Naomi's First Birthday Party

On Sunday we headed to Coquitlam for our friend Peter's daughter's birthday party. They rented a room at the the local Rec Centre and had food, cake and activities.The food was really great.and the cake was amazing. Two levels, one chocolate and the other vanilla with a strawberry cream icing in between. The room they had it in was the perfect size and ensures you don't have to worry about crowding so many people into your own house.

The entertainment was by their son's music teacher. He's obviously done birthday parties for a long time and he had the kids rolling in their seats. Carter's favourite part was when a puppet of a horse was singing "Twinkle, twinkle, little cat...". That's one of his favourite songs and I guess having someone singing it incorrectly was just the funniest thing on earth. He wanted Kerry to call me at work the next day so that he could tell me all about it. "Daddy! The donkey say 'Twinkle, Twinkle, little cat!'".

Callie was a bit more reserved during the music portion and decided to stick close to mommy. However when she found out there was going to be balloon animals she was front and centre. He wasn't an incredibly talent balloon artist however Callie was quite happy with her cat and Carter with his guitar.

An all around great party.

Earth Hour

On Saturday the family participated in Earth Hour. This yearly event is intended to highlight issues around sustainability by having people shut off power for one hour between 8:30p and 9:30p. I like to do it because the kids enjoy coming up with fun activities to do in the dark.. Last year we set up candles and made shadow puppets on the wall with a flashlight.

There are a couple things about Earth Hour that complicate things. One is the time.  It's kind of late for Carter to stay up till 9:30p so we start our Earth Hour a bit early at 8:00p. The other thing that's difficult is probably difficult for everyone and that's getting the house completely dark. It's amazing how many little green, yellow and red indicator lights exist in your house even when you've turned off all the lights. My solution is to shut off the breaker to the whole house. I figure it's no different then a short power outage and it ensures we're using absolutely no energy.

This year we played hide-and-go-seek. It took a while for Carter to figure out what to do.  He tended to be sitting right in front of you after you finished counting to 20. Even when he did start hiding he would just hide with someone else and either get bored and leave or give away both players position. I had the two best hiding spots of the evening. One was very simple.  I simply laid down beside our bed. No one thought to look in such an obvious spot. The other was much more difficult. We have a crawl space under our house but to get to it you have to go in the hall closer, open the plywood hatch, get in and close the hatch behind you. Very difficult to do in only 20 seconds. I eventually banged on the floor to let people know where I was. The picture to the left pretty much sums up the experience. I've never been somewhere so dark. If I wasn't claustrophobic before I may be now.

Seattle - The Aquarium and a Cruise

Our final day in Seattle started with breakfast at the hotel again. This time we had a different cook and the scrambled eggs weren't as good.  I don't think Kerry was very impressed when Callie said, "These eggs aren't as good Daddy. They taste like Mommy's."

We checked out of our hotel room first thing in the morning but we kept the key to the parking garage so that we could leave the car there while we walked over to the aquarium. Callie loved the tide pools where you can get right up close to the starfish and other creatures. Her favourite were these tiny barnacles that look like little trees and hide in their shell in about 1/100th of a second when you touch them.

Callie was so excited about the tide pools that she missed about half the aquarium including the seals and otters. Carter and I wandered around the whole place which included many aquariums of fish, jelly fish and an underwater dome.  Carter just laid down on the floor and stared at the fish for about 15 minutes.

We ended the day with a harbour cruise. The boat we went on was part of the City Pass program and the guy narrating managed to talk the entire hour. He knew all the history of the area and every pier and building had a story. I highly recommend it if you do head to Seattle. It's only an hour and gives you a great view of the city.

That was the end of our trip and we headed back across the boarder in time for dinner.

Seattle - A Day at the Zoo

Day two in Seattle started with breakfast in our hotel.  It was included with the hotel room and was a small room with half a dozen tables and a kitchen. A single cook spent the morning making a hot breakfast buffet. Callie and I really liked the scrambled eggs so Kerry asked the cook what he did. Apparently cream in your scrambled eggs tastes very good.

After breakfast we headed off to the Woodland Park Zoo. It was about 10 minutes from our hotel and right beside a large public park.  It was a bit chilly but still a really great place and would be a wonderful place to picnic in the summer.

The zoo itself was great. It had all the typical animals with lions, tigers, elephants and giraffes as well as a few more exotic ones like Komodo Dragons. Callie and Carter had a lot of fun as the exhibits allow you to get up very close to the animals and there was even a carousel. It's still quite cool out so it wasn't very busy at all. Mostly mothers and their babies who probably have seasons passes. I think it's spring break down there as well as there were very few classes.




After the zoo we headed back to our hotel and walked over to Pikes Place Market. It's a nice market but once you've been to Granville Island there's really no comparison. The quality of the food and the crafts is much better in Vancouver.

After the market we went back to our hotel for a nap (myself included). Before dinner I walked down to the pier to scout out some places to eat and do a bit of geocaching. I found a small one under a sculpture of an octopus.

For dinner there were quite a few options. We considered The Crabpot where they place the food directly on your table but it's better if you go with a group. We also found a great place that had happy hour from 3:30 to midnight during the off season but it was apparently too good as the wait was an hour and a half. In the end we ended up at Red Robin. Not very sea food like but at least we knew what we were getting.

After dinner it was off to the Space Needle. Kerry isn't very comfortable around heights so she and Callie only came outside for a few minutes. Carter and I spent more time outside taking in the amazing view of Seattle's skyline at night.

Seattle - A Not Quite Stay-cation

It's spring break and it's been a while since we had any sort of vacation so we decided we'd head down to Seattle for a few days. It's only a couple hours drive and it gives us a chance to hit the outlet malls on the way down. Things started out a bit rough as Carter decided to get sick the evening before we left. He was up coughing all night but in the morning he wasn't running a fever so we wrapped him up and stuffed him in the car.

On the way down we stopped at Walmart to pick up some Chocolate Cheerios and a few other unusual foods that you don't see in Canada very often.  Then it was over to the outlet malls for kids shoes and a few things for us. Ronnie gave me some American money for my birthday and I took full advantage of the cheap prices picking up a pair of track pants and a new basketball.

Once we got to Seattle we tried to check into our hotel however it wasn't quite ready so we went straight to the Science Center. Seattle particpates in the City Pass program and for $59.00 for adults and $39.00 for kids you get tickets to all the major attractions including the Science Center, the Zoo, the Space Needle and others. Before we got there Carter was quite excited to see the dinosaurs.  Once he saw them up close though he was slightly less excited.

Callie's favorite part was the Mole Rat exhibit.  I'm mildly uncomfortable around spiders so of course Callie likes to show me spiders all the time. When Kerry and Callie were looking up the Zoo they found out about this exhibit and Kerry didn't like the mole rat pictures.  In the picture to the left Callie and Carter are trying to get a good picture of them so that they can bring it home and scare Mommy later.

Kerry's favourite part was the Butterfly House. There were hundreds of them and signs everywhere saying to be careful where you step. They also had to do a butterfly check on the way out for apparently obvious reasons.

After the Science Center we headed back to our hotel. Our travel agent (Barb) had picked out a lovely Inn near Pikes Place Market.  It was mainly apartments but they had a number of hotel suites as well.  The room was absolutely enormous as I think they just converted a few of the apartments into hotel rooms.
We rested up at the hotel for a few hours before heading out to dinner. We went to the Rainforest Cafe when we were in Disneyland and we wanted to surprise Callie with it. As we drove up Callie recognized the sign but it wasn't until we were inside that she realized where we were going. "Really Mommy! We're actually going here? I thought it was only in Disneyland!".  The picture above is taken with everyone copying Carter's new picture smile. Dinner was great and included their signature desert, a Volcano, which is a pile of ice cream covered in slices of cake and a sparkler on top.  Too much food even for four people.
After  the restaurant we headed back to our hotel to try to get some sleep before continuing our adventure the next day.

A Tale of Two Chairs and Four Dogs

We'll start with the two chairs.  I'm not certain where these came from. They were at my parents house for the past 20 years or so and I thought they came from my Grandparents on my DAD's side but my parents have no memory of this. Even when we got them they were in bad shape. My DAD had replaced one of the seats with an old piece of counter top and the original paint had long since been replaced by a nice coat of rust. I sanded them down to bare metal, painted them with three coats of rust proof paint and replaced the seats with maple. I think they'll have to be plant stands though. I wasn't able to find very good protectors for the feet and when you have them upside down they're a lethal weapon. Still a fun project though.

Now on to the four dogs. We only have one named Wilson. (He's the cute one in the middle.) The other three belong to my in-laws. Captain, Hana and Spencer. (Those are the dogs names, not my in-laws.) They went on back to back cruises in February and we looked after the dogs. As individuals they're each great dogs. As a group they turn into a pack. And a pack of Bichon's isn't something you want to meet in a dark alley. My ear drums are still recovering. We can't complain though since they're coming down to look after Wilson while we go to Seattle in a couple weeks.

This last picture is just plain strange.  I came around the corner to find Callie and Carter creeping up on a few small treasures. They were guarding it while calling on me to clean it up and I guess they figured the smell was rising so it was better to be close to the floor.