Oliver's First Snowfall

We've had about 30cm of snow over the past week and Oliver got to experience his first snowfall. He reacted as most dogs I've had have reacted in the past. He is very confused with the white stuff covering all of his normal scents and he tries to uncover everything with his nose. There was already about 3 cm when I let him for the first time and it was hard to get him back inside. He sniffed and ran around the entire time.

When Callie came home there was even more snow and the two of them had great fun running around in the back yard. Oliver was due for a hair cut and long hair on dogs that don't shed is very good at collecting snow. By the time he was ready to come back in he had snow balls all over his feet. Luckily we have a hot tub and a very quick dunk of his feet had him clean and ready for a towel. The snow is still around on December 21st. If it gets cold again soon we might have snow on the ground for Oliver's first Christmas.

Las Vegas

In November I got the chance to go to a conference for work. The conference was related to one of the software vendors we use for designing changes to our electrical system including dams, substations and transmission lines. Now that I've explained what the conference was about I should probably mention that it was in Las Vegas. It may seem odd to have a work conference in a location like Las Vegas but it actually makes a lot of sense. In the off season there is a lot of hotel space and they have some excellent conference facilities.

My room was a bit over the top however it was in the hotel where the conference was and it was a very good deal. It seems all the rooms in the Palazzo are laid out like this. It was definitely nice enough to want to bring the family back at some time since they've offered me a 3 nights for the price of 2 deal for a future visit. The room had two levels with a full living room area. The bathroom had both a shower and a tub and even had a makeup area separate from the double sink.  Definitely more room than I needed but I wasn't complaining.

The hotel is relatively new to the Las Vegas strip so everything was very well thought out. The  pool area was amazing and was a string of five or six pools on the fourth floor roof. It was November so it was only about 20 degrees at the peak of the day but the hot tub was warm enough for me to spend a bit of time in. It was obvious I came from the north since I was the only one out there. Apparently 20 degrees just isn't warm enough for people in Las Vegas. 

The conference was a great learning opportunity for the work items I was there for and it was also fun for my outside of work interests as well. They had whole sections on 3D printing and manufacturing as well as CNC mill's demoing the creation of parts out of solid aluminum. The most interesting cross over was the use of artificial intelligence to create a piece of furniture. They use the computer to come up with thousands of variations of a chair and then they picked one that looked good and used the software to print the parts in metal. It was a nice looking chair. Not too long before people are not involved in the process at all.

I did do a bit of gambling at the slot machines however Las Vegas isn't as interesting a town as a place like New Orleans or San Francisco. I did get to enjoy some music at the Rock and Roll Marathon that was happening on the first night I was there. I also got the chance to go on the 'High Roller' which is a giant Ferris wheel that gives great views of the strips. It takes about 40 minutes to go all the way around and you are in a car about the size of your living room with a dozen other guests. It was all part of the conference because they had rented out an entire street including pubs and restaurants for the evening. Some great food was available including Kobe Beef Sliders and some excellent Mexican food. It was a great trip.

Carter's Stick Fort

Surrey has plenty of park space but it's not the type of park space where you can walk into the woods and build a fort without someone assuming you are homeless and getting you in trouble. This didn't stop Carter and I from enjoying the task of building a fort. He noticed several dead branches from some recent tree trimming and we brought them home to build a fort in the yard. A simple structure that Eeyore would have been proud of. Carter really seemed to enjoy it so I think we will try to do something similar when we're in Prince George next year and possibly even try to get him into Scouts.

Carter's Birthday

I almost forgot to blog about Carter's birthday which would be about par for the course unfortunately for Carter's birthday. It's in mid-September and with back to school we just don't seem to have as much time to prepare for it. Originally Carter was going to do something like bowling or a fun park but at the last minute he decided he wanted a Pokemon party at home. He only recently got into Pokemon with the release of the new app you can play on your phone. Somehow in a very short period of time however he's managed to memorize most of the 500+ different types of Pokemon.

Callie really helped out with the planning for the party. Her and Carter looked up Pokemon related things to do online and Callie helped with the refreshments including Squirrel Juice, Charmander Cheetos and Nidorina Nachos. Carter did all the goodie bags and made a personalized Pokemon for each one. Pokemon was the theme for gifts as well which suited Carter just fine. We are still playing the phone game and he checks every day to see which Pokemon we've captured.

GG's Birthday Weekend

After our quick trip to Oliver the weekend before it was time for a quick trip to Prince George. At least the Prince George trip was on a long weekend. We left right after school on the Friday again but due to the longer trip we spent the night in 100 Mile house. This left us with just a short trip on Saturday morning allowing us to arrive in time to visit with family before Thanksgiving dinner at my parent's house. It was prime leaf raking time and Grandpa hired Carter to take care of the first raking of the year. He subbed some of the work out to me but still did quite a bit including cleaning up all the piles.

Oliver had plenty of fun as well. This was his first experience with leaves and I was able to get a few hundred leaf pictures with Oliver and the kids. A good thing too since it ended up being too wet for leaf pictures in Surrey this year. We can't do the annual calendar if we don't have some good pictures of the kids jumping in leaves. The kids also had a good time playing with their other real cousin. (There are lot's of second cousins that apparently don't count.) Jackson even helped Carter line up the balls for a game of pool.

The main reason we came up for Thanksgiving was to celebrate Great Grandma's 95th birthday. She insisted she didn't want a party but of course we didn't listen to here. She came for Thanksgiving dinner at the Schwab's on Saturday and then we had an afternoon tea event at her retirement home on the Sunday afternoon. GG made sure to visit with everyone and she was easy to keep track of with her giant birthday balloon attached to her wheel chair. It was good visiting with first cousins, second cousins, distant cousins and aunts and uncles. For some reason we didn't get a lot of family pictures but we did get some good ones of GG. She looks great for 95.

Festival of the Grape

The timing worked out for us to attend the Festival of the Grape in Oliver this year. We are Crush Club members at a local winery which means we get a box of wine each year and a discount on all purchases. It also includes a Pick Up party in the fall where we pick up our wine as well as get some free food and entertainment. It's a whirlwind trip since we leave right after school on the Friday, attend the party on Saturday evening and then Festival of the Grape on Sunday morning before heading back in the afternoon on Sunday. Luckily Oliver is only a 4 1/2 hour trip so it's not too bad.

It was an even fuller weekend for Kerry, Barb and Reg. Barb and Reg are close friends with the owners of the Silver Sage winery and have been spending some of their free time helping out at the winery. Kerry joins in the fun from time to time as well and even has her alcohol serving ticket. Kerry helped out at the winery on the Saturday afternoon which was very busy due to so many people in town for the festival and Barb and Reg helped out at the Festival itself. A fun weekend and the weather was quite nice.

Donut Dash and the PNE

We took part in the Second Annual PNE Donut Dash this year. This was our second time doing this run. I think it would be neat if we could continue it as a family for the next several years and be able to say we've done every one. The run is a pretty good deal compared to some other runs. For your entrance fee you get a 5k run, a t-shirt, a finisher's medal, donuts and entrance to the PNE for the day. The entrance fee alone is around $20 so compared to other races for a similar price it's well worth it. 

We had also purchased ticket's for Gub and Gampoo however they weren't up for a run so they went to Starbuck's instead and cheered us on at the finish line. Carter had a bit of an incident last year where he got tired half way and decided to blame it on the time we had spent warming up. For all races since that time he now refuses to do any of the warm up exercises. We still have to work on our 5k times but there are so many 5k races in the lower mainland it's easy to get practice in. We're looking to do the Star Wars 10k in a couple years at Disneyland so these runs are perfect warm ups. The weather on this day was perfect for the PNE and we did our usual tour of the food booths and a trip to the Super Dogs. Barb and Reg hadn't been for several years and I think they really enjoyed watching the dogs. Callie of course loves petting the dogs at the end of the show. We are usually some of the last to leave as she tries to get to everyone of them.

Mike Lake Hike

If you are a true outdoors person and you want to live in the Lower Mainland, the North Shore is your ideal location. Within minutes you can be in areas so secluded you can't see any sign of civilization. Living in Surrey we aren't quite as close but we're close enough to make it a nice day trip. At the end of August we took a trip across the river to Mike Lake in Golden Ear's Park. This is a provincial park north of Maple Ridge and since all of our drinking water comes from the North Shore mountains they keep the parks as natural as possible.

I'd never actually heard of Mike Lake and I'm not entirely sure you could call it a true lake. It might have been grander a few thousand years ago but since then it had filled in form the edges and was more marsh then lake. It has a bit of history as one of the main logging camps from when much of the old grown timber had been cut down in the 1800's. A typical site in the lower mainland are the 10 ft wide stumps of old grown trees with notches cut in where loggers placed planks to get up high enough to cut down the tree.

It must have been incredibly intimidating to walk up to a tree that big and have to cut it down by hand. Still amazed they took so many of those big trees. We only had time to do the short loop around the lake but one of the local maps showed an enormous network of trails. We'll definitely have to go again next summer with proper hiking  gear so we can explore some of the more secluded trails. Having said that I think we only saw a handful of people along the way. There were a few more people in the parking lot but they seemed to be trying their hand at a bit of fishing and kayaking.

Seaweed Forts

In August it was a beautiful day so we took a trip down to White Rock Beach with the Kilden's. The tides are never at the same time each day and we never really know how far out they will be. At times there can be at least 500 feet of sandy beach to walk on. I'm pretty sure that's what Ryan was expecting because when we got there he looked quite dejected that he wasn't able to play in the sand. I've never actually seen the tides this far in. There was not a spec of sandy beach to play on.

As it turned out however, it was a blessing in disguise. The tides had been even farther in at one point and the whole beach was covered in about 6 inches of seaweed. It had apparently all blown in when it was windier and was far enough up on the beach that it had already mostly dried. If I had a truck and it was a more secluded beach I might have considered taking some home for the garden. Instead the kids and I had other plans.

It was easy to pick up big chunks of it at a time and within about an hour Carter and Callie both had their own seaweed fort. The walls were almost 3 ft tall and two feet thick. Ryan decided he wanted to build his between two big logs so Carter and Uncle Corey helped tow one of the logs down the beach for him. We were definitely the envy of the beach. Several other kids watched for a while and then eventually joined in and took over the forts when we left.