Callie Meets Dave

This year Callie was in grade nine which meant it was her turn for 'Take Your Kid to Work" day. Callie of course had the option of either Kerry or myself and since she had spent 8 years at work with Kerry I was able to convince her that she would learn more and have more fun if she came to my work. Kerry wasn't happy but reluctantly agreed. BC Hydro is a big company and I'm at one of the home offices so they had events already prepared. We started the day by taking the bus and the sky train to work. I wasn't surprised when security said they didn't know what was going on. After a bit of convincing I managed to get a pass for Callie to come to my desk.

The plan was to spend an hour at my desk doing boring things like checking e-mail and meeting co-workers before sending her to BC Hydro baby sitting where she got to go on several 45 minute tours of various parts of the company. The highlight of the morning was the magical coffee machine on my floor that has an LCD display and will make everything from espresso to to milk hot chocolate. We also stopped by Starbucks in our building. The next highlight was getting introduced to Dave who is the social media spokesman for BC Hydro. Just a regular BC Hydro employee who has his face all over BC. We got a powerpoint presentation on how he got his job and then Callie went off on her tours for the morning. I think she liked the Geomatics and Fleet tours the most. She even met up with a friend from elementary school. Lunch was provided and included pizza and a cookie and we got to have our picture taken with Dave. Callie had a great day and Carter can't wait for his turn.

Halloween Gets Out of Hand

Halloween is getting out of hand. It all started a few years ago when my friend Jeremy asked if I wanted to make a monster in a box which was a mix of woodworking and electronics. It was a lot of fun and ever since I've been adding a few more props. This year started in early October and was based on a comment Callie had made. Last year I had created a cemetery entrance but not a cemetery. This year I worked on adding some fence sections so we could have a fenced in cemetery. It started with a length of old looking picket fence along the front which was made with new wood with a technique for aging it.

The next step was to place the cemetery entrance and add a section of wrought iron fencing with lit up skulls. This too was new materials made to look older. The columns were solid wood and have the words Keep Out and Dead End on them. I've started making everything out of materials that will survive the rain. Unfortunately October is often quite wet and the columns I made for the cemetery entrance last year were made out of a plywood and have already started to peal. I may have to rebuild them. I also redid the archway with a lit up Cemetery sign. It's got a strobe light inside so it flickers and looks quite spooky.

The final touches for this year included a new place for the monster in a box and the coffin with the skeleton as well as a blue tooth speaker in the bushes playing spooky sounds of the cemetery. Just loud enough so that people weren't sure it was there. We had another new record for number or kids so I think people are starting to enjoy coming just for our house. Next year I plan on improving the fog chiller. Chilled fog stays close to the ground for a spookier effect and the plan is to build a chiller that looks like a cemetery crypt. Add to that some new cemetery stones and we should keep our place as spookiest house on the block.

The Pedunkle

One more year at the pumpkin patch. I would say this looks like our last year except for the fact that we go every year with the cousins and I think Ryan has a few more years left in him. We posed for our traditional family picture at the big pumpkin and I got some good shots of the kids but when we handed our camera to someone to get the full family I think he was either drunk or blind because he somehow missed us. We are all in the left hand side of the screen and I think one of us is missing. Next time we'll have to be a bit more judicious in our picture taker selection.

One of the highlights this year was the kittens. There are always newborn somethings and it's typically pigs, chicks and rabbits but this year there was a kitten pen. They don't seen to have any qualms about hundreds of people picking up the bunnies for hours on end but they were a bit more protective of the kittens. Only 60 minutes a couple times during the day. Callie and I got lucky and were able to get in just as they were about to shut down visiting hours. Kittens sure are cute. Too bad Callie and Kerry are allergic.

The true highlight of the day however started a year earlier. The person who took us on the hay ride to the patch asked a question of what the top of a pumpkin is called and the answer was pedunkle. The winner got a free pumpkin and at that moment Carter wrote down the answer and brought it home and posted it on our fridge. It sat there all year and we were reminded about it every few months. The day finally arrived and Carter even took the time to learn the other parts of the pumpkin just in case they switched up the question this year.

Things weren't looking good when the driver asked a completely different question. He wanted to know why the farm was called Aldor acres. (Turns out it is because the owners are named Al and Dorothy.) Carter did not look happy because that was not on his list of answers. Kerry saved the day when she told the driver about Carter's year of planning and the driver was very excited that someone would be that dedicated. He asked the question to him directly and Carter got his free pumpkin. We'll have to do a bit more studying next year so we can be even more prepared.

Carter's Birthday Party

Carter turned 11 this year and apparently that is still young enough to have a real birthday party. The good thing is that we didn't have to do anything too big at the house because he wanted to go to Extreme Air Park which is a trampoline place in Langley. They have well over 100 trampolines and there is a mix of open areas and closed arenas for events like basketball or dodgeball. They even turn the lights off periodically and turn on the black lights so everyones socks light up nice and bright.

The attendees were the usual suspects including Jevin, Luca, Ryan and Kristen. There were enough of us that we had to borrow uncle Corey to help us bring the kids from our house to the trampoline park. It's an interesting experience with kids in the car as they get older. They are in that stage where they completely ignore you as the driver. No number of dad jokes are able to bring them out of their parent ignoring trance. We managed to get everyone to the park and went through two hours of jumping and dodgeball without any damage.

After the trampoline park it was back to the house for cake and presents. I will admit that I was a terrible father and had accidentally booked a movie with some friends during the second half of the party. Luckily it's not as big a deal now that Carter is older because the party is much more self sufficient. Carter even did most of the work with the goodie bags. He was careful to avoid any unnecessary plastic toys that would just break and get thrown out. His cake was an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen with a Simpsons theme. The kids have been hooked on that since we got back from Universal Studios.

Carter's big gift was exactly that. Big. This year he wanted the Apollo shuttle. Not sure how many piece it was but these aren't even a challenge for him anymore. He had it together with no assistance before the evening was over. Now we just have to find a place for a 36 inch space shuttle.

A New Start for Kerry

Kerry has been a temporary vice principal on and off for the past few years. This was typically precipitated by some sort of illness in either the vice principal or principal position at Frost Road. They aren't able to bring in someone to fill the position right away and when it's an illness they don't know how long they will need someone so they try to fill it from within. She had almost three full years experience in this temporary role and felt it was time to apply for a permanent role. She was successful on her first attempt and the hope was that she would be able to have one more year at Frost Road before being moved to a new school.

Things were looking good right up until the end of August when she got the call from her district principal and was informed that she was going to be moving to Hazelgrove Elementary. This was a big announcement and probably better that she didn't have too much time to think about it. It could have been much worse. The new school is less than 15 minutes away and because it's so big she gets to be 80% vice principal which is good experience for getting her own school as principal in the next couple years. She said her goodbyes and set up her new office. Since I'm writing this in December I can say that it's been a lot more work than her last school. I think a principalship in a smaller school will be easier. :)

Callie's Birthday

It's been a few months since my last blog post. No specific reason other than the fact that things got busy in early September. (There will be a blog post on that.) It's the end of 2019 and one of my tasks for 2020 is to go back to regular posting rather than my current approach of uploading pictures every few months and trying to catch up on blog post at that time. This year I'll also be concentrating more on woodworking which will give another excuse to open up blogger. I spent most of the spring and summer on a back yard project and this year I'll just be focusing on the plants. Should free up some time.

Regardless of how exciting the day is, I hope to always have a post about the kids birthdays. This year there was no formal party for Callie and instead the day was focused on TV and food. (Maybe that's not a good thing....) I was at work but Kerry took the kids to Rocko's Diner in Mission. It doubles as Pop's diner in the Riverdale series which is loosely based on the Archie comics. Dinner involved a trip to Kelly O'Bryan's which includes a free dinner on your birthday. We followed that up with a trip to snowy village where they provide overly elaborate frozen milk deserts. Callie had a good day with family and friends.

Summer Road Trip - Last Day at Disneyland

We were up early again but once again Melissa and crew were first in line. Their hotel is closer to the park then ours however it still takes a bit of effort to be the front of the line. By the time we got there they had already entered the park and were waiting by the ropes in California Adventure Land. This worked out very well for us as our goal was to get on the Radiator Springs Racers ride. It was the last of the big rides and one of only a few rides remaining in California Adventure Land for us to say we had ridden every ride at least once.

The only other ride that we had to focus on getting in line for was Toy Story. I don't consider this one of the big rides but it seems to be a fan favourite. It's similar to Buzz Light Year where you are shooting things to score points however it's much more fun as it's more like an interactive video game. You are presented a screen in pairs and you shoot things like plates and ducks as if you are on the mid way. The line up was manageable since it was so early and we got on with no problems. I had the high score for our car at 158,000. Nowhere near the high score for the ride that week of over 350,000.

We finished most of the outstanding rides and then headed over to Disneyland for the rest of the morning. We decided to take the train but we got distracted by a character for pictures and missed it by about 15 seconds. This means that technically it would have been faster to walk to New Orleans square but we were tired so we decided to wait the 10 minutes for the next train. I actually think they need to run this thing more often now that Galaxy's edge is in. The park is getting to be quite the walk from one end to the other.

Today was our last chance to get something in that Carter had been waiting patiently for. He wanted to build a droid however he wanted to make sure he did it with his cousin Kristen and this was the first chance we had to do that. It was initially going to be just the two of them but Ryan decided at the last minute that he wanted to. $99 per kid later and they were in the droid factory picking their parts. It's not a terrible price if it was Canadian but in US it's a bit steep even though the end result has a motor and a remote. At least this time the batteries are included.

We did our usual pool time in the afternoon and then headed back to California adventure for our last outstanding rides which included the Nemo submarines and another ride on Soarin over California. The submarine is actually quite ridiculous. You stand in line for a long time to get on a submarine and then you look out a tiny portal. I think you could get the same effect by climbing into a garbage can with an iPad and a video of the ride on YouTube.

We had seen the fireworks from various locations every night however tonight we managed to be right in the middle. There are fireworks coming from Toon Town as well as Fantasyland and we got to see them from in between. I think they are much better in the summer. This year there were various themes including Frozen and the Lion King. During frozen they had bubbles falling from the street lights to simulate snow. I was finished by about 10:30 but the kids and Kerry managed to stick around right til midnight. They made Space Mountain their last ride. Another fun trip.