dinner with a Texan

This is my friend Shae. He lives in Texas. We went to Bible school together 10 years ago, at Ravencrest Chalet in Colorado. I have talked to him fairly frequently since 1998, but have not seen him since school finished. He is currently on holidays in the Seattle area! We had supper on Friday night!!!
Before Pammer and I made our way over to Beachwood, we headed a bit further south to Burlington, WA (mmm....home of Krispy Kreme...) and met up with Shae for supper.
Since i haven't seen him in 10 years, and who knows when i'll see him again, i had to take some pictures so that I can remember what he looks like in 2008. Lucky for me they didn't have digital cameras in 1997/98 so i won't be posting any sweet pics of how awesome we both looked 10 years ago....so here's what we both look like now!

this is Shae not wanting to have his picture taken. Too bad i took it anyway!
And one more for good measure!
Good to see you old friend!! i hope it won't be another 10 years before we see each other again!

camping extravaganza weekend

So because camping is so much fun and spending one day at Beachwood last weekend with the Unrau's wasn't enough, Pammer and I went back this weekend and spend Fri. night-Sun. night sleeping on luxurious airmattresses in a giant mondo-of-a-tent beside the trailer. The weather held out and afforded us the luxury of some good old fashioned relaxation. Here are some pics highlighting our weekend.

First, there's Allie, who will make a toy out of just about anything. This bottle was fun to chew on!

But then she discovered that it's even more fun to try and stick ones tongue in as far as it could go, because there were a few tasty drops of Poweraid left inside...silly dog!!
Anyway, on to other things...like taking pics at the ocean shore!
I enjoyed that this flower was growing out of this log

Auntie Pam and Maya
Maya
Maya looking for rocks (i think she got tired of me taking so many pictures...lol!!)

If you didn't know better, we could be in Saskatchewan, if you didn't know that was the ocean in the background
An array of ocean treats nicely laid out
After spending a couple of hours down at the ocean, it was time for dinner....can you say 'old fashioned wiener roast'????? Here are the weapons, ready to go...

That's some good roasting me...keep up the good work

Cheers!! Red wine served in classy camping glasses
And then it got dark and i got to play with more features on my camera, using the fire as my subject

Yay for weekend of fun!!!

...introducing....

I would like to introduce the newest addition to my family. He's a 40" beauty and goes by the name Samsung T. Vee but you can call him Sam for short!

sunshine and shopping and s'mores, oh my!!

On Sunday, Pammer, T-dog and I headed down to Washington to do some shopping in Bellingham before heading over to Birch Bay to visit the Unrau's who were camping. We did some damage at Bellisfair (yay Target!!) and then were ready for some shillaxing in the sunshine. Then, once the sun started to go down, it was time for s'mores...mmmm.....
Here's Pammer enjoying the fruits of her labour, while Kassie and Maya work on toasting the perfect marshmallow.
mmmmmmmmmmm..........
Here's Chad, demonstrating the masterful technique of melting the chocolate by sticking it right in the middle of the toasted 'mallow
Yes, s'mores are a snack that truly show off grace and manners...lol
"i want some i want some i want some i want some i want some....look the other way so i can get some...."
"harumph...you people are mean"
We took off for home and swung by the ocean's shore just in time to catch the last few seconds of the sunset

T-dog and Pammer

What a fun day!!!!!!!!!!!

rewind to the Canada day long weekend

Ok so this is going back a few weekends, but i never got around to posting about the Canada day long weekend adventures. The weather was wonderfully hot, so it was necessary to spend lots of time outdoors. One afternoon Chad and his kiddos decided to head up to Hope, to the Othello tunnels. Pammer and I decided to tag along. It's been a few years since i've been there, and it's a cool place to visit every so often. Basically it consists of a chain of 4 tunnels that were created years ago, straight through all the rock, to allow the railway to pass through. now it's a nice walking path!
Here's the gang stopping to watch the rushing waters below
View of one of the tunnels
Auntie Pam and Maya
Auntie Pam and Kassie
Chad and his girls taking a breather from the heat
What a fun adventure!! Now on to the next part of the long weekend....

This is Jones Lake. it's about half way between Chilliwack and Hope. I don't drive out that way often, but every time I have, I see that sign for Jones Lake and wonder what it's like. On the way to the Othello tunnels earlier that weekend, i saw the sign again, and it drew me in!!! Well, on the Tuesday of the long weekend (yes, stupid Tuesday holiday, where I had to work Monday and then got Tuesday off...), Pammer and I decided to check it out. It was a gorgeous day, and we were hoping that it would not be a super crowded lake like every other body of water in the lower mainland. Well, I suppose the 9km logging road it takes to get there deters many people, which was fine with us!!!! It was spectacular, and worth the rugged drive to get there.
Seriously...does it get better than this?????

There are a few areas to camp up there too, actually very nice looking campgrounds. We wandered down the shoreline a short ways, away from the main beach area (that wasn't too crowded, but there was a lot of activity going on, involving flying frisbees, etc...). And lo and behold, this whole area of beach we found was deserted!!! We ate our picnic lunch, sat in the sun and read our books, took a dip in the frigid waters when we got too hot, and returned to the warmth of our beach chairs. It was quiet, peaceful and relaxing!!!!! What a great way to spend a summer day!!

aquarium fun!

This past weekend I went to the Vancouver Aquarium for the first time. Pammer had some relatives in town who had little kids, so it was the perfect adventure. It was a beautiful sunny day, which also meant it was super crowded, but we made do, and i got a few good pics.



Here's the new baby beluga that was born this spring. She's swimming along with her mama." Baby beluga in the deep blue sea...swim so wild and swim so free..."
Ah the dolphin show! We saw it twice while we were there, from 2 different vantage points, both time trying to peer around people who seemed to be doing their best to hog a bunch of space...At any rate, i still managed to snap a few pics as the dolphins did some tricks


These are jellyfish...i thought they looked cool. Even though i didn't get great pics, i thought i would post them anyway because i like the colors!!! It was really tough to take shots in this low lighting, without a tripod, hence the blur...but you still get the point

Here's a crazy creature that is a pro at blending in with his environment....
And finally a cute little otter. Well, i shouldn't say little, this thing was HUGE! Who knew they got so big? Anyway, it was still cute as it swam around seeking attention from the crowd...lol
Also involved in our day was a great all-you-can-eat-sushi lunch in downtown vancouver, and a little mellow relaxation in Stanley Park. A great day!!! I would love to go back sometime, but maybe on a day when there's not as many people...(and get a 2 for 1 admission coupon..sheesh that place has pricey admission...!!!) Anyway, all that aside, it was tons of fun, great to be out in the sunshine and see some cool animals you don't get to see everyday!!

NYC part one

I know, I know, this post is SOOOOOOO long overdue...life has been insane since getting back from New York, as I've been busy trying to unpack and organize my new abode. And since i took about a billion pictures in NYC, the thought of blogging and picking which pics I wanted to post has been somewhat daunting....hence my procrastination and avoidance. Until now!!!! I am finally getting 'er done! So, what follows is a 2-part post, just because even though I have been selective in which pics I've chosen to post, there are still a lot, because we did and saw a TON. These pics aren't totally in the order of the way we saw the city, mainly because I still never know what order blogger will post things when you upload pics, so try as I might to put some order to my post, it's not always successful!! So here we go!!!



Pammer and I both flew into JFK Sunday late afternoon, me from Buffalo, she from Seattle. We flew in within about 20 mins of each other, so the plan was for Pammer to come meet me at my baggage carousel. Well, Pammer got in just about right on schedule. I landed a bit late but then was lucky enough (sarcasm) to have my plane sit on the tarmac for 90 mins. because of airplane gridlock...how fun!! Pammer and I sent a few text messages so we knew all was good, and I finally got off the plane, met up with her, got my bags, and we got a cab to our "guest house"...more on that later....



Anyway, we were also fortunate (sarcasm again) to experience NYC in the midst of a heat wave. Sunday night we hardly slept b/c of no AC in our room, but the next day we spoke to the lady who owned the house and we got the AC in our room...yipee!! The week got better from there as our little AC unit was used to the max! (to give you an idea, the temps in first few days of the week were anywhere from 35-40C with humidity...ewwww...but I think we were just thankful it didn't rain the whole trip!)



Ok i'd better move along...so Monday-day was just plain hot, and i almost got heat stroke, so we didn't do much during the day. But in the evening, wedid a double decker bus tour - we actually bought a pass for the week, for the "hop on hop off" tours, which gave us the chance to do a variety of tours, hop off at whatever stop we wanted, check stuff out, and when ready, just wait for the next bus to come by and hop back on. It was great!



So here's a shot of the NY skyline, as we drove across the Manhatten bridge.

This is a cool looking building that you see in pics of NY quite often. I don't really even know what it is, but it looks neat!
Taxi city!!! Driving is crazy, I would never even think of attempting to drive in that city! I will let the cabbies to their thing!

This is a cool tile mosaic in "our" subway station - we stayed only 4 blocks from the "116th St" Subway station, which made transportation a breeze -- we are subway pros now!!

Here I am going into our "guest house". We had a room in this house (those are our windows and AC unit!!!) and the lady who owns the house lives upstairs. I think she also rents rooms on the top floor of her house too (it's a common 3-level brownstone, a pretty cool house) We chose a room that had our own kitchen and bathroom. Oh yes, and perhaps I should mention that we didn't really realize that our place was in HARLEM until the taxi was driving us there....a wee bit of fear the first night but after that it was all good. We got used to being the minority and having everyone stare at us (hi we're tourists, oh yes and the only caucasian people around here) and it really wasn't that bad!!!
Times Square at night...a totally different look than in the daytime...lights everywhere, people everywhere, it's a busy busy place!!!
Our adventure to Tiffany and CO where Pammer bought some wine glasses and felt like a star carrying around her Tiffany's bag for the rest of the day!

the MET (Metropolitan Museum of Art)...a fine, AC'd place to spend some time on a hot day!

the Empire State building...my biggest disappointment of the whole trip. We went at night because i wanted to take some pics of the city-scape and by the time we got to the top, there was a sudden rain and wind storm that blew in and they closed the observation deck, so we couldn't even go outside!!! I was not a happy camper. and they didn't even give us our money back. boooo

Here I am in Starbucks...but not just any Starbucks...the Trump Tower Starbucks!! And surprisingly, the coffee was priced just the same as anywhere else!
And a view of The Donald's building

Well those are some highlights from the first couple of days...let's carry on to part two shall we?