Monday, July 21, 2014

Berries and Birthdays

Summertime in Vancouver is great! The weather has never really gotten too hot...there have been a few days  here and there, but overall it stays around 20-28 degrees Celsius or 68-82 degrees Fahrenheit. It's perfect weather. I do miss the heat sometimes, and I have to remind myself that it isn't really going to get hotter than this. This IS the summer here!

There are so many community events and places to enjoy outdoors. During these past two weeks, we have gone blueberry picking twice, raspberry picking in a neighbor's yard, attended a concert by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra in Deer Lake Park with some ward members, and Dave and I went out with some other couples to the Richmond Asian Night Market. I still would like to get the kids involved in some summer classes of some kind and take advantage of all the cheap swim times at outdoor park pools. There are also drive-in movies and of course, museums we want to see, as well as many beaches we can visit anytime we want!

Berry season is in full swing here! I absolutely love it! My friend brought me some raspberries from her yard and then invited me and the kids to harvest more while she was away! I jumped on that opportunity. One of my dreams is to have Raspberry bushes of my own, but right now we don't have a yard to do it. Hopefully we can grow some in a planter.


We also found a local blueberry farm where we can pick our own berries for $0.80/lbs.! They also pay $0.50/lbs for kids to pick for the farm! We went once last Saturday in the middle of the day with Dave and I the boys and our friends, the Hales. It was a really hot day, but we did end up with about 10 lbs of berries! We only paid $8.00! Just think about how much you usually pay in a store...yeah, we got a GREAT deal! I took the kids back today, actually to "work". Shhh, but I did about 75% of the work by myself. Isaac just feasted (hopefully he didn't eat any spiders). We harvested another 12(ish) lbs, and each of the kids were paid a Toonie coin ($2) for their four lbs. buckets. I just donated the rest, since our freezer is full of berries. The kids want to go back with friends to earn more money....(It won't be as "boring"). ;) I think they secretly had more fun than they admit.








We had two birthdays this last week (Caleb and Dave's) and a big washing machine problem that threw everything of kilter. You should have seen our whole family, minus Isaac (asleep) at 10 PM one night, with towels and mops, mopping up a flooded laundry room. The washer didn't know when to turn off while filling. The old Indian man downstairs kept thinking it was because we were using the higher water levels for our  loads, but we showed him that the flooding happened on the smallest loads as well. After waiting for the repairman (who forgot about us once) to come for an entire week, we finally got it fixed. When I was finally able to do laundry after almost a week and 1/2, I had 9 loads to do!

The birthdays turned out pretty well  OKAY. I mainly focused on Caleb's, because his have been low-key for the last 2 years. For his, we invited some friends from the area to have a baked potato picnic and water games in the park. Then we brought them all back to our house for a movie and ice-cream sandwich cake! Caleb's friends gave him a Nerf gun, Ninja turtle slime, and Legos (THANK YOU!!!). He is helping Dave build a portable Lego tabletop to fit over our card table as his larger present.




Dave's birthday was kind of a flop. I wore myself out the day before for Caleb's party (the downside of having two birthdays in a row) and his big gift had to be put on hold until groceries were taken care of. He's finally getting a bike that he can put to use for getting to and from the skytrain everyday for work! He didn't get a cake....I just had no time or energy. When I did try to do something last minute, it flopped. The fun little chocolate bowls (a Pintrest idea) made from water balloons dipped in chocolate, turned into a Pintrest fail! They kept popping in the hot, melted chocolate. Then, when we finally successfully dipped them without them popping and let them set and then purposely popped them to form the bowls, the balloon pieces would not peel off the chocolate! We tried holding the bowls in our hands in order to peel the balloon pieces off, but the chocolate just melted all over our hands! We ended up eating ice cream with chocolate chunks and butterscotch sauce while watching Star Wars. I guess everyone had fun in the process. I may or may not have been the grump of the family that night...hahaha....

The Vancouver Symphony was really nice!


They played a very beautiful concert with a great musical selection too (Beethoven's 5th, the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, The Overture to Candide by Leonard Bernstein, John William's Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D Major). It was so great to hear a top quality symphony orchestra and enjoy a potluck picnic with friends in the park. Our kids were dancing, playing with a 3-week-old puppy and eating chicken wings, cheesecake tarts and Cheetos, while Mom (me) was oblivious and lost in the music. Dad (Dave) got after me a little for that. Oops...

Dave and I finally got out for a date night last Saturday with some friends we have made in the ward.


The Richmond Asian Night Market is basically a vendors market (kinda over priced trinkets and souvenir-type stuff like lots of cell phone cases, hats, socks, and colored contacts).



It is SUPER crowded and had really "loud" live music (cringe). They also have lots of food you can buy. My friend, Olane went straight for the BBQ and spicy Squid. That's not really my thing...I think I could cook a rubber band in BBQ sauce and get the same taste (sorry, Olane)!


We tried some fried potato swirly things on a stick called "Rotatos" and Asian equivalents of smoothies with ingredients like sweetened condensed milk, fruit juices, red beans (what?!), worm-like rice starch noodles dyed green, tapioca balls, strawberries, berries and mangos.

I had a shaved ice and custard "Icy" that was a little more my style with fresh mango, berries and melon on top. It was yummy! I just had to close my eyes while paying almost $6.00!



There was a Candyland area. It was a big candy market with lots of Asian candies I have never seen. They were interesting, for sure. We brought some different flavors home for the kids. I have a general assumption that Asian people like gummy textures. There were lots of gummy textures in the candies and even in the smoothies. The whole night market kind of compares to a state fair in the U.S., but with an Asian flare and no livestock or 4-H exhibits ;). It was quite a new experience for me, but fun!

Monday, July 7, 2014

Colorado Reunion and Stanley Park Totem Poles

  A week ago we returned from a great vacation back in the good ole' USA. Yes, this blog is all about our life in Vancouver, but, oh well....we are stepping back into the USA for a little here and then I'll show you some more from up north.
  David, his Mom and Dad, siblings, siblings and their spouses and kids, are all really close. We try to get together as often as possible and have meaningful, enriching activities and reunions. This year we included Dave's Grandma and Grandpa Wilson from Ontario. We planned to have a reunion in Durango, Colorado this year for a little change of scenery and because it was relatively easy to travel to for most of us. During the year since planning it, many have moved further away and it actually became a little less easy to get to! But, we all made it there anyway!
  It was great to go back to the U.S. It always feels like coming home for me, even if we are just taking a 40 minute drive over the border for cheaper groceries. Getting to Colorado was a long process with wiggly kids, but we got to our nice Cabin lodge at about 1:00 AM. We had a little mix-up and some long lines with the rental car company, and were thankful that some of Dave's family came to the airport to meet us. They led us to the lodge, which would have been impossible to find at that hour of the early morning, along dirt roads in the back country of Durango.
  As always at family reunions, we enjoyed great food and mingling together. During the 4 days there we got out and had a picnic and walk in Durango and enjoyed a small children's museum. We went to a Mountain setting attraction called "Bar D Chuckwagon" where we could look around some shops, take a little kiddie train ride, and have dinner and a show. The show was put on by a local old west comedy group called "The Wranglers". They were quite funny to listen to! We also did some white-water rafting along the Lower Animas River, attended church, took some family photos, stayed up late for late-night talks, movies and board games sessions, and aroused a few water fights and leather bracelet- making activities for the kids. Here are a few pictures to illustrate:    












The white water rafting was a blast! The section of the river we did was very family-friendly. Our group of 17 had to take 2 boats. The company had a photographer, thankfully! **Hint: Watch Caleb's face in the 2nd boat's photos!** 















 This trip was memorable, for sure! Thanks everyone there for making it so!

Next up, is Stanley Park. This park is a peninsula all of it's own off the mainland north of Vancouver. The famous seawall runs along part of it. This past Saturday, we took a walk around the southern part of Stanley Park and the seawall. We saw some old totem poles (many restored in the last few decades), a canon called the Nine O' Clock Gun (no picture, sorry), and Third Beach, where we let the kids wade/swim in the water. It was a cloudy day, with rain off and on. We tried not to let that stop us and ruin our spirits...which was a difficulty, but we were successful, I think. We even had lunch in the rain, under a big tree. The tree sheltered us pretty well from the rain, which stopped just afterward, and we were able to have a much more enjoyable afternoon. Here are some photos from walking along the seawall and the Totem Poles





Below, we created a "Family Totem Pole". Each person was copying a figure from one of the poles behind them. Haha!





Thanks for Stopping by today!