Jul 10
25
Summer Fun!
Along with warm summer days come long days at the beach, and if we’re lucky a bit of camping. The last two weekends in a row, we’ve managed to do both! Our first trip was up island to Rathtrevor Beach and then this weekend we made it out to China Beach. Despite one set of hands being dedicated to holding and working with the littlest guy, we managed to have a great time and enjoy our time together.
(The following is a long post about our family’s two week vacation. If you want the full story, click the ‘More’ link below. If you just want to see the photos click here.)
Call it my inner crazy, but for quite a while I have been looking forward to an Alberta road trip with the family. Danielle has fond memories of her family trips to Alberta and I’ve been itching to take the kids to the water slides at West Edmonton Mall, the icefields near Jasper and the zoo in Calgary. This year we felt the time had come for this trip, with two Alberta families expecting in August and Kira being old enough to handle an extended car ride. OK, I admit that I was a bit off with the last one but in Kira’s defense being strapped into a car seat for several days and being away from familiar surroundings taxes even adults.
Jun 10
27
Happy Father’s Day
So I fulfilled a long standing childhood dream last weekend. My wonderful wife had agreed last year that a scholarship award could be put towards a boat fund. Almost a year and a half later an opportunity to purchase a used boat in good shape within budget came up.
So on Father’s day weekend, I drove up to Edmonton and checked it out. As I’ve been perusing various classified ads throughout the northwest since the award date, I knew right away that this was a bargain for the condition the boat is in. I must give a big thanks to Doug & Lisa for letting me borrow their Subaru (with roof rack) so I could bring it home.
So now I have a small hole in the water to put money into, never to be seen again. You can learn about its specs here. Also, now that it’s home, I need to figure out how to get it to the water to enjoy it! Have a great summer and happy sailing!
Jun 10
23
I was on TSN!
No, I’m not kidding you. I finally fulfilled a long held childish dream. I made it onto TSN during a professional golf tournament. The sad part is that I wasn’t playing but was rather a lowly spectator. If any of you saw the final few holes of the Telus World Skins game, you would have seen me during a pan view of the crowd moments before the winning shot was made.
I’m not going to go into too much detail what the Skins game is all about. Let it be sufficient to say that to have it come to Victoria was a huge, huge deal. A once in a lifetime opportunity for the loyal Canadian golf fan. Two of the more notable names in town were Mike Weir and Fred Couples. If you’ve even heard of either of these guys, you’ll know this is a big deal.
I wasn’t really planning on attending as the tickets are not exactly affordable for most human beings. Through shear dumb luck a free ticket ended up on my desk only days prior to t-off.
For those non-golfing, non-sport following people you probably don’t know how things played out, so here’s a real quick run down. In the end, the entire tournament came down to one single shot in a sudden death type playoff. That one single shot would be worth $270,000 to the winner. I was standing just a few feet off the back of the 18th green when Mike Weir, fellow Canadian and lefty golfer, put the ball 3 feet from the pin from 125 yards out to win the cash and overall title. Needless to say the crowd went wild, as did I.
In the end however, the big winner of the tournament was the Queen Alexandra Foundation for Children and a project they are working on known as Jeneece Place. Through the efforts of Telus, the Skins game, and local community, a check for $1,000,000 was presented at the closing ceremonies. Somehow lost in the media coverage was how a day of meaningless sport culminated in something of true value.
Jun 10
13
Clara’s Ballet Recital
Clara’s ballet classes are more or less finished for the year, so her dance studio had the year-end recital last week. It was quite the production. Clara had a rehearsal Friday night, followed by a full dress rehearsal Saturday morning before the final performance Saturday night. The studio rented out the Timms Centre for the Arts at the U of A campus. There were probably two to three hundred people in attendance, and the programme lasted roughly two and a half hours. At first we weren’t sure about the idea of buying tickets and sitting through such a long event just to watch Clara’s two minute performance, but it was actually quite entertaining. Clara did very well, and her number was an audience favourite. She had a lot of fun this year with her ballet, and is looking forward to doing it again next year.
We have some photos from the evening posted here. We also have a video of her performance posted here (it may take several minutes to load completely).