Vancouver; Soggy Jewel of Canada

After Vancouver Island we decided to check out the Space Center and Astronomy Tower and jumped on a bus at a stop I found in my rambles. Alas it wasn't so simple, 3 buses later and few wrong turns we made it across the bridge and found out it was closed on Mondays (and it was getting later and dark by then). So we had hot drinks at Starbucks (of course), Mum tried some mulled apple juice and we made our way back. Unfortunately the toys the kids had gotten at the bug zoo were lost on this excursion. Blythe had a squishy worm; Devlin had a large life like tarantula.. which he left under a seat on the bus; I'd love to see how it gets discovered! XD


Mum kindly took the kids home from the bus stop and I got unleashed to shop! shop shop!! I bought some shoes, naturally, and looked in every shop for cheap kids snow boots. Picked up some bubble tea and ate the rest of the high tea cakes while finishing off my Christmas cards and postcards; I thought it would be fun to post them from Canada to my Aussie friends as a surprise :).


Vancouver Island and then this trip really took it out of Mum so she had a good opportunity to rest up for a few days before we had our big Rocky Mountain adventure. So the kids and I purchased a two day pass on the Tourist Trolley Bus (tram) which you could hop on and off on its loop around the city all day long. The tour guides were very informative, even apart from the travel convenience it was worth it just for the guides.


We got instructions from our driver and hopped off in Chinatown, feeling brave as we'd heard it was a dangerous place with the druggies and homeless, and caught a skyrail to Science World which was thronged with school groups. It was well worth it with heaps of hands on activities and games and areas with different themes. It was also very informative for those inclined to read the info, which meant mostly adults :p. The best part were the live performances they held every hour or two which were performed by a different grad student/volunteer who would give it on different properties - we caught the end of a turbulence/air/smoke show and saw the bubble/soap film show.

This contraption was just awesome, it released balls from the top which would be randomly pushed, dropped, scooped down, around, onto chimes, drums, xylophone, etc; it was perpetually in motion and sound.
Cameras showed how you would look with a symmetrical face = two lefts or two right sides, goes to show asymmetry is beautiful. (not showing you mine :P)
With all our layers and bags on Blythe was the weight of a giant octopus, Devlin a wolverine and I a komodo dragon.
The performer encased (albeit briefly) people in giant bubbles!

We learnt about pollution and green impact; about push and pull, pulleys and weight; about light and sound and movement; about asymmetry, Canadian animals and various physics and visual illusion. Blythe went for a lone exploration and when I found her I was not impressed which dampened the playtime fun somewhat and because I wasn't sure when the trams would finish running I was worried and rushing; which was a huge shame because it was the perfect place to let the kids loose to have some fun.


When we caught a train back I got the instructions wrong anyway and after getting off at the wrong stop we ended at the top of Robson street with no bus in sight. Being me I thought, no worries, we'll just walk and the kids were very stoical, especially after being fed. We bought some kids snow boots on the way back too!


The next day, back on the trolley, we went through Stanley Park, saw a canon that fires at 9pm sharp every night, a statue to a runner, the Olympic rings barge, the girl in a wetsuit statue and the Lionsgate Bridge. We saw a tree you could fit a small car into and part of the devastation caused in 2006 ( 45 hectares leveled in hours!) - they left an area unrestored as a reminder and to allow the natural process of recovery.

Canada's Olympic symbol.
The most popular beach, Second beach, used to have benches but they kept mysteriously disappearing at night. To save expense and to stop furnishing peoples lawns the council replaced the benches with these mammoth logs... they're still there :).
There's a kids water play park including a kids dryer!
Snapshot of some of the devastation.

We saw a lot of squirrels which was very exciting, I mean.. we've never seen them before and Dev was saying "squirrel!" every time, so I agree this would get a bit annoying! But our second driver took his job very seriously and asked me to keep my kids under control. I understand his annoyance, but considering the continuous changes with sleep, food, environment, weather and comfort I was very very proud of my kids, they were real champions, they were very well behaved.

Best shot I could get of the totems; there are 7 (?) to represent each of the First Nations Tribes.
An eagle's nest, they're massive!
Girl in a wetsuit which gets decorated with lingerie annually by college students.
Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel!

We went to Granville Island today and headed to the Kids Market first. As it was our last day in Vancouver I was hoping to knock over a bunch of things by getting on and off the tram. The Kids Market was a 2 storey building filled with kid shops; there were dress ups, clothes and shoes, raincoats and boots and coats (a whole shop just for those - only in Canada!), scrapbooking, photographing, a climbing maze of tubes and ball pit, an arcade, a cafe, jewellery, baby clothes and accessories, toys toys and toys - wooden toys, dolls, board games, building sets, science sets, stuffed animals, puppets, you name it!! The kids got to pick one thing each that would the the toy I'd buy them for the trip. Dev got a stretchy bus as long as his arm and Blythe got a plush pony that made galloping sounds.

The kids had a play in the maze (which was called Adventureland heh) while I did some important stamp shopping ;). Then we went on the hunt for a silk shop I thought would be a good candidate for shirt shopping for my brother (he'd asked me to keep an eye out for work shirts since Vancouver is the place to shop!). No luck there, but we did find genuine french chocolate filled croissants and comforted ourselves with those ;). An important discovery was some waterproof shoes I liked! They were gumboots with koi fish (which I wore for the rest of the trip.. forget that they had no insulation at all lol and my feet froze, I looked good freezing ;)).

Home, sweet home. There's a lot of homeless in Vancouver, being the warmest city in Canada. The chair quotes "retired, and working part time as a know-it-all" :).

We went up and down the streets vainly looking for this silk shop and missed out on touristing, I looked up the tram times worriedly and there was one due in 10 mins, the stop was 15 mins away; we RAN. Me dragging a crying 5 year old, lol, oh what a sad scene we reached a street length away and saw the tram pulling away. "Wait!" lol, waving frantically and running, the fellow kindly stopped and waited while we huffed through the door and collapsed. It was our helpful and friendly first tram driver who told us we were looking at the wrong time table and there were no trams after this one.. it was the last!!
Since it was the last it terminated in Gastown so we could walk (ahahahahaha), catch a taxi for $30 or he volunteered to drive us to our door in his spare time for $5, what a guy!
Unfortunately I'd run out of money, lol, so I gave him $5 and what I could scrounge of all my change for a tip (hopefully close to $5).

Blurry Chinatown lamp. Rice World! Every Chinatown must have one.
Friendly French fellow with a gazillion pretty dogs.
Blythe driving the Trolley Bus.
Inside the Trolley.

We arrived in time to chat to Mark on the phone, he'd tracked us down, he also roused on me for letting Mum get out of bed at all and diagnosed her with swine flu.

We had to pack, book out and I wanted to exchange Blythe's snow boots for ones with grip, shirt shop for Mark and grab us dinner! I achieved all of this in time (albeit with more running), found exactly the shirts I imagined in the 8th shop (the girl at the counter - in Guess - checked me out in simmering malice, lol!! how dare I shop there with no makeup, hair a mess, gumboots and flaky raincoat! XD).

Caught a taxi to the train station and found my bag was 10kg too heavy.. hmm too many shoes, woops. Mums was exactly 10kg light :), so after Mum bribed the counter lady with tim tams ;) we got a golf cart escort to the Pacific sleeper at 7:30pm, ate cold dinner, tucked kids in and got to sleep in my own bed without a kid shawl for the first time that week!

Next post: Adventure through the Rockies!!

Water, Bridge and the Gold Coast

I found my camera! It had been missing for a week, so you missed out on dramatic shots of us angst and nit ridden; a near 2 meter carpet snake in our driveway and various school holiday antics.

We still have nits (we think), its paranoia central here, this is the first time the kids have had them - they always love my long, clean, healthy hair - but its also the first time they've been resistant to oil and essential oil treatments.
So after some internet and soul searching I decided to do the insecticide treatment :( and that was sad.. after all the organic food and chemical avoidance's and we go ahead and spray it on the skin sigh. Well we've got another treatment to go next week, lets hope that's the end of it!

My head hair is now long past the small of my back and I was very close to shaving it instead of treating it, kids weren't very amenable to shaving theirs off though :D!

Bits of news include enrolling the kids in the last 2 months of soccer and I've started cooking nearly every night in an attempt at being a 'real' wife :P. Oh and I started a new diet which is 'insulin reducing', so sugar, wheat, potatoe, banana, grape, rice (except basmati), dried fruit, fruit juice free. I haven't cemented the fine details of the diet yet, but its to be used in conjunction with a progesterone cream (of which I am severely deficient) and exercise!
So it looks like all my prayers are coming true in a scary and hard work necessitating way doh!!

So far I've made spelt spaghetti with sugar snap peas, zucchini, green onions, sausages and brollini; sweet potatoe mash and ah.. a middle cut of beef boiled in garlic thyme and wine which was actually reeeally yummy; and tonight we had sausages sweet potatoe hash brown and homemade tomatoe sauce baked beans :). Introducing even slightly alternative cooking to my picky family is, well, intimidating but, I'm hopeful :).

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

I thought I'd show you those Gold Coast shots that I actually blogged about months ago but never posted. So briefly (unlike my original draft ;)), Blythe had a reward chart which she completed over 6 months and her request was White Water World so I paired it up with a Bridge Congress (which is a huge annual Australian event) and we drove down Friday, went to WWW, stayed in a nice hotel; then the kids went home with Phill, Dad arrived and we played in the congress Saturday, Sunday, Monday.

The 'green room' was a single loop that shot you out into the huge funnel and so fast up the side that you think you're going to loop which is freaky as you're only sitting on a tube! And then gravity swings you up the other side and back and forth you go as you get funneled out the end! Although the green room had the biggest thrill, the orange one was much more fun because it had a shorter queue, heh, and went for four times as thrilling long.

It had been rainy and cold on the drive down and the kids prayed earnestly on the way and we decided to go and see (I'd packed other clothes and raincoats in case we went elsewhere!). As we arrived we could see the horizon shrouded in grey with a blue patch just above the park.. and.. it was even warmer.

Blythe and Daddy headed straight for the big stuff, while Dev and I went in search of 'squirting things'.

We found some squirting things.. apparently they weren't 'the ones' but nothing a bit of exploring, sun baking and general monkeying around couldn't fix.

I went on three big rides with Blythe which was pretty hilarious, I don't know why but I couldn't stop laughing, my mouth filling with water! We went on the Octopus first, I got stuck on the lip at the top, I felt like a flopping fish out of water! lying on my mat, trying to get unstuck!


Dev was scared stiff of 'The Bucket'; now this was one serious bucket!

Teh Bucket, nuff said.

There was a wave pool which was good fun, Dev and I spent most of the time there and playing with the camera. We left the big rides to Blythe and Daddy (and the queues!). Blythe and I floated in huge inflatable rings and when the waves started I got the giggles and when you're hanging nearly upside down its very hard to stop the giggles!


When we got cold we headed for the hotel and found Mantra on the Park on the forth time looping round the block and had some yummy Italian food.

The kids played 'Bang' and let us sleep in :). That's our room's view and there's some funky cafe decor.

We had 5 sessions of bridge that were about 4 hours long each; there were four sections: novice for under 100 points, restricted for under 300, open, and senior for those over 75 years I think (given that the average age of bridge players is about 70 that's not such a restrictive section ;p). Although I'd only been playing 2 and a bit years and had less then 50 points! Dad had nearly 200 so we were pegged in restricted. This was very intimidating! These players were either very good and had been playing for at least 4-5 years or were still good and had been playing for 10-20++ years!


How the points work: every time you play at a club it takes about 4 hours and you get a percentage, 50% meaning you got average on everything which is actually a decent score, anything more then 50 means you did better then most, so the top third at the session scores points. Depending on how many people are there it could be anything from 0.20 to 0.60 of a green point. In club competitions you get red points which are about 0.40 to 1 point ans then there's state and national competitions which are gold points which can get you twice as much as green or even more.

Over 2000 people played in the pairs event.
Sushi is Good.
Hordes of bridge players (ie: -mostly- retired, resort attired older folk) descend upon Broadbeach; we played 'pick the bridge player' :).

The first two sessions was to grade us, out of 126 pairs and we did pretty well and got into the "A" grade, got into the top 20 in fact. There was only one other pair from our club in Buderim so a little friendly encouragement (read: rivalry ;)) started, they came about third in the grading!

The first two sessions after that were a bit disheartening, mistakes happened, so did bad luck, and some arguing, we got 49% and 49%. This didn't do us any good on the competitive front or the relationship front.

I had some prayer and realised that we came to have fun and that my outlook was all wrong. This cheered me up :) and the next day I prayed that we have fun! oh and please God, I don't care about winning but please, please no more bad luck ;), we've had our share!

Well it was an odd day, the cards were extreme (they're always randomly dealt before hand) but we had decided to just have fun and the cards favoured us and so did luck. You could watch your progress being projected on the big screen throughout the day and we kept going up and up. Our poor compatriots kept going down and down although they'd been having a very good time coming in the top 5 and 10 previously. Suffice to say we came first by a large margin with a smashing 67.81% (actually 66.67% but there were two errors against us)! Our fellow Buderimites came 8th and what gracious fellows they are.
This big finish brought our poultry 16th place to 4th place overall! We got a shiny pen and $100 prize heh :). But I tell you what, we had fun ;) :p.

Our weekend netted us over 11 gold points.

We had some really yum food there, I highly recommend Valentino's for pizza, Oberoi's Taj Indian before 7pm - $10 dinner! Alto for breaky/brunch, pricier but good and best of all Sushi4U (lol) - sushi and yum cha - cheap and authentic!

Then we drove home in a deluge; that storm ended up flooding low areas and causing huge traffic and detours, fortunately we got home safe and sound. I took some really cool shots though.. something about driving at night in the rain with the glowing fuzzy reflecting lights is entrancing.

We went for a drive one morning and found this huge Asian super store... these looked like frogs eyes but turned out to be some lotus or sesame or otherwise innocent drink.
There were crowds on the beach waiting for the tsunami to arrive doh!!
Yum Cha is Good!
Rainy drive lights.

Summer Simple Pleasures

Or, upside down AU Winter snippet :)

As per Whirliegig's post I'm adding some snapshot memories.

These are the flourless chocolate cupcakes, featured in my recipe of the month, in their various stages: being stolen by Phill before I put the topping on, being iced (the cupcakes not Phill), smothered in cream cocoa and cinnamon.


This sunset is the most spectacular I've ever seen.. I chased it home all the way from work, barely looking at the road :p, it was a river of gold. Flecks of dove grey, pink and gold gathering into one clump of pure gold ripples ahh. The fluff ball clouds covered the entire sky from powder puffs to steaming banners on the other side. Was bitter sweet because I didn't make it to the camera in time, but here's the after glow: