The (mis)adventures of A & J

For now....

2009-09-28T09:51:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to apologize for not updating, to anyone who still checks here. My brother died in January 2009 and I have not had any desire to keep updating since then. I don't know if I will update again. I haven't decided. I also know that I take so many photos that a photo blog is getting too cumbersome (kind of why I stopped scrapbooking several years back). So, I'm very sorry. But that's just how it is for me right now and I don't know when or if it will change. Thanks to those of you who I've got to know. I'm still reading, just not writing.

Joss

Winter wonderland?

2008-12-21T21:42:00.000-08:00

To give you some idea of what the weather has been like around here for the last while: white stuff. About 3 feet of it. All at once.

Feel free to stop coming down anytime. Really.

Soon we won't even be able to make it out to the hot tub!

Cinnamon minis

2008-12-15T21:36:00.000-08:00

I recently bought a fantastic thing called The Cookie Book, and it helped me turn this...

... into these :) And they were really good!

Jim's birthday

2008-12-08T21:25:00.000-08:00

Andrew's dad celebrated his 58th birthday with family and a delicious cake :)

Jim's dad Bill and his partner Irene

Bath time for Harley

So long, farewell...

2008-12-07T21:10:00.000-08:00

In the next week we will bid farewell to and sell Andrew's Chevy Cavalier as we have bought a Santa Fe SUV in anticipation of more family members in a few years' time.

Andrew had his car for 8 years and was very fond of it, and the loud sub-woofer. I thought it only fitting that we have a tribute post here in its memory.

Mad Tea Party

2008-12-06T20:39:00.000-08:00

Tamara celebrated her 28th birthday with a Hat party. And tea. And a pirate, apparently.

Very funky tea... starts off as a ball and...

..blossoms into this! Tamara is quite the tea conoisseur.

Andrew and I, with our feminine hats.

Yummy scones that we ate with jam and real clotted cream.

The fabulous tea-cup of Tamara's that I used.

I love your hat! Can I take it home?

Halloween highlights

2008-10-31T20:42:00.000-07:00

We had a mini-get-together for Halloween. We'd done some pumpkin carving at Jordan and Lindsey's a few nights before and this Shrek creation turned out really well.

L-R: Tamara (angel), José (80's rapper), Andrew (the Doppler Effect... an idea borrowed from The Big Bang Theory show) and Jocelyn (random Battlestar Galactica crew person).

Say cheese!

Mom's birthday

2008-10-26T20:35:00.000-07:00

We were lucky enough to have good weather for my mom's birthday and celebrated with a slightly chilly picnic at Derby Reach park near Fort Langley.

Mom and Dad... cheers!

The picnic spot. Andrew C wasn't able to join us :(

We had some fun with the bocce balls in the middle of a game. They're too much fun to take too seriously.

Fall in Langley

2008-10-16T20:31:00.000-07:00

Just a few photos of the gorgeousness that is Fall around here...

Thanksgiving snapshots

2008-10-12T20:24:00.000-07:00

Thanksgiving co-incided with my brother's birthday so we combined the two a bit. He enjoyed his turkey dinner, that's for sure :)

Pumpkin Pie

The cutest pumpkin. Baby Harley and his hat at Jim and Marj's....

Andrew and his festive favourite: blueberry jello salad!

Day trip to Harrison

2008-10-11T21:24:00.000-07:00

Right before Thanksgiving we headed out to Harrison Lake to see the end of their sand sculpture-building competition. We stopped first at Limbert Mountain Farm, though, which is on the Agassiz-Harrison Circle Farm Tour route, and was recommended by some friends.

I suspect that this guy knew what holiday it was because he was in an awful mood and hissed his head off at everyone.

I've never before seen such a fantastic selection of different types of squash.

Andrew found a dog for me to visit with :)

After visiting a cheese shop (with the most delicious gouda I've ever tasted!), also on the Circle Farm tour, we drove the final few kilometres to the lake.

Here are a few of the impressive sand sculptures that were on display....

Grand Canyons

2008-09-29T21:00:00.000-07:00

Andrew, his dad Jim, and Jim's friend Bill did a trip to Utah/Arizona, with the aim of hiking the Grand Canyon at the end.

They started off at Zion National Park, which is spectacular! This is Andrew on top of Angel's Landing.

Ya think?

There's a unique hike/walk through the main river, called "The Narrows" ... which is pretty narrow by the looks of things in the photo!

Andrew at Bryce Canyon National Park.

They found this really cool formation called the Horseshoe where the Colorado River enters the eastern area of the Grand Canyon.

Andrew and Bill on the way down the Grand Canyon.

Andrew at the bottom!

The guys at Phantom Ranch at the bottom, where I bet they wish they could have stayed a night or two instead of having to hike right back up again.

Attempts at baking

2008-09-26T20:55:00.000-07:00

With Andrew hiking canyons in Utah and Arizona, I had a lot of time on my hands. I pulled out a recipe for my grandmother's shortbread and made some. This is my dad and I enjoying it at his office (we sent a copy of this picture to her!).

Do the Puyallup!

2008-09-21T20:13:00.000-07:00

I guess the sign of a true fan is travelling far, far away to see an artist you love. Last time it was a 1,200km round-trip with Andrew. Him being somewhere near the Grand Canyon this time around, I drove down past Seattle by myself to see Steven Curtis Chapman perform at the Puyallup Fair.
And a fair, of course, means farm animals!

I'd like to present a selection of weird-and-wonderful sheep I encountered:

Jersey sheep

Spandex sheep

And my all-time favourite:

Medieval jousting sheep

(the fact that their weird outfits were supposed to keep them warm is beside the point!)

After wandering the fairgrounds for several hours and actually hearing the Puyallup theme song blaring out a speaker at one point, I made my way to the concert venue. 12th row seat!

Steven playing "Yours."

What an amazing night! And then I shopped up a storm on the way home the next day :)

Island Life

2008-09-07T19:59:00.000-07:00

Mom Thorp wanted to take the family out to Bowen Island for a day. Bowen is just offshore from West Vancouver. Here's Andrew and me at Horseshoe Bay, waiting for the ferry.

Sunday Sept 7th was bright and sunny and a perfect day for a sea adventure. Looking towards Bowen Island...

... and looking back towards Horseshoe Bay.

The cute restaurant where we had lunch (although having one waiter and boatloads of people isn't a good idea).

The boys had a rock-skipping competition.

Guess who won?

Fish work hard too, even on Sundays!

Garibaldi Lake and the Black Tusk

2008-09-06T21:34:00.000-07:00

As part of their training for hiking the Grand Canyon, Andrew and his dad hiked past Garibaldi Lake to the Black Tusk.

Not hard to see this as a volcanic landscape, is it?

Part of the hike, er, climb that I WASN'T aware of until they came back! I'm glad I wasn't there because Andrew climbing the Black Tusk looks quite scary.

At the top of the Black Tusk. What a view! And what a hike! Ten hours round-trip.

Adventures in Kelowna

2008-09-03T21:08:00.000-07:00

We went camping in Kelowna this Labour Day weekend. We stayed at Bear Creek campground, which is on the west side of the lake and hiked the canyon nearby. This is the new-ish bridge which crosses the lake, as seen from the canyon hike.

On the way out of the canyon we found this really weird tree which would have provided an awesome emergency camping spot had something horrible happened to our tent!

We visited the resort where Andrew's family used to vacation when he was growing up. He has lots of good memories there!

And then he went paintballing, which he had been looking forward to for months.

Around the campfire at night... having no electricity, we invented what we like to call "Dueling iPods." We cued up our ipods to the same song, counted to three, and pressed play... it made for some good sing-a-longs.

On the Sunday we rented bicycles and went up to Myra Canyon, which is where part of the old Kettle Valley Railway (that joined the interior with the Lower Mainland) used to run.

This area and most of the trestle bridges were wiped out by wildfire in 2003, but all the bridges have been re-built and it is both fascinating and scary to see how they were built along cliffsides, and to think that trains used to run along them.

There are also several tunnels through the rocky cliffs... a lot of fun to bike through :)

This is a view of one of the tallest and longest trestle bridges... made out of steel by necessity due to its size.

We'd recommend this ride to anyone visiting Kelowna. It was an easy, level ride and the views and bridges were fantastic.

The P.N.E.

2008-08-24T20:57:00.000-07:00

Andrew and I braved horrible weather to visit the Pacific National Exhibition (PNE) this year... and it paid off because hardly anyone was there thanks to the rain :) We got to meet the Berenstein Bears before watching the Superdogs show.

This was an interesting exhibit - we guess there had been a competition for building things out of cans. This whale was made largely of tuna cans (ironic?) and there was a Winnie-the-Pooh-type bear next to it as well.

Due to the aforementioned lack of crowds, Andrew and I had the Playstation tent almost to ourselves, and spent a good half and hour playing Guitar Hero.

And then, of course, we watched the pigs races and visited the petting zoo... because I'm a sucker for any kind of livestock that I can touch.

Movie Madness a.k.a. Andrew's 30th Birthday

2008-08-16T21:47:00.000-07:00

We had a 30th birthday party for Andrew, with a movie theme, and requested that everyone come dressed as a movie character (preferably from the last 30 years).

I have been watching the Food Network for a while now, and have been enchanted by a show called "Ace of Cakes." Of course, I don't have the know-how or the skills and equipment to make their fancy stuff but I planned for something I thought I could accomplish cake-wise, and it turned out really well!!

(The wispy hair on the left is because this cake photo was part of another photo - in all the rush I forgot to get a decent photo of it!)

Andrew and Jocelyn, dressed as Maverick (Tom Cruise) from "Top Gun", and "Miss Congeniality"

Dean, Elisa, and Chiara as the three surfer chicks from "Blue Crush"

Andrew's Mom (Cleopatra), Dad (Spiderman), and friend Donna ("Marilyn")

Melanie (soccer player from "Bend it like Beckham") and José (a hobbit from "Lord of the Rings")

The Thorp clan l-r: Adam (Paulie Bleeker from "Juno"), Marj (with baby Harley), Jim, and Andrew

Jocelyn and Tamara (dressed as Princess Leia from "Star Wars")

Gerald and Nola (with Jocelyn) as Danny and Sandy from "Grease"

Spiderman, doing whatever a spider can...

My dad with my brother Andrew

Newsboys at the NW Washington Fair

2008-08-15T11:22:00.000-07:00

The Newsboys are on of my favourite bands, and hail from a small town on Australia's Sunshine Coast called "Mooloolaba," which Kerry incidentally took Andrew and myself through back in May.

Lucky for me, the show was at the Northwest Washington Fair, which meant lots of farm animals! Up close! I arrived just in time for a sheep and goat dress-up competition (!), and this little darling was the winner in the "most beautiful" category.

And, of course, a pig picture. Because I LOVE pigs.

Due to an unfortunate event involving Tamara not being able to find her passport and thus not coming with me to the concert, I ended up befriending a lady who also had a spare ticket - in the THIRD row! So I had prime seats for the entire thing, without having to pay more.

And they take the stage. Lead singer Peter and his signature bald head.

The whole group onstage.

One of their songs is called "Breakfast," and part of the lyrics go, "When the toast is burned, and all the milk has turned, and Captain Crunch is waving fairwell...." I could not stop laughing when they sang these lyrics and I turned around to see at least 10 people across the audience waving Captain Crunch cereal boxes around.

Starfish in summer

2008-08-10T11:19:00.000-07:00

I've always marvelled over the HUGE purple starfish that live on the rocks at the end of the White Rock pier. Finally got a photo of them when we went for a walk at the beach with Andrew's parents.

Some of the other local wildlife, the ever-present seagulls.

Berry Picking

2008-08-08T11:02:00.000-07:00

Tamara and I went berry-picking after work, at a farm only a 10 minute drive from my house.

The only thing open for customers was the raspberry field, which suited me just fine because I love raspberries. It was nearing the end of the raspberry season so we had to hunt high and low for what was left of the crop.

On the vine. Or branch. Or whatever the plant-name is that raspberries grow on...

Quite the haul in this particular area.

I think the last time I picked any fruit was in Kelowna with my grandparents, about 10 years ago (when they were visiting from Australia). Happy memories!

Our final lot of raspberries... and now on to home, to separate them and freeze them and enjoy later with ice cream!

Green thumb?

2008-07-29T20:21:00.000-07:00

I haven't done well with growing plants in the past. Potted ones seem to hate me. I think I over-water them. Anyway, in April I bought some Lily bulbs and thought "why not" and decided to see what happened. My mom took care of them while we were in Australia for 3 weeks, and when we got back the stems had broken through the soil.

They are finally blooming now, 3 months after being planted. This is the first flower, absolutely beautiful, and there will be seven in total. I'm quite proud that I did this right. Maybe, what with having a yard now, I'm getting a green thumb after all... and it's nice to devote time to something other than picking out weeds.

More Harley

2008-07-27T20:09:00.000-07:00

Andrew's extended family had a dinner get-together so everyone could meet Harley. This is a 4-generation photo!

Hello, camera!

Kim and Ryan were down from Fort McMurray. Ryan is 1 1/2 years old now and so active... :)

...and a typical boy, too. There was a program on TV about construction vehicles and he was glued to the screen.

The guys having a good laugh about something. L-R: Jim, Andrew, Wayne, James.

Welcome little Harley!

2008-07-22T20:04:00.000-07:00

Adam's (Andrew's brother) wife Erica gave birth to a baby boy - Harley - just after noon today. Jim and Marj are such proud grandparents...

... and Adam is a doting dad.

Such tiny feet!

First-time "uncle" and "aunty"... very excited! Harley is such a cutie-pie.

Where's the bear?

2008-07-19T19:50:00.000-07:00

We went for a hike up the Diaz Vista trail at Buntzen lake today. We had to detour to get to the trailhead because there were signs and trail-blocks everywhere saying that a bear had been spotted in the area. Great!

The hike itself was good. We'd done it several times before but this was the first time this year... and when I checked out the stats online afterwards, websites seemed to indicate the elevation gained was equivalent to having done 1/3 of the Grand Canyon hike. Not bad!!

This is not the normal viewpoint, but a hidden one off to the side that Andrew knew about. Someone had labelled it quite appropriately :)

On the way down some people said they had seen the bear off to the side of the trail, so we prayed really hard and made a lot of noise and didn't see it at all. Thank goodness.

O Canada!

2008-07-01T19:32:00.000-07:00

It's always a bit of a debate as to what to do on Canada Day: brave the crowds or stay at home. This year we went with the Wyatts to Granville Island - early - which promised lots of entertainment and a decent parking spot. This is the view west towards English Bay.

May I say that the Granville Island Market is one of the wonders of the world, at least as far as cool food is concerned. Display case after display case featured such a wide assortment of one type of food (e.g. meats, desserts) that Andrew and I couldn't stop staring.

We simply had to try one of the eclairs - they were practically calling out to us... and were as delicious as they looked!

Dean, Elisa, and Chiara went on a ferry ride around False Creek. Chiara was so excited about going on the boat and loved it.

Then we all got fake Canada Flag tattoos. Mine didn't last too long but Dean's stayed for days!

There was a map where you could place a stone on the location that you come from. Mine is the reddish-brown one by Durban. Apparently quite a few South Africans had stopped by already. Cool!

To finish it all off, we listened to some pretty horrible Jazz music (I usually like Jazz too!), but it was nice to sit under the trees and relax a bit.

Happy birthday, Canada!

A milestone

2008-06-30T12:08:00.000-07:00

My car reached 100,000 kms recently. I had to screech to a halt at the side of the road (luckily there was a place to pull over) and managed to get this picture. Thought it was kind of cool :)

First day of summer

2008-06-30T11:54:00.000-07:00

June 20th, 4.49pm....
Summer arrives!

It looked like this. We were not impressed.

THIS weekend, however, has been stinking hot. Thursday was a cool 16 degrees, Friday ramped up the heat and by Saturday morning we were sweltering hot. Sunday afternoon we took a photo of the thermostat in our house. It actually went up to 29.5 degrees but at that point I was too hot and lazy to get the camera out again.

We've been trying to cook as little as possible, especially during the day. I did make a few cupcakes though.

Father's Day

2008-06-30T11:45:00.000-07:00

Andrew and I had a difficult time figuring out what to get our dads for Father's Day, so we made them each a "coupon" good for an activity with us.

We had lunch with my family and dinner with Andrew's. Unfortunately we changed cars in between and the camera got left behind in the first one. My parents recently moved into a townhouse complex and this is their backyard/patio area. Very nice!

Dad in action at the barbecue. We all volunteered to do it but you know how men get....

Mom, dad, and my brother Andrew.

Land Down Under

2008-06-25T19:26:00.000-07:00

Well it's been a while since we've been back from our May trip to Oz, and with over 1,400 photos I'm going to have to just post some highlights here:

Gorgeous beaches. There is a new cove around every corner and it's spectacular!

Cool animals. We got to pet kangaroos, koalas, even a wombat! The Aussie animals are fantastic!

Great scenery and a great tour guide. This is me and my aunt at the Three Sisters, a rock formation in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.

Awesome cousins! Bronwyn and Lauren are a whole lot taller than the last time I saw them.

Fabulous friends. This is Kerry and I at the Crocoseum at the Australia Zoo (home of the late Steve Irwin).

Loving grand-parents. Miss you SO MUCH XOXOXO.

Spending time with family: priceless.

Oh, and they have good chocolate. This is called "Rocklea Road" (thanks, Kerry!)

We had a fantastic time and wish it wasn't a long 15-hour plane ride away.

Cutie-pie at the park

2008-04-18T22:11:00.000-07:00

Dean, Elisa, and 2-and-a-bit-year-old Chiara had lunch with us last Sunday afternoon, and we ventured out to a playground nearby afterwards.

Chiara particularly enjoyed the chips, and was quite willing to show us exactly how she ate them.

Dean and Chiara, having a swingingly good time.

Best. Pic. Ever. The static in the slide made for an awesome photo.

Andrew and Dean catching up on the park bench.

Getting back into gear

2008-04-18T22:01:00.000-07:00

Saturday April 12th was the first "hot" day of the year - I think it hit 20 degrees. Andrew and I went for a fantastic bike ride with my parents along the river by Fort Langley.

Looking east towards Mt Baker

A nice spot to sit and enjoy the view

A really cute pony we saw along the way, along with a ton of dogs and one adorable lab puppy.

Float plane taking off on the Fraser.

We passed a bee apiary off of the main road.

All the daffodils are blooming and they are GORGEOUS.

Mom and dad, post-bike-ride.

New toy

2008-04-18T21:55:00.000-07:00

We were lucky enough to buy a new camera a few weeks ago at an awesome price. It's a Fuji FinePix S8000fd. Here are a few photos I took right outside our place - mostly testing the macro and zoom functions :)

Can you spot the spider on the daffodil?

Focusing in the foreground

Focusing in the background

Zooming in on Andrew's car from several feet away.

Happy Easter!

2008-03-27T20:51:00.001-07:00

This year we spent Easter lunch with Andrew's family and Easter dinner with mine. This is the spread from lunch. Yummy!!

Erica (Adam's wife) is five month's pregnant at this point, with either a little Harley or Chanel in her tummy.

Spring cleaning

2008-03-27T20:36:00.000-07:00

Our deck was SO dirty. We didn't know if it had ever been washed before, so last weekend we borrowed a pressure washer and cleaned that sucker off.

And it was fun, too :) I couldn't resist writing my name in the grimy stuff.

P.S. The big round circle in the grime is (we assume) from a potted plant that sat there before we moved in.

Spring has sprung...

2008-03-27T20:32:00.000-07:00

... and so have some lovely (and unexpected) flowers by our front door!!

From left to right: unknown blue flowers, daffodils, and crocuses.

Logistics

2008-03-27T20:14:00.000-07:00

Andrew's brother Adam made us a gorgeous cabinet / cupboard. We'd asked for it while still in our old place, and when it was finished and we tried moving it into our townhouse... well, let's just say that we had a few problems. We couldn't get it around the corner at the top of the stairs onto our main floor.

However, as the Afrikaans saying goes, " 'n Boer maak 'n plan."

With the help of Adam and our fathers, we carried the thing around to our back yard and hoisted it up a ladder and over the balcony railing, and in through the sliding door into our kitchen. It was dangerous. We did a lot of praying.

It's now inside and looks great (we've put the cupboard doors on since the photo was taken!). We'd just better not move - ever - because then we'll have to get it back out again.

Chinatown, downtown, all around town...

2008-03-27T19:49:00.000-07:00

Andrew and I decided to explore Chinatown a few weekends ago. Vancouver has a big Chinese population and I had been looking forward to going for ages. We didn't make it during the recent Chinese New Year celebrations (it was raining) but the weekend after worked well, and was much less crowded. This is Andrew at the Millennium Gate.

This is the world's narrowest building (Guinness Record), at only about six feet wide (if you don't count mud huts in Africa and such). If you need a lesson in "how to fit your business into a compact space," this is the place to go :)

The Dr Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden cost money to get into, but right next door we discovered a free park in the same style. Fantastic!

Sounds like a fun place to eat! :)

We've posted photos of us with the bear/moose at one of the Gastown tourist shops before. This is one we hadn't seen before, which we passed on our walk from Chinatown to Gastown (past a very scary part of town) before having lunch at the Old Spaghetti Factory.

No visit downtown is complete without going to our favourite destination, Canada Place. This bald eagle was sitting RIGHT by the edge of the building.

And then I decided to take a photo of us - you know, the photo you take where you hold the camera backwards and try to get both your faces in the shot? Well, we must have really looked like tourists (we had a tourist shopping bag with us too from something we'd bought earlier) because someone asked (half in English, half with gestures - probably in case we were foreign) if we wanted her to take our picture. Which is how we ended up with this shot.

On a side note - at the tourist shop we visited earlier, a lady (store employee) nudged me and gave me a shopping basket which I thanked her for. Later she walked past us again, gave Andrew a long look, and said, "German?" Um, pardon?? "No, Langley!" I laughed. "Oh, " she said, "He looks like he is from Germany."

It's a fun game, really, playing tourist in your home town and looking authentic :)

Sur la plage, en hiver

2008-03-27T19:43:00.000-07:00

Well, we weren't quite ON the beach, but my team from work had dinner at the Washington Avenue Grill on White Rock's East Beach at the beginning of March. The owners are obviously Canucks fans :)

I got this shot of the sunset, with... fake flowers in the foreground. Yes, they're fake. I was so excited about the photo and only afterwards did I take a closer look and realize that (of course) those beauties wouldn't be growing in freezing weather...

... and it was chilly. The gorgeous sunny day got cold really quickly in the evening. So we didn't go for our planned walk before dinner. And I didn't get photos of my co-workers hamming it up on the beach. There's always next time.

More of Mt Baker

2008-03-09T16:27:00.001-07:00

My birthday :)

2008-03-09T16:06:00.000-07:00

We celebrated my birthday on the weekend of Feb 9-10, and kicked it off with lunch at a Japanese restaurant near our house called "Miraku." Really good food, if you're ever in the Langley area and craving something exotic.

Andrew, me, Melanie

The whole crew who came: José, Tamara, Adam, Erica, Andrew, me, Melanie.

I think we were mostly done with our meal at this point.

Very cute little cups that our tea came in.

Later in the afternoon, Andrew and I headed into Surrey for something called "Winteruption" - billed as a celebration of winter and also a celebration of Surrey being named the cultural capital of Canada.

Well, put succinctly, it sucked. But we did get to meet Leo, the B.C. Lions mascot (Andrew and I are both huge Lions fans).

On Sunday evening we had my parents and brother over for dinner, where Andrew surprised me with a dessert that he'd been hiding in the fridge since Friday night. I thought he'd made a chocolate cake or something similar, but he surpassed all expectations when he revealed that he'd made a traditional South African dessert called a "Milk Tart." He'd found my grandmother's recipe for it in my recipe box, and made it on the sly. What a guy. And it tasted awesome.

A visit from the prairies

2008-01-27T15:46:00.000-08:00

Andrew's Aunt Sandy is out visiting from Manitoba right now. She said it was -30C there last week. Brrrrr. And now it's "warmed up" to about -15C there. Which is why we live in Vancouver, not Manitoba :)

She had visited family in Switzerland not too long ago and shared some actual Toblerone from over there with us. The type she bought was wrapped in individual pieces and had different varieties e.g. classic, classic with white top, praline, and dark chocolate. She also shared stories of life on the farm with their cattle, and of giant jack rabbits, and invited us to come visit them and shoot gophers. I'm not sure about the gophers, but giant rabbits sound awfully fun!

Dad's birthday

2008-01-27T15:43:00.000-08:00

My dad celebrated his birthday 2 weeks ago and Andrew and I hosted a birthday dinner at our house. On the menu: Saucy Chicken and a delicious but tricky-to-make Creme Caramel.

Mom and dad. Awwww....

The view

2008-01-27T15:27:00.000-08:00

Waking up to this view every morning is one of my favourite things about our new place.

Happy New Year ('s Eve)

2008-01-06T21:19:00.000-08:00

We were probably a bit too ambitious having people over for New Year's Eve after only being in our house for 2 weeks, but we did it anyway and had a ton of fun.

We started off with some Pictionary...

And moved on to Cups (a Thorp family favourite, which nobody else had played before)...

And finished up with Spoons.

We don't know of any games called "knives" or "forks" yet, although it's probably just as well :)

Christmas!

2008-01-06T21:10:00.000-08:00

We spent Christmas Eve with Andrew's family and Christmas day with mine. Andrew's cousin Kim (and hubby Mike) were down from Fort McMurray with cutie patootie Ryan, who is a year old and so much bigger than when we last saw him!

You may notice the braces :) I was tempted to try to photoshop them out but what the heck. I have them on for a few months to straighten some teeth because I have a good medical plan and may as well use it.

These are the chocolate "peppermint bark" gifts I made for everyone. SO YUMMY!!

It snowed on Christmas day, a rare thing in Vancouver. We kept nice and warm inside. My brother Andrew is wearing glasses now and looks so good in them.

Movin' on up

2008-01-06T21:07:00.000-08:00

We bought a townhouse. It's terribly exciting. This is the day we got posession of the place - December 9th - with our parents.

We are almost trippling our space, our old suite being only about 460 square feet (I measured it one day out of curiosity).

Sunset

2007-12-06T21:17:00.001-08:00

The sunset was gorgeous yesterday. These photos are taken from my office window.

Work can be fun

2007-12-06T21:06:00.000-08:00

My co-worker Joanne and I wrapped up our supervisor's door while she was on holiday earlier this week.

Snow! (a.k.a. too much of a good thing)

2007-12-06T20:54:00.000-08:00

So that snow from Matt and Denise's wedding kept going and going and going....

By Sunday afternoon (Dec. 2nd) we had about 2/3 of a foot of the white stuff. Both Andrew and I cleared off our cars several times but it was a bit pointless, really.

So we headed over to Dean and Elisa's place to make a snowman or two for Chiara. The drive over was incredibly sketchy, and included us getting side-swiped (almost) by a snowplow who showered our car with dirty snow.

Elisa showed off her fantastic contraption - an actual "snowball maker."

Chiara was not interested in the snow. Not at all. She wouldn't touch it, wouldn't walk in it, wouldn't go near it. All she did was look darn cute while watching the rest of us build snowmen and throw snow at each other.

She didn't want one pair of mittens near the end, so her snowman inherited some reindeer-style antlers.

Make-shift Christmas tree

2007-12-06T20:50:00.000-08:00

We're moving in just over a week thus haven't put up our Christmas tree. Kerry sent us some lovely personalized bauble ornaments for Christmas and Andrew hung them up on a vase arrangement while I wasn't looking. I think his make-shift Christmas tree is such a great idea! This way we get to enjoy the ornaments for much longer.

Matt & Denise's wedding

2007-12-06T19:31:00.000-08:00

Andrew's good friend Matt got married on December 1st. His lovely bride Denise said she prayed it wouldn't rain, but forgot to pray it wouldn't snow. It was definitely memorable trying to navigate between the ceremony and the reception site along slippery roads - the first snowfall of the season, a year to the day (almost) since the first really huge one of last year.

Tamara's marvelous momos party

2007-11-30T21:47:00.000-08:00

Our friend Tamara celebrated her 27th birthday last weekend with a "Marvelous Momos" party. Momos are a Nepalese version of dumpling-type food. She had a momo party last year too, where we ate too much and learned our lesson. This year we mainly just looked at the momos.

Andrew got to eat some delicious ice cream.

José also ate some ice cream. And Melanie really enjoyed looking through "The Book of Bunny Suicides."

And then, while clearing the table for a game of Cranium Hoopla, there was an... incident... with a container of pasta sauce.

Good times :)

The Great Adventure

2007-11-10T13:38:00.000-08:00

I am a huge fan of Stevn Curtis Chapman. Have been since the mid-90's. He just released a new CD and didn't have any viable tour dates in Seattle or Portland... but he did have a Saturday night concert in Kennewick, WA, which is... oh... only 600km away from here....

We have video of the concert, not photos. But we DO have photos of a really neat little town we passed on the way to Kennewick: Thorp, WA.

Yes, even spelled the right way. I found out about it about 2 years ago, and it was nice to have an excuse to visit it. The photos speak for themselves, as there really wasn't much to the place other than what we took photos of. But how cool is that, having a place with the same name as you?

And we're back....

2007-11-10T13:26:00.000-08:00

It's been just over 2 months since I last posted, mostly because not a whole heck of a lot has been going on. And since this is a photo blog, we haven't had many photos :) Here are a few things from September and October:

Boundary Bay near Tsawwassen, B.C. I was down there for training for a week and managed to get to the ocean one day.

That was also the week when I decided I didn't want to pay $2.50 for a cup of coffee at the hotel's restaurant and unfortunately tried to use the free in-room coffee machine to brew myself a cup. I say "unfortunately" because I NEVER brew coffee (I always use the instant stuff) and yours truly burned her finger quite badly while trying to follow the step-by-step instructions. The nice nurse at the hospital bandaged it up so it looked quite a bit worse than it actually was :)

Andrew's friend Lori (from high school) was visiting from Ontario in October, so she had a bunch of people around for a barbeque. L-r: Me, Andrew, Lori, Matt, and Denise (who are getting married in just over 2 weeks).

And then I organized a get-together for South African ex-pats over here so we could all watch the Rugby World Cup final, where South Africa won! The game was awesome but so was the amount of people who came out for it. We expected about 10 and had 40 there!

And those, aside from a few family birthdays, were about the only things we took photos of in September and October. And now you are up to date :)

The squeaky wheel gets the oil

2007-09-02T13:52:00.000-07:00

We went to Swiss Chalet for dinner last night. I wanted the quarter chicken dinner and Andrew was keen on their messy chicken sandwich. Good prices, good food.

So we went in and the restaurant was probably only 1/4 full. Plenty of servers around though. The hostess seated us and said our waitress would be with us soon.

5 minutes passed. Nobody showed up. We started a countdown. At 10 minutes we got up, picked up the menus, headed to the front, and asked to speak to the manager... who took our order herself and give us the meal for free. And she rushed our order too. We just wanted them to hear our complaint and order some food, and we offered to pay several times, but she wouldn't hear it.

Good on you, Swiss Chalet! You may have the occasional sucky waitress but you make sure your customers are happy in the end.

Dinner at the Rickshaw

2007-08-25T19:18:00.000-07:00

In his ever-continuing birthday celebration, Andrew's grandfather and partner Irene took us out for dinner at the Rickshaw Chinese Restaurant on the 19th. We had some good almond chicken and chop suey, but the "beef and broccoli" dish was about 4 small pieces of stir-fry size beef and a mountain of broccoli.

My fortune cookie had an interesting fortune inside.

A (Titanic) Day-trip to Victoria

2007-08-19T16:25:00.000-07:00

The two of us, my parents, Andrew's parents, Adam and Erika ALL went to Victoria yesterday to see the Titanic artifacts exhibit at the Royal B.C. Museum. We caught the 8am ferry and it was beautiful (as always) going through the small islands on the way.

It was also very windy. My dad and I went out on the deck quite a bit (looking for Orcas, which my mom was hoping to see) and took this lovely wind-blown photo. Note the hair in my face.

We had lunch at a hotel restaurant downtown. My lunch - a garden wrap with grilled chicken. It tasted really good, especially because it had both avocado and tzatziki sauce in it.

My mom and dad in front of the parliament buildings.

Victoria is notorious for its hanging baskets. They are everywhere and they are gorgeous. These ones were just outside the museum.

Sorry, no photos from the exhibit. Photo-taking prohibited!

Before leaving town (and catching the bus back to the ferry), we stopped off at a Blenz Coffee shop. Right near Blenz was "St Andrew's church."

This was the stunning sunset we saw on the ferry ride back to Vancouver.

Peach pie

2007-08-19T16:21:00.000-07:00

Dean and Elisa invited us over for pie the other night. Apparently Elisa had an abundance of peaches. And it was YUMMY.

Chiara looking out the window at the "digger." They are ripping up the street (in front of their house and ours) and putting in a sidewalk.

Andrew's birthday

2007-08-19T16:13:00.000-07:00

We celebrated Andrew's birthday a week early - we went to Anton's Pasta bar in Vancouver last Saturday night for dinner. Andrew loves the place and was so excited to go there.

I was adventurous and had chicken and spinach Manicotti for dinner. Manicotti is a rolled pasta... I was served 4 of the rolled things in the photo, covered in creamy tomato sauce. REALLY tasty. Andrew had fettucini alfredo.

I had a much better photo of Andrew and his slice of birthday cheesecake, but you gotta love how Adam is getting in on the action in this one.

Camping in Manning Park

2007-08-19T15:58:00.000-07:00

We camped at Manning Park on the August long weekend. I think this is going to be our one and only camping trip of the summer. It was really cold at night (the campsite - Lightning Lakes - is at some ridiculous altitude above sea level in a mountain pass) and it's a lot of effort to cart all your stuff so far just to not sleep. Well, Andrew of course slept like a log because he's practically a hot water bottle. But other than that, we had a good time :) We went with some friends of ours (Colin and Melissa) from church (they also didn't sleep).

This photo is from a walk we did around Lightning Lake. It's beautiful there. The Pine Beetle, which has been causing havoc to trees in central B.C., has killed tons of trees in Manning Park too. It's shocking to see the difference between a few years ago and now. All those brown trees in the photos? Dead.

We ventured up the opposite side of the valley to some alpine meadows (which is also the starting place for many of the more challenging hikes in Manning Park, like the Heather Trail). Just GORGEOUS. On top of the world.

Us making kissy faces at the camera. Just for you!

Fire in the sky

2007-08-19T15:45:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since our last update, but we've been really busy (despite all the bad weather).

We went to the annual Celebration of Light fireworks in Vancouver on July 28th. We caught the Canada show that night. It was... okay. They didn't do as good of a job as they could have, but we still had a good time.

There's a huge Inukshuk on the beach at English Bay. Some guy told me "Your photo won't come out because you're looking into the sun!" Um. Yeah, thanks. I think it came out pretty well, don't you?

We parked by B.C. Place stadium and biked into the beach area. Always fun and makes for a quick escape from the crowds once the fireworks are over.

Some of the cops were on horses... living up to the name "RCMP". Some of the horses let loose and pooped right on the road behind us... 20 minutes later a street sweeper vehicle came to clean it up and proceeded to whip the droppings around and made it stink pretty badly :)

No alcohol allowed on the beach. These girls, sitting in front of us, got busted! The cops made them empty about 12 bottles of beer down the drain. Quite good entertainment for us.

And finally - the actual fireworks :)

Tamara's Block Party

2007-07-18T20:55:00.000-07:00

We got a call from Andrew's mom late this afternoon. "Tamara Taggart from CTV is hosting a block party in the cul-de-sac near our house, and doing her weather forecast for the news from there."

Right on!

So of course we drove the few minutes down the road, and Marj and I got our photo taken with her. She was really nice and such a trooper despite being very preggers and the weather not co-operating at all.

Caption this

2007-07-16T21:58:00.000-07:00

What do you think is going through Chiara's mind?

The 1-1/2 year old cutie-pie and her parents were over at our house for a barbeque on Saturday evening.

She managed to say "Juss" when Elisa prompted her with "Joss" and pointed at me. She'll try to say anything you want her to. It's pretty cool.

The Kwik-E-Mart

2007-07-16T21:48:00.000-07:00

This really was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (especially for Andrew who loves the Simpsons). The 7-Eleven in Coquitlam (along with about 10 others in the U.S.) has been converted into a Kwik-E-Mart in anticipation of the Simpsons Movie being released in a few weeks. The main changes are to the outside. There are a few characted stand-ups inside, and collectors "Squishee" cups instead of the regular slurpee ones. They were all sold out of Buzz Cola and Krusty-O's and the like.
Still had a lot of pink sprinkle donuts hanging around.
And the employees were wearing official Kwik-E-Mart shirts just like Apu does in the cartoon. Overall, very cool, a bit surreal, and totally worth the 1/2 hour drive just to take a few photos :)

What $1 at IKEA gets you

2007-07-16T19:57:00.001-07:00

So we finally ventured to IKEA for their $1 breakfast that they advertise all the time. It was a pretty good deal, tasted much healthier than comparable McDonald's junk, and we went back for seconds because, hey, it's only a buck!

White Rock in summer

2007-07-16T19:50:00.000-07:00

We went to White Rock beach on July 7th for a bit of a walk and some lunch.

Some girls about to jump off the pier. You would have to pay me big time to jump off of that pier... the water looks suspiciously green and gross. It's great to swim at the actual beach though.

Canada Day

2007-07-13T22:24:00.000-07:00

Hey! Two weeks late but better late than never. We went to the Cloverdale fairgrounds on July 1st to check out the Canada Day festivities. Got ourselves some nifty flag temporary tattoos. Aren't we cool?

By the way

2007-07-13T22:20:00.001-07:00

Dean requested this post.

I did sell my old car... to Dean and Elisa (parents of cutie-pie Chiara)... several weeks ago. Just FYI in case anyone was wondering.

This is Dean goofing around with Andrew a few weeks back.

;)

Adam and Erica's wedding

2007-07-01T15:08:00.000-07:00

Introducing... Mr and Mrs Adam Thorp :)

Some photos of us that we took while the more official photos were being taken nearby. Andrew was in the wedding party, hence his cool fedora. He kept joking about his tommy gun being in the shop getting fixed.

Isn't he just adorable?

Ryan, Andrew's 2nd cousin... last featured in this blog at Adam and Erica's engagement party. He's 5 months now and SO CUTE. Here he's having fun putting his hand in his grandmother's mouth.

Team Day

2007-07-01T14:49:00.000-07:00

I had team day last Friday. Part of it was spent at Granville Island, and these are some photos from our time there. First up, the market with some gorgeous flowers!

We had lunch at a place called the "Sand Bar," and I had capers for the first time. They were on my caesar salad and I started taking them off until I found out what they were :) The restaurant overlooks False Creek and we had a great view of the Burrard Street Bridge.

After lunch we went to a room at the community centre and painted this gorgeous flower on a canvas. We were rather proud of our efforts. It's now hanging in the hallway in our office and everyone keeps talking about "the painting that wakes you up."

Photos from our trip

2007-06-24T14:00:00.000-07:00

I finally too Trish's advice and signed up for Flickr, which is so much easier than trying to post all our trip photos on here.

SO... you can see our greatly-reduced-in-number photos from Durban here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jossthorp/sets/72157600455120282/detail/

and London here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jossthorp/sets/72157600469671192/detail/

Hope you enjoy! :)

New car smell

2007-06-06T16:26:00.000-07:00

(Still going through our hundreds of trips photos... it's coming, I promise!)

We bought me a new-er car last night. It's a silver 2002 Pontiac Sunfire. It has air-conditioning. I'm very excited about that.

My blue 1992 Pontiac Sunbird is now looking for a good new home. I can't drive the new car before selling the old one because it costs too much to have insurance on both, and I need insurance on the old one so potential buyers can test-drive it.

Updates

2007-06-01T15:12:00.000-07:00

So we are actually back, we're (that is, me Jocelyn) just sorting through about 900 photos deciding which ones to put on the blog and the whole process also involves re-sizing whichever photos are picked. So it's taking a while.

However, we're safe and sound and finally waking up at the right time in the morning. We got back on Sunday, and on Monday morning we were up at 4am... and watched 3 taped episodes of CSI before breakfast.

It's a great way to start the week :) At least it's Friday now!

Packing

2007-04-30T19:20:00.000-07:00

This is probably our last post for a while. We leave on Thursday for 3 1/2 weeks... off to visit some of my family in South Africa, and then we'll be staying in London for 3 nights on the way back.

This is what our living room looks like right now. It's a bit of a disaster :)

Dinner at Sr. Thorps

2007-04-30T19:18:00.000-07:00

We had dinner at Andrew's parents place last night. Cornish Hens! (Which are apparently small chickens)

Things will be great when you're Downtown (part 1)

2007-04-26T19:41:00.000-07:00

I'll admit it - I've been slacking. My excuses for not posting this 3 weeks ago is that we've been getting ready for our impending overseas trip and both Andrew and I have been battling bad colds. Anyway, better late than never.

So... several weeks ago we had a sunny-but-windy Saturday and decided to head Downtown. First stop was in Gastown, the touristy part of town with a million souvenir shops. Andrew and I always like posing with the huge stuffed moose and bear.

We also took a look at the steam clock (which I don't think is geothermically-powered anymore, although it now does its song-and-dance routine every 15 minutes).

These are a couple of the plaques at the base of the clock, telling about its history:

We wandered over to Canada Place, which always has a stunning view across to North Vancouver.

From Canada Place: you can see the Lion's Gate Bridge in this one

From Canada Place: the container ship docks and the Seabus, the cheapest boat ride at $2.75 or so!

Things will be great when you're Downtown... (part 2)

2007-04-26T19:23:00.000-07:00

Then we decided to walk all the way from Canada Place to English Bay, which took forever, but walking along Robson Street is always entertaining. And when we got closer to English Bay there were some cops on horseback walking up the street.

Proof that spring is here (or rather, was here 3 weeks ago): A beautiful cherry tree in blossom.

This is English Bay with waves... or about as "wavey" as it ever gets here.

Looking back towards English Bay from the Seawall. A large portion of the Seawall is still closed from the bad storms we had back in November - January.

If it's bust, he can fix it!

2007-03-27T11:54:00.000-07:00

On Sunday night I put some leftover pizza in the microwave, closed the door, and re-heated it. When I tried opening the door afterwards it wouldn't open. The door was stuck shut WITH MY PIZZA INSIDE. Andrew, being the aspiring handyman he is, took the whole outer frame off and we found the piece that had broken... and managed to pop the door open!

After calling around and looking for parts on Monday (with no luck), he managed to actually fix the microwave by drilling a hole or two in the broken plastic piece and putting in a metal rod. Saved us at least $70 for a new microwave. Isn't he great? :)

Sunday and storms

2007-03-27T11:17:00.000-07:00

We went to Abbotsford (an hour east of Vancouver) on Sunday morning to see Andrew's grandmother. After church we went to a fantastic Chinese restaurant called Dragon Fort, which makes delicious deep fried prawns (my unhealthy favourite). This was followed up by an ice-cream stop at McDonald's, where Andrew had an Oreo McFlurry and his gran and I had chocolate sundaes. With nuts.

I know in the previous post I said we were supposed to get 3 days of sun. Well, it was mostly sunny, except for this lovely ominous-looking storm cloud that swept over Surrey in the late afternoon.

Note the impromptu lake covering the farmer's fields, due to the ton of rain we've had.

A superb sunset

2007-03-27T11:11:00.000-07:00

We've had a ton of rain - 21 days in a row to be exact. We were rewarded with a spectacular sunset on Saturday evening, heralding the onset of 3 days of sun :)

As the saying (or a variant of it) goes: "Pink sky in the morning, shepherd's warning; pink sky at night, shepherd's delight."

This was definitely pink sky at night.

The good old hockey game

2007-03-27T11:03:00.000-07:00

Andrew plays in a floor hockey league at his old church. His team (the "blue" team) was knocked out of the playoffs but they went out with a bang, winning their last games (fighting for third place) by a landslide.

l-r: Ed, Christopher, Alex, Andrew, and Doug

Almost Spring

2007-03-22T13:42:00.000-07:00

Andrew has been doing the 6-week school component of his plumbing apprenticeship and he's been studying a lot. So... this last Sunday I joined my parents in a walk along Crescent Beach.

Spring is almost here (well, it is now, but was almost here on Sunday). The pink cherry blossoms aren't quite out yet but these gorgeous white ones are.

My parents dropped me off at Andrew's parent's house, where he was doing laundry (and studying). We headed home and on the way ran into the Wyatts with cutie-pie Chiara, out for a walk. Well, she was getting towed.... Probably wondered about the mad woman who jumped out of the black car and started taking photos of her :)

A&E's engagement party

2007-03-04T09:04:00.000-08:00

Andrew's brother Adam got engaged a few weeks ago. Marj hosted an engagement party for him and Erica last night. We have the utmost admiration for anyone who can do a sit-down dinner for 20 people!!

Andrew's cousin Kim was visiting from Fort McMurray (way north in Alberta!) and we got to see her adorable son Ryan for the first time. He's 8 weeks old and already had all the women flocking to him!

The boys cleaning up after dinner. Andrew and his dad doing the dishes...

Marj split us into 4 teams and we had to design bridal gowns with one roll of toilet paper and some tulle. Andrew's grandmother and grandfather are on the left. Bill's fake boobs are courtesy of the balloon table centrepieces :)

Marj, Ryan, Jocelyn, and Andrew. The little guy was fast asleep!

27th

2007-02-19T11:15:00.000-08:00

Jocelyn's 27th birthday was on Feb 12th. Her parents had all of us around for dinner.

Some of the festive flowers and balloons...

How to tell each other apart

2007-02-04T14:31:00.000-08:00

Andrew's cousin Toni (and her hubby and kids) sent us a very useful anniversary card.

"They say when you've been married for a while, you begin to look alike - so here's something to help keep things straight!"

WEAR THESE!

So we did:

Chiara's birthday

2007-01-16T09:31:00.000-08:00

Cutie-pie Chiara Wyatt celebrated her first birthday on January 16th. We're very grateful to her that she held off until after our wedding before she was born! Here are some pics from the party :)

Chiara and Elisa

Dean and Chiara, with the all-important birthday cake.

Well, we can all guess where the cake went....

We survived the first year!

2007-01-16T09:30:00.001-08:00

We celebrated out first wedding anniversary in style at the Harrison Hot Springs Resort at Harrison Lake.

We got a fantastic room with two queen beds, so we actually spent the night sprawled out separately for the first time in a year.

The hot spring pools are the main attraction of this place, and the hotel has a fabulous set-up of indoor and outdoor pools of varying size and heat. And they also provided us with robes, which were much appreciated when dashing from indoors to outdoors, trying to get as quickly as possible out of the freezing cold air and into the hot outdoor pool.

Given that it's the middle of winter, nothing much was happening and almost nothing was open, especially past 6pm. We ordered pizza from the nearby town of Agassiz and chowed down on pizza in our room while watching the Canucks beat the Leafs 6-1. HAHAHA! :)

In the morning we got window seats at the Lakeside Cafe for breakfast, with stunning views over Harrison Lake.

Gerald's birthday

2007-01-16T09:30:00.000-08:00

My dad's (Gerald) birthday was yesterday, but we celebrated on Friday night. He requested a chocolate cake and he got one, sprinkled with white chocolate too.

l-r: Andrew C, Melissa, Gerald, Jocelyn, Andrew T.

More snow!

2007-01-11T14:59:00.000-08:00

This. Is. Nuts.

Rememer my post a while ago about the bad snowstorm we had in November? Well, we just had another dumping of the white stuff yesterday. We got over a foot at our place in Surrey. There have been cars skidding all over the place, cars abandoned on the road, people pushing cars, traffic is at a crawl, and not nearly enough snow ploughs and salt/sand trucks to go around (like there are in Ontario, which expects this kind of thing to happen).

I missed work yesterday, and Andrew stayed home today. I didn't dare drive my car this morning what with the icy roads, so a woman from work picked me up in some huge Toyota 4x4 thing she owns (it looks like a Hummer H2). It was a fun ride in to work, past all the other poor people spinning and skidding in their vehicles.

I taped last night's news with our digital camera, so for your viewing pleasure here is the news report on all the snow and the news report on all the destruction and devastation in Stanley Park where $4 million worth of damage has been done to trees from the bad windstorms we've had.

The Snow

Stanley Park damage

Party hats included

2007-01-10T21:42:00.000-08:00

Adam's (Andrew's brother) 25th birthday was last weekend. We went over for dinner and a delicious Oreo cheesecake!

Andrew and I were both quite sick with bad colds, but that's no reason not to ham it up with party hats :)

New Year's Eve (part 1)

2007-01-01T12:20:00.000-08:00

Wow, are our post titles creative or what?

Anyway, so last night we hung out with some friends from church (we were all in a pre-marital counselling group together). We met up at Montana's in Coquitlam for some dinner around 8pm. Montana's has a very cool western cowboy-ish theme and the tablecloths are pieces of brown paper - they give you crayons and you can draw all over!

The guys: Wayne, Andrew, Brian

The girls: Jessica, Jocelyn, Lacey

Wayne and Lacey's "Mile High Mud Pie" about to fall over

A cool sign

New Year's Eve (part 2)

2007-01-01T11:30:00.000-08:00

After dinner we went to Brian and Jessica's place for a rousing game of Taboo, and then Andrew introduced us to "Spoons" (or PIG, as he calls it), which got everyone very enthusiastic and competitive.

Midnight arrived, and apparently there's a Canadian custom of banging pots and pans at midnight (something I - Jocelyn - haven't heard of in my 10 years here), so we did just that and made a huge racket outside on their balcony.

Christmas Day

2006-12-28T21:00:00.000-08:00

A few years ago someone taped their fireplace and CBC-tv played the video on Christmas Day. Soon enough the "Fireplace video" was so popular it was being sold in stores, and in the last few years we've counted at least 3 or 4 TV channels with various versions of fireplace videos playing. Some have the crackling fire noise, while others have been dubbed over with Christmas music. All have a hand or poker stick appearing every once in a while to stoke the fire or add a new log. Whatever your choice, it makes things a little bit more cosy.... :)

L-R: Jocelyn, Andrew C, Gerald, Nola, Andrew T

Christmas Eve (part 2)

2006-12-28T20:51:00.000-08:00

After dinner we headed to church for the Christmas Eve service, and then to Jim and Marj's for their family gathering.

Jim played Santa and handed out the presents.

Bev admires her new earrings

Andrew and his grandmother

Cheryl and Marj

Christmas Eve (part 1)

2006-12-28T20:37:00.000-08:00

We started Christmas Eve off at Andrew's grandfather's place, where his girlfriend Irene prepared a delicious dinner for us because it was his 82nd birthday!

Left: Bill and Irene

Andrew and Jocelyn

Adam and Erica

Gerald and Nola's 30th (part 2)

2006-12-20T11:29:00.000-08:00

A couple of photos from the evening.

Gerald and Nola's 30th anniversary

2006-12-11T20:59:00.000-08:00

Jocelyn's mom and dad are celebrating 30 years today. They asked her to put together some photos in a slide show... and this is the result. They only provided photos up until 1994 (something about lost photo albums) but of course she had something up her sleeve :)

As always, speakers ON.

Jim's birthday

2006-12-10T00:04:00.000-08:00

We celebrated Jim's (Andrew's dad) 56th Birthday on Friday night.

We got some requests for photos of Bill (Andrew's grandfather), so here he is with his lovely lady Irene.

Elisa and Chiara. Chiara (last seen in this blog at our Halloween Party - now 11 months old) is crawling like crazy, stands up on her own, walks while holding on to things, and has an impressive vocabulary of "Ma ma ma ma", "Da da da," and various mouth-clicking and whale-like noises. Jocelyn is very proud of having taught her to put small plastic play cups into bigger ones :) This is one bright kid. There are a lot of other neat tricks she does but maybe we'll just stick with the highlights here.