Our New Second Car Modo

Our household now needs approximately 1.1 vehicles. 90% of the time the one vehicle is fine but sometimes we have events that require us to separate and use two vehicles. I figure it's $5k to $8k to have a vehicle so rather than buying we are lucky enough in the lower mainland to have access to car sharing networks. There is now one that has a car just a few blocks from our house plus other vehicles at the skytrain station. I tried it out for the first time when I had to get to a blood donation. I could have taken transit but the car was faster and I wanted to try it out. I picked it up at the Skytrain with no trouble and now know what to do when we need a second vehicle. Much more economical.

Gingerbread Mayhem

A very short post on Gingerbread making this year, mainly because it went so quickly and I didn't get a lot of pictures. The kids still wanted to decorate so I made the house parts on the Saturday and we picked up materials the same day for decorating on Sunday. We went to the cake decorating store which I now regret because it made this much more expensive than it should be. We might as well have bought kits. Callie had two friends and Carter had one and we had just enough icing to put together five houses. I may try to plan more next year so we can do some more interesting things like lights or moving parts.

Mark Hall - Celebrity Tree

For the past several years we've been getting a live tree. Or at least a tree that was recently live. One year I'd like to get a tree with the roots still attached that gets planted after Christmas but I'm not sure where to go for that. The tree farm we've settled on is called Dogwood Christmas Tree farm and it opens at the end of November and is usually sold out within the first few weekends. It's the actual farm so you get to cut your own trees or take one of the ones they've already cut. Those are typically pretty expensive because they cut the tall ones and you pay by the foot.

Kerry was very excited during our hunt because we were warned that some of the trees that had blue ribbon on them may have a bit of fake snow from filming a Hallmark film in the summer time. Hallmark has started making these utterly ridiculous movies that they release at Christmas time. This year there was 30 new ones and when you're making that many you know the quality has to be high. I follow the Christmas tree farm on Facebook so I knew about it in advance and with a little sleuthing we determined that the movie was the "Mistletoe Secret" staring Patrick Duffy and Kelly Pickler.

We found the marked trees and Kerry insisted on getting a celebrity tree so after a bit of searching we found our tree and named him Mark Hall. He's a noble fir and we later discovered he had his part cut when they did the final editing. It's a shame too because he was a great tree. We got a good deal during the height measurement too because the tree measuring guy works at Kerry's new school. We strapped Mark to the top of our car and he fit nicely into our living for the whole month of December. We watched the parts with the tree farm in the movie but Kerry couldn't stand to watch this particular movie. Even she has her limits.

Christmas Craft Fair

Kerry is at a new school this year and her school arranges a craft fair each year. The organizers had expressed the need for some wooden crafts so I volunteered to help out. I had low expectations when I discovered that the approach was that each table paid a $20 entry fee which was how the PAC made their money. An okay deal for the sellers but it did mean there wasn't much incentive for the PAC to encourage people to attend. They had their money already and their other income was from selling pop and chips at the door which they could always just sell later if no one shows up.

I felt this would be a good family event so Callie made toques and Christmas ornaments, Carter made Christmas ornaments and I made wood crafts. Attendance was what I expected and most of the attendees appeared to be other vendors or family members. I had made sure we all made things we could use or gift to others after the event which worked out well because we had very few people attend our booth. Those that did though were quite interested. Callie managed to sell two of her Jughead toques and Carter did okay with ornaments. I had zero sales for the first half but managed to see a few items. I was also lucky our friend Brenda came and bought a few things. We did better than most vendors though. Some of the people near us didn't sell anything. I don't think we'll be doing this craft fair again next year.

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.