People leave

I can't decide what to do with this blog now that I'm not required to write on it for Creative Writing or Adv. C.W classes.  I have so many blogs already, I don't really know if I should keep this one up or go back to using my original one.  I think I'll keep using this one, at least to record my trip home and then I'll re-evaluate.

Well, it's the day after grad.  People are leaving.  Actually, Julie already left.  She took off yesterday during grad because she had to get back to her PT clinical in Michigan.  Luckily, she got away before all the rain and craziness in Nashville, although she did have to drive through about four hours of really, really heavy rain later on in her trip, but I got a text later on last night saying she had gotten back safely, so that's good.

My uncle left early this morning to go visit his cousin in Oklahoma so we said good-bye to him last night.  And my grandparents flew out of Chattanooga this morning too back home.  We said good-bye to them last night too, but we'll be seeing them when we get back to BC.

Around 11 a.m., I drove Jodi to Groome Transportation so she could catch the shuttle to Atlanta to get her flight back to Alberta so now she's gone too and then, several hours later, Bryn drove Cherry to the airport to fly home to BC.  So now it's just my immediate family still here.

I worked a bit on grading more newsletters today and also started working on packing in earnest now.  We're going to try to leave sometime (my dad says early, but I know it won't be until at least afternoon) tomorrow.

Jonathan and I went to a wedding tonight.  Adrienne, the copyeditor for the Accent, got married in the UTC chapel and I was invited and could bring a guest.  I wore the same dress as I did on Sabbath at church, but I doubt anyone except for my family and Jonathan knew.  It was a nice wedding, but there was a little ways to walk from the parking lot to the chapel and then back again.  And then Jonathan and I got lost trying to find the reception place.  We saw another car trying to find the place too.  Finally, we just ignored the directions on the program and used Jonathan's phone to find the right place.  Ahhh, how nice to have technology when we need it.  About halfway through the reception, I got really tired and I also started to worry about the newsletters I still had to grade, so we left and went back to my apartment where I graded for a couple hours.

I've actually made a significant dent in them now, so hopefully I can get the last few done tomorrow morning.  I think Ms. Chamberlain needs to get them soon and look over them herself to get the grades in on time so I have to do that first thing.  But now I'm dead and so I'm going to bed.  I can grade more tomorrow.

Graduation Day

And I'm graduated!!!  Let me tell you, it feels great to FINALLY be done.  And I should know.  I graduated from high school a little more than seven years ago, which is a long time since I'm sure that the majority of the university graduates sitting up front next to me today graduated from high school about four or five years ago.  But I did other stuff, like SMing and working and changing my major four times.  So what I'm basically trying to say is that it really feels awesome to be done this next step in my life.  I'm sure you all know how grads go so I won't get into the whole ceremony.  I'll just say a couple things:  (a) I had to get a picture taken by an American flag.  I asked the camera person, "What if I'm not American?" but got no answer other than a shrug and a nervous laugh.  (b) Commencement address was terribly boring, in my non-financially-oriented brain.  Maybe some people liked it, but I sure wasn't interested.  I used that time to text Jonathan, who was sitting several rows in front of me.  (c) Class gift at the end?  Strange.  The whole talk about it being almost as long as the address was super annoying to me.  I really don't care much for or against the gift, but I felt a whole lot more against it after that whole rigmarole than before it.  Yeah, it's a picture.  People will look at it.  But what can anyone really do with it?  I'd rather have gotten another gazebo thing for people to swing in or eat food in or hang out in or something else like that that people could actually use.  But a picture is fine.  Just don't make me sit in my chair an extra 20 minutes telling me stuff I already heard over an e-mail, on a voice mail, and at grad practice.  (d) The idea of having people gather at their major signs in the hallway after grad made sense, but it didn't turn out to be very practical.  There are just too many people attending grad for that kind of thing to be very feasible.  Oh well, I guess they'll probably do something different for next year.

So after grad, a bunch of graduates and our families and friends met at student park for a haystack, potluck meal.  It was great, especially since my family made sure to bring pickles.  Americans seriously don't know what they're missing out by not having pickles on their haystacks.  Then we had a bunch of pictures taken of the grads with a big cake and then people ate the cake, but I opted not to since I am still caked out from all the cakes I've eaten earlier in the semester.

After the meal and hanging out and visiting, people started leaving and then mine and Jonathan's and Danielle's families moved by the Southern sign and got some pictures and then we left to go back downtown to the aquarium.  I've been there tons, but it was fun showing it to the family and friends who had never been there yet.  I especially love watching the sharks and spent a good portion of time sitting in front of that tank.  Oh and also the crocodiles and turtles.  When we were done at the aquarium, it was pouring rain so my parents ran to get the vehicles and drove them as close as they could.  We all piled in and then went to Panera's to get food to go and then we all came back to our apartment to eat it.  Ahhh, a good fulfilling day.  Oh, and busy!

Picnic & exploring

Today I had to get up early.  Earlier than I have in quite awhile in order to have a shower and get downtown for Sabbath School and church in time.  I made it and I enjoyed both very much.  After church, our whole group drove to Chesterfrost Park in Hixson where my brother Mark and my sister-in-law Terrie put on a wonderful picnic meal for Bryn and me.  Veggie meatballs, potato salad, assorted raw vegetables and then a triffle and cookies for dessert.  I ate so much I thought I would pop.  My mum's cousin, Alan, and his granddaughter, Brianna, drove up from Dalton, Ga. and it was really neat to meet them.  I've seen pictures and read e-mails, but had never met them in person before, even though we were so close to them for three years.

Before lunch was fully ready some of us played a game that Mark and Terrie had brought along for their kids, Tucker and Coral.  There were two ladder sort of things set up across from each other separated by several meters and each person got three balls (which were each really two balls connected with a string) to throw and see if you could land on certain rungs.  Each rung higher was more points.  It was kind of hard at first, but soon enough us older people got the hang of it and it was fun.

After playing that and then eating and visiting and playing the game again some more, Bryn and I and Jodi, Julie and Cherry decided to go explore Lookout Mountain.  Other people wanted to leave and go rest for a bit so we took off all squished into one car and found Point Park.  We were disappointed at first because we thought you had to pay to get in when we saw the turnstiles, but then we realized there were no people taking money and all the gates were open, so we just went in and really enjoyed ourselves as we walked around.  We took a bunch of fun pictures and just had a great time hanging out together.  Then we realized it was getting late so we quickly drove by Rock City and then down the other side of the mountain and back to Collegedale to change into warmer clothes.

Soon after, we left for Cleveland where my parents had their fifth-wheel parked and joined our family and Jonathan's family for a worship and then meal of hot dogs and other fire-roasted-type foods.  It was delicious and again I ate too much, especially when the marshmallows were opened!  And then we all left and now I'm about ready to fall into my bed, smoky smelling and all.  Wow, what a busy day.

Everyone arriving

Last night my dad took us (and the friends and family who had already arrived) out to supper at P.F. Chang's.  Right before we were seated, Cherry called and said she was almost at Groome Transporation, so my dad, Bryn and Josh left to go pick her up.  We waited to order until they got back and then we all ate really good Asian food and had tons of leftovers to send back to Ty who didn't come because he was on duty in the dorm.

This morning Cherry took my car and left early (like the kind of early that is so early humans shouldn't even be awake yet) and drove to Atlanta to pick up another friend Jodi who flew in there.  I spent the late morning and early afternoon sitting on the porch at Jonathan's apartment trying to get some grading done of the Pub. Editing final newsletter projects, while his family worked at packing up his stuff.  I tried to keep in touch with my dad and also with my mum who was supposed to be flying into Chattanooga at 4 p.m.  Unfortunately, the person who was pushing the wheelchair for my grandma (who was traveling out with my mum) walked too slowly and they missed their flight from Atlanta to Chattanooga.  My mum, apparently, was really angry with all the people involved in the situation and because of her persistence to have them remedy the situation, they got them onto the next flight into town and bumped some of the airline workers who were trying to get free flights.

Once we knew their new arrival time, my dad, my uncle and I went to the airport to pick them up.  After waiting and waiting for the luggage to come, the carousel stopped and we didn't see the luggage anywhere, so my mum went to investigate and found out it had come on that earlier flight that they had missed.  So it all turned out alright.  We brought my grandma to the hotel where she was reunited with my grandpa and she left her stuff there and then we all went out to Cracker Barrel.  Cherry and Jodi, who had just gotten back from Atlanta, met us there with Bryn, Ty and my cousin Breanna.  After supper, they all came back to our apartment to hang out and talk for a bit before everyone headed out to their respective sleeping places.  And now Bryn and I are about to leave to take Jodi and Cherry and Jodi's auntie's place where they are staying for the weekend.

Finally finished

And now, here comes the whirlwind effort to catch up on exactly three weeks of inactivity on this blog.  Bear with me please.  I'll do my best to zip through the days and get you all caught up on what's been going on with me.  Going back in time, now:

I'm done, really done.  I just finished my Adv. Creative Writing final.  I was kind of worried, after our last class period on Thursday, that this exam would be harder than I thought, but it was actually a lot of fun.  Tons of writing though, but hey, I'm a writer so it wasn't bad.  And now all I have to do is visit with family and friends who have already started arriving here for grad, participate in all the graduation events, and pack up my apartment.  Should be fun.

My dad, grandpa and one of my uncles got here this morning.  They left my hometown last Friday, stopped by WWU for Alumni Weekend, and then drove the rest of the way to TN.  My dad called me earlier while I was holed up in the abandoned Accent office marking/helping to edit an Adv. Reporting student's final project/studying.  I gave Dad directions and the three travelers came up to the office to say hi and visit for a few minutes.  They didn't stay long since they wanted to pick up the fifth-wheel that my parents left in TN last fall and move it to the KOA they'll stay at during grad weekend before it got too dark.  And now, in a few hours, one of mine and Bryn's friends, Cherry, will arrive here too so I guess I'd better start cleaning this place up a bit for having company.

SM screening

Apparently I have become so used to giving interviews that I can anticipate upcoming questions when I'm the one being interviewed.  I had my SM screening today with Andrew Dormus, the assistant chaplain.  First I commented on his large Canadian flag hanging in his office and he told me that he had just put it up and then said that he was born in Canada, but hasn't really been back since he was 12.  Then we got into the screening.  Most of it was stuff that was on the application, and I remembered many of my answers from that, so it worked out well.  And then I talked so much for some questions that I happened to answer the next question or two within my answer for the first one.  "Wow, you're just knocking these down in record time," Andrew said.  After the last question he told me that it was the fastest SM screening he has done so far.  So I guess doing all those interviews for Accent articles this past year has helped my being-interviewed skills as well.  I'm not sure if that's a skill I'll need to have in my lifetime, but I guess it can't hurt.

Later I met my parents who just arrived this afternoon for Bryn's senior violin recital tomorrow.  The three of us took a quick trip to Soddy Daisy to visit my sister-in-law and niece and nephew.  Then we drove back and now I'm quite ready for some sleep.  Yes, I did stay awake all night to write my research paper and I think I'm writing-ed out for this semester, which is too bad because I have 10 more pages to write for Literary Journalism and I have to finish my Adv. Creative Writing story, too.  Somehow I'll make it through.  I hope.

Oldest

It's hard being the oldest sibling. I know from nearly 22 years of experience. Oldests have to be the responsible ones who get up first for the shower in the morning and then wake up the rest of the troops once they're done. They have to remember to take lunches to school (and remind the younger ones), make sure the school bus waits while the slower ones struggle to the bus stop through snow drifts, get the younger ones ready for bed if the parents are busy or dealing with another child. They have to edit their siblings' English papers and try to help them with math problems that they can't even remember how to do because they did those problems three, four, five years earlier. Oldests have to set examples in orderliness, character, and creativity. But the benefit of being the oldest sibling is that you got x amount of years alone with your parents before the others came on the scene. Unfortunately for most of us, those years happen when we aren't really aware of the alone time with our parents before it's over.

Similar siblings

You know you're siblings if:

-you regularly finish each other's sentences.
-you enjoy/hate the same types of music and have many of the same tracks on your iPods/MP3 players.
-you go on a trip together and find, upon arrival, that you all have the exact same toothbrush, just in different colours.

Babysitting little Q's

Screams met us as Terrie opened the door and let us inside the house. Tucker and Coral bounced around the living, jumping and dancing with joy at an afternoon and evening with Auntie Ali and Auntie Bryn. First we were introduced to the newest member of their family, Maggie, a brown German Shepherd, some-kind-of-terrier cross who Mark said was probably the friendliest dog on the planet. I quietly made a correction in my mind; that dog was Pepper. In any case Maggie proved to be constantly under foot, literally. We'd try to take a step and there was Maggie, flopped on the grass for a tummy rub or licking the feet of the closest person to her.

For awhile we played outside on Tucker and Coral's new Big Toy (what we call the playground set in their backyard) and then Bryn started a soccer game with Tuck. A bit later I joined in and even Coral played for a few minutes before dragging me off to help her finish making her "bird house" (sticks and twigs she had stuck onto the branches of a small tree near the house). Then she found "tiny rocks" (bits of the shingles from the roof) beneath the drain pipe. She sprinkled handfuls of them below the tree and then wanted to have a place to put the extras so I built her several "rock pits," small holes dug into the ground at the base of the bird-house tree. We spent a long time transferring rocks until finally Maggie came over to investigate and broke Coral's spell with the rocks.

Coral loves Maggie. Before Mark and Terrie left on their date Terrie told us that she occasionally crawls into the Dog-loo to be with Maggie. Coral and I took turns "tackling" Maggie and rubbing her belly after she obligingly dropped to the ground. Finally we let the dog be and headed inside where the soccer players had gone several minutes earlier. Inside I got my dominoes out and I built domino lines for Coral to knock over. Tucker, who had been reading his comic books (ones he himself had written) to Auntie Bryn, came over to investigate after the first knock-down and tried his hand at the line-building too for a bit.

Later on Coral and I played Hide-the-Dominoes with three dominoes from the set. According to Coral I wasn't allowed to have any clues or hints when it was my turn to find the dominoes, but I was supposed to give her lots of hots and colds when she was looking. Tuck joined in for a round and then I put the dominoes away so we could play Scrabble Slam. Tucker got the game really quick and had fun playing it while Coral tried to mess it up for us since she didn't want to play, but didn't want us to either. I worked through that controversy and then we put the game away and Bryn warmed up the pizzas for supper.

We played more games after supper until it was time for the kids to put on pj's and have Quiet Time. We read a bunch of books in half an hour and then put the kids to sleep. After the customary "I have to go to the bathroom once more" delays, they were finally in bed and then out came the laptops and textbooks as we half studied and half watched the Olympics on TV until Mark and Terrie got home.

Even though I'm super tired now, I have to run to Walmart to buy ingredients for my demonstration speech tomorrow. I was going to try and do something cool (how to write news stories), but the demonstration part of that idea proved to be too time consuming so I'm just going to fall back on the traditional how-to-make-a-certain-type-of-food speech. I'm going to make up a batch of Midnight Bars tonight so that I can bring in the final product and let my classmates taste them and then I'll measure out another set of ingredients into containers so I can whip up another batch during my speech tomorrow. It might be a long night but I wouldn't had traded the good memories I made with my niece and nephew today for anything.

New sibling

She walked into her parents bedroom, bounced onto the queen bed, and cuddled into the comforter with her younger siblings, waiting for her parents to speak. "What would you think about having another sister or brother?" they asked. She didn't need more than a second to think about it. "Really? We're going to get one? When?" questions sprang from her lips. "We're not quite sure yet," they responded, "And it might be twins. We'll know soon." She thought about another child in the family for the next couple weeks. A little sister, a little brother, twin look-alikes, twin not-look-alikes. Her parents left the children at her aunt and uncle's house often while they went off to appointments. She played with her cousins, always knowing--in that secret only-I-know place in her mind--that soon her life would change. Her parents brought back pictures and gave explanations. Names popped from everyone's mouths like the bubbles she blew with her Hubba Bubba gum. A wave of excitement crashed through the house when her parents announced it would be a boy. But only just the one, no twins. There was a name. Jeffrey. The upstairs saw a frenzy of moving. She moved out of her bedroom with the window overlooking the backyard, the Big Toy, and the alley behind it. Her brother moved in. It was bigger, better for two boys. Her sister moved to her brother's old room. She moved into her sister's room. That window looked out onto the red shale planter bordering the driveway that led to the road. New items appeared around the house. Flannel towels, soft as bunnies fur, stacked in the washroom closet. Blankets and sheets and comforters covering a second bed in her brother's new room. New shoes lined up on the closet floor. Toys placed in strategic piles around the room. She sometimes found her brother playing with the toys. She showed him his own toys. Legos, toy trains, Cool Tools, matchbox cars. But he liked the new ones too. She went shopping with her mum for new clothes. Bright, colourful clothes, too small for her to fit into. She helped fold them neatly and place them in the drawers of the new dresser that somehow squeezed into the bedroom. And then it was time. She traveled to meet him for the first time. She never thought he would like her best. Maybe her brother because they were both boys. Maybe her sister because they were only four months apart in age. Not her, the older sister. But he did like her. Better than the other two. While they raced from jungle gym to slide to teeter-tooter he stayed right by her side. Her new soon-to-be-officially-adopted brother. Jeff.

Rox and Todd

Driving to Lupi's on East Brainerd today was amazing. I rolled my window down a bit on the drive and it felt wonderful. Bryn, Ty, Jonathan and I met my sister-in-law Terrie and her kids, Tucker and Coral, as well as my sister Roxanne and her husband Todd at the restaurant. Rox and Todd had just drove up to Tennessee from Florida last night and wanted to see us at some point during the weekend. My brother Mark was going to try and come for lunch too, but he couldn't manage to get away from work. Even though Mark couldn't be there, we had a good time. I haven't seen Rox and Todd in nearly three years since Feb. 2007 when my dad and I flew down to Florida for a few days after being at a weekend church-growth seminar thing in Tulsa, OK. That was the first time I had met Todd (they got married while we were still in school and only our parents got to make the trip for the occasion). Dad, Rox, Todd and I had a great few days of doing Florida stuff, including boating to an island (and getting caught in a lightning storm on the way back), playing hours worth of Dead Kenny Uno* (definitely more intense than regular Uno), and going to a Tampa Bay Lightning game when Wayne Gretzky brought his Phoenix Coyotes into town. (Tampa won, much to Roxanne's chargrin - she was in love with Gretzky back when he played for the Edmonton Oilers when she was in high school, just like about a billion other Canadian teenage girls.) Anyway, my point is that it's been awhile since I've seen them. Bryn and Ty had actually never met Todd until today so it was nice that they finally got to talk to him a bit. Tucker, Jonathan and I had a fun time playing The Dot Game while we waited for our pizzas, but I made too many dots so we didn't actually finish before our food came. Bryn and Coral played their own game and made much fewer dots so they were done in plenty of time. So basically what I wanted to say in this post is that the company was good, and the pizza was delicious! I love Lupi's with family on a unseasonably warm Friday afternoon in January. Especially when I can drive there with my sun roof open!

*Oops, I guess it's really called South Park Uno. Oh well, here's the extra rule (taken from the ever credible Wikipedia's Uno card game entry). - The special card is called "Dead Kenny". When you play this card, you decide which player will share Kenny's bad luck. You may choose any player's hand to "kill" by having that player draw cards from the DRAW pile. The chosen player must keep drawing cards until he/she draws any card with Kenny on it.

Back at school

This morning our alarms (all three of us set our cell phone alarms and then we got a wake-up call from the hotel as well) went off within five minutes of each other around 4 a.m. We finally got ourselves up and ready to head to the airport. While Bryn and Ty took showers I went downstairs to the hotel lobby to check-in all three of us online and print out boarding passes. It was nice there was a computer all set up to do that. Then we did a last minute sweep of our room before carting all of our bags/backpacks down to the lobby to catch our shuttle. Then we were on our way. The shuttle dropped us off close to our airline and then we had to take the elevator up to the skywalk and then take another one up to the ticketing level. Then we got in the line to just drop our bags off. I was really glad I had checked-in online earlier because it was a lot faster that way. We got through security without too much trouble. Then we left Bryn guarding all of our carry-ons while Ty and I walked to the food court area and ordered some more of that delicious pesto penne that we always get when we come through SEA-TAC. We brought the food back to where Bryn was sitting and ate as much as we could right there. Then we packed up the extras for the next time we would be hungry and took the train to the S terminal, found our gate and hung out until our flight boarded. We got more comments about all our instruments as we boarded the plane. Bryn and I sat together in the middle and aisle seats and Ty sat in the middle seat of the row behind us. I slept almost the entire flight. I did try to read more of my book, but I only got about 10 pages before I had to put it back down and continue sleeping. I'm SOO glad we had a nonstop flight straight from Seattle to Atlanta. I've never had that flight before, but it's sure nice. Connections just make air travel take a whole lot longer than it should. We got to Atlanta at 2:30 p.m., half an hour earlier than scheduled so that was nice. It didn't take too long to get our bags, but then we had a little difficulty finding where to get our shuttle to the car parking place. Finally Ty went back in the baggage claim area and found a sign so we followed him and made it back to our car fine. Then we had to load up the car, put our destination in our GPS and start the last part of the journey back to school. We got here just after 6 p.m.

After dropping Ty off at the dorm, Bryn and I went to the music building to put our violins away. Well, I put my violin away and Bryn met Emily, a current SM who was back for Christmas and wanted to use a violin for the evening before she had to fly back to Ukraine. Bryn let Emily use her violin and then we headed back to our place. Jonathan called just as we were leaving campus and wanted to come over and hang out so soon after we got to our apartment he came over. It was great to see him again. Then I had a shower and just when I finished Jonathan's grandma called and said they wanted us to come over for supper so we went over there and I met his aunt, uncle and little cousins. We stayed there visiting for a bit and then I came back here to write this before having to head out to pick up Stephen at Groome Transportation. He gets there around 1 a.m. so I'm really happy we don't have school tomorrow!

International flight

This morning I awoke to my mother shouting through my doorway, "Ali, come watch! Quick! Come now!" (I know that seems like a lot of exclamation marks, but that's how she said it.) I turned over and tried to ignore her, but then, when I couldn't get back to sleep, I thought I might as well go see what the fuss was about. Turns out she had found out how to stream GYC online and wanted me to watch it with her. So I found a blanket and sat there watching Mark Finley speak for church service at GYC in my pajamas. It was a rather nice way to start the Sabbath, actually. After the service was over my dad and Ty had already left for church and so my mum and I showered, got ready for the day, and then drove down to the hospital to have a little church service out our own with Auntie Beth. She hates being in the hospital so much and especially can't stand it on Sabbath when she knows everyone else is in church but she is still stuck in the hospital. We had a nice time with her and she really enjoyed it I think. Then we went home and I finished my packing and then helped my mum get raclette toppings ready for lunch while listening to the GYC music concert streaming online. The rest of our family and my grandparents came over when church was done and we had an awesome meal. It was even better than the first Q. raclette-making with the addition of several new toppings. My grandparents were a little astounded at the whole process at first, I think, but they both said they really liked the meal. Then we ate my grandma's apple crisp and some ice cream for dessert. I was stuffed. We said good-bye to my grandparents until graduation in April/May and then finalized our packing. I snuck in several more minutes of GYC-watching with my mum throughout the last few hours at home.

We said good-bye to my mum at home and then my dad took us to the airport. We got there pretty much exactly two hours before our flight was scheduled to leave. When we walked in the doors I saw a huge long line up stretching from the Horizon Airlines ticketing counter down the hallway almost all the way to baggage claim. (I will admit that our airport is pretty small so it wasn't the same distance as if that line had been in say SEA-TAC airport or something.) We got in line and a few minutes later a guy from Horizon came by to talk to us about what we were and weren't allowed onto the international flight down to Seattle now that there are new emergency security measures enacted for international flights into the U.S. He confirmed that we were allowed to bring musical instruments with us as carry-ons, but told us that the only way we could bring our laptops with us on the plane would be to hold them without any case or covering or anything at all other than just the laptop, not even our power cords. Finally we made it up to the ticket counter and got all our bags checked. We could check our backpacks for free since we weren't allowed to take them onto the plane, so that was nice, but I was still kind of worried about the stuff in my backpack getting wrecked and ruined by the baggage handlers. By the time we got to ticketing our flight had been delayed 15 minutes because the incoming flight from Seattle was late. Once we had our boarding passes, we walked down to security and then said bye to my dad. He told us to make sure to text him if our flight got delayed at all. If it got delayed too much he said he was going to just call off the flight and drive us down to Seattle himself. Getting through security was a breeze, but then we just had to sit in the departure lounge with nothing to do. Actually, correction. I had to sit in the departure lounge with nothing to do. Bryn and Ty had their iPods to play games on. I only had a stupid phone that doesn't do anything cool. Eventually I got a seat near the White Spot restaurant which had two TV's showing hockey games in their bar section. I mostly watched the Team U.S.A. vs. Team Finland quarter-final game, but when that game was in intermission I watched the first game of a double-header on CBC's Hockey Night in Canada, which was Calgary vs. Toronto. I hate both those teams so the only reason I was hoping Toronto would win was so that Calgary, who is in Vancouver's division, wouldn't get any more points. By the time we actually got in line to board Team U.S.A. was up 2-0 on Finland in the second period and Calgary was about 2 minutes away from beating Toronto 2-1.

While we were waiting there our flight got delayed another 25 minutes. Bryn decided this delay gave her enough time to order some food to-go from White Spot so she got a menu and found food she wanted and ordered it. When the food came I went over to help her and Ty eat it. Ty ate the yam fries while Bryn and I shared a Caesar salad and then we all helped finish off our random meal with a brownie and ice cream dessert. It was delicious. A few minutes after we were done eating our flight was finally called for boarding. While we were in line, a family right in front of us asked Ty if he really knew how to play the ukelele (He was just carrying it without a case or anything and lots of people commented on it all evening.) He said he could, but when older daughter asked him to play something for her, he said he couldn't cause he was carrying his computer, too. She seemed a little disappointed. I think she thought he was cute. Then she said they were from Hawaii and so the ukelele got their attention right away. (Later on the dad asked Ty if we were in a band.) We went through the gate in groups of 20 and then walked to our plane. When we got right near the plane we had to line up with males on the right side of the hallway and females on the left side. Then one by one, each person had to go to a security person and get patted down and thoroughly searched. They even searched through our carry-ons/personal possessions we were taking onto the flight. Then men got searched right there at the end of the hallway we were all lined up in and the women were around the corner right before getting onto the plane. Finally all of us passengers were completely searched and deemed safe for flight. We all sat around on the plane for at least half an hour with absolutely nothing being done. It was simply fabulous (and that was a highly sarcastic comment). The flight attendants kept saying that we'd get going in a few minutes, which was a gigantic lie. Finally the captain told us we were going to leave and then turned the propellers on just before 8 p.m. (our flight was originally supposed to leave at 6:35) and soon after that we were actually in the air. Bryn slept leaning against my back pretty much the entire flight while I stared out the window for any sign that we were coming into Seattle. After what seemed like hours, but was really only about 30 minutes, the clouds thinned out and I saw sprinklings of lights. Once we got near the town I searched for I5 and then followed that right through the city and picking out the Seattle Space Needle from the air. A couple minutes after flying over downtown, we were on the ground at SEA-TAC. Then we had to go through immigration, which took a little bit longer for me because I had to fill out a form for a new F1 visa. (I got a new passport this summer and when I drove across the border going to school in August the border official said I didn't need a new form or a stamp in my new passport, but this immigration officer didn't agree with that. It didn't take long to complete though and by the time I rejoined Bryn and Ty they hadn't even found any of our luggage yet, so it was fine. I thought it was interesting that the immigration officer asked me what instrument I played after seeing my violin case. When I told him violin he said, "And piano too right?" I looked at him in astonishment and said yes. Then he said his two daughters play violin and piano.) Then we got our luggage and went through customs, then put our luggage on another conveyor belt that sent our bags to the normal baggage claim out in the main part of the airport. We took the train and beat our luggage to the baggage claim so I left my carry-on stuff with Bryn and Ty and ran up to ticketing to make sure we would be allowed to each bring two carry-ons on our flight tomorrow. The lady there said everything was normal with carry-ons on domestic flights so I ran back down to baggage. By the time I got back Bryn and Ty had our bags and then we just had to get out to Parking and find the courtesy phones to call for a shuttle to our hotel. Now we're here. We rearranged items so that we had just the things we wanted to take on the flight tomorrow in our carry-ons and now we're just checking our e-mail and stuff before going to sleep. Tomorrow's going to come super early so I'm signing off for now. Write to you all again back at school!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.