a couple hours south of us, took our snowmobile and the one my cousin's daughter uses up into the mountains. Then we spent several hours driving up and down the logging roads. For the majority of the time we took turns pulling each other on snowboards/skis which was so much tons of fun! I even tried Bryn's snowboard and it wasn't near as bad as the last time we switched equipment. I just put my snowmobiling boots into her snowboard bindings and it actually worked alright. The only part that was hard for me was steering. I kept edging off toward the left-hand side of the road and once I hit the branches of a tree and broke some off. I fell many times, but by the end I was getting the hang of things a bit better. My second fall of my snowboarding experience I went straight down on my knees so they're a little bruised and sore, but it was too terrible. The snow is pretty thick up there so falling wasn't too painful usually. Ty and Isaac used my dad's snowmobile and Bryn and I used the smaller one. My mum stayed up at the junction between two logging roads were we had parked the truck and trailer and my dad stayed around there for most of the time too, but took a couple rides around on the snowmobiles in between when we went. After both Bryn and I snowboarded behind the snowmobile, we got out my ski boots and skis and tried that. My dad was just moving his snowmobile to get it reset up for Isaac to pull Ty on his snowboard when he drove over the tow rope that Bryn and I had been using. The rope got all caught up and wound around both sides of the snowmobile track and so I ran over to help him. We tried and tried to get the handle back through the track but it was just too long to go around some of the curves. I'm not sure how it got through originally, but finally my dad found a way to undo the handle from the rope and then it was easy to pull back through and untangle the rope from the snowmobile. Then I towed Bryn on the skis and then we switched and she pulled me. That was the most fun part of the whole afternoon. It was just like waterskiing except for colder and not quite so wet. It was so much easier for me to steer on the skis than with the snowboard and I was skiing all over the road just like how waterskiers cross the wake. By the time we turned around to come back it was getting pretty dark so once we got back to the truck we loaded up the snowmobiles, got all our gear into the truck, and headed back into town.
A couple hours later we drove downtown to meet some church friends at The Keg for a supper out. My dad had gift cards for that restaurant from last Christmas and this one from someone at his business so it was nice to be able to share the meal with others. The adults, my parents, one of my dad's salesmen, Arnie, and his wife Lori, sat at one end of the table and the young adults, my siblings and I, Isaac and a guy from Australia that's stay with Arnie and Lori while he works here, Daniel, sat at the other end. We had a great time learning more about each other and, of course, eating. Daniel told us that his dad was a taxidermist and then Ty and I peppered him with questions about taxidermy. I sure learned a lot of stuff I never knew before. Later in our conversation we tried to think of a name for the snowmobiling-snowboarding/skiing that we'd done that afternoon. Ty came up with boardmobiling (which would be skimobiling when skis are used) and Daniel thought up snowmoboarding (or snowmoskiing). I think they're all great, but I think I like how snowmoboarding sounds best.
Now we're home and I'm planning to spend the rest of my evening reading. That is if Bryn doesn't convince me to watch a movie with her and my parents instead. We'll see. Both sound good. Oh, and not to leave hockey out in today's post, feel free to read my Olympics Hockey Roster post on my other blog if you're just dying to find out who will represent Canada in February's Vancouver Olympics.
In the afternoon our family and Tyler's friend, Isaac who lives just across the border a couple hours south of us, took our snowmobile and the one my cousin's daughter uses up into the mountains. Then we spent several hours driving up and down the logging roads. For the majority of the time we took turns pulling each other on snowboards/skis which was so much tons of fun! I even tried Bryn's snowboard and it wasn't near as bad as the last time we switched equipment. I just put my snowmobiling boots into her snowboard bindings and it actually worked alright. The only part that was hard for me was steering. I kept edging off toward the left-hand side of the road and once I hit the branches of a tree and broke some off. I fell many times, but by the end I was getting the hang of things a bit better. My second fall of my snowboarding experience I went straight down on my knees so they're a little bruised and sore, but it was too terrible. The snow is pretty thick up there so falling wasn't too painful usually. Ty and Isaac used my dad's snowmobile and Bryn and I used the smaller one. My mum stayed up at the junction between two logging roads were we had parked the truck and trailer and my dad stayed around there for most of the time too, but took a couple rides around on the snowmobiles in between when we went. After both Bryn and I snowboarded behind the snowmobile, we got out my ski boots and skis and tried that. My dad was just moving his snowmobile to get it reset up for Isaac to pull Ty on his snowboard when he drove over the tow rope that Bryn and I had been using. The rope got all caught up and wound around both sides of the snowmobile track and so I ran over to help him. We tried and tried to get the handle back through the track but it was just too long to go around some of the curves. I'm not sure how it got through originally, but finally my dad found a way to undo the handle from the rope and then it was easy to pull back through and untangle the rope from the snowmobile. Then I towed Bryn on the skis and then we switched and she pulled me. That was the most fun part of the whole afternoon. It was just like waterskiing except for colder and not quite so wet. It was so much easier for me to steer on the skis than with the snowboard and I was skiing all over the road just like how waterskiers cross the wake. By the time we turned around to come back it was getting pretty dark so once we got back to the truck we loaded up the snowmobiles, got all our gear into the truck, and headed back into town.
A couple hours later we drove downtown to meet some church friends at The Keg for a supper out. My dad had gift cards for that restaurant from last Christmas and this one from someone at his business so it was nice to be able to share the meal with others. The adults, my parents, one of my dad's salesmen, Arnie, and his wife Lori, sat at one end of the table and the young adults, my siblings and I, Isaac and a guy from Australia that's stay with Arnie and Lori while he works here, Daniel, sat at the other end. We had a great time learning more about each other and, of course, eating. Daniel told us that his dad was a taxidermist and then Ty and I peppered him with questions about taxidermy. I sure learned a lot of stuff I never knew before. Later in our conversation we tried to think of a name for the snowmobiling-snowboarding/skiing that we'd done that afternoon. Ty came up with boardmobiling (which would be skimobiling when skis are used) and Daniel thought up snowmoboarding (or snowmoskiing). I think they're all great, but I think I like how snowmoboarding sounds best.
Now we're home and I'm planning to spend the rest of my evening reading. That is if Bryn doesn't convince me to watch a movie with her and my parents instead. We'll see. Both sound good. Oh, and not to leave hockey out in today's post, feel free to read my Olympics Hockey Roster post on my other blog if you're just dying to find out who will represent Canada in February's Vancouver Olympics.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Suit shopping
I woke up pretty early this morning, but continued snoozing after a bit. All of a sudden a familiar, but slightly out-of-place sound woke me again. I listened to a loud scraping sound go by the front of our house three times. I was suddenly convinced the sound was made by snowplows. Just then my mum walked into my room and I mumbled, "Did it snow last night?" "Yes, it sure did," my mum replied. As she left my room I dragged myself from my warm bed and looked outside. Sure enough there was a thin layer of snow sitting on top of front lawns all down our street. The snow looked like crisp, clean white sheets stretched over large mattresses. So finally we got snow! Even though it was just a little bit, it was still enough for the city to get the snowplows out on the road, so I think that is pretty significant. We actually had been forecast to get snow when I checked the weather last night, but that happened last week with no fluffy white results, so I hadn't believed the report. We got some more snow tonight though not very much. We have snow forecast for the next few days as well until the week is supposed to end with rain on Saturday.
Around 4 p.m. our entire family went out to Moore's to help Ty pick out a suit that he got as a gift card Christmas present. He found several he liked and then we all said which we liked best and he finally picked from there. My mum and I left then to take my grandma to the hospital to visit Auntie Beth. We made sure she got in the hospital alright and then went back to the store to help with picking out dress shirts, ties, shoes, socks and a belt. Man, it's quite a complicated process to get a new suit. I used to be jealous of guys cause they can get ready for church so fast. All they have to do is pick a suit and then make sure the shirt/tie etc. match and they're good to go. But I realized tonight that a lot goes into the buying of the suit. Maybe shopping for dresses/skirts/tops isn't so bad after all . . .
After the purchases were made we drove back to the hospital and all of us went up to visit Auntie Beth except my dad stayed with the car so we didn't have to pay for parking. She had just been moved to a floor in the hospital and I liked it a lot better. It seemed more cheery and happy. When we got to her room my grandma told us the story about trying to find the new room. She sure went on a trek to get to the right place, but finally she found it and was happy to see her sister. She called us to let us know the new hall and room, which was nice so that we didn't have to go through the same confusion. After a short visit with both Auntie Beth and her two new roommates, we prayer with her and left. Then we went straight to my grandparents place where my grandma and my siblings and I got out. My parents went home to get some extra food and us kids helped my grandma get everything ready to eat haystacks. I turned on the World Junior game and it was near the end of the 2nd period with Canada beating Slovakia 7-1. By the end of the game it was 8-2. There was another hat trick tonight and that guy got the Player of the Game award. So, because I know you all care so much about hockey, here's some interesting facts about Team Canada so far in this tournament: (1) Canada has scored 30 goals so far and only has 2 goals scored against them (both in tonight's game). (2) Canada had a shutout (no goals scored against them) for 157.25 minutes before Slovakia finally found the back of the net. I think that's pretty impressive.
My parents had come back over and we were pretty much ready to eat by the time the game was done. It was delicious and I ate too much. Then we gave our grandparents their presents that they hadn't had time to open on Christmas Day before sundown. After that we cleared the table and played some games. First up was 7-Up (the game played with Rook cards) and somehow I won that one, even though Bryn usually does. Then Ty wanted to play Probe because he had an awesome word to use. It's a game only really made for four players so we teamed up. I was with Ty. As it turns out, curmudgeon isn't such a great word when the G, O and N are guessed/exposed right in the first few rounds. Our word was guessed first. Then I figured out Bryn's and my grandma's word of phonics. Bryn and my grandma guessed my parents word of icily and then they eventually guessed my grandpa's word of curriculum. By the time all the other words were guessed we had only guessed the C and the L and two blanks of my grandpa's word, but then my mum guessed M and I knew the word right then. Too bad my turn didn't come back around until after Bryn and my grandma's turn. Oh well, they won, but I think Ty and I had the next most points. Then some people wanted to leave and get home to bed, but I convinced them all to play one game of SkipBo. My grandpa finally won that game and we headed home. So it was a relaxing morning and early afternoon and then a busy but fun evening and night.
Around 4 p.m. our entire family went out to Moore's to help Ty pick out a suit that he got as a gift card Christmas present. He found several he liked and then we all said which we liked best and he finally picked from there. My mum and I left then to take my grandma to the hospital to visit Auntie Beth. We made sure she got in the hospital alright and then went back to the store to help with picking out dress shirts, ties, shoes, socks and a belt. Man, it's quite a complicated process to get a new suit. I used to be jealous of guys cause they can get ready for church so fast. All they have to do is pick a suit and then make sure the shirt/tie etc. match and they're good to go. But I realized tonight that a lot goes into the buying of the suit. Maybe shopping for dresses/skirts/tops isn't so bad after all . . .
After the purchases were made we drove back to the hospital and all of us went up to visit Auntie Beth except my dad stayed with the car so we didn't have to pay for parking. She had just been moved to a floor in the hospital and I liked it a lot better. It seemed more cheery and happy. When we got to her room my grandma told us the story about trying to find the new room. She sure went on a trek to get to the right place, but finally she found it and was happy to see her sister. She called us to let us know the new hall and room, which was nice so that we didn't have to go through the same confusion. After a short visit with both Auntie Beth and her two new roommates, we prayer with her and left. Then we went straight to my grandparents place where my grandma and my siblings and I got out. My parents went home to get some extra food and us kids helped my grandma get everything ready to eat haystacks. I turned on the World Junior game and it was near the end of the 2nd period with Canada beating Slovakia 7-1. By the end of the game it was 8-2. There was another hat trick tonight and that guy got the Player of the Game award. So, because I know you all care so much about hockey, here's some interesting facts about Team Canada so far in this tournament: (1) Canada has scored 30 goals so far and only has 2 goals scored against them (both in tonight's game). (2) Canada had a shutout (no goals scored against them) for 157.25 minutes before Slovakia finally found the back of the net. I think that's pretty impressive.
My parents had come back over and we were pretty much ready to eat by the time the game was done. It was delicious and I ate too much. Then we gave our grandparents their presents that they hadn't had time to open on Christmas Day before sundown. After that we cleared the table and played some games. First up was 7-Up (the game played with Rook cards) and somehow I won that one, even though Bryn usually does. Then Ty wanted to play Probe because he had an awesome word to use. It's a game only really made for four players so we teamed up. I was with Ty. As it turns out, curmudgeon isn't such a great word when the G, O and N are guessed/exposed right in the first few rounds. Our word was guessed first. Then I figured out Bryn's and my grandma's word of phonics. Bryn and my grandma guessed my parents word of icily and then they eventually guessed my grandpa's word of curriculum. By the time all the other words were guessed we had only guessed the C and the L and two blanks of my grandpa's word, but then my mum guessed M and I knew the word right then. Too bad my turn didn't come back around until after Bryn and my grandma's turn. Oh well, they won, but I think Ty and I had the next most points. Then some people wanted to leave and get home to bed, but I convinced them all to play one game of SkipBo. My grandpa finally won that game and we headed home. So it was a relaxing morning and early afternoon and then a busy but fun evening and night.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Team Canada
For pretty much the first time all break I have nothing of much importance to write about. I was basically lazy all day. My friend Julie flew to NYC last night to visit a friend there and then go to GYC so she's gone. Bryn's friend Rachel and her husband are gone to Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland to visit their extended families. I think Nik left back to Alberta with his family today. Stephen, Chris and Jonathon, as far as I know, are at their house two hours south of us and I'm not sure if they'll be back in town during the rest of this break. My friend Jodi and her family are in Spokane visiting her brother and his wife for the holidays. Just after I got back home for the break I wrote to my friend Jodi, who currently lives in Alberta, that she should swing by my house on her way to or from Spokane where her family was visiting her brother and his wife. She wrote back that that would be rather difficult and add a lot of hours to their trip home, which I knew, of course. So I guess I'll just have to try and convince her to come down to visit us at school. Maybe she'll come for our grad. This is sounding like a pity party so I'm going to switch subjects.
I was on the computer pretty much all day. It was pretty nice. For a few hours in the afternoon I went out and settled on the rocking chair in the TV room and watched some World Junior hockey. Team Canada beat Switzerland 6-0 in their second game of the tournament. On the opening day, Boxing Day (the day after Christmas) they beat Latvia 16-0, so they still don't have any goals against. I suspect that could change soon though. They're playing Slovakia tomorrow and then the United States on New Year's Eve. Particularly the game against U.S. could be challenging for them. But I'm going to stay positive and say they can keep up their winning ways. Some notes about today's game: (1) Team Canada wore green sweaters. It was rather shocking to see them in a colour other than red or white. I read somewhere yesterday that the green jerseys were in honour of the Saskatchewan Roughriders, Saskatchewan's CFL team that lost in the Grey Cup (CFL's equivalent to the SuperBowl). Oh, by the way, the World Junior Championships this year are being held in Regina and Saskatoon, SK. I found the idea of the green jerseys rather odd since this is the first time the Team has ever worn any colour other than red or white that I can remember. I wonder why, when the WJC were held in Vancouver in 2005, Team Canada didn't wear orange and black sweaters in honour of the BC Lions, our provinces football team. It's all very strange and very hard to wrap my brain around. Even by the end of the game I would sometimes still think that Team Switzerland was Team Canada because they were wearing white jerseys with red emblems on the front. Hopefully in tomorrow's game they'll be back to their ordinary jerseys and everything will be back to normal. (2) Brandon McMillan got a hat trick in today's game. A hat trick is when one player scores three goals in a single game. (For more intriguing details, click here and scroll down to the hockey entry.) I was happy to see McMillan get the hat trick because they are always nice to see, but what made me proud was that he's a forward for the Rockets, my hometown WHL team. He's the only Rockets' player in the World Juniors this year so I'm sure that tonight all the junior hockey hearts in town are bursting from pride over his achievement. (3) I was disappointed to see the McMillan wasn't given the Player of the Game award at the end of the game. I think getting a hat trick beats out anything else another player does, even if they had good physical play or did a great job of defending. The only player that might supercede a hat trick scorer could be the goalie if he made numerous amazing stops and saved the team. But today our goalie had a relatively easy day with only 15 shots on goal from the Swiss. So I thought it should have gone to McMillan. Plus he's a Sask. boy. Why not give it to him in front of a hometown crowd? I definitely agree with TSN analyst Bob Mackenzie on that one. (4) The Team Canada coach talked in a press conference that I saw a part of tonight when I was watching the evening news. I was highly impressed with his tie, which was Team Canada red with little tiny Team Canada logos subtly spread out over the entire tie in the same red colour. It was classy, but showed pride for our team and our country.
After watching hockey I watched some Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, which is a pretty sad, but also uplifting show. There was a marathon so I watched a few. Didn't I already tell you it was a lazy day? Then tonight we went out to eat at Milestone's with a gift card from one of my dad's cabinet installers. Every year he gives our family a gift card to a restaurant so tonight was the night to use it. I hadn't been to the new Milestone's since it's been moved from in the mall to at the edge of the mall parking lot so it was nice to see how they did things up differently. It seems a lot more classy now. I stuffed myself even though Bryn and I shared our penne dish. Somehow, though there was room for gelatto for dessert. It was scrumptious. Then I came home and decided I really had to finish "Harriet the Spy" so I did just that. I can see some similarities between Harriet and myself (more on that here). Anyway, now I can move on to one of the many books I got for Christmas. We'll see how much I can accomplish in the next few days. Wow, for doing nothing and apparently having nothing much to say, I sure said a lot. Allow me to apologize once again.
I was on the computer pretty much all day. It was pretty nice. For a few hours in the afternoon I went out and settled on the rocking chair in the TV room and watched some World Junior hockey. Team Canada beat Switzerland 6-0 in their second game of the tournament. On the opening day, Boxing Day (the day after Christmas) they beat Latvia 16-0, so they still don't have any goals against. I suspect that could change soon though. They're playing Slovakia tomorrow and then the United States on New Year's Eve. Particularly the game against U.S. could be challenging for them. But I'm going to stay positive and say they can keep up their winning ways. Some notes about today's game: (1) Team Canada wore green sweaters. It was rather shocking to see them in a colour other than red or white. I read somewhere yesterday that the green jerseys were in honour of the Saskatchewan Roughriders, Saskatchewan's CFL team that lost in the Grey Cup (CFL's equivalent to the SuperBowl). Oh, by the way, the World Junior Championships this year are being held in Regina and Saskatoon, SK. I found the idea of the green jerseys rather odd since this is the first time the Team has ever worn any colour other than red or white that I can remember. I wonder why, when the WJC were held in Vancouver in 2005, Team Canada didn't wear orange and black sweaters in honour of the BC Lions, our provinces football team. It's all very strange and very hard to wrap my brain around. Even by the end of the game I would sometimes still think that Team Switzerland was Team Canada because they were wearing white jerseys with red emblems on the front. Hopefully in tomorrow's game they'll be back to their ordinary jerseys and everything will be back to normal. (2) Brandon McMillan got a hat trick in today's game. A hat trick is when one player scores three goals in a single game. (For more intriguing details, click here and scroll down to the hockey entry.) I was happy to see McMillan get the hat trick because they are always nice to see, but what made me proud was that he's a forward for the Rockets, my hometown WHL team. He's the only Rockets' player in the World Juniors this year so I'm sure that tonight all the junior hockey hearts in town are bursting from pride over his achievement. (3) I was disappointed to see the McMillan wasn't given the Player of the Game award at the end of the game. I think getting a hat trick beats out anything else another player does, even if they had good physical play or did a great job of defending. The only player that might supercede a hat trick scorer could be the goalie if he made numerous amazing stops and saved the team. But today our goalie had a relatively easy day with only 15 shots on goal from the Swiss. So I thought it should have gone to McMillan. Plus he's a Sask. boy. Why not give it to him in front of a hometown crowd? I definitely agree with TSN analyst Bob Mackenzie on that one. (4) The Team Canada coach talked in a press conference that I saw a part of tonight when I was watching the evening news. I was highly impressed with his tie, which was Team Canada red with little tiny Team Canada logos subtly spread out over the entire tie in the same red colour. It was classy, but showed pride for our team and our country.
After watching hockey I watched some Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, which is a pretty sad, but also uplifting show. There was a marathon so I watched a few. Didn't I already tell you it was a lazy day? Then tonight we went out to eat at Milestone's with a gift card from one of my dad's cabinet installers. Every year he gives our family a gift card to a restaurant so tonight was the night to use it. I hadn't been to the new Milestone's since it's been moved from in the mall to at the edge of the mall parking lot so it was nice to see how they did things up differently. It seems a lot more classy now. I stuffed myself even though Bryn and I shared our penne dish. Somehow, though there was room for gelatto for dessert. It was scrumptious. Then I came home and decided I really had to finish "Harriet the Spy" so I did just that. I can see some similarities between Harriet and myself (more on that here). Anyway, now I can move on to one of the many books I got for Christmas. We'll see how much I can accomplish in the next few days. Wow, for doing nothing and apparently having nothing much to say, I sure said a lot. Allow me to apologize once again.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Snowmobiling
Today was my fourth time ever snowmobiling. 1st time: I was so little I can only just barely remember it. We went riding around on a snowmobile and then my dad, uncle, cousin and some other people cut a hole in the ice at some lake and caught fish. That's all I can remember. 2nd time: We went while our family was visiting family friends up in central BC on their property. I think we took two or three snowmobiles with sleds attached behind them and the kids sat in the sleds while their dad and older brother and my dad drove them. I remember we saw an elk or moose or that type of animal during our travels. 3rd time: Bryn and I went with a whole group of our guy friends. We took three of four snowmobiles and some of them had sleds too that Bryn and I and some of the guys sat in. By the time we made it to a cabin at the top of the mountain, Bryn was so cold she thought she almost got frostbite or hypothermia (which, to my understanding, are vastly different, but I'm not a medical professional so what do I know). So she basically spent the rest of the time in that cabin warming up by a fire the guys got right to work making. I was pretty cold too, but I warmed up faster than Bryn and went out with the guys for a bit as they snowmobiled around in some deep powder. Some of them had brought their ski/snowboarding equipment in the sleds and they drove each other up the mountain and then skiied/snowboarded back down. They all took turns doing this and I rode along behind, but it wasn't the most fun because the powder was so deep that we kept on tipping over and me and the driver usually fell off. I was pretty cold again by that time too so I probably wasn't much help to lean the right direction and help make it easier to steer either. By the time we got back down the mountain and back to the cars Bryn and I had made up our minds that we weren't ever going to really like snowmobiling too much.
So today we went up into the mountains to an area that our city's snowmobiling club maintains. They make sure the roads and trails are groomed and well kept. We got to the parking lot a bit after 10 a.m. We were planning to go with three guys my dad works with. When we got to the parking lot two of them were already there and one wasn't there yet. My dad and the other guys, my cousin Ward, and a fellow church member Duane, got their snowmobiles unloaded. Then the other guy, Durwin, got there with his wife and four-year-old son. When his snowmobiles were unloaded he showed me how to use the big one that Bryn and I were planning on sharing and then told me to go test it out by driving it around the parking lot. I took it for a spin and it was fine, but kind of powerful. I asked Ty if he and our friend Sarah would like to use it at first and so they did that and I used one of Ward's snowmobiles. Finally we were all ready and started on the trail. By the time we made our first stop at a chalet, I was just about boiling to death. The hand warmers (on the handles) and thumb warmer (on the gas throttle) were on at almost full blast and my thumb was nearly burning up. As soon as we stopped I pulled off my helmet and goggles, took off my jacket and also my top sweatshirt. (To ward off the cold I had worn four layers under my jacket and three layers under my snow pants. I also had two pairs of socks on in my new -100 C rated boots.) I even took off my gloves and just stood there in the nice fresh coldness for a bit while other people ate some lunch and socialized. Finally I got back to a normal temperature and put my jacket and gloves back on, but I didn't wear my sweatshirt again the rest of the day. My dad put it in a compartment under the seat of the snowmobile Bryn was riding. Then we started out again and I rode the small snowmobile that Bryn had been riding while she rode my dad's and he rode the one of Ward's that I'd started out using. (The whole day turned into snowmobile-trading between us Q.'s and Sarah.) It was a little colder, but then we got into some trails and it kept the wind down a bit. When we got to a frozen over lake, Bryn said she was freezing so we made more switches and Sarah drove her own snowmobile while I rode along behind my dad on the machine with a long enough seat for two people. It was actually kind of scary riding with my dad. He went pretty fast and I couldn't really see around him to learn to one side or the other as we went around corners. And we were using our quadding helmets which have pointy chins so the chin of my helmet kept bumping my dad's back whenever we went over bumps in the trail. Then we came to another lake and stopped to take some pictures, eat more of our lunches, and have some fun in the powder. I ended up getting stuck once but Duane and Durwin's wife helped me get out. Then Ty got stuck in a deep hole and most of the men went to help him get out. After that we stayed away from the area with all the deceptively deep snow and it was fun to race across the other side of the lake and not have to worry about getting stuck. It was also fun to watch Durwin's son play in the snow. He was adorable in a little red snowsuit and helmet and I couldn't believe how happy he was to be out there in the cold. Whenever we stopped, he'd get off the snowmobile he was riding on in front of his dad and go sit in the snow. When he was ready to keep going he's ask Durwin, "Dad, when can we leave? I want to keep going." He was a pretty good-natured kid to be along with adults all day and in the snow and wind. Then we continued on and Bryn went behind my dad while I drove again. I did switch sleds with Ty once after that because the windshield on Ward's snowmobile was right in my line of vision. I had to try and either see overtop of it or else crouch down to see through it and it wasn't very comfortable for me. A few kilometres before we got back to the parking lot I switched with Bryn again because my right (driving) had was getting cold and I wanted to warm it up. Around that time Durwin told Ty that his son had fallen asleep. I bet that would feel pretty comfortable to be small enough to fall asleep while riding on a snowmobile. Anyway my hand warmed up pretty fast riding along behind my dad again.
About half a kilometre, or maybe even less, we came around a corner and saw a huge group of snowmobiles stopped on the side of the trail. I saw that some of them were ones that people in our group were using and I hoped nothing bad at happened. Some of the men were down the bank. When we stopped my dad jumped off and ran to help and I went to stand to the side and watch with Bryn and Sarah. It was a guy from a different group who was heading back to the parking lot and was going too fast around the corner and went off the edge and into the trees. He was just being helped up the bank when we got there. Apparently Sarah (who's in SAU's nursing program) had already asked him some nursing questions to make sure he was alright and hadn't hit his head or anything. He said his arm hurt, but nothing much else. Once he was up the bank he sat on his friend's sled while the men all worked to get his snowmobile back up the bank. It had stopped when it hit a tree, so he was lucky he hadn't slid farther down the bank. He was also lucky one of his friends was right there with him and that he wasn't at the back of his group and also that Durwin had seen the snowmobile tracks going off the trail and then looked down to see the machine down the bank and stopped to help. The men found some ropes and finally got the sled up the bank. More of his friends had come back to help (someone from our group had gone to the parking lot to tell them) get the snowmobile up the bank and then they towed it slowly back to the parking lot. Then another couple friends helped the guy on another snowmobile and carefully drove him back too. Then we all left, loaded up our machines and piled into the trucks for the drive back down into the valley. All in all, it was a really fun day and a great new experience, but I still think I enjoy boating and quadding more. They're less cold - even though I hardly froze at all because of my many layers, new awesome boots and great new gloves (thanks to Santa for putting those in my stocking) - and less icy. They also seem more stable for some reason, but maybe that's just cause most of the machines I drove today were a bit too big for me to control too well. Anyway, it was still a lot of fun and a great time.
So today we went up into the mountains to an area that our city's snowmobiling club maintains. They make sure the roads and trails are groomed and well kept. We got to the parking lot a bit after 10 a.m. We were planning to go with three guys my dad works with. When we got to the parking lot two of them were already there and one wasn't there yet. My dad and the other guys, my cousin Ward, and a fellow church member Duane, got their snowmobiles unloaded. Then the other guy, Durwin, got there with his wife and four-year-old son. When his snowmobiles were unloaded he showed me how to use the big one that Bryn and I were planning on sharing and then told me to go test it out by driving it around the parking lot. I took it for a spin and it was fine, but kind of powerful. I asked Ty if he and our friend Sarah would like to use it at first and so they did that and I used one of Ward's snowmobiles. Finally we were all ready and started on the trail. By the time we made our first stop at a chalet, I was just about boiling to death. The hand warmers (on the handles) and thumb warmer (on the gas throttle) were on at almost full blast and my thumb was nearly burning up. As soon as we stopped I pulled off my helmet and goggles, took off my jacket and also my top sweatshirt. (To ward off the cold I had worn four layers under my jacket and three layers under my snow pants. I also had two pairs of socks on in my new -100 C rated boots.) I even took off my gloves and just stood there in the nice fresh coldness for a bit while other people ate some lunch and socialized. Finally I got back to a normal temperature and put my jacket and gloves back on, but I didn't wear my sweatshirt again the rest of the day. My dad put it in a compartment under the seat of the snowmobile Bryn was riding. Then we started out again and I rode the small snowmobile that Bryn had been riding while she rode my dad's and he rode the one of Ward's that I'd started out using. (The whole day turned into snowmobile-trading between us Q.'s and Sarah.) It was a little colder, but then we got into some trails and it kept the wind down a bit. When we got to a frozen over lake, Bryn said she was freezing so we made more switches and Sarah drove her own snowmobile while I rode along behind my dad on the machine with a long enough seat for two people. It was actually kind of scary riding with my dad. He went pretty fast and I couldn't really see around him to learn to one side or the other as we went around corners. And we were using our quadding helmets which have pointy chins so the chin of my helmet kept bumping my dad's back whenever we went over bumps in the trail. Then we came to another lake and stopped to take some pictures, eat more of our lunches, and have some fun in the powder. I ended up getting stuck once but Duane and Durwin's wife helped me get out. Then Ty got stuck in a deep hole and most of the men went to help him get out. After that we stayed away from the area with all the deceptively deep snow and it was fun to race across the other side of the lake and not have to worry about getting stuck. It was also fun to watch Durwin's son play in the snow. He was adorable in a little red snowsuit and helmet and I couldn't believe how happy he was to be out there in the cold. Whenever we stopped, he'd get off the snowmobile he was riding on in front of his dad and go sit in the snow. When he was ready to keep going he's ask Durwin, "Dad, when can we leave? I want to keep going." He was a pretty good-natured kid to be along with adults all day and in the snow and wind. Then we continued on and Bryn went behind my dad while I drove again. I did switch sleds with Ty once after that because the windshield on Ward's snowmobile was right in my line of vision. I had to try and either see overtop of it or else crouch down to see through it and it wasn't very comfortable for me. A few kilometres before we got back to the parking lot I switched with Bryn again because my right (driving) had was getting cold and I wanted to warm it up. Around that time Durwin told Ty that his son had fallen asleep. I bet that would feel pretty comfortable to be small enough to fall asleep while riding on a snowmobile. Anyway my hand warmed up pretty fast riding along behind my dad again.
About half a kilometre, or maybe even less, we came around a corner and saw a huge group of snowmobiles stopped on the side of the trail. I saw that some of them were ones that people in our group were using and I hoped nothing bad at happened. Some of the men were down the bank. When we stopped my dad jumped off and ran to help and I went to stand to the side and watch with Bryn and Sarah. It was a guy from a different group who was heading back to the parking lot and was going too fast around the corner and went off the edge and into the trees. He was just being helped up the bank when we got there. Apparently Sarah (who's in SAU's nursing program) had already asked him some nursing questions to make sure he was alright and hadn't hit his head or anything. He said his arm hurt, but nothing much else. Once he was up the bank he sat on his friend's sled while the men all worked to get his snowmobile back up the bank. It had stopped when it hit a tree, so he was lucky he hadn't slid farther down the bank. He was also lucky one of his friends was right there with him and that he wasn't at the back of his group and also that Durwin had seen the snowmobile tracks going off the trail and then looked down to see the machine down the bank and stopped to help. The men found some ropes and finally got the sled up the bank. More of his friends had come back to help (someone from our group had gone to the parking lot to tell them) get the snowmobile up the bank and then they towed it slowly back to the parking lot. Then another couple friends helped the guy on another snowmobile and carefully drove him back too. Then we all left, loaded up our machines and piled into the trucks for the drive back down into the valley. All in all, it was a really fun day and a great new experience, but I still think I enjoy boating and quadding more. They're less cold - even though I hardly froze at all because of my many layers, new awesome boots and great new gloves (thanks to Santa for putting those in my stocking) - and less icy. They also seem more stable for some reason, but maybe that's just cause most of the machines I drove today were a bit too big for me to control too well. Anyway, it was still a lot of fun and a great time.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Q&F game night
This morning I:
-woke up late
-missed Sabbath School
-got to church in time for our Christmas program
-performed in the program
-heard and wrote down a great quote
-got my foot caught and almost fell down (nearly knocking Ty's cello over) during the closing hymn
-talked to a friend from way back in Gr. 1 who I haven't seen since summer
-had a pleasant conversation with our pastor
-nearly froze walking to and from the church in a skirt
I think that's quite a few accomplishments for one morning, despite the few setbacks included in there. (Apparently despite is my new favourite word. I'm using it all the time these days.) If you're curious about the quote, here's the background story as well as the quote:
For our church service, the elder in charge did some announcements after the song service and then said the program would proceed as planned after the prayer, scripture reading and opening song. When the opening song was over, the song leader said, "Now the Q.'s will play. I'll let them introduce their song." We were just planning to set up and start playing, but I thought that would be just a bit awkward after he said that we'd introduce our song. So once we were set up and tuned I just said, "I'm sure you'll all recognize the song." Then we played our song. My friend, Shannon, played a flute song next and before she played she said, "I don't think this song needs much introduction either so I'll take a cue from them (point in our direction)." I almost burst out laughing right on the spot because of her little cue/Q pun, but managed to contain my glee to a quiet, muffled guffaw. A classmate of Ty's who was sitting behind me giggled, so I knew I wasn't the only one that caught the joke. After church as we were eating lunch I brought it up and my mum said she thought it was pretty good, too, but I don't think the rest of my family got it. Maybe it's not even that funny or maybe it's just one of those things you had to be there for. In any case, it amused me for the rest of the day.
For lunch we all pitched in to make raclette. My mum had left church early to go spend some time with my Auntie Beth at the hospital and so Ty directed the rest of us in the raclette-making so that it would be ready by the time my mum got home. She came in the door just a few minutes before we were done the preparations so it was pretty good timing. It was an awesome meal to finally eat again. I'm so happy we have a raclette grill!
Tonight my friend, Julie, and her family came over for a game night. We each wrote down on a piece of paper one game that we wanted to play and put them all in a Santa hat. Then we took turns pulling pieces of paper from the hat starting with the youngest person. The first game was "Smart Ass," a game Ty had seen when he and Bryn were shopping at the mall and told her he wanted. She went back and later and got it for him for Christmas. It was actually a really fun game and when my dad eventually won, I was sad that the game was done. (I was also annoyed that he won cause we had been sitting on the very second-to-last square of the board until he got that last question right and moved to the end.) We played crokinole next. Since we had nine people it was rather complicated but Julie's mum sat out and kept score and then we played in with partners (two people on each side of the board) so there were four people per team. It was a little confusing at first to remember who's turn it was to shoot, but eventually we figured out the pattern and it was fine. I was on a team with my dad and Julie's dad and brother and we won 110-0. Then we were going to play 7-Up (the game with Rook cards, not the game kids play in elementary school), but we couldn't find our Rook cards. My set are at my apartment at college and my mum said she thought our other set was in our 5th wheel down in storage there until the end of the school year. Our pizza came right around then so we took a break from games to watch the last movie in the "Love Comes Softly" series. Those movies are aggravating. They are so drastically changed from the book series that it really bugs me. I decided to just think of them as a whole different storyline and then they're not so bad. Anyway I pretty much called the entire plot, which is fun to do sometimes. After that we played Careers, which Bryn had just bought me for Christmas. Our family plays it with my grandparents and so we know the rules down pat, but it took a bit of explaining to teach Julie's family how it works. Finally they got it, although on some turns it took three or four people to help Julie play. It was pretty hilarious. Bryn ended up winning that game, but several of us were close to winning. Then my mum took some pictures of Julie and I and we said good-bye to her. She's flying out to NYC tomorrow night and then going to GYC for the weekend before heading back to Andrews for her last 8 months of PT school. She made me promise to come visit her at school sometime before the end of March when she'll be gone to other parts of Michigan doing more clinicals. So I guess I'll be going to Andrews in the first couple months of the semester. If any of you want to come with me, let me know.
In hockey news, today Team Canada beat Team Latvia 16-0 in the first game of round robin play in the 2010 World Junior Championships. That is the most goals Team Canada has scored since an 18-3 win over Poland in 1986, according to CBC.ca. It might look like a cruel score to you, but CBC.ca explains, "There is no mercy at the world juniors, where goal differential in the preliminary round can be a key tie-breaker to reach the single-game elimination stage next week." There's a lot more stats from the game I'd love to tell you, but you can just read them yourself if you're at all interested. Also, the Canucks beat the Edmonton Oilers 4-1. Bryn's friend and her husband were at the game in Vancouver with seats three rows back from the Canucks bench. They were so close to the ice that they made it on CBC's "Hockey Night in Canada." I'm jealous (of them being at the game and sitting in those seats, not for being on CBC). I kind of wanted to watch the game since it was the only time during break that I'd get to watch them on HNIC (which only happens on Saturday nights during the regular season), but I'm still glad we got to have game night. Hockey is just a game, friends are more important.
-woke up late
-missed Sabbath School
-got to church in time for our Christmas program
-performed in the program
-heard and wrote down a great quote
-got my foot caught and almost fell down (nearly knocking Ty's cello over) during the closing hymn
-talked to a friend from way back in Gr. 1 who I haven't seen since summer
-had a pleasant conversation with our pastor
-nearly froze walking to and from the church in a skirt
I think that's quite a few accomplishments for one morning, despite the few setbacks included in there. (Apparently despite is my new favourite word. I'm using it all the time these days.) If you're curious about the quote, here's the background story as well as the quote:
For our church service, the elder in charge did some announcements after the song service and then said the program would proceed as planned after the prayer, scripture reading and opening song. When the opening song was over, the song leader said, "Now the Q.'s will play. I'll let them introduce their song." We were just planning to set up and start playing, but I thought that would be just a bit awkward after he said that we'd introduce our song. So once we were set up and tuned I just said, "I'm sure you'll all recognize the song." Then we played our song. My friend, Shannon, played a flute song next and before she played she said, "I don't think this song needs much introduction either so I'll take a cue from them (point in our direction)." I almost burst out laughing right on the spot because of her little cue/Q pun, but managed to contain my glee to a quiet, muffled guffaw. A classmate of Ty's who was sitting behind me giggled, so I knew I wasn't the only one that caught the joke. After church as we were eating lunch I brought it up and my mum said she thought it was pretty good, too, but I don't think the rest of my family got it. Maybe it's not even that funny or maybe it's just one of those things you had to be there for. In any case, it amused me for the rest of the day.
For lunch we all pitched in to make raclette. My mum had left church early to go spend some time with my Auntie Beth at the hospital and so Ty directed the rest of us in the raclette-making so that it would be ready by the time my mum got home. She came in the door just a few minutes before we were done the preparations so it was pretty good timing. It was an awesome meal to finally eat again. I'm so happy we have a raclette grill!
Tonight my friend, Julie, and her family came over for a game night. We each wrote down on a piece of paper one game that we wanted to play and put them all in a Santa hat. Then we took turns pulling pieces of paper from the hat starting with the youngest person. The first game was "Smart Ass," a game Ty had seen when he and Bryn were shopping at the mall and told her he wanted. She went back and later and got it for him for Christmas. It was actually a really fun game and when my dad eventually won, I was sad that the game was done. (I was also annoyed that he won cause we had been sitting on the very second-to-last square of the board until he got that last question right and moved to the end.) We played crokinole next. Since we had nine people it was rather complicated but Julie's mum sat out and kept score and then we played in with partners (two people on each side of the board) so there were four people per team. It was a little confusing at first to remember who's turn it was to shoot, but eventually we figured out the pattern and it was fine. I was on a team with my dad and Julie's dad and brother and we won 110-0. Then we were going to play 7-Up (the game with Rook cards, not the game kids play in elementary school), but we couldn't find our Rook cards. My set are at my apartment at college and my mum said she thought our other set was in our 5th wheel down in storage there until the end of the school year. Our pizza came right around then so we took a break from games to watch the last movie in the "Love Comes Softly" series. Those movies are aggravating. They are so drastically changed from the book series that it really bugs me. I decided to just think of them as a whole different storyline and then they're not so bad. Anyway I pretty much called the entire plot, which is fun to do sometimes. After that we played Careers, which Bryn had just bought me for Christmas. Our family plays it with my grandparents and so we know the rules down pat, but it took a bit of explaining to teach Julie's family how it works. Finally they got it, although on some turns it took three or four people to help Julie play. It was pretty hilarious. Bryn ended up winning that game, but several of us were close to winning. Then my mum took some pictures of Julie and I and we said good-bye to her. She's flying out to NYC tomorrow night and then going to GYC for the weekend before heading back to Andrews for her last 8 months of PT school. She made me promise to come visit her at school sometime before the end of March when she'll be gone to other parts of Michigan doing more clinicals. So I guess I'll be going to Andrews in the first couple months of the semester. If any of you want to come with me, let me know.
In hockey news, today Team Canada beat Team Latvia 16-0 in the first game of round robin play in the 2010 World Junior Championships. That is the most goals Team Canada has scored since an 18-3 win over Poland in 1986, according to CBC.ca. It might look like a cruel score to you, but CBC.ca explains, "There is no mercy at the world juniors, where goal differential in the preliminary round can be a key tie-breaker to reach the single-game elimination stage next week." There's a lot more stats from the game I'd love to tell you, but you can just read them yourself if you're at all interested. Also, the Canucks beat the Edmonton Oilers 4-1. Bryn's friend and her husband were at the game in Vancouver with seats three rows back from the Canucks bench. They were so close to the ice that they made it on CBC's "Hockey Night in Canada." I'm jealous (of them being at the game and sitting in those seats, not for being on CBC). I kind of wanted to watch the game since it was the only time during break that I'd get to watch them on HNIC (which only happens on Saturday nights during the regular season), but I'm still glad we got to have game night. Hockey is just a game, friends are more important.
Friday, December 25, 2009
Away in a Manger
Happy Christmas to all my readers! I can say, from years of experience, that probably the most obnoxious way to get woken up in the morning is by someone jumping on you. I know this because every Christmas morning my younger siblings come wake me up sometime between 6 and 6:30 a.m. by jumping on me. This morning I was already slightly awake so I heard someone running through the kitchen and dining room. I tried to roll into a ball to protect myself but before I could, Ty was already in my room pouncing on me. I was surprised that Bryn wasn't with him because usually one of them wakes the other up (of course by jumping on him/her) and then they jointly come to wake me up. Bryn showed up two minutes later so I got jumped on twice. Usually I greet this treatment with some gruff-sounding mumblings, pull the covers back up to my chin (they always pull them off), and stuff my head under my pillow. But since I was already kind of awake by the time they showed up, my grumbling session was shortened and I was soon up and racing into the living room with them to check out our stockings. We waited for my parents to come join us and then we all opened our stockings. I was surprised by the number of books that can be fit in or nearly in a stocking. I'm really not sure how I'll be able to read them all before break is over. I haven't even finished "Harriet" yet, but I'll try to work on that this coming week and then get through a couple of my new books. I read two of the small kids picture books already this morning between stocking and Christmas present-opening time. One of our traditions on Christmas morning is to open our stockings really early and then to make hot chocolate and/or freshly-made coffee cake and drink/eat it either during or right after opening our Christmas presents. We also hand out all the presents from under the tree to each person and then we just go around the circle each opening one present at a time. None of this ripping all the presents open at the same time for us. We use a orderly method to prolong the package-opening ceremonies. I got quite a few awesome gifts. Actually they're all awesome. But I have to say, my most surprising (and therefore most memorable) present was a voice recorder. Now I just have to figure out how to use all the features, but I'm sure my dear brother will help out with that. We tried it out on my grandparents this afternoon and we were both pretty impressed with the sound quality. The recorder will help out my interviewing so much, especially to get exact quotes! I'm excited to try it out when I get back to school.
After the presents were all opened and hugs were exchanged were brought our stuff to our rooms. Then we talked to my older three siblings. Ty skyped my older brother Mark and his family and that was hilarious. The kids were so excited to see us all on the screen and they showed us all their new toys and other assorted items Santa had given them. We also got to see their new-to-them dog, who is really cute. I can't wait to meet her in person . . . or in canine-son. Then Coral and Tucker sang "O Tannenbaum" for us. Well, Tucker sang the words in pretty good German and Coral spent the entire song dancing, jumping and twirling all over the room. I'd say she must be a Q. cause her jumps looked a lot like the ones I experience every Christmas morning. When that call was over we all took showers and got to work on the Christmas dinner preparations. Then my grandparents came over. Bryn, Ty, my grandpa and I set up the crokinole board and, after us kids practice our shooting a little bit to regain a little bit of skill, we played a game. Sadly, Ty and I lost to Bryn and my grandpa with the final score being 105-50. I'd say we were sorely beaten although it was a pretty close game at the start. Then we ate Christmas dinner, which was amazingly filling, like Christmas dinner's should be. We were all so stuffed full, in fact, that we vetoed dessert for the time being and listened to my mum read a couple Christmas stories instead. Then we had sundown worship and played a Bible trivia game, guys against girls. The girls won 25-22 so at least I won one game today. When worship was over my dad and Tyler took my grandparents home and then Bryn, my parents and I went to the hospital to visit my great-aunt, my grandma's sister, who has been in the hospital for a week and a couple days because of asthma-related problems. She was really glad to see us, especially since all her roommates were either moved to other rooms or gone for the holiday. We talked to her and read her some e-mails from church friends and family members who live far away. Then the nurse came to assess her and visiting hours were over so we left.
Now my siblings and I just finished figuring out what we're going to play for our church Christmas program tomorrow. We thought we'd play one of the songs we did with orchestra for the School of Music Christmas concert, but that sounded pretty bad with just us three, so we tried a few other ideas, none of which worked out too well. Then Ty said we should just do something easy, like "Away in a Manger" Bryn started playing it and Ty joined in with the rhythm from the version of "All Creatures of Our God and King" we made up. I came in with a harmony part and that's how we decided what we'll play. It's weird how we just play around with things and get kind of discouraged and frustrated that things aren't working out and then all of a sudden something comes to one of us and we all contribute ideas to make it awesome and a new version of a song is created. What a weird process. But it seems to work. Bryn and I tried out some different ways to change up the verses and I had the idea to do a round kind of thing for the first verse. It sounded really cool at the start, but had some clashing notes in certain parts so then I tried coming in a bit later. It worked sounded weird. So then I tried waiting a bit longer to come in and it worked all really good until the last two lines and then that part sounded just awful together. We were almost ready to toss that idea aside when I realized I could just switch to playing a harmony part at the place where it started to sound bad and we could finish play in unison instead of a round. We tried it and it sounded good. So we kept that idea. Then just a little more tweaking made it sound reasonable. I hope it's not too short though. "Away in a Manger" is a pretty short song so we thought up four verses and an ending, but it still seems not that long. Anyway, the audience will just have to be happy with what we play. Hopefully it goes well tomorrow.
After the presents were all opened and hugs were exchanged were brought our stuff to our rooms. Then we talked to my older three siblings. Ty skyped my older brother Mark and his family and that was hilarious. The kids were so excited to see us all on the screen and they showed us all their new toys and other assorted items Santa had given them. We also got to see their new-to-them dog, who is really cute. I can't wait to meet her in person . . . or in canine-son. Then Coral and Tucker sang "O Tannenbaum" for us. Well, Tucker sang the words in pretty good German and Coral spent the entire song dancing, jumping and twirling all over the room. I'd say she must be a Q. cause her jumps looked a lot like the ones I experience every Christmas morning. When that call was over we all took showers and got to work on the Christmas dinner preparations. Then my grandparents came over. Bryn, Ty, my grandpa and I set up the crokinole board and, after us kids practice our shooting a little bit to regain a little bit of skill, we played a game. Sadly, Ty and I lost to Bryn and my grandpa with the final score being 105-50. I'd say we were sorely beaten although it was a pretty close game at the start. Then we ate Christmas dinner, which was amazingly filling, like Christmas dinner's should be. We were all so stuffed full, in fact, that we vetoed dessert for the time being and listened to my mum read a couple Christmas stories instead. Then we had sundown worship and played a Bible trivia game, guys against girls. The girls won 25-22 so at least I won one game today. When worship was over my dad and Tyler took my grandparents home and then Bryn, my parents and I went to the hospital to visit my great-aunt, my grandma's sister, who has been in the hospital for a week and a couple days because of asthma-related problems. She was really glad to see us, especially since all her roommates were either moved to other rooms or gone for the holiday. We talked to her and read her some e-mails from church friends and family members who live far away. Then the nurse came to assess her and visiting hours were over so we left.
Now my siblings and I just finished figuring out what we're going to play for our church Christmas program tomorrow. We thought we'd play one of the songs we did with orchestra for the School of Music Christmas concert, but that sounded pretty bad with just us three, so we tried a few other ideas, none of which worked out too well. Then Ty said we should just do something easy, like "Away in a Manger" Bryn started playing it and Ty joined in with the rhythm from the version of "All Creatures of Our God and King" we made up. I came in with a harmony part and that's how we decided what we'll play. It's weird how we just play around with things and get kind of discouraged and frustrated that things aren't working out and then all of a sudden something comes to one of us and we all contribute ideas to make it awesome and a new version of a song is created. What a weird process. But it seems to work. Bryn and I tried out some different ways to change up the verses and I had the idea to do a round kind of thing for the first verse. It sounded really cool at the start, but had some clashing notes in certain parts so then I tried coming in a bit later. It worked sounded weird. So then I tried waiting a bit longer to come in and it worked all really good until the last two lines and then that part sounded just awful together. We were almost ready to toss that idea aside when I realized I could just switch to playing a harmony part at the place where it started to sound bad and we could finish play in unison instead of a round. We tried it and it sounded good. So we kept that idea. Then just a little more tweaking made it sound reasonable. I hope it's not too short though. "Away in a Manger" is a pretty short song so we thought up four verses and an ending, but it still seems not that long. Anyway, the audience will just have to be happy with what we play. Hopefully it goes well tomorrow.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Christmas Eve pajamas
gI finally wrapped my Christmas presents this morning. I had most of them bought and hidden around my room several days ago, but just didn't get around to wrapping them until today. It such relaxing work. I also find it fun to be creative with which wrapping paper is best to go with which present for which family member and deciding to how wrap each present and if I should include a bow or not. Maybe I'm just too orderly or OCD or something, but I just find it fun to think about all that stuff.
After my presents were wrapped I went to the grocery store with my mum to get food for Christmas dinner. It was probably the fastest we've ever bought food for any big, family-get-together type of meal. We were in and out of the store in 20 minutes and that was including my mum talking to three people she knew. Yeah, I know. Pretty impressive, right? When I was over in the bakery getting baby-sized loaves of flax bread, a mother and her two kids were there just before me. The mum told the two kids they could choose which cookies they wanted to get and the boy decided on these humongous oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. The mum made sure the kids knew the cookies were for Santa. She put several in a bag, all the while apologizing to me (like any good Canadian) that they were in my way. I responded with, "no worries," and smiled at the little girl who stared up at me with huge brown eyes. She gave me a half smile back and those adorable eyes started twinkling. I'm serious. They twinkled. It was amazing to see. I was kind of sad to see those merry eyes leave when the whole group moved on to let me get my baked goods. As they walked away I heard the little boy ask if he could have a cookie and his mum told him again, "No, we're saving them for Santa." Poor kid. They looked like yummy cookies, too.
When I got home from the grocery store, I left the bags for Bryn to bring in and ran to grab stuff for swimming then drove to the H20 Adventure + Fitness Centre. Julie was waiting for me in the lobby and so I paid quickly and we went to change. Then we spent the next two hours there swimming in the wave pool, being pulled around this circular pool that had a current (my personal favourite pool in the place), racing down the waterslides (Julie won every single time even though we alternated slides), lounging in the hot tubs, and laughing a LOT. Another friend, Kristina, was there, too, and so was Julie's family. We had a great time, although I was rather pruney by the time we emerged from the water and went home.
After that we went to my grandparents place for Christmas Eve dinner like we always do. It was awesome and I was so stuffed I could barely fit any dessert into my overfilled stomach. Then we played this game where one person had to draw a Christmas phrase while the rest of us guessed what they were. It was rather hilarious. After each song was guessed (the phrase idea morphed into just drawing Christmas songs pretty quickly) we would write the name of the song under the drawing and then get a picture taken. Ty went first and got us in a giggly mood when he wrote the title of his song upside-down and it turned out as "Joy to the Worlb." My mum's drawings were also fun to guess because they got pretty complicated and then were almost impossible to guess. Ty's last one was funny too because it was a four-part drawing of "In the Bleak Midwinter." Maybe I'll try to upload some of the pictures here later, so check back if you want to see them. When we ran out of ideas for that game we taught my grandparents how to play 8 1/2, a card game Bryn got for Christmas last year. We got kind of confused between that and Pinocchio though, so we ended up just using the 8 1/2 cards, but playing by Pinocchio rules. Then I scrounged up my grandpa's crokinole board and discs to bring back home with us. We didn't have time to play it tonight, but we're going to make sure to have a few games before eating Christmas dinner tomorrow when my grandparents come over. I love crokinole. It's probably my favourite games ever. Maybe that's why I occasionally like watching curling on TV.
Then we finally trimmed our Christmas tree and put most of the presents underneath it. My dad had set the tree up last night, but it was already late by then so we decided to finish it tonight. Before we went to my grandparents house my dad had put the lights on so we just had to put the ornaments on. It was kind of fun doing it on Christmas Eve for once. Our tradition used to be to put up the tree on December 1, but that's pushed back now until we're home from college, and this year we couldn't find a time to get the tree and put it up until tonight. It was still fun though. We also listened to our Billy Gilman CD, which has been another Q. tradition since my mum bought that CD for Tyler years ago. Once the tree was stuffed to overflowing with ornaments (it's a rather straggly and spindly tree, but we all love it anyhow), we made hot chocolate and then opened our Christmas Eve presents. Every year we are allowed to open one present each. That present is always pajamas. It's so nice knowing that you are guaranteed new pajamas at least once a year and my mum always finds really awesome ones too. This year Bryn got music ones, which are adorable. Ty got ones that have cartoon animals playing a bunch of different sports and I got moose pajamas. I must admit that I knew about mine. When we were driving to the Winnipeg airport after a weekend in western Ontario for my cousin's grad, we stopped to get gas at a small town that had a bunch of random stuff for sale in their gas station/gift shop. I saw the pj's and told my mum they would be nice for Christmas. Then I forgot about them until I opened my box tonight. I also got Canadian hockey pj pants. And then, of course, my mum took some more pictures before we headed for our own rooms to finish up last minute pre-Christmas secrets. So I bid you all goodnight and a Happy Christmas Eve!! Hope this holiday is amazing for you all!
PS - I just posted this, but came back to edit this blog with some good pre-Christmas news. I just found out that my married friends, Sharlet and Brad, just had their baby at 11:35 p.m. It was due on the 28th, but Sharlet's water broke last night. She went to the hospital, but was sent home cause nothing was progressing. Apparently she was going to get an IV to induce labour this morning if nothing had happened in the night. Anyway, her step-father-in-law posted updates on Facebook throughout the day (which weren't that interesting since nothing was really happening) and then her brother wrote a new status update from the hospital when the baby was born, which is how I heard the news. (Crazy how society has changed since we were born and our parents had to actually call up their parents on the phone to let them know.) Anyway, so they're now proud parents of a Christmas Eve daughter and everything is right with the world because a new Canucks fan was born . . .
After my presents were wrapped I went to the grocery store with my mum to get food for Christmas dinner. It was probably the fastest we've ever bought food for any big, family-get-together type of meal. We were in and out of the store in 20 minutes and that was including my mum talking to three people she knew. Yeah, I know. Pretty impressive, right? When I was over in the bakery getting baby-sized loaves of flax bread, a mother and her two kids were there just before me. The mum told the two kids they could choose which cookies they wanted to get and the boy decided on these humongous oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. The mum made sure the kids knew the cookies were for Santa. She put several in a bag, all the while apologizing to me (like any good Canadian) that they were in my way. I responded with, "no worries," and smiled at the little girl who stared up at me with huge brown eyes. She gave me a half smile back and those adorable eyes started twinkling. I'm serious. They twinkled. It was amazing to see. I was kind of sad to see those merry eyes leave when the whole group moved on to let me get my baked goods. As they walked away I heard the little boy ask if he could have a cookie and his mum told him again, "No, we're saving them for Santa." Poor kid. They looked like yummy cookies, too.
When I got home from the grocery store, I left the bags for Bryn to bring in and ran to grab stuff for swimming then drove to the H20 Adventure + Fitness Centre. Julie was waiting for me in the lobby and so I paid quickly and we went to change. Then we spent the next two hours there swimming in the wave pool, being pulled around this circular pool that had a current (my personal favourite pool in the place), racing down the waterslides (Julie won every single time even though we alternated slides), lounging in the hot tubs, and laughing a LOT. Another friend, Kristina, was there, too, and so was Julie's family. We had a great time, although I was rather pruney by the time we emerged from the water and went home.
After that we went to my grandparents place for Christmas Eve dinner like we always do. It was awesome and I was so stuffed I could barely fit any dessert into my overfilled stomach. Then we played this game where one person had to draw a Christmas phrase while the rest of us guessed what they were. It was rather hilarious. After each song was guessed (the phrase idea morphed into just drawing Christmas songs pretty quickly) we would write the name of the song under the drawing and then get a picture taken. Ty went first and got us in a giggly mood when he wrote the title of his song upside-down and it turned out as "Joy to the Worlb." My mum's drawings were also fun to guess because they got pretty complicated and then were almost impossible to guess. Ty's last one was funny too because it was a four-part drawing of "In the Bleak Midwinter." Maybe I'll try to upload some of the pictures here later, so check back if you want to see them. When we ran out of ideas for that game we taught my grandparents how to play 8 1/2, a card game Bryn got for Christmas last year. We got kind of confused between that and Pinocchio though, so we ended up just using the 8 1/2 cards, but playing by Pinocchio rules. Then I scrounged up my grandpa's crokinole board and discs to bring back home with us. We didn't have time to play it tonight, but we're going to make sure to have a few games before eating Christmas dinner tomorrow when my grandparents come over. I love crokinole. It's probably my favourite games ever. Maybe that's why I occasionally like watching curling on TV.
Then we finally trimmed our Christmas tree and put most of the presents underneath it. My dad had set the tree up last night, but it was already late by then so we decided to finish it tonight. Before we went to my grandparents house my dad had put the lights on so we just had to put the ornaments on. It was kind of fun doing it on Christmas Eve for once. Our tradition used to be to put up the tree on December 1, but that's pushed back now until we're home from college, and this year we couldn't find a time to get the tree and put it up until tonight. It was still fun though. We also listened to our Billy Gilman CD, which has been another Q. tradition since my mum bought that CD for Tyler years ago. Once the tree was stuffed to overflowing with ornaments (it's a rather straggly and spindly tree, but we all love it anyhow), we made hot chocolate and then opened our Christmas Eve presents. Every year we are allowed to open one present each. That present is always pajamas. It's so nice knowing that you are guaranteed new pajamas at least once a year and my mum always finds really awesome ones too. This year Bryn got music ones, which are adorable. Ty got ones that have cartoon animals playing a bunch of different sports and I got moose pajamas. I must admit that I knew about mine. When we were driving to the Winnipeg airport after a weekend in western Ontario for my cousin's grad, we stopped to get gas at a small town that had a bunch of random stuff for sale in their gas station/gift shop. I saw the pj's and told my mum they would be nice for Christmas. Then I forgot about them until I opened my box tonight. I also got Canadian hockey pj pants. And then, of course, my mum took some more pictures before we headed for our own rooms to finish up last minute pre-Christmas secrets. So I bid you all goodnight and a Happy Christmas Eve!! Hope this holiday is amazing for you all!
PS - I just posted this, but came back to edit this blog with some good pre-Christmas news. I just found out that my married friends, Sharlet and Brad, just had their baby at 11:35 p.m. It was due on the 28th, but Sharlet's water broke last night. She went to the hospital, but was sent home cause nothing was progressing. Apparently she was going to get an IV to induce labour this morning if nothing had happened in the night. Anyway, her step-father-in-law posted updates on Facebook throughout the day (which weren't that interesting since nothing was really happening) and then her brother wrote a new status update from the hospital when the baby was born, which is how I heard the news. (Crazy how society has changed since we were born and our parents had to actually call up their parents on the phone to let them know.) Anyway, so they're now proud parents of a Christmas Eve daughter and everything is right with the world because a new Canucks fan was born . . .
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Christmas tree
This morning we woke up really early (6:30 a.m., which is early for me at least), bundled up in warm winter gear, and drove about 15 minutes up into the mountains to get our Christmas tree. I know it's only two days before Christmas, but we've been busy doing a bunch of other stuff, so this was the first time that we really had to all go get one together. When I got out of the truck I thought about not even wearing a toque, but about 20 seconds later I rethought that and was glad I had brought it along with me anyway. It was freezing up there. Surprising how 15 minutes and about a 2,000 foot increase in altitude can make so much difference. Dad had checked the temperature when we piled out of the truck and it was -16 C. That's pretty chilly, especially when we've been experiencing weather between 5 and 0 C since we've been home. We traipsed through the woods for about five minutes before I pointed out a tree I thought might be OK. My dad started to knock some of the snow and ice off the branches to see what he thought and Bryn came along, looked at the tree, and grimaced in disgust. "That one's ugly. What about the one right back there?" She pointed beyond my choice to a tree standing alone in a circle of much taller trees. "Hmm, yeah, that could work," Dad said and walked over to check it out. We both agreed with Bryn that it was better. Then we had to call Ty and my mum over from examining the hide of a dead animal. Ty was trying to identify it while my mum was trying to take pictures of it. When they finally made their way to the chosen tree they agreed that it was good. My dad started cutting it down and then each of us kids took a turn with the saw while my mum got pictures of that, too. Then the three of us followed my dad out of the forest. He cut a wider path for us so we could get the tree back to the logging road and our truck. About halfway back Ty got tired of sharing the carrying load with Bryn and me and hoisted it up to carry back all by himself. Then we posed for some pictures near the road before jumping back into the truck to warm up. My feet were completely frozen and my hands were getting cold as well. The temperature had gone down to -17 C as we started driving home. When we pulled up to our driveway I was surprised to see that it was still cold down in the city at -11 C. We put our tree in the garage to let it thaw (notice my appropriate use of the word "thaw" as opposed to the non-word "unthaw") so we could put it up and decorate it later this evening.
In the early afternoon, when my mum, Ty and I were out shopping, I saw the cutest sight. We were in Lululemon, a yoga apparel store (no, I'm not into yoga, but the clothes are super comfy) and I was putting something back on a hook when I turned and saw a baby sitting on the floor of the store. He was probably around five or six months old and wearing a dark brown snowsuit that covered his entire body except for his adorably chubby face. His mum was standing beside him looking at a table of sweatshirts. She was in between me and the baby. How she was standing was exactly perfect for her son to peek through her legs to watch the customers in the store. As soon as I saw him I couldn't look away. I grinned down at him. He stared back at me for about three seconds and then broke out in an infectious baby smile. I kept grinning at him and he kept smiling back. It was the absolute happiest I have ever seen a baby look. We just stood there happily gazing upon each others faces. Then my mum walked up behind me and I half-turned to tell her to look at the baby. She looked down and gasped. "Oh, that would make the most gorgeous picture!" she exclaimed. "Why don't I have a camera with me." I looked back at the baby. He was so roly-poly-looking in that brown snowsuit that he looked like a cuddly little brown bear cub. I just wanted to walk around his mum and scoop him up and cuddle him. Then he started to kick his legs in glee, all the while still giving my mum and I a toothless grin. Ty came up just then and glanced over to see what had captured mine and my mum's attention. "He looks just like a seal pup," Ty said. It was true. His snowsuited feet looked like the end of a seal's tail. Several seconds later the baby's mum reached down and picked him up off the floor and the moment - and perfect photo opportunity - had passed. But I'll never forget that exuberantly happy little baby's face when he first started smiling at me.
After leaving Lululemon, we walked across the street to Mosaics, "the largest independently owned bookstore in the Okanagan Valley" (according to their motto or tagline or whatever that's called). It used to be my very favouritest bookstore when I was a kid. My mum would drive all the way downtown just to shop there and if we were already downtown for an appointment or other shopping, she'd take us there as a treat if we were good. I like it less now that it's moved to a new location. I especially feel that their kids selection has gone downhill since then, but maybe it's just the quality of kids books as a whole that I'm not as impressed with (what is with all this magic and sorcery in kids books these days anyway?). So, in any case, I still like to stop in there to see what gems I can find. Mosaics usually has quite a good selection of Canadian books so that makes me happy. Today I saw my dream book there. I had actually just read about this new book that is newly released during finals week. I went on CBC.ca to check out some Canadian news (something that I have been extremely delinquent in doing this past semester) and saw a link to a story and soundslide by the editor, Mark Reid, about the book. It's called "Canadian History: 100 Photos That Changed Canada" and I desperately want it. My mum told me she'd had it in her hands to buy for me yesterday but then put it back before getting to the till. I told her that I wouldn't mind having it, despite all that. She reminded me that I also have a birthday coming up soon. So I guess we'll see what becomes of all that.
Later in the afternoon Bryn and I picked up my dad early from work (these days he usually walks to and from work) and then went to look for snowmobiling boots. We tried the place that Ty and I went to yesterday to buy boots for my dad. I was a little scared the guy that helped us yesterday would recognize me and say something about our purchase to my dad but, although he was in the store again today, a different guy helped us, so it was all fine. They ended up not having any women's boots at all and the smallest size they had in men's was a seven, which our feet would be swimming in. So we went to the place the guy suggested we try and they did have women's boots and they fit. They're rated for up to -100 C weather (year, I was shocked to hear that, too) so I'm pretty excited to try them out. I've never not had my feet get cold when participating in a winter sport, so I'm really curious to see if these boots live up to their rating. I do have to say that they were the most comfortable pair of boots I have ever put on in my entire life. It was like putting my feet into their own little quilt-covered beds (bad analogy but if I think of something better I'll come back and change it). I kind of just want to walk all around town in them, but I have a feeling that it's not quite cold enough down here in the valley for my feet to like that too well after a little bit. I really wish that we'd bought the boots yesterday so we could have tried them out this morning as we got our tree. Oh, well. Along with the boots, I also got my first pair of Smartwool socks. I can't wait to try out the socks and boots when we head up to the mountains on Sunday!
In the early afternoon, when my mum, Ty and I were out shopping, I saw the cutest sight. We were in Lululemon, a yoga apparel store (no, I'm not into yoga, but the clothes are super comfy) and I was putting something back on a hook when I turned and saw a baby sitting on the floor of the store. He was probably around five or six months old and wearing a dark brown snowsuit that covered his entire body except for his adorably chubby face. His mum was standing beside him looking at a table of sweatshirts. She was in between me and the baby. How she was standing was exactly perfect for her son to peek through her legs to watch the customers in the store. As soon as I saw him I couldn't look away. I grinned down at him. He stared back at me for about three seconds and then broke out in an infectious baby smile. I kept grinning at him and he kept smiling back. It was the absolute happiest I have ever seen a baby look. We just stood there happily gazing upon each others faces. Then my mum walked up behind me and I half-turned to tell her to look at the baby. She looked down and gasped. "Oh, that would make the most gorgeous picture!" she exclaimed. "Why don't I have a camera with me." I looked back at the baby. He was so roly-poly-looking in that brown snowsuit that he looked like a cuddly little brown bear cub. I just wanted to walk around his mum and scoop him up and cuddle him. Then he started to kick his legs in glee, all the while still giving my mum and I a toothless grin. Ty came up just then and glanced over to see what had captured mine and my mum's attention. "He looks just like a seal pup," Ty said. It was true. His snowsuited feet looked like the end of a seal's tail. Several seconds later the baby's mum reached down and picked him up off the floor and the moment - and perfect photo opportunity - had passed. But I'll never forget that exuberantly happy little baby's face when he first started smiling at me.
After leaving Lululemon, we walked across the street to Mosaics, "the largest independently owned bookstore in the Okanagan Valley" (according to their motto or tagline or whatever that's called). It used to be my very favouritest bookstore when I was a kid. My mum would drive all the way downtown just to shop there and if we were already downtown for an appointment or other shopping, she'd take us there as a treat if we were good. I like it less now that it's moved to a new location. I especially feel that their kids selection has gone downhill since then, but maybe it's just the quality of kids books as a whole that I'm not as impressed with (what is with all this magic and sorcery in kids books these days anyway?). So, in any case, I still like to stop in there to see what gems I can find. Mosaics usually has quite a good selection of Canadian books so that makes me happy. Today I saw my dream book there. I had actually just read about this new book that is newly released during finals week. I went on CBC.ca to check out some Canadian news (something that I have been extremely delinquent in doing this past semester) and saw a link to a story and soundslide by the editor, Mark Reid, about the book. It's called "Canadian History: 100 Photos That Changed Canada" and I desperately want it. My mum told me she'd had it in her hands to buy for me yesterday but then put it back before getting to the till. I told her that I wouldn't mind having it, despite all that. She reminded me that I also have a birthday coming up soon. So I guess we'll see what becomes of all that.
Later in the afternoon Bryn and I picked up my dad early from work (these days he usually walks to and from work) and then went to look for snowmobiling boots. We tried the place that Ty and I went to yesterday to buy boots for my dad. I was a little scared the guy that helped us yesterday would recognize me and say something about our purchase to my dad but, although he was in the store again today, a different guy helped us, so it was all fine. They ended up not having any women's boots at all and the smallest size they had in men's was a seven, which our feet would be swimming in. So we went to the place the guy suggested we try and they did have women's boots and they fit. They're rated for up to -100 C weather (year, I was shocked to hear that, too) so I'm pretty excited to try them out. I've never not had my feet get cold when participating in a winter sport, so I'm really curious to see if these boots live up to their rating. I do have to say that they were the most comfortable pair of boots I have ever put on in my entire life. It was like putting my feet into their own little quilt-covered beds (bad analogy but if I think of something better I'll come back and change it). I kind of just want to walk all around town in them, but I have a feeling that it's not quite cold enough down here in the valley for my feet to like that too well after a little bit. I really wish that we'd bought the boots yesterday so we could have tried them out this morning as we got our tree. Oh, well. Along with the boots, I also got my first pair of Smartwool socks. I can't wait to try out the socks and boots when we head up to the mountains on Sunday!
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Christmas shopping
*STOP!! If your name is Glenda and you are my mother, remember that you promised you would not read this blog post until after December 25, 2009. This is an honour system and I'm trusting you to keep your word. If your name is Don and you are my father and somehow accidentally happened upon this url, please stop reading as well. If your name is anything else and you are not one of my parents, please feel free to continue, but realize that I wrote a LOT today. This blog post is not for the faint-of-reading-skills. Proceed with caution!*
I got my hair cut today. It was wonderful to have my hair stylist actually cut my hair again. I had forgotten how relaxing a hair cut can be when you don't have to worry about how it's going to turn out. I told Laura the whole story about my last hair cut and I think she was kind of appalled at how the cut had turned out. She kept examining the strange layers on left side of my head. I told her what I did and did not like about that last hair cut (the did's were quite a bit shorter than the did nots) and then let her get to work. She likes her clients to arrive at an appointment with their hair dried and styled the way they usually do it and then she can see the cut and work from there. She usually does a pre-wash cut and then washes the hair and then does more styling and playing with it to get everything just right after drying it. Anyway, I'm being wordy when I'm not meaning to be. All I meant to say was that Laura did an awesome job to make both sides of my hair equal again and to incorporate that really high layer on the left side of my head with the rest of the hair underneath by giving me more layers in between the two. So the verdict is that I love my hair again. Now the challenge will be to see if I can remember how to style it the right way when I have to do it by myself tomorrow.
On the way home I stopped at a store to get my mum's Christmas present. The item I wanted wasn't there any more so I searched the store and found something that I liked for her just as well. When I brought it up to the till (cash register) to pay, the lady told me that it had a small crack in the front. I hadn't seen that and wondered what I should do since that was the last one of that particular model. The lady called a customer service person who came to the till and looked at the crack. She said if I still wanted to buy it she would let me have 20% off. I thought that sounded reasonable and I also thought the crack would be fixable so I agreed. Now I just have to find something at a craft store to fix the spot. I might consult my dad for that since I'm not the craftiest person around. I'm sure with his help we can disguise the crack pretty well so nobody will know.
After getting home and hiding my presents, Ty came home from his own shopping spree and then we left together to buy presents for our parents. We knew exactly what to get my dad and had already decided that the three of us siblings were going to get him the snowmobiling boots he wanted. They're rather expensive so combining our funds was a necessity. When we walked in the store Ty and I found the boots without any trouble but then couldn't decide the difference between two boots of the same brand. We decided to ask for help and Ty approached the only salesman who wasn't busy. "Hey, we'd like to buy some snowboarding boots, but have a few questions," Ty said to the salesman. "Snowboarding boots?" the guy responded. "No, snowmobiling," I interjected. "Yeah, those," Ty sheepishly corrected himself. With that misunderstanding behind us, he led us to the front counter and found another guy that knew about the snowmobiling gear. That guy told us the only difference between the two pairs of boots was that one was last year's model and the other was this year's. The price was nearly the same, too, so we just asked him which ones he had in the right size. Turns out he only had nines in this year's model so that's what we bought. Next we headed to a strip mall shopping area to find my mum's present. (I'm not sure if Americans are familiar with the term strip mall, but in case you aren't, it's a bunch of stores all connected but you have to get to the various stores from the outside so it's not a mall where you can just walk around inside. That was probably a confusing explanation. Sorry, it's the best I can think up at the moment.) I was just along to help Ty pick something out. We went into one store and Ty looked around for something he thought would be a good idea. I tried out different couches and chairs and found that not many of them were very comfortable. Suddenly I had an inspiration for a present Ty could get my mum. When I told him, he agreed that it would be a great present and sat down on a couch to look up on his blackberry Internet where he could find the item. He didn't have any luck so we went to the store beside the one we were in. That item wasn't there either. Then we walked to Wal-Mart so Ty could buy a gift card for a member of our extended family. (We do a name draw every year with all the members of my mum's side of the family.) While we were there I thought we might as well look for that item. After search a couple aisles (and me getting distracted, not by notebooks this time, but by Vancouver Canucks bed sheets, pillows and blankets) we finally found the item, a raclette grill. For those of you who aren't familiar with raclette, you should become familiar with it. Very familiar. I only first heard of it two years ago when my siblings and I visited Stephen's family during Thanksgiving break. Their family had found out about raclette when they lived in Switzerland for several years working for the church when their kids were young. I would try to explain the awesomeness of this meal to you, but I think I'll leave it up to the experts at Wikipedia to give you a little more background about raclette. Anyway, ever since that first time eating raclette at Stephen's house, us siblings have wanted to get a raclette grill for our family. So finding two sets left at Wal-Mart was pretty awesome. We looked over both boxes and each was in pretty bad shape. So I thought that maybe we could walk over to one more store and check that out. I thought the grill might be cheaper there, too. We walked there and searched, but had no success so then we went back to Wal-Mart and got the nicer looking of the two boxes. While we were waiting in line a man came up behind us and set a few items on the conveyor belt. As Ty was reaching for a divider to put between our item and his, the man said, "Nice grill." Ty said thanks and then the man asked, "Are you Swiss?" We both shook our heads, and Ty said something like, "We just like raclette." Then he asked us where we get our Raclette (which is the kind of cheese that makes raclette the amazing meal that it is) and neither of us had any good response since the only two times we've eaten raclette was at Stephen's house during two consecutive U.S. Thanksgiving breaks, last year and the year before. Ty mumbled, "We don't," just as I pipped up with, "Well, we've only eaten raclette at our friends house, but we've always wanted to buy a grill and make our own." Then the man told us that Costco has the cheapest raclette cheese and then it was our turn to pay so Ty thanked him and we continued on our way. It was a really random conversation, but we were both glad that now we know where to buy the cheese. As we walked back to the truck Ty said that he thought the man was probably Swiss. I was thinking the same thing. How else would he have known about raclette and what the grill was for so fast . . . unless, of course, he had had the same type of raclette experience that we'd had. Then Ty said that the way the man asked us where we got our raclette was like some conversations guys have (For example: "Where do you go to get your tires changed?") That got me started laughing and Ty and I kept going with the analogies until we got in the car and drove home.
Tonight Bryn, Ty and I met some friends at an bowling alley and played two games of 10-pin. I haven't bowled since probably last Christmas when we all got together then, so it was fun. The only bad part was that I haven't cut my fingernails for a little while and, although they aren't really THAT long (by non-string players standards), they felt too long to bowl well with. There were eight of us that came and so we played with four on each lane. In the first game, Ty and I tied with 75 and Bryn and Julie tied with 73. In the other lane Kim got 63, her sister Melissa got 70, Rachel got something over 100 and her husband Chad got 165. Yeah, Rachel and Chad are both super good at bowling. Rachel's parents are both really good too and I think their whole family goes bowling a lot. I think Rachel's grandma is even on a bowling team, too. Then for the second game Bryn, Julie and Rachel (who had all spent the entire day snowboarding) got really tired. Ty and I ended up doing pretty well though. Ty actually did extremely well. He got three strikes in a row and won with 145. Chad wasn't far behind him with 140 and then Rachel got 118, I got 110 (thanks to two strikes and several spares, which, unfortunately weren't in a row like Ty's were), Julie got 73 again and I can't remember the rest of the scores. Halfway through our second game another of our friends, Kristina, showed up. She spent the game talking to us. I snuck away several times during both games to look through the windows into a sports bar at the front of the bowling alley to check the Vancouver Canucks score. The last time I looked, just before we left, the score was 4-0 for the Canucks against the Nashville Predators. I was pretty happy since I hate the Preds (except for BC-boy Shea Weber who used to play for our hometown WHL team when he was in juniors). And now that you've read probably way more than you ever wanted to, I bid you bon soir. Thanks for reading all my tales.
I got my hair cut today. It was wonderful to have my hair stylist actually cut my hair again. I had forgotten how relaxing a hair cut can be when you don't have to worry about how it's going to turn out. I told Laura the whole story about my last hair cut and I think she was kind of appalled at how the cut had turned out. She kept examining the strange layers on left side of my head. I told her what I did and did not like about that last hair cut (the did's were quite a bit shorter than the did nots) and then let her get to work. She likes her clients to arrive at an appointment with their hair dried and styled the way they usually do it and then she can see the cut and work from there. She usually does a pre-wash cut and then washes the hair and then does more styling and playing with it to get everything just right after drying it. Anyway, I'm being wordy when I'm not meaning to be. All I meant to say was that Laura did an awesome job to make both sides of my hair equal again and to incorporate that really high layer on the left side of my head with the rest of the hair underneath by giving me more layers in between the two. So the verdict is that I love my hair again. Now the challenge will be to see if I can remember how to style it the right way when I have to do it by myself tomorrow.
On the way home I stopped at a store to get my mum's Christmas present. The item I wanted wasn't there any more so I searched the store and found something that I liked for her just as well. When I brought it up to the till (cash register) to pay, the lady told me that it had a small crack in the front. I hadn't seen that and wondered what I should do since that was the last one of that particular model. The lady called a customer service person who came to the till and looked at the crack. She said if I still wanted to buy it she would let me have 20% off. I thought that sounded reasonable and I also thought the crack would be fixable so I agreed. Now I just have to find something at a craft store to fix the spot. I might consult my dad for that since I'm not the craftiest person around. I'm sure with his help we can disguise the crack pretty well so nobody will know.
After getting home and hiding my presents, Ty came home from his own shopping spree and then we left together to buy presents for our parents. We knew exactly what to get my dad and had already decided that the three of us siblings were going to get him the snowmobiling boots he wanted. They're rather expensive so combining our funds was a necessity. When we walked in the store Ty and I found the boots without any trouble but then couldn't decide the difference between two boots of the same brand. We decided to ask for help and Ty approached the only salesman who wasn't busy. "Hey, we'd like to buy some snowboarding boots, but have a few questions," Ty said to the salesman. "Snowboarding boots?" the guy responded. "No, snowmobiling," I interjected. "Yeah, those," Ty sheepishly corrected himself. With that misunderstanding behind us, he led us to the front counter and found another guy that knew about the snowmobiling gear. That guy told us the only difference between the two pairs of boots was that one was last year's model and the other was this year's. The price was nearly the same, too, so we just asked him which ones he had in the right size. Turns out he only had nines in this year's model so that's what we bought. Next we headed to a strip mall shopping area to find my mum's present. (I'm not sure if Americans are familiar with the term strip mall, but in case you aren't, it's a bunch of stores all connected but you have to get to the various stores from the outside so it's not a mall where you can just walk around inside. That was probably a confusing explanation. Sorry, it's the best I can think up at the moment.) I was just along to help Ty pick something out. We went into one store and Ty looked around for something he thought would be a good idea. I tried out different couches and chairs and found that not many of them were very comfortable. Suddenly I had an inspiration for a present Ty could get my mum. When I told him, he agreed that it would be a great present and sat down on a couch to look up on his blackberry Internet where he could find the item. He didn't have any luck so we went to the store beside the one we were in. That item wasn't there either. Then we walked to Wal-Mart so Ty could buy a gift card for a member of our extended family. (We do a name draw every year with all the members of my mum's side of the family.) While we were there I thought we might as well look for that item. After search a couple aisles (and me getting distracted, not by notebooks this time, but by Vancouver Canucks bed sheets, pillows and blankets) we finally found the item, a raclette grill. For those of you who aren't familiar with raclette, you should become familiar with it. Very familiar. I only first heard of it two years ago when my siblings and I visited Stephen's family during Thanksgiving break. Their family had found out about raclette when they lived in Switzerland for several years working for the church when their kids were young. I would try to explain the awesomeness of this meal to you, but I think I'll leave it up to the experts at Wikipedia to give you a little more background about raclette. Anyway, ever since that first time eating raclette at Stephen's house, us siblings have wanted to get a raclette grill for our family. So finding two sets left at Wal-Mart was pretty awesome. We looked over both boxes and each was in pretty bad shape. So I thought that maybe we could walk over to one more store and check that out. I thought the grill might be cheaper there, too. We walked there and searched, but had no success so then we went back to Wal-Mart and got the nicer looking of the two boxes. While we were waiting in line a man came up behind us and set a few items on the conveyor belt. As Ty was reaching for a divider to put between our item and his, the man said, "Nice grill." Ty said thanks and then the man asked, "Are you Swiss?" We both shook our heads, and Ty said something like, "We just like raclette." Then he asked us where we get our Raclette (which is the kind of cheese that makes raclette the amazing meal that it is) and neither of us had any good response since the only two times we've eaten raclette was at Stephen's house during two consecutive U.S. Thanksgiving breaks, last year and the year before. Ty mumbled, "We don't," just as I pipped up with, "Well, we've only eaten raclette at our friends house, but we've always wanted to buy a grill and make our own." Then the man told us that Costco has the cheapest raclette cheese and then it was our turn to pay so Ty thanked him and we continued on our way. It was a really random conversation, but we were both glad that now we know where to buy the cheese. As we walked back to the truck Ty said that he thought the man was probably Swiss. I was thinking the same thing. How else would he have known about raclette and what the grill was for so fast . . . unless, of course, he had had the same type of raclette experience that we'd had. Then Ty said that the way the man asked us where we got our raclette was like some conversations guys have (For example: "Where do you go to get your tires changed?") That got me started laughing and Ty and I kept going with the analogies until we got in the car and drove home.
Tonight Bryn, Ty and I met some friends at an bowling alley and played two games of 10-pin. I haven't bowled since probably last Christmas when we all got together then, so it was fun. The only bad part was that I haven't cut my fingernails for a little while and, although they aren't really THAT long (by non-string players standards), they felt too long to bowl well with. There were eight of us that came and so we played with four on each lane. In the first game, Ty and I tied with 75 and Bryn and Julie tied with 73. In the other lane Kim got 63, her sister Melissa got 70, Rachel got something over 100 and her husband Chad got 165. Yeah, Rachel and Chad are both super good at bowling. Rachel's parents are both really good too and I think their whole family goes bowling a lot. I think Rachel's grandma is even on a bowling team, too. Then for the second game Bryn, Julie and Rachel (who had all spent the entire day snowboarding) got really tired. Ty and I ended up doing pretty well though. Ty actually did extremely well. He got three strikes in a row and won with 145. Chad wasn't far behind him with 140 and then Rachel got 118, I got 110 (thanks to two strikes and several spares, which, unfortunately weren't in a row like Ty's were), Julie got 73 again and I can't remember the rest of the scores. Halfway through our second game another of our friends, Kristina, showed up. She spent the game talking to us. I snuck away several times during both games to look through the windows into a sports bar at the front of the bowling alley to check the Vancouver Canucks score. The last time I looked, just before we left, the score was 4-0 for the Canucks against the Nashville Predators. I was pretty happy since I hate the Preds (except for BC-boy Shea Weber who used to play for our hometown WHL team when he was in juniors). And now that you've read probably way more than you ever wanted to, I bid you bon soir. Thanks for reading all my tales.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Nappy-Nap
Another lazy day. I haven't even unpacked yet so I'm currently living out of my suitcase. I'm not totally sure I will unpack during this break anyway though, so I guess it's fine. I feel like my blog posts are just getting longer and longer, but I can't manage to keep them short and sweet like Janelle is so skilled at doing. I console myself with the knowledge that if people didn't want to read my blog, they wouldn't, so I'm not going to stress about my lack of brevity.
When I went to have a shower this morning I found an intriguing-looking book left on the washroom counter so I stole it from who(m)ever left it there (I assumed it was my brother since we share that washroom) and took it back to my room for further inspection. After said inspection, I realized it was an awesome book and started to read it. Then Tyler came into my room to talk to me, saw that I stole the book my mum had just given him, and took it back. I'll have to stage another book-napping at some point in the next few days, but for now I guess I'll just finish "Harriet the Spy."
Later on, in the afternoon, my mum took us to the mall. She dropped Bryn and Ty off in front of Chapters (the Canadian equivalent to Barnes and Noble, but better because you can actually buy books written by Canadian authors) and then she and I went to some other stores in the area. At one store, we were waiting in line behind a lady who was returning something. The computer was being super slow and the saleslady was very apologetic to the lady returning the item. Finally the transaction went through and the lady in front of us left the store. Then she started ringing up my mum's purchase, but the computer was still being slow. The lady apologized to us saying, "I'm SO sorry the computer's being so slow. I guess it decided to take a little nappy-nap." I thought it was hilarious and immediately whipped out my phone to text the quote to Bryn. (I wanted to include a link here to How I Met Your Mother's "Three Days Rule" episode so you could understand the joke, but apparently nobody except for my siblings and I thought the clip I'm referring to was amusing enough to put up on YouTube. In any case, what I was going to link to was a scene where the main character Ted sends a girl he just met a text. In that text he says, "I just wanted to send you a little texty-text," and then sends it. He realizes how dumb "texty-text" sounds a second after he sends the text, but by then it's too late. And now that that's been over-explained, I'll continue my blog.) Then my mum and I left the store and went back to the mall to look around for half an hour before meeting Bryn and Ty.
Back at home, we hid our presents and voted on a place to eat out as a family. I won the vote and we went to Lake Tai, a vegetarian Taiwanese restaurant. I've been there at least three times, but Bryn and Ty had never been for some odd reason. I guess it does make sense though since the three times I've eaten there were during the year I worked at home when they were both away at Southern/UCA. Anyway, my dad told us each to order a dish and then the five of us shared all the food. It was amazing as usual and I surprised myself by not appreciating the dish I ordered because I thought I remembered liking it before and actually enjoying the curry Ty ordered. The radio was playing quietly in the background and near the end of our meal a song that I almost recognized started playing. I tilted my head toward the speakers and wrinkled my nose in thought for a few seconds, but then smelled the food in front of me and bent back down to gobble up more fried rice. Bryn, who had been watching me said, "Ali, don't you recognize this song?" I listened intently again while chewing and then it hit me. It was "À la claire fontaine" a French children's song I had learned in my middle school choir in Gr. 6. I immediately got out my phone and texted my best friend Jodi. Every once in awhile, when we're together, we'll remember the song and start singing it. We can remember a good portion of the song and kind of just quickly gloss over the parts we can't quite recall. I didn't hear back from her until about an hour later and then she told me that she could sing the song perfectly, but didn't remember when we'd learned it or for what. So I refreshed her memory. Then she texted back that another of our classmates, Londell, was hanging out at her house in Alberta and she sang it to him, but he had no clue about the song. I laughed at him for his not-so-impeccable memory, but later on I realized something about choir class in Gr. 6 (read this if you care to learn more) and decided that Londell wasn't to blame since he was probably in a different choir section. In any case, I'm really glad that song came on the radio so I had something to text Jodi about. It was great to communicate with her again.
After filling ourselves we stopped in at my grandparents place for a game. We eventually decided on Rummy-O (I believe it's called Rummikub or something like that in the States). It was a very atypical game with Ty and my grandma not being able to play once until the second-last round of the entire game. I've never seen a game of Rummy-O quite like that. In the end Bryn and my grandpa won (my grandpa almost always wins that game), but I would have gone out if it had got around to my turn first. I was ready to either play around game of Rummy-O or to play the second choice, SkipBo, but other people were ready for bed so we said good-bye and left. I could have stayed up all night playing games, but I guess it's better this way. Now I can try to finish "Harriet" so I can try to re-steal that book back from Ty and make some headway in it before he realizes it's missing.
When I went to have a shower this morning I found an intriguing-looking book left on the washroom counter so I stole it from who(m)ever left it there (I assumed it was my brother since we share that washroom) and took it back to my room for further inspection. After said inspection, I realized it was an awesome book and started to read it. Then Tyler came into my room to talk to me, saw that I stole the book my mum had just given him, and took it back. I'll have to stage another book-napping at some point in the next few days, but for now I guess I'll just finish "Harriet the Spy."
Later on, in the afternoon, my mum took us to the mall. She dropped Bryn and Ty off in front of Chapters (the Canadian equivalent to Barnes and Noble, but better because you can actually buy books written by Canadian authors) and then she and I went to some other stores in the area. At one store, we were waiting in line behind a lady who was returning something. The computer was being super slow and the saleslady was very apologetic to the lady returning the item. Finally the transaction went through and the lady in front of us left the store. Then she started ringing up my mum's purchase, but the computer was still being slow. The lady apologized to us saying, "I'm SO sorry the computer's being so slow. I guess it decided to take a little nappy-nap." I thought it was hilarious and immediately whipped out my phone to text the quote to Bryn. (I wanted to include a link here to How I Met Your Mother's "Three Days Rule" episode so you could understand the joke, but apparently nobody except for my siblings and I thought the clip I'm referring to was amusing enough to put up on YouTube. In any case, what I was going to link to was a scene where the main character Ted sends a girl he just met a text. In that text he says, "I just wanted to send you a little texty-text," and then sends it. He realizes how dumb "texty-text" sounds a second after he sends the text, but by then it's too late. And now that that's been over-explained, I'll continue my blog.) Then my mum and I left the store and went back to the mall to look around for half an hour before meeting Bryn and Ty.
Back at home, we hid our presents and voted on a place to eat out as a family. I won the vote and we went to Lake Tai, a vegetarian Taiwanese restaurant. I've been there at least three times, but Bryn and Ty had never been for some odd reason. I guess it does make sense though since the three times I've eaten there were during the year I worked at home when they were both away at Southern/UCA. Anyway, my dad told us each to order a dish and then the five of us shared all the food. It was amazing as usual and I surprised myself by not appreciating the dish I ordered because I thought I remembered liking it before and actually enjoying the curry Ty ordered. The radio was playing quietly in the background and near the end of our meal a song that I almost recognized started playing. I tilted my head toward the speakers and wrinkled my nose in thought for a few seconds, but then smelled the food in front of me and bent back down to gobble up more fried rice. Bryn, who had been watching me said, "Ali, don't you recognize this song?" I listened intently again while chewing and then it hit me. It was "À la claire fontaine" a French children's song I had learned in my middle school choir in Gr. 6. I immediately got out my phone and texted my best friend Jodi. Every once in awhile, when we're together, we'll remember the song and start singing it. We can remember a good portion of the song and kind of just quickly gloss over the parts we can't quite recall. I didn't hear back from her until about an hour later and then she told me that she could sing the song perfectly, but didn't remember when we'd learned it or for what. So I refreshed her memory. Then she texted back that another of our classmates, Londell, was hanging out at her house in Alberta and she sang it to him, but he had no clue about the song. I laughed at him for his not-so-impeccable memory, but later on I realized something about choir class in Gr. 6 (read this if you care to learn more) and decided that Londell wasn't to blame since he was probably in a different choir section. In any case, I'm really glad that song came on the radio so I had something to text Jodi about. It was great to communicate with her again.
After filling ourselves we stopped in at my grandparents place for a game. We eventually decided on Rummy-O (I believe it's called Rummikub or something like that in the States). It was a very atypical game with Ty and my grandma not being able to play once until the second-last round of the entire game. I've never seen a game of Rummy-O quite like that. In the end Bryn and my grandpa won (my grandpa almost always wins that game), but I would have gone out if it had got around to my turn first. I was ready to either play around game of Rummy-O or to play the second choice, SkipBo, but other people were ready for bed so we said good-bye and left. I could have stayed up all night playing games, but I guess it's better this way. Now I can try to finish "Harriet" so I can try to re-steal that book back from Ty and make some headway in it before he realizes it's missing.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Winter boating
One of my life-long dreams came true today. Our family finally went winter boating. It was everything I'd always dreamed that it would be, except colder. I used to ask my dad every winter if we could take our boat out. I love boating in the summer, sitting in the bow with the warm wind whipping my hair everywhere and drops of water splashing onto my face as the boat rises and falls through the waves. So I thought that boating in the winter must be equally as fun, just quite a bit more chilly. My dad would also respond that our boat barely even worked in the summer and for sure wouldn't be able to start up in the wintertime. Plus I always begged to go winter boating on Okanagan Lake, the biggest lake in the valley, instead of on Woods Lake or Kalamalka Lake, the smaller lakes to the north that we usually visit in the summer. My dad's second excuse was that our little boat was too small to handle the waves on Okanagan Lake. So every year I would ask once more, knowing the typical response. But this year was different. At the very end of the summer my dad finally decided to upgrade our brown and cream (whoever thought those colours worked well together), starting-to-fall-apart, motor-almost-not-working (even after having a new one put on), little boat. Truthfully, I was kind of sad to realize that the boat I had spent a part of nearly every summer of my life in wouldn't be part of our boating experiences anymore. But then my dad let me come with him to decide on a new boat and my twinge of nostalgia disappeared quite rapidly. The boat I endorsed became the new member of the family just before Bryn and I left for college. We were going to help break it in the Sunday morning that we left for school, but the people at the place we bought the boat couldn't get it ready in time for us to pick up on Friday afternoon. The owner said he'd try to get people to work on it on Saturday, but my dad didn't want that, so we spent that last day at home with our good old Canaventure.
So when I asked my dad before coming home for Christmas if we could take the new boat out for a spin during our break, he finally consented. I mean there were no more excuses to not go winter boating. The new boat definitely wasn't falling apart, the motor worked fine and it was big enough to handle any wave that Okanagan Lake could send our way. The night we got home, I asked my dad when we could take the boat out and we agreed upon Sunday, as long as the weather stayed warmer than -5 C and there was no rain. Today met those qualifications. Ty helped my dad get the boat out of the garage and hooked up to the truck. Our friend Nik dropped by to see us as they were doing that and my dad invited him to join us. Having nothing else planned for the afternoon, he readily agreed. We all piled in to the vehicles and drove down to a public launch on the lake. Bryn got in the boat and we handed our stuff to her and then she arranged it while Ty and Nik, being guys, got right in there to help my dad launch the boat. Meanwhile I had a good chat with some mallard ducks crazy enough to be swimming around on Dec. 20 while my mum snapped pictures. After my dad parked the truck and trailer we all piled into the boat and set off for our adventure. The first obstacle was navigating out from shore. It was super shallow by this time of the year so my dad had to make sure to keep the motor enough out of the water so that it wouldn't hit on stuff at the bottom of the lake, but enough in the water to actually make us go forward. He managed it without too much difficulty and then we were truly off. We headed south for a place I've always wanted to see up close, Rattlesnake Island. (OK, so Kelowna is pretty much right in the middle of the lake and then it goes north to a town called Vernon and south to a town called Penticton. The island is about halfway between Kelowna and Penticton.) We stayed close to the eastern shore of the lake. I was absolutely amazed by the calmness of the lake. In my entire life I have never seen it so peaceful and glassy smooth like it was today. Near the edges it was a perfect mirror reflecting the mist-covered mountains and evergreen trees. Just a few minutes into our trip we were all really glad to be dressed in our ski gear and covered in blankets. Even though the temperature was rather warm (around 3 C), the speed of the boat created a fierce wind that found every place possible to get inside our toques, jackets, pants, and gloves to freeze us. We quickly rearranged to make sure the wind stayed outside our clothes and blankets. Bryn soon found a cozy place to hide out underneath the bow cover, which my dad had attached as soon as we got into deeper water. It was great to keep the wind at bay. Pretty much the whole entire trip my mum was snapping pictures. Finally we got to the island and my dad steered us around it. Ty and I agreed that we should come back in the summer and camp there. (He also decided that he is probably going to ask his future wife to marry him there. We'll see if that happens.) Then we headed across the lake to drive on the western side back to Kelowna. My dad drove slower as we passed Deep Creek, one of our favourite spots to go for Sabbath lunch picnics in the summer. By then we were all getting pretty chilly and so we skimmed past Peachland pretty fast and soon could see through the fog and mist enough to see the floating bridge. Then we knew we were close to Kelowna again. Before we got all the way back to our launch site we stopped the boat and took some pictures of the group wearing Santa hats. Finally I was colder than I get when I go skiing and we were all ready to be done our adventure so we motored back in to shore. Ty and Nik held the boat away from the pier while Bryn and I unloaded it and my dad got the truck. Then my mum took some more pictures of us before we ran to jump in the toasty warm truck. Bryn and I decided that guys are really nice to let girls go sit in warm trucks while they do all the hard/cold work. Once the boat was back on the trailer we headed home and took super warm showers. Even after I got out of the shower my feet were still a bit cold. I put on my warmest clothes and wrapped in a cozy blanket after giving my dad a big hug to thank him for the awesome, spectacular day that I'll remember for the rest of my life.
So when I asked my dad before coming home for Christmas if we could take the new boat out for a spin during our break, he finally consented. I mean there were no more excuses to not go winter boating. The new boat definitely wasn't falling apart, the motor worked fine and it was big enough to handle any wave that Okanagan Lake could send our way. The night we got home, I asked my dad when we could take the boat out and we agreed upon Sunday, as long as the weather stayed warmer than -5 C and there was no rain. Today met those qualifications. Ty helped my dad get the boat out of the garage and hooked up to the truck. Our friend Nik dropped by to see us as they were doing that and my dad invited him to join us. Having nothing else planned for the afternoon, he readily agreed. We all piled in to the vehicles and drove down to a public launch on the lake. Bryn got in the boat and we handed our stuff to her and then she arranged it while Ty and Nik, being guys, got right in there to help my dad launch the boat. Meanwhile I had a good chat with some mallard ducks crazy enough to be swimming around on Dec. 20 while my mum snapped pictures. After my dad parked the truck and trailer we all piled into the boat and set off for our adventure. The first obstacle was navigating out from shore. It was super shallow by this time of the year so my dad had to make sure to keep the motor enough out of the water so that it wouldn't hit on stuff at the bottom of the lake, but enough in the water to actually make us go forward. He managed it without too much difficulty and then we were truly off. We headed south for a place I've always wanted to see up close, Rattlesnake Island. (OK, so Kelowna is pretty much right in the middle of the lake and then it goes north to a town called Vernon and south to a town called Penticton. The island is about halfway between Kelowna and Penticton.) We stayed close to the eastern shore of the lake. I was absolutely amazed by the calmness of the lake. In my entire life I have never seen it so peaceful and glassy smooth like it was today. Near the edges it was a perfect mirror reflecting the mist-covered mountains and evergreen trees. Just a few minutes into our trip we were all really glad to be dressed in our ski gear and covered in blankets. Even though the temperature was rather warm (around 3 C), the speed of the boat created a fierce wind that found every place possible to get inside our toques, jackets, pants, and gloves to freeze us. We quickly rearranged to make sure the wind stayed outside our clothes and blankets. Bryn soon found a cozy place to hide out underneath the bow cover, which my dad had attached as soon as we got into deeper water. It was great to keep the wind at bay. Pretty much the whole entire trip my mum was snapping pictures. Finally we got to the island and my dad steered us around it. Ty and I agreed that we should come back in the summer and camp there. (He also decided that he is probably going to ask his future wife to marry him there. We'll see if that happens.) Then we headed across the lake to drive on the western side back to Kelowna. My dad drove slower as we passed Deep Creek, one of our favourite spots to go for Sabbath lunch picnics in the summer. By then we were all getting pretty chilly and so we skimmed past Peachland pretty fast and soon could see through the fog and mist enough to see the floating bridge. Then we knew we were close to Kelowna again. Before we got all the way back to our launch site we stopped the boat and took some pictures of the group wearing Santa hats. Finally I was colder than I get when I go skiing and we were all ready to be done our adventure so we motored back in to shore. Ty and Nik held the boat away from the pier while Bryn and I unloaded it and my dad got the truck. Then my mum took some more pictures of us before we ran to jump in the toasty warm truck. Bryn and I decided that guys are really nice to let girls go sit in warm trucks while they do all the hard/cold work. Once the boat was back on the trailer we headed home and took super warm showers. Even after I got out of the shower my feet were still a bit cold. I put on my warmest clothes and wrapped in a cozy blanket after giving my dad a big hug to thank him for the awesome, spectacular day that I'll remember for the rest of my life.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Friends reunite
Today was awesome. First we went to our little church on the hill. It was full, which is something I haven't seen at our church since, well probably last Christmas. For some reason our church has started doing two Christmas programs, one the Sabbath before Christmas and one the Sabbath after. So for this week we weren't involved in the program and just got to sit and watch it. To be perfectly honest, I did a good bunch of people-watching through the almost two-hour program, especially since there were so many visitors and people I didn't recognize. Part of that people-watching was kid-watching. For years our church has been rather devoid of children, but recently we've been having more people with younger children come and it's fun to hear kid sounds and to watch them throughout the service again. One of Bryn's friends, Rachel, was sitting about halfway up the church holding her 14-month-old nephew. He's a really quiet, but very observant baby, so it's always fun to watch him when his parents are in town and come to our church. Anyway, after the service we talked to all the people we haven't seen since August and then went home for a wonderful haystack meal with my family and grandparents. After lunch my mum read more Christmas stories and then she took Bryn, Ty and I to the hospital to visit my great-aunt who got admitted on Wednesday because of asthama/breathing problems. She really, really doesn't want to be in the hospital and apparently kept telling my mum all during her and my grandma's visit yesterday that she just wanted to walk out of the hospital and leave. Today she was a lot calmer and was really happy to see us college students home again. We helped her eat supper and get her comfortable before leaving.
After that we stopped at one of my favourite stores, Art Knapp. It's a plant and florist store with a bunch of lawn and house decorations. That was a really bad description, but unless you go to an Art Knapp store, especially at Christmas time, you can't really understand what it's like. My mum wanted to show us a few things that we could get her for Christmas, but we ended up just wandering through the store looking at all the cool stuff they have. I must be getting old because every time I go into that store I see more and more things that I like. I'm starting to become my mother, ack! After that we went home for a few minutes and then were off again to Julie and Michael's house. We picked up another of Ty's friends, Mark, on the way there and then the them and Michael and another friend, AJ, went to the basement to watch movies. Julie and her parents and Bryn and I played a whole bunch of games and laugh, a lot. It was great to play games again. I didn't do too much of that this semester, but really want to do more of it this coming semester. After we were game-ed out, we found a couple Christmas movies on TV to watch and switched back and forth between them until we decided to watch the less weird one. We were about halfway done that movie when we heard the doorbell ring. Julie's dad went to answer it and as soon as I heard the person outside talk I knew, it was one of my high school classmates, Jonathon. He just got home from Loma Linda yesterday and their family was in town for the day. On Saturday nights here at home our school gym is open and anyone who wants to can go play floor hockey. Jonathon and Stephen and their other brother, Chris who goes to CUC (the Canadian one) were at the school playing hockey and then when they were done they came over to our house which is just around the corner from the school. When my parents said that we were up at Julie's house they came up there to see us. We abandoned the movie and talked with them for awhile. Later on Chris came over too and after more talking, when the boys were done their movies, we decided to make a Tim Horton's run before heading our separate ways. I rode with Jonathon and we had a really great talk, something we haven't had a chance to do for a long time, mostly because he's always in med. school and even during breaks we don't have that much time to see each other. Anyway we all got food and talked some more until finally Jonathon said he had to get to sleep and all the groups of siblings headed back to our respective dwellings. It was awesome to be able to spend so much time with friends we don't get to see all that often. If tonight is any indication, I think this break is going to be pretty great!
After that we stopped at one of my favourite stores, Art Knapp. It's a plant and florist store with a bunch of lawn and house decorations. That was a really bad description, but unless you go to an Art Knapp store, especially at Christmas time, you can't really understand what it's like. My mum wanted to show us a few things that we could get her for Christmas, but we ended up just wandering through the store looking at all the cool stuff they have. I must be getting old because every time I go into that store I see more and more things that I like. I'm starting to become my mother, ack! After that we went home for a few minutes and then were off again to Julie and Michael's house. We picked up another of Ty's friends, Mark, on the way there and then the them and Michael and another friend, AJ, went to the basement to watch movies. Julie and her parents and Bryn and I played a whole bunch of games and laugh, a lot. It was great to play games again. I didn't do too much of that this semester, but really want to do more of it this coming semester. After we were game-ed out, we found a couple Christmas movies on TV to watch and switched back and forth between them until we decided to watch the less weird one. We were about halfway done that movie when we heard the doorbell ring. Julie's dad went to answer it and as soon as I heard the person outside talk I knew, it was one of my high school classmates, Jonathon. He just got home from Loma Linda yesterday and their family was in town for the day. On Saturday nights here at home our school gym is open and anyone who wants to can go play floor hockey. Jonathon and Stephen and their other brother, Chris who goes to CUC (the Canadian one) were at the school playing hockey and then when they were done they came over to our house which is just around the corner from the school. When my parents said that we were up at Julie's house they came up there to see us. We abandoned the movie and talked with them for awhile. Later on Chris came over too and after more talking, when the boys were done their movies, we decided to make a Tim Horton's run before heading our separate ways. I rode with Jonathon and we had a really great talk, something we haven't had a chance to do for a long time, mostly because he's always in med. school and even during breaks we don't have that much time to see each other. Anyway we all got food and talked some more until finally Jonathon said he had to get to sleep and all the groups of siblings headed back to our respective dwellings. It was awesome to be able to spend so much time with friends we don't get to see all that often. If tonight is any indication, I think this break is going to be pretty great!
Friday, December 18, 2009
Thick and thin
Last night we flew into our airport just before 6 p.m. PT. It was awesome be back on Canadian soil. It didn't take too long to get our bags and go through customs since it's a pretty small airport. Our parents were right there waiting for us outside of customs so we hugged them hello. Then we saw another family from our church there to pick up a couple of their kids from work/school so we greeted all of them before heading home. We were all pretty much beat so we just sat around in the living room listening to my mum read Christmas stories and then went to bed.
Today I slept in for the first time in awhile. Then I was rather lazyish all day. In the middle of Friday night worship our doorbell rang. I instinctively knew it was my friend Julie. Turns out my instincts were right. It was Julie and her brother Michael, who is friends with Ty. They came in and more hugs with traded. We finished worship and then Julie and I talked for a good long time, with my parents occasionally wandering back into the living room to join in. At one point in our conversation I told Julie that I loved her hair. It's so nice and thick and manageable, unlike my own thin, always-doing-its-own-thing hair. Then she told me she would give me her hair. I thought that was a great idea until I imagined Julie without hair. I didn't want to take all her hair away from her nor did I want her to have to go through the annoyance of having my hair. Somehow as we discussed the pros and cons of thin and thick hair Julie came to the conclusion that I have thin hair, but a thick head and she has thick hair, but a thin head. I'm not even sure what that means, but it amused us for quite awhile. I'll leave you to come up with your own ideas for that statement. Happy Sabbath!
Update: I came up with a meaning for the thick and thin thing. Julie's right, I have a thick head. Once I have an idea in my head I usually stick with it. It takes a lot of convincing (and a lot of proof from the convincer) to make me change my mind. It also takes me a long time to make new friends, but once I do they are usually friends for life. Julie, on the other hand, has a pretty open mind when it comes to ideas and friends. I'm not saying she can be easily convinced of stuff, but she is more open to others' opinions and view points. She also is super friendly and easily makes new friends wherever she goes. I sometimes wish I was more like her in that aspect. Oh well, I guess that's just one more thing for me to work on.
Today I slept in for the first time in awhile. Then I was rather lazyish all day. In the middle of Friday night worship our doorbell rang. I instinctively knew it was my friend Julie. Turns out my instincts were right. It was Julie and her brother Michael, who is friends with Ty. They came in and more hugs with traded. We finished worship and then Julie and I talked for a good long time, with my parents occasionally wandering back into the living room to join in. At one point in our conversation I told Julie that I loved her hair. It's so nice and thick and manageable, unlike my own thin, always-doing-its-own-thing hair. Then she told me she would give me her hair. I thought that was a great idea until I imagined Julie without hair. I didn't want to take all her hair away from her nor did I want her to have to go through the annoyance of having my hair. Somehow as we discussed the pros and cons of thin and thick hair Julie came to the conclusion that I have thin hair, but a thick head and she has thick hair, but a thin head. I'm not even sure what that means, but it amused us for quite awhile. I'll leave you to come up with your own ideas for that statement. Happy Sabbath!
Update: I came up with a meaning for the thick and thin thing. Julie's right, I have a thick head. Once I have an idea in my head I usually stick with it. It takes a lot of convincing (and a lot of proof from the convincer) to make me change my mind. It also takes me a long time to make new friends, but once I do they are usually friends for life. Julie, on the other hand, has a pretty open mind when it comes to ideas and friends. I'm not saying she can be easily convinced of stuff, but she is more open to others' opinions and view points. She also is super friendly and easily makes new friends wherever she goes. I sometimes wish I was more like her in that aspect. Oh well, I guess that's just one more thing for me to work on.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Gogo Inflight Internet
At this moment I am blogging from the skies. Yes, that's right. I'm trying out Gogo Inflight Internet. So far I'm quite impressed with it. Seeing how I didn't actually get to bed last night, I was planning to sleep through this entire flight from Atlanta to Minneapolis, but the idea of writing a blog post from the air was too enticing an opportunity to pass up. So here I am. Blogging in a plane. (Try singing that to the chorus of "Woke up in a Car." It works quite nicely.)
Anyway, like I said, I didn't go to sleep last night. Instead I spent some pre-break quality time with Jonathan and then spent the last few hours before leaving for the airport packing, doing last-minute cleaning, checking in to our flights online and, subsequently, wrestling with Bryn's printer to print out boarding passes, flight itineraries and directions to the car-park place. It was exciting to get all that done in two hours, but somehow we did it, all while managing to keep our checked luggage to one bag apiece, each less than 50 lbs. Then Bryn and I drove to the dorm to pick up Tyler and Stephen. We let them try to rearrange the bags so that they'd all fit into the trunk, but eventually we had to agree that Ty's bag just wouldn't be able to stay in the trunk. So Bryn and I set it between us on the middle of the back seat. About halfway through the drive south we realized that was a mistake, since we couldn't sleep on each other's shoulders, so I managed to scoot around the suitcase and then shove it to the right side so I could sit in the middle next to Bryn. We were a lot more comfortable and a lot warmer after that.
We got to the car-park place around 5:45 a.m. and took a shuttle to the airport. Since we were already checked in, it was easy for us to check our baggage right where the shuttle dropped us off. Then we just made our way through the very short lines at security and took the train to our terminal. It was definitely the easiest traveling experience I've had at Atlanta airport in my life. Usually Atlanta airport hates me and everything goes wrong when I travel to/from there, but today things were great. The only annoying thing was that it was cold enough that our plane had to be de-iced before we took off, but it didn't take all that long. So that's our travel history from 3:30 a.m. up to now. Hope you enjoyed. I might add more to this post throughout the day. Next stop, Minneapolis!
Update: Now I'm sitting at the far end of the C terminal in Seattle. The rest of the trip to Minneapolis was fine. When we de-boarded there our next gate was right across the hall so we didn't have far to walk at all. Then I tried to find an outlet to plug in my computer and recharge it, but sadly didn't see even one. Meanwhile, Ty had found something odd printed on his boarding pass so went to ask the lady at the gate podium. She said for him to bring all of our boarding passes up there so Ty did and she called some people and did some stuff and got us all new boarding passes. Then just a few minutes later the lady came on the loudspeaker and said that our flight was changing gates. So we packed up and went over to G terminal and settled in there. I found an outlet in a McDonald's and charged up my phone until we boarded about half an hour late. Our new plane was an Airbus 330, which was amazing to travel on. The captain got on the speaker and said that we were lucky because that plane isn't used for domestic flights, only for trans-oceanic flights. It was really nice and comfy and roomy so I was happy about that. And plus, because we were in a bigger plane than we were going to be in, there were extra seats and the seat beside me was empty. So the three of us had all four middle seats to spread out on. Each seat also had a TV screen, like on overseas flights so I spent the last part of the flight watching "The Time Traveler's Wife." It's kind of a weird movie, but it got stopped just before I was done cause we were getting close to Seattle, so I guess I'll have to find it somewhere and finish it.
We got in to Seattle about 12 minutes earlier than we were supposed to originally, which was surprising considering we left Minneapolis half an hour late. We got off at the S terminal, which is the one we always fly in to. Then we had to take the train back to the main terminal and to get our luggage. Once we finally found all three bags we walked all the way to ticketing and then to the very end where Alaska/Horizon is. We tried checking in with the booth things, but they kept saying there were errors so we just went to the desk and it was way faster since there wasn't anyone else in front of us. Then we went through security. It was pretty quick, at least for Seattle, which has some of the most strict security rules of any airport I've been to in North America. After that we were pretty much right around the corner from our gate so we took the time to eat at our favourite pasta place in the world. We all got pesto penne and it was delicious. I finally got my computer working with the new wireless they now have at SEA-TAC and then we headed over to our gate. There were absolutely no plug-ins though so I wandered around the terminal with my almost-dead laptop in hand until I finally found a place at the very end of the terminal that had an outlet that wasn't being used. Yay, my computer is almost all charged up now so I should head back to our gate for boarding. Then just a 50-minute flight and I'll be home. Oh and going through customs, but that doesn't take long at our airport. Talk to you next from BC!
Anyway, like I said, I didn't go to sleep last night. Instead I spent some pre-break quality time with Jonathan and then spent the last few hours before leaving for the airport packing, doing last-minute cleaning, checking in to our flights online and, subsequently, wrestling with Bryn's printer to print out boarding passes, flight itineraries and directions to the car-park place. It was exciting to get all that done in two hours, but somehow we did it, all while managing to keep our checked luggage to one bag apiece, each less than 50 lbs. Then Bryn and I drove to the dorm to pick up Tyler and Stephen. We let them try to rearrange the bags so that they'd all fit into the trunk, but eventually we had to agree that Ty's bag just wouldn't be able to stay in the trunk. So Bryn and I set it between us on the middle of the back seat. About halfway through the drive south we realized that was a mistake, since we couldn't sleep on each other's shoulders, so I managed to scoot around the suitcase and then shove it to the right side so I could sit in the middle next to Bryn. We were a lot more comfortable and a lot warmer after that.
We got to the car-park place around 5:45 a.m. and took a shuttle to the airport. Since we were already checked in, it was easy for us to check our baggage right where the shuttle dropped us off. Then we just made our way through the very short lines at security and took the train to our terminal. It was definitely the easiest traveling experience I've had at Atlanta airport in my life. Usually Atlanta airport hates me and everything goes wrong when I travel to/from there, but today things were great. The only annoying thing was that it was cold enough that our plane had to be de-iced before we took off, but it didn't take all that long. So that's our travel history from 3:30 a.m. up to now. Hope you enjoyed. I might add more to this post throughout the day. Next stop, Minneapolis!
Update: Now I'm sitting at the far end of the C terminal in Seattle. The rest of the trip to Minneapolis was fine. When we de-boarded there our next gate was right across the hall so we didn't have far to walk at all. Then I tried to find an outlet to plug in my computer and recharge it, but sadly didn't see even one. Meanwhile, Ty had found something odd printed on his boarding pass so went to ask the lady at the gate podium. She said for him to bring all of our boarding passes up there so Ty did and she called some people and did some stuff and got us all new boarding passes. Then just a few minutes later the lady came on the loudspeaker and said that our flight was changing gates. So we packed up and went over to G terminal and settled in there. I found an outlet in a McDonald's and charged up my phone until we boarded about half an hour late. Our new plane was an Airbus 330, which was amazing to travel on. The captain got on the speaker and said that we were lucky because that plane isn't used for domestic flights, only for trans-oceanic flights. It was really nice and comfy and roomy so I was happy about that. And plus, because we were in a bigger plane than we were going to be in, there were extra seats and the seat beside me was empty. So the three of us had all four middle seats to spread out on. Each seat also had a TV screen, like on overseas flights so I spent the last part of the flight watching "The Time Traveler's Wife." It's kind of a weird movie, but it got stopped just before I was done cause we were getting close to Seattle, so I guess I'll have to find it somewhere and finish it.
We got in to Seattle about 12 minutes earlier than we were supposed to originally, which was surprising considering we left Minneapolis half an hour late. We got off at the S terminal, which is the one we always fly in to. Then we had to take the train back to the main terminal and to get our luggage. Once we finally found all three bags we walked all the way to ticketing and then to the very end where Alaska/Horizon is. We tried checking in with the booth things, but they kept saying there were errors so we just went to the desk and it was way faster since there wasn't anyone else in front of us. Then we went through security. It was pretty quick, at least for Seattle, which has some of the most strict security rules of any airport I've been to in North America. After that we were pretty much right around the corner from our gate so we took the time to eat at our favourite pasta place in the world. We all got pesto penne and it was delicious. I finally got my computer working with the new wireless they now have at SEA-TAC and then we headed over to our gate. There were absolutely no plug-ins though so I wandered around the terminal with my almost-dead laptop in hand until I finally found a place at the very end of the terminal that had an outlet that wasn't being used. Yay, my computer is almost all charged up now so I should head back to our gate for boarding. Then just a 50-minute flight and I'll be home. Oh and going through customs, but that doesn't take long at our airport. Talk to you next from BC!
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Done everything
I'm done. I got done at 1:30 p.m. and went straight to a congratulations party for some of my friends who are graduating from the nursing program. I managed to get there before the end so that was great. Then I went home to get some last minute stuff done. When my sister got home from work we went to the mall again to buy a few more things before heading home. Then we went to grad, said goodbye to Danielle, who was working in Talge East until midnight. We gave her Set Cubed and I'm pretty sure she screamed and schreeched about it for a minute straight so I was glad that made her so happy. She said it made her night, which was nice to hear. Then I went back home to watch a movie and then pack. Wow, what a day
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Nursing pinning
I went to the nursing pinning tonight. It was the first time I've been to one. It wasn't the most interesting thing I've ever sat through, but I knew several people being pinned, so I went. Watching the play, which my friend Tim starred in as Jesus, was interesting though. After the pinning I went to the mall with Bryn and Jonathan. It was a quick trip (thankfully!) just to help Bryn find a Christmas present for her boss. We stopped in a Barnes and Noble (and I managed not to buy anything), a game store and Hallmark. Then I made everyone go to the pet store to watch the puppies. It always makes me so sad to see them in those tiny cages. There was a tiny, adorable puppy that looked a bit like my dog when she was small. It was chewing on its lock. I also took some time to pet the rabbits, something I haven't done for awhile. Then Jonathan said, "Hey, look! It's a hamster." I asked where and he pointed to an animal just coming out from under a tunnel thing. It was definitely not a hamster, but a guinea pig. That made me laugh for awhile. Jonathan just said, "how am I supposed to know what a hamster looks like? I've never seen one in my life before." I find that both super amusing and incredibly hard to believe.
Now I'm drained and don't want to write more. So I'm watching "Julie and Julia" with my sister. I have to say that Amy Adams (the actress who plays Julie Powell) has an adorable haircut. I kind of want to get my hair cut like it now. I always do this. Wait until my hair is almost long enough to look normal and then all of a sudden want to cut it really short again. I think I'll try to suppress my hair-cutting wishes, at least for now.
Now I'm drained and don't want to write more. So I'm watching "Julie and Julia" with my sister. I have to say that Amy Adams (the actress who plays Julie Powell) has an adorable haircut. I kind of want to get my hair cut like it now. I always do this. Wait until my hair is almost long enough to look normal and then all of a sudden want to cut it really short again. I think I'll try to suppress my hair-cutting wishes, at least for now.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Meteor shower
Last night I was supposed to watch the most amazing meteor shower since 1996. Instead I stared up at a overcast sky lit by a gas station down a hill to the north and apartment houses across a cemetery to the south. Not one single falling star did I see. Oh well. Instead of star-gazing I ate a whole bunch of good food (although I'm not really sure how nachos, fudge, cheesecake and bottles of IBC cream soda's really go together to make a nutritious meal), and hung out with interesting friends. Some of these interesting friends decided to try and do a star dance to ward off the evil clouds blocking our view of the meteor shower. It didn't work, but it was amusing to watch. Later on, when we were about to leave, my brother discovered that his car key had fallen out of his pocket at some point after getting to the star-viewing location. So some people used the flashlights we had along while the rest of us tried searching with the light from our cell phones. Those of us with only cell phones realized how unbright cell phone lights are. Eventually Ty's friend Nathan found the key in the parking lot and we all bid each other good night and good luck on exams. Although this event wasn't quite as epic as the last meteor shower I witnessed, it was a memory that I'll look back on fondly. I mean who wouldn't remember cooled off nachos sprinkled with mist?
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Final Web site
My brain is finished with Web design class, but before I can truly be done the class I have to finish my final project. It's a Web site for my dad's cabinet company (here's his current site if you're curious) and I was really excited to work on it when we first started our final projects, but now I just want to be done. I've learned a ton of stuff in Web design class, most of it very useful. My head is filled with html and css, not to mention all the intricacies of designing in Photoshop and turning that design into slices to import into tables in Dreamweaver and code to look like an actual Web site. When I look at my project, I like the Home page and I really like the Contact page (I've found I'm a sucker for forms. Any page with a good form on it will probably be my favourite page of a Web site.), but I'm rather disappointed with my About and Products pages. I just don't know how to make them any different than my home page, but still look good. So as of right now my About page looks remarkably similar to my Home page and my Products page is still relatively blank. The last page, the Design Consultants one, is coming along nicely. Now if I can just get the rest of the info for that page from the salespeople at my dad's company it'll turn out good. Anyway, that's about where I'm at with my project as of right now. I have no more will power to stay at the lab any longer tonight so I'm leaving now, an hour before the lab actually closes. I'll come back in tomorrow night when the lab opens at 6 after all the exams for the day are finished to try to get everything sorted out and in order. After the four hours I'll probably spend there tomorrow, I'll have two hours to put the finishing touches on my site on Tuesday afternoon from 12-2 so whatever I can't get done tomorrow night will have to be done then or else not at all. I can't wait until after 7 p.m. Tuesday night when I'll be done with this project and with Web design class.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Christmas concert
Today we had our last orchestra concert of 2009. We did the School of Music Christmas concert for vespers last night for the students and then this afternoon we did the exact same concert for the community members. I was relieved that our concert this year wasn't anything like oratorios or anything like the concerts we've done for other years. I don't enjoy them nearly as much and they take a lot more work to bring together and sound good. This year choir took the brunt of the work load and orchestra only had to play a few songs, which I liked since we got out of rehearsals a lot earlier and even got to miss a few rehearsals. While actually performing the concerts though I realized that the only downfall of not playing a full work was that it was actually not that interesting to be involved in. For most of the concert we just sat up on stage listening to all the other groups play/sing. Oh well. There were some interesting parts. One was last night between the final two songs. Just as we finished the second last song Dr. Kibble, who was sitting behind the first violins, did a shouting whisper of, "Mrs. Minner, Mrs. Minner, Laurie! Can you get her attention?" We tried to pass the message up through the ranks of violinists but, before we could, the narrator started reading. Mrs. Minner's head shot sideways in surprise since she was gearing up to start our final piece. Dr. Kibble whispered, "It's OK, just wait," and, although Mrs. Minner looked rather startled and confused, she went along with the new plan and waited until the narrator was done reading before starting the last song. There had been just enough time for all the people on stage who needed to move either off the stage or to another location on stage. Anyway it all worked out in the end and the concert came off without a hitch. The concert today went smoothly as well and now we're done until next semester. Yay!
After the concert Bryn, Ty and I found my older brother Mark and his family and talked to them for a few minutes before they took us out to eat at Lupi's. It was nice to see them again and hang out as a family. And the pizza was great, too! Now we have a few people over to our apartment to make and eat cookies and other dessert-type foods and drink hot chocolate as we listen to Christmas music and watch a movie a little later on. I love this time of year!
After the concert Bryn, Ty and I found my older brother Mark and his family and talked to them for a few minutes before they took us out to eat at Lupi's. It was nice to see them again and hang out as a family. And the pizza was great, too! Now we have a few people over to our apartment to make and eat cookies and other dessert-type foods and drink hot chocolate as we listen to Christmas music and watch a movie a little later on. I love this time of year!
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