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!