Our Second Covid Easter

This was our second Easter during Covid. The vaccine is available and Kerry has her first shot but the province is still pretty much closed. We remain working from home and you can't travel outside of your health district, meaning no one can come to or from Prince George or Oliver. We did still do our own thing for Easter Sunday though. The kids woke up and looked for chocolates from the Easter Bunny. At this point I'm not sure we're ever going to be allowed to stop that. Carter is getting much more competitive so perhaps we'll stop when one of them gets seriously injured.

We also had a traditional easter dinner of turkey, potatoes, stuffing, buns and Brussel sprouts. I would have been fine without turkey since there are a lot of leftovers with 4 people and no Uncle Ronnie, but Carter really wanted a giant turkey leg for Easter. Callie made the buns and did a great job. Things are looking much better for next year. Covid should be done by the summer and we should be able to have regular family holiday events in the fall. 

Bathroom Reno Completion (Almost)

In the fall last year our toilet broke. We bought a new one but quickly discovered that it had been leaking for a while and we would need to remove the particle board floor around the toilet. At this point of course it made sense to redo our whole bathroom. Covid was in full swing and everyone's vacation funds were being turned into home renovation funds so contractors weren't cheap. The guy up the street with a similar house layout to us indicated he had asked for a quote and been told $35k to $40k. I figured we could do it for about half of that so we started purchasing materials before Christmas including the shower, vanity and fixtures.

There were two pieces that I didn't really want to do. The first was the plumbing. Our house has the old Poly-B pipes that are prone to sudden failure and needed replacing. It was going to be easier if we did the half of the house that included the bathroom now so we hired a contractor to do that and install the shower and drain for the tub. The other piece was the tile. I've done tiling myself before but its not my favourite because if you screw up you can't just sand it smooth. You have to rip it out and start over. We tried several options for someone to come but in the end none of them called us back or gave us very high prices. Kerry and I set aside a weekend and made the attempt. I placed the mortar on the floor and she back buttered the big tiles. There was a lot of swearing but we survived. It took about 4 months from plumbing start to all fixtures in place although it is July and I'm not quite done. I'm working on a cabinet to store toilet paper for the apolocolypse and unfortunately it seems the plumbers didn't install the drain correctly so I have to figure that out. Should be done by the end of the summer.

A Covid Christmas

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, were bubble members only because Bonnie Henry said so. Merry Covid Christmas! Things weren't looking too bad going into October and my work had even asked that people leaders return to work for one day a week starting in mid November. By the time mid November came around however we were into the hundreds for daily Covid numbers and that continued into December. By the second week of December Bonnie Henry was starting to drop hints that Christmas would be different this year. We had considered having Kerry's parents come down with the intention of both households quarantining in advance but with a travel ban and only one family per house hold rules in place it was decided that our Christmas would be much smaller. No family visits, no big Christmas Dinner and no fondue. Having said all that, we did still go through the motions of Christmas with a fresh tree and lights on the house though admittedly I had a few strings that needed work and I decided it was easier to just not put those ones up.

My grand mother passed away before a few years ago and one of the the things she always did was a lot of Christmas baking. Since she was in a home for the past few years of her life we hadn't had her short bread for several years. When she was still alive I had her tell me the recipe with the goal of one day trying to replicate it. Shortbread is a simple recipe but there are many variations so I was glad I got both the proper ratios of ingredients and the steps she took. This year seemed like a good year to give it a go. There were a few steps like how long to beat the butter and sugar that I didn't have so I borrowed some steps from Anna Olsen. The end result was better than I expected and pretty close to what I remember. The only step I didn't do that I think she did was to use a fork to flatten the shortbread before cooking. I know she did that for some of her recipes but not sure about this one. I've carefully documented all the steps and am glad I can replicate this piece of her.

The next Christmas event was exchanging gifts with Kerry's brother and his family. They only live a few blocks away and they would typically come over on Christmas day and we made this happen despite Covid. We had a gift exchange in the drive-way. We even had a bit of snow. The six foot rule was adhered to at all times with the help of a gift exchange piece of cardboard on the front planter and we all made sure to wash our hands as soon as we got inside. I think this exchange would have been Bonnie Henry approved.

The next tradition that was ruined by Covid was the Christmas day dinner. We would typically have Kerry's parents and her brothers over but this year we kept it to just Uncle Ronnie. He lives alone and effectively works alone as well so he was allowed to come to Christmas dinner. Bonnie Henry felt it was important to that single people get together with family. We had a turkey that was the free gift from Superstore and we had a few crackers left over from last year. It was similar to a regular Christmas but not quite the same.

For the past 20 years I've Participated in the Kilden family tradition of a fondue during Christmas break and for the past several years that has included the Duke family. The day shifts around depending on when people are available but once again it was our family only. We decided we would do it on New Years eve. Only one pot and with less people in the pot it went quickly. We started around 5:30 and were done by 6:15. The only good thing is that meant the house didn't smell of oil the next day.

We wrapped up Christmas with a new tradition that hopefully we don't have to repeat next year. We met up with Kerry's parents in the parking lot of Manning Park Lodge to exchange gifts and food. Kerry's parents always bring down lots of treats for Christmas and they had made them hoping they could come. We ended up with enough food to last us weeks. The one nice thing about the visit was we got to see real snow. There was several feet at the lodge and it almost felt like a real Christmas.

Here's to hoping Covid wraps up before next Christmas.

A Covid Christmas Tree Hunt

It's early December and at this point our assumption is that Christmas is cancelled. At least from the point of view of having people over. This means no big Christmas dinner, no Christmas fondue and it's looking like no family visits at all. Barb and Reg usually come down for Christmas but there is a travel ban in place with rising numbers and little hope that it will be removed. We may still decide to self quaranteen in advance and risk it but I think people are leaning towards a quiet Christmas. Just because there aren't people coming though doesn't mean we don't still need to get a tree.

We planned our traditional tree hunt at Dogwood Christmas Tree Farm. Unlike many places they decided against trying to do any sort of reservation system for your visit. That's probably okay since everything is outdoors. It was busy but easy to physically distance. The other change was that they had no food or hot chocolate to purchase and of course masks everywhere. We got another Noble fir and aptly named it Henry after Doctor Bonnie Henry. It's not a celebrity tree like last year but we still got close to what looked like a Hallmark movie shoot at a nearby farm. It was either a bigger production or they were shooting multiple movies. All using the same farmhouse and gazebo of course. 

 

A Very Covid Halloween

This year's halloween project was a proper chiller for my smoke machine. Smoke machines superheat a liquid and blow it out. The heated smoke tends to raise and spread everywhere. If you can chill it below ambient temperature however it will stick close to the ground. I had previously thrown together something simple with a five gallon pail but envisioned something fancier. The end result was a box with holes coming out of skull heads with the smoke machine, ice and blower fan all encased inside. The box was meant to look like a crypt and had a dog skeleton on top. It worked quite nicely and was a hit with the everyone walking by.

This of course was 2020 and the year of Covid so Halloween was very different. Doctor Bonnie Henry did not explicitly say no however she encouraged a physically distant Halloween. This mean avoiding kids having to come to your front door and making sure you made every effort to keep six feet distant. One of the popular projects online was a candy delivery system. I briefly considered doing something that I could use in future years but in the end only had time to create a simple candy chute with some PVC pipe. It worked okay but wasn't quite big enough and due to lighting issues, many kids didn't notice it. The ones that did though liked the idea of having candy thrown at them through a pipe. I think I even got some day time trick or treaters that didn't intend to try to get candy. Their parents were very excited their kids didn't have to get too close.

It was definitely not a normal year. We had 160 last year and this year we only got 50 kids. Carter went out and found it very difficult to find houses to trick or treat at. The number of homes participating in our neighbourhood was already down and now people had a further excuse. I hope things rebound next year. I'll have to start thinking about what my next project is going to be. The yard decorations definitely help us bring in more kids than most people on our street.

 

Raine the Bunny in Trouble

Since the spring we've had at least two bunnies living in our back yard. We're pretty sure there were two because they seemed to be different sizes. It was hard to tell though so we named 'the bunny' Raine and weren't too worried about which one we were looking at. Raine was chosen because Oliver's bunny based dog food is from a brand called Raine. It seemed fitting. We weren't entirely sure if they bunnies actually lived in the backyard or if they just visited a lot. They seemed to be there most days and you could see their various escape routes under the fence. Necessary as Oliver would often chase them.

One day in October during work I was outside on a conference call and the bushes near the deck were moving. I discovered that Raine was there but wasn't running away the way he/she normally wood. Upon close inspection I noticed that he/she was entangled in some grass. You could tell this was where (let's just go with she) she was living because she had eaten out the inside of one of my perennials. More noticeable now that the plants were dying back for winter. She had either become entangled trying to jump in or out and the grass had wrapped completely around her stomach. I quickly grabbed some kitchen scissors and freed her hoping she would hop away. Unfortunately it looked like she had injured herself while trapped. It was very apparent that she had either severely dislocated or broken one of her hind legs. She made a very feeble effort to get away from me but it was obvious she wasn't going anywhere quickly.

After a bit of thought I decided the immediate action was to protect her for a while and watch to see if she could get better on her own. I surrounded her with some metal fencing and got a light bulb to keep her warm. We fed her some water and spinach and other then the inability to move she seemed fine. She drank and ate and made efforts to move around her cage. After a couple hours however it was obvious the leg was broken. It hung limply and I knew there was no way for us to care for her. I did seriously consider looking after her for a few weeks while she got better and it might have worked if it was a sprain. A break though needed more aid.

I biked over to the vet and they recommended a wildlife shelter in Langley. We got Oliver's old kennel from the basement and put her inside. We drove to the sanctuary and dropped her off and then came home and made a donation. I suspect generic rabbits are not one of the rarest animals they get. We don't know what happened to her. The sanctuary does care for rabbits but the break may have been more effort than they would want to do for a species that 'breeds like rabbits'. Of course, our assumption is that she is living out a long live at the animal sanctuary with other bunny friends. All this in about 5 hours on a slow work day.

 

Backsplash

When we moved into our town house in 2002 our kitchen didn't have a back splash. It just had the curved laminate and we did go to the tile store a few times to pick out tiles but we never ended up installing one. We ended up moving into our house after a few years. Our new house had a dated kitchen and the plan was to replace it eventually. We finally did so four years ago and everything was finished except the back splash. I do much of the work on our house and tiling is one item I don't enjoy doing. My main issue is that if you screw up there isn't a lot to do to fix your mistakes but replace everything. This year we replaced our fire place which also had tile around it and there was now a need to tile two things. All this back story is leading up to the fact that I finally took the plunge and started on the backsplash. Home Depot had a good tile saw for a price that made sense to buy rather than rent and after getting Kerry to finally check out tile for our new house we were ready to go.

The easy part turned out to be the initial install. I was worried it would take a long time to cut tiles but with a new saw and a new blade they cut like butter. The next hard part was trying to be neat. I've watched enough HGTV shows to know that it's important to be neat with the install or your grouting will be a pain. The first wall was a bit of a disaster but after I got the hang of it it got easier. I was also able to clean the mastic with a putty knife and a rag so I was well prepped for grouting. Grouting on a vertical surface is a bit of a pain but with tiles that were rough on the edges things didn't have to be perfect. After 17 or 18 years we finally have our first backsplash. Now on to the fireplace.