Well… that’s it. That’s quite enough blogging for one lifetime. I’ve always been more of a fan of living than blogging and blogging for work this year just kind of pushed me over the edge.

I’ve been blogging since July 2002. That feels like a REALLY long time. Hey wait, 16 years IS a really long time.

The blog will hang around with the archived content and my Instagram feed.

Dani, Toryn, Colin, Nikki, Fabio, Allegra, Pete, and Hitomi joined us for a week or so of Christmas. The house was cozy (in fact we overflowed into a van in the driveway (sorry about that, Dani and Toryn!) It had been a couple of years since we’d all managed to get together so it was great to see everyone again.

We were treated to a (token gesture) white Christmas with some residual snow on the ground and a few flakes here and there 🙂

Nikki treated us all to Kurios by Cirque du Soleil which was a fantastic show. We fitted in many many board games including Codenames, Farkle, and Pandemic Rising Tide and a family climbing session where Zoe was fearless.

As for now, we’re enjoying new year’s eve playing board games, watching Swallows and Amazons and celebrating with Dani, Toryn and Colin.

My new year’s resolution for this year is to only have one new year’s resolution instead of the usual handful. The past two years I’ve done really well on my exercise new year’s resolution right until about September each year. Third time lucky? My one and only resolution will be to do 30 minutes of exercise every day (my doctor seconds this resolution).

My other two resolutions from last year were flossing every day (success!) and posting a photo on Instagram every single day (only missed 1 or 2 days!).

Toby’s job at the movie theatre has been going really well. He’s pretty much been working 40 hour weeks for the past couple of weeks so that should buy him some bonus travel-time in Europe next year.

Zoe’s French is coming along nicely – she’s annoyed she’s thinking in French accidentally from time to time.

Aly’s grade 12 year is jam-packed. Between working, volunteering and schoolwork we rarely see her. When we do, I try to grab her for a hug knowing my days are numbered!

We’re not sure what 2018 will bring. Maybe a change of scene? After all, we’ve been here 3 years and don’t tend to stay still for long.

Now, as a last goodbye – some memories from the blog when I first started it in 2002….

Toby has learnt how to climb up on tables. Fortunately, he can’t yet climb on the couch [when he’s up there he loves to run along it]. Unfortunately, Aly kindly pulls all the cushions off the couch so he can get up there [at least it’s not as far to fall and the cushions are already on the floor to catch him!]

Aly has decided to hit people (i thought she’d got over this when she was about 15 months old). She’s now completely in a big bed. She now dances and sings (often with a plastic sausage for a microphone) to all the theme tunes she knows.

Aly’s latest phrase is ‘i mizz you’ (i missed you) – usually if one of us is out of sight for more than a minute or so

Happy 21st birthday Daniel! 

Toby is finally coming to terms with wearing shoes but walking to the mailbox with him is proving tricky since he acts like a homing pigeon and we can only get him to walk TOWARDS the house.

From new year 2014….

and an ode to the old website (kudos to my business partner, Sue, for bringing the site into this century!)

 

Apparently, I’m down to only blogging every other season. Snow arrived yesterday and I haven’t said a word about Autumn yet!

Halloween was a lot of fun. Aly was collecting food for the food bank again this year. She even got a little bit of help from Zoe.

Aly as King George (for a school project)

Mum and dad came for a visit. It would have been a more relaxed trip than normal except for the amount of time I had to spend driving children around. For some reason, life had become a little more chaotic for the time they were here. Toby is job hunting as well as the usual 3-days of soccer a week. In addition to volunteering and working, Aly was also in a 3-day leadership conference. Even Zoe has started going to scouts which got added into the activity stream!

Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t very good while they were here, but we did get a few nice days where the beautiful fall colours seemed to be apologizing for all the rain we’d had to put up with.

We did a nice trip to Lulu Island Winery for Dad’s birthday. We used to live really close to this new winery but had never been further than the wine shop. We did a nice tour (with yummy snacks) and we had no idea that there were so many tasting rooms (some of them were huge). I didn’t love most of the wine (but I’m not much of a wine connoisseur so don’t read anything into that!), although the red ice wine was lovely.

    

Mum and dad took each of the children out for a meal by themselves which I thought was a great idea. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves (although they were a little horrified that they couldn’t talk Zoe out of  choosing McDonalds!)

On Zoe’s second week of Scouts, she went camping for the weekend. We weren’t entirely sure how that would go – she only knew one or two kids and she’s not the most easygoing kid when it comes to food.. or bugs.. or dirt. Anyway, she had a fantastic time and, apparently, the food was ‘amazing’ (ie. hot dogs, bacon and pancakes).

Virtual school seems to be going well for Toby. He’s officially in grade 11 this year. He did a couple of grade 11 courses last year in the hope that he’d be able to complete grade 12 this year and then go traveling with Aly. Getting him out of bed in the mornings is not my favourite thing (I have a spray bottling chilling in the fridge for emergency use), but he seems to sit and focus well for most of the day once he’s up. Due to course scheduling (and having to do a combination of semestered and non-semestered courses through 2 different online school), it doesn’t look like he’ll be completely done by the end of this school year but should be able to complete everything by the end of the summer. He has a lot less time to save up for the trip than Aly has, so he’ll likely only be in Europe for 3 months rather than the 12-15 that Aly is hoping to do (unless he finds a job there).

In other news, I’m officially declaring the death of this blog for the end of this year. 16 years feels like just about enough. 2/3 of my children are now taller than me and rarely say super-cute things that need documenting! I’ll leave the site up with links to my Instagram feed and will try to add a bit more text to my Instagram updates in future.

Speaking of Instagram, I’m almost at the end of my photo-a-day-for-a-year challenge that I set for myself. I think I may have missed one or two days, but on the whole, I’m so glad I’ve done it. I plan to print the year using ChatBooks so I’ve been trying to stick to one photo a day and no video. I’ll probably mix things up a little more next year.

After Vegas, we spent a night in Mammoth. The drive in was beautiful but quite nauseating. It was the first time we’d needed to stop the car to give everyone some fresh air (well – very very hot air). It quite possibly could have been avoided since trusting our car nav without first checking with the all-great Google is usually inadvisable.

On the way out of Mammoth, we visit Mono Lake with it’s weird, white spires sticking out of the water and ring of flies protecting its alkali water.

We got a brief glimpse of Yosemite as we drove out of town but didn’t have time to stop. The last time I had been there was when I was pregnant with Toby.

The next stop was a winding road to the ghost town of Brodie. The town was so much more complete than I was expecting. It’s completely abandoned with the exception of 2 ranger houses. What was strangest to me was seeing all the old furniture and crockery etc. with a thick layer of dust and springs sticking out of mattresses. I’m used to seeing all of these items carefully preserved in a museum behind some velvet ropes.

We made a brief stop in Carson City, Nevada before stopping in Reno for the night. We all had a lot of fun in the old-fashioned arcade. Sascha and I were delighted to discover our drinks were free at the bar in Reno, the slots seemed more willing to give us money, and as we were leaving the casino floor, we saw a masseuse doing the rounds to offer massages to the busy gamblers.

Next day we went to Lake Tahoe, California where we were only planning to take a quick look at the beach and maybe grab a drink but we quickly came to the consensus that nothing would be better than jumping in that lake to cool off. Sascha was dispatched to the car to unearth bathing suits, and before long Sascha was throwing each of us into the icy cold, but very refreshing, waters of Lake Tahoe.

After we pried ourselves out of Lake Tahoe, we had a long drive to Shasta Lake. We arrived just in time for sunset over the lake. Sascha and I had a nice meal at the Shasta Lake Lodge while the children ate Chef Boyarde and watched TV in the hotel room (I feel like it was a win-win for everyone).

Next day we had another long drive up to Florence, Oregon. We stayed at the Three Rivers Casino. By now, Aly was getting fed up of us leaving her to put Zoe to bed while we spent some quality time with the Larry the Lobsterman Slot Machines! It was a great hotel (including free pop which I didn’t think was a particularly good idea but Toby was delighted by!). We were right next to the Oregon Dunes and went out into the mist just before sunset to explore the local dunes. We found an Army dredger dredging the channel, a dead, headless bird, various species of marooned jellyfish, and most interestingly, lots of driftwood shelters built by visitors which Aly and I played in.

  

The temperatures in Oregon came as a bit of a shock since it was almost 20 degrees cooler than it had been a day earlier.

The next day we headed up the beautiful coast stopping to play in the tidal pools along the way.

After a stop in Seaside, Oregon for a play on the beach and some junk food we arrived in Ocean’s Park, Washington where we were spending two luxurious days. I can’t overstate the excitement of waking up in the morning to realize you don’t need to start packing and dragging the kids out of bed. We spent a leisurely day. The boys golfed, and mini golfed while the girls went horse riding at Long Beach (my first time), kite flying and sandcastle building.

Finally, it was time to head back up to Canada. We drove up to Port Angeles where we caught the ferry to the Inner Harbour in Victoria. It was strange to in arrive in the centre of Victoria after so many years of getting the ferry to Swartz Bay.

We spent a relaxing few days in Saanich with family. The kids and Sascha went to the Saanich Fair. Aly and I went with Dani and Colin to Butchart Gardens for the first time (it was a beautiful, magical nighttime walk).

We also managed to squeeze in a day on the water where we sailed to Sidney Spit for a barbeque and some paddle boarding.

All too soon it was time to head back on the ferry for a day at home to prepare for school. It was a lovely trip and great to spend time with these teenagers that will be gone all too soon. Next year we’re hoping to tag along with Aly and Toby for a week or two on their gap year in Europe.

On our way to Dinosaur National Monument in Utah, we broke up the journey with a stop at a lovely lakeside cabin in Wyoming (a big step up from the KOA cabin without water or cooking facilities).

We made it to Dinosaur National Monument mid-afternoon and hopped straight on the tram up to the dinosaur quarry. They had excavated a huge number of dinosaur skeletons and bones from that area – including one we’d seen at the Smithsonian last year, but they had decided to leave the final layer of bones in place. This means that visitors are faced with an enormous wall of bones (which they have built the visitor’s centre around).

I had been dying to go to the Tyrell Museum in Alberta for as long as I can remember but this has definitely kept me happy for another few years. Dinosaur was so much better than I could have imagined and I’m so glad they were able to resist the temptation to remove the bones from the cliff.

 

On the way out of Dinosaur National Monument, we took a slight detour to take a look at some petroglyphs. They were great – there was a lot more than I expected and Zoe had a great time sketching them.

Our hotel that night was just outside of Dinosaur in Vernal. All too soon we were headed out of town on Stegosaurus highway. We had to drive through the town of Dinosaur to get out of town, past Dinosaur town hall and Dinosaur bible fellowship. This lead to some theological discussions!

We headed to Arches National Park which was spectacular. As is often the case, we all felt like we were in Disneyland – Cars Land to be specific (we know it’s ridiculous). The scenery around each corner was more and more amazing. We got out to hike to the first arch with a short hike and just about died at the top of the hill in the 45-degree temperatures. We opted out of the next couple of hikes we were planning but managed to grudgingly pry everyone out of the air-conditioned car to stand under a final arch (which was awesome) before retreating to the car to drink gallons of water!

We’d passed through so many interesting biomes on our journey so far, although our introduction to Colorado was a mass of power poles supplying oil derricks as far as the eye could see! We really should come back sometime since we didn’t get to see much more of Colorado on this trip.
After winding around some cattle on the open ranges of Colorado, we arrived in Blanding. We had finally decided to spend a few days in one place and had chosen Blanding, Utah to hang out, do some laundry, buy some groceries and cook some meals. We were delighted with our stay at Grandma’s House; a quaint 2-bed house decorated with old finds from the house, photos of the ‘grandma’ that had lived here and memories of Grandma written by her grandchildren. As Zoe said, “it’s like coming home.” We were very happy we had decided to spend three nights here as the break from unpacking and repacking and dashing off somewhere was very welcome. We also took advantage of Grandma’s surprisingly new washing machine! (The original wash board was carefully preserved on the wall next to the dryer!)

Blanding was a quiet town (some might say bland) – even quieter on a Sunday when only the gas station was open. I guess that explains the line-up at the movie rental machine we had been bemused by. Friday evening, the kids had been delighted with our trip to A&W to find out what they sell in American A&Ws since we are so familiar Canadian A&W. One of the burgers was the same (a Papa Burger maybe?), but the rest of the burger family were missing. In its place were things like a fish and chip basket. Everything also came with ‘fry sauce’ (which appeared to be thousand island dressing).

This particular A&W was inside a gas station and shared its space with a bowling alley and grocery store – quite the combo. As Toby said, it’s all you could really wish for on a Friday night in a small town. As we were leaving the place began to fill up with cheerleaders and football players since the Friday night football had obviously just finished.

Next day we did a round trip to Mesa Verde. Mesa Verde hosts an impressive collection of Ancestral Pueblo dwellings. The Pueblo people inhabited Mesa Verde from 0-1300 AD but the Cliff Palace that we visited was inhabited around the end of that time. We had been tempted by a tour of Balcony House, but the 40ft of ladder climbing might not have gone done well with the family members who are less keen on heights. Personally, I found the steep steps and ladders of the Cliff Palace pretty awesome. (A mesa is a large hill with a flat top by the way).

At the end of the day, we took the long way back to Grandma’s house and visited Four Corners (the intersection of New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona). The actual intersection is on tribal lands and is surrounded on all four sides by vendors who welcome us to their particular state. I heard an interesting conversation about the legalities of what the vendors were and weren’t allowed to do depending on which side of the square they were selling!

On our other day trip from our base in Blanding, we visited Bluff pioneer fort where the preserved homes had been furnished and decorated by the descendants of the original residents. We found a few more Petroglyphs and then headed to Gooseneck State Park to see the huge winding stripped valley carved by the river.

We then headed for the Valley of the Gods. Valley of the Gods was spectacular and one of my favourite places of the trip. We loved how close we were able to get to the structures. The car ended up completely coated in a bright red sand which stayed with us for the rest of the vacation!

Never ones to skimp on how much we could jam into a day, we finished off the day with a trip to Natural Bridges National Park. After looking at a couple of bridges from afar, Sascha, Aly and I decided to take a short (but extremely hot) hike under one of the bridges (Zoe was refusing to go on any more hikes that day, and Toby was more than happy to stay with her).

Next day we headed to the Grand Canyon (Arizona) via monument valley (where we stopped to see the eclipse).

We arrived at the East Rim of the Grand Canyon right before an electrical storm rolled in. We headed back to the hotel to wait out the torrential rain and then headed to the South Rim in time for a lovely sunset walk along the rim. I couldn’t believe how few barriers there are along the rim and how many people were perched precariously dangling their legs over the edge (many of them taking selfies).

I didn’t realize how much there was at the bottom of the Canyon – all the vegetation, mesas and, of course, the river (which you can barely see because it’s so far down).

We were headed to Phoenix next to meet up with our friends, and old colleagues, Damien and Linda Drake (and their two kids).

Shortly after leaving the Grand Canyon we stopped for breakfast at the town of Williams along route 66. We ate at an awesome diner.

The drive in through the forests of cacti was fascinating. We had a fantastic evening with the Drake family, and all the kids got on incredibly well. The last time they had met, the three older kids were only about 3 or 4 and the youngest two hadn’t been born yet.

It was a shame we weren’t able to spend longer with them. It’s their turn to visit us again next, and we’re hoping it won’t be another 11 years. We stayed at a lovely place in Phoenix. It was a shame we really only slept there. The number of bugs we arrived back to when we got to the hotel after dinner was somewhat alarming!

Next morning I had a work phone call and perched in the one shady spot on the balcony, but it was approaching 40 degrees at 8 am, and I kept having to stick my head inside the room to grab a breath of cool air.

Onwards to Las Vegas (Nevada). I was surprised how much there was to do with kids. Aly went on the roller coaster at New York New York while the other two played in the arcade, and they all enjoyed rides at Circus Circus. Aly and I went on the X-Scream at the top of the Stratosphere tower.

The kids loved the M&Ms, and Coke shops (where Toby and I tasted all the strange Coke flavours from around the world). Toby is now on a quest to move somewhere that has a TopGolf facility after having a ton of fun there (it’s a mixture between a driving range and video game).

We also all enjoyed wandering around all the casinos/hotels – MGM (which was in a frenzy since we were there up until the day of the Mayweather/McGregor boxing match), Treasure Island (where we stayed), Paris, Venetian (our favourite), The Mirage, Caesar’s Palace, Harrah’s, and SLS. We spent a lot of time going back and forth on the monorail and walked almost 12kms a day.

Who knew there were still so many smokers in the world? The kids hated walking through the casinos where there was usually a dense cloud of smoke. The swimming pool at the hotel wasn’t much better, and it was tricky to get in past all the beer bottle lined up around the edge! Upon reflection, maybe Treasure Island wasn’t quite as kid-friendly as we hoped.

Sascha and I missed the sound of all the coins dropping now that everything is on the cards but we didn’t let that stop us, and we had a lot of fun on the slot machines.

Aly and I started collecting unusual sights in Vegas. They included:

• Someone dragging a large dummy through a hotel
• The obligatory drive thru wedding chapels
• Sascha saw Elmo saving a guy’s life (he pulled him back by his collar as he almost stopped out in traffic)!

 

First night of our road trip we stopped just outside the German Village of Leavenworth (Washington) in Wenatchee. We had a lovely (but hot) walk around Leavenworth. We ate schnitzel and spätzle with a side of landjaeger for dinner and as we walked back to the car the German band in their lederhosen were playing the birdie song (chicken dance to North Americans) ?!

Saturday we drove to Coeur d’Alene (Idaho). We stopped on the way in the middle of absolutely nowhere to visit the NW Inland Rail Museum. I was a big fan of the quaint dining car. We also got to ride a little train which turned out to be much more exciting than it looked because it had just started to rain making the track slippery and we almost didn’t make it round the loop.

When we got to Coeur d’Alene we stocked up at a Kmart that was going out of business and went to the Triple Play Fun Park where the boys played mini golf and us girls did the high ropes course and climbing (Zoe is absolutely fearless with heights which always surprises me considering she runs away screaming if she sees a puppy or a fly!)

Next day we headed to a KOA cabin near a lake in Townsend, Montana. There were many many flies but we liked the cabin and the flamingo grill which was a restaurant in a pink bus.

On the way to Townsend we stopped in the mining town of Wallace where we got the tram up to the silver mine. We all wore fetching helmets. It was very interesting, although Zoe was very unimpressed with the volume of the mining equipment!

Next day, we headed straight out to the caverns in Lewis and Clark State Park. There was a hilly 1 mile hike into the extensive, spectacular winding caverns which included a slide and lots of stooping for the taller amongst us (finally, us girls could be smug about our height).

Unfortunately on the second evening, I went for a shower and came back to find Toby sitting on the porch swing in his socks and the door to the cabin firmly locked (Sascha was with the girls at the playground). Thus ensued a couple of hours of trying to troubleshoot how to get into the cabin since the office had shut hours ago.

The car keys were in the cabin and there were no taxis in the area. We tried remotely accessing the car (to no avail – it’s a new car and we hadn’t set up remote access yet) and called to check if the one (dodgy) motel in town had any rooms (they did and were half the price of the cabin!). Meanwhile Shoeless Toby did some googling about how to pick a lock with only a pair of nail scissors. We were about to make friends with some neighbours to see if they would drive us into town, when Sascha decided to give breaking into one of the windows another try. I found a metal garden stake and that seemed to do the trick. Phew! I don’t think I’d ever been so happy to be in a cabin without a bathroom!

Next was Yellowstone (Wyoming) – somewhere I had always wanted to go. The park was busier than anywhere we had been and we decided to head straight for Old Faithful since the timing is important (it only erupts every 90 minutes or so and they only predict the next eruption after the previous one).

We couldn’t believe the sights we saw on the way to Old Faithful – there are so many fumeroles, brightly coloured bacterial mats, and steam vents along the roadside for miles and miles. It really has to be seen to be believed.

The Old Faithful parking lot is the size of a theme park! It is almost an arena event. There are two rows of seating 180 degrees around Old Faithful lined with people full of anticipation. The timing is only accurate to the nearest 20 minutes or so, so once you’re seated you really don’t want to risk leaving your seat! It was worth the wait. There is a smaller geyser next to Old Faithful which started to gurgle and steam a couple of minutes before the main event which really heightened expectations! The eruption itself was definitely spectacular. The thing that struck me the most was the volume of water raining down.

After Old Faithful we headed to the Grand Prismatic Spring. It was a little chilly but the nice steamy facials that arrived regularly were very helpful. We had opted out of the hike to overlook it so didn’t get the full effect but the colours were beautiful.

Finally we stopped off at Fountain Paint Pot nature trail since I really wanted to see some bubbling mud pots. This turned out to be a very compact trail with a little bit of everything. There was a mini rainbow coloured spring, the amazing bubbling Paint Pots (mud pools), steam vents, fumeroles and geysers! What more could you ask for?

After all the excitement we headed back to the cabin where we grabbed some wood and toasted marshmallows (we were surprised to discover there was no fire ban on this part of the country yet). There was a great view of the milky way in Yellowstone.

As we left Yellowstone, we gave a guy in a truck a jump start at the KOA. We were happy to help, but as Sascha said, you probably don’t say no to a guy wearing a gun that big on his belt!

School is all done for the summer. Toby has opted out of regular school next year. He’s doing a combination of two different online schools (one here in Richmond which involves weekly meetings after school hours) and the one he’s already been using which is based in the Prince George school district. Hopefully, it’s not a year filled with me whining “do your schoolwork”! He’s hoping to join Aly on her trip to Europe once she’s finished her grade 12 year next year.

 

 

We headed to Victoria (the capital of British Columbia) to celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday. The 5 of us went for a lovely sail (repositioning Dani and Toryn’s boat from a marina in Oak Bay to one in Sidney). There was a little bit of a taxi issue at the other end with it being Canada Day, but we made it in the end.

Skipper Zoe

We then spent 90 minutes trying to get into downtown Victoria for the celebrations, parked 30 minutes away, hiked in just in time for the tail-end of the concert and for the fireworks (which were great). It then took 2 hours to escape! I usually avoid the Canada Day crowds but I was all-in for the 150th anniversary (despite the fact 150 does seem laughably young for a country!)

 

Our summer road trip has been a little postponed due to Sascha’s work but hopefully, we’ll get there at some point. Despite that, summer appears to be quite busy – I seemed to have jammed lots of activities into the first 3 weeks of July. Zoe is doing 2 weeks of skating, 1 week of full-day camp at Kidtropolis (where Aly works) and a week of gymnastics lessons. I’m having some difficulty squeezing work in between her activities!

Mid-May we got ourselves a shiny new car – actually the same car that we already had (an Acura MDX) but we’ve been waiting for a 7-seater SUV hybrid with a decent hybrid engine so we were very happy that one finally arrived.

Thank goodness for some sun at last.

On my quest to get some exercise everyday, and the arrival of a folding bike for my birthday last year, I’ve been attempting to get out on my bike and explore the corners of Richmond I don’t usually see from the car.

My resolution to post a photo a day on Instagram is also going well and is a great incentive to make sure I leave the house (not always a given for someone who usually works from home).

I finished up a year of work with Richmond Food Security at the end of last month. I’ve been able to implement some great new systems for them and look forward to seeing them to continue to grow.

Quick update on what the kids are up to…

Zoe has been remarkably consistent with wanting to take ice skating lessons and her backwards skating is coming along nicely. She’s also become great on her bike and wants to take riding lessons again this summer.

Toby’s soccer season finished, but is in the middle of a session of goalie clinics. He’s also in the table tennis club at school (all that table tennis practice should come in handy when he’s a programmer in a tech company and that’s the only reason to come out of the basement!)

Aly is still on a quest to save the world – she MC’d the REaDY summit – a Richmond environmental conference. She also become a Butterflyway Ranger – helping to save pollinators. Now if only she could remember which way to turn out of the driveway to get to work every week, she’d be ready to leave home!

Aly just turned 17. She had a lovely tea party at home. I can’t remember the last time she was actually at home for a birthday party. There won’t be many more of them :,-(

Aly went on a trip to the Juan de Fuca trail on Vancouver Island a couple of weeks ago. They waded through mud and slept under a tarp for 3 nights. Sounds like hell to me but it looked very pretty

She’s also still obsessed with comic books and all things Marvel. Rather that than drinking and boys!

I guess I also haven’t blogged since Easter. Zoe had a very successful egg hunt..

My blogging performance has been atrocious as usual over the past month or so. Can it make it through 2017? I guess we’ll find out!

We had our first sailing trip of the year (thanks to Dani and Toryn letting us borrow their boat). We did a quick trip to Sidney Spit for a BBQ. The kids and I were all a little rusty, but everyone soon got into the swing of things again. Hopefully, we’ll have a chance to explore some of the local islands this summer.

So Zoe had this mysterious full body rash last weekend, but not really any other symptoms except for being a little bit achy the day before it appeared. Three days in, I started trying to get some answers but one nurse, one doctor and one natropath could only conclude that it seemed like an allergy to something – perhaps to the naturopathic remedies she’d been taking for three weeks to try and shake her One-A-Day migraines.

The consensus was, that whatever it was, probably wasn’t contagious so I sent her back to school the next day. After school that day she came home with a notice saying “Fifth Disease is going around the school”.

This was a new one on me. I thought I’d seen everything after 17 years of parenting, but apparently not. The symptoms fit what she had perfectly. Helpfully, by the time the rash arrives, it’s no longer contagious. Naturally, it’s spreading like wildfire around the school. In fact, you can spot the kids who are just getting it by their red cheeks.

Fortunately, it seems to be a very mild illness and nothing to worry about.

I did something new last week – I had my first session with an executive coach to work on direction for my business(es).

As you can tell I haven’t done very much blogging on here, however, I’ve been more diligently blogging on rethink9to5 which is a website exploring alternatives to the traditional 9-to-5 working life. My most recent posts include:

• What to Do If You’re Not as Productive as You Promised
• Women In The Workforce: Why There’s More to the Glass Ceiling Problem
• Shipping Breast Milk Is Not a Win-Win!
• What Does Flexible Working Mean?

I’m starting to wonder if I’m a feminist.

We spent this weekend beginning to plan our road trip to the US. Last year we did the East Coast and we’ve driven up and down the West Coast quite a few times. This time we’re aiming somewhere in between. We’re thinking of making a loop from Calgary down through Yellowstone all the way down to Arizona, then West to the Grand Canyon/Vegas and back up via Reno. Who doesn’t love 70 hours of driving?! Maybe we’ll find a way to get Aly insured on the SUV so we can split the drive between the 3 of us (too bad it’s not a couple of months later or we could have roped Toby in too!).

It should take us about three weeks. After that Aly is headed 13 hours north for a week-long rangers camp in Smithers, BC (wow, this province is big – Smithers is only about halfway up!).

We had a lovely end to the weekend at Garry Point Park in Steveston where we were surrounded by blossom and the calmest waters we’d ever seen there.

 

On our last night in Ft McMurray, after 2 hours of shivering in the car at minus 25, we were rewarded with an amazing light show for around 20-30 minutes. There was dancing, there was colour. Soooo happy!

What a winter..I’ve never seen close to this amount of snow in Vancouver before. I’m not really complaining – I’ll take snow over rain any day.

We’ve really embraced it this year – Aly went on a school ski trip to Whistler. I’d show you some photos except she didn’t take a single one (I think she’s doing teenagerdom wrong – shouldn’t there be hundreds of selfies of her on the slopes?). I asked if she was going to call while she was there and she pointed out she didn’t call when she went to India for 3 weeks so “the chances are not high”. She was right.

Sascha bought me a trip to see the Northern Lights for Christmas which we finally got around to taking this weekend. We’d had to reschedule once or twice due to the weather. I was a little worried when our flight was canceled and we had to route through Calgary (which got us into Fort McMurray for 2am), but it doesn’t seem to have been due to weather.

The aurora forecast is an interesting thing. There is a Kp Index (the scale of geomagnetic activity which ranges from 0-9) and then you need to factor in location, visibility and even the brightness of the moon. You also get a colour forecast (it was always green when we were looking). It’s by no means an exact science. We had missed the peak of the geomagnetic activity earlier in the week and the forecast was a little overcast so we weren’t overly optimistic.

Kellie and I had bought mum and dad a trip to Iceland to see the Northern Lights which they had gone on last week and, although they saw them, it was more grey with a hint of green. This was great to know because the first night we were looking, that’s pretty much what we saw.  For the second night, we drove further out of town to Willow Lake and got lucky with a gap in the clouds and geomagnetic activity and had about 30 minutes of green streaks overhead. I was VERY happy and Sascha was very relieved (since he’d promised to take me further North to Yellowknife in the Yukon next year if the edge of the arctic circle in Fort McMurray, Alberta, wasn’t sufficient!)

It was certainly VERY chilly (-27 degrees with wind chill). We came pretty wrapped up, although Sascha had forgotten to bring a scarf – only to discover that scarves don’t seem to exist here. Instead, balaclavas are all the rage!  The temperature would feel fine for a few minutes, but then suddenly an almost imperceptible breeze would blow through which had us both instantly running for the car!

We found a great ice sculpture park and playground made of ice. I’d be jealous of the kids here except that Sascha mentioned how little of the year it was actually realistic to go to a playground!

Sunday evening we headed down to the river, only to find that on Sunday evening in Fort McMurray, the thing to do seems to be to drive across the river. We’d obviously learned everything we could possibly need to know from watching Ice Road Truckers so we headed out there too.  We decided to opt out of trying to climb up the bank on the other side since there had been several trucks sliding around before finally making it up the other side!

Other interesting things of note – we were starving when we finally got in at 2am on Friday so we headed straight to a drive-through – only to discover the windows had all frozen shut!  There were also some issues with the turn signal freezing. At least we’d been able to get a car – the rental company kindly agreed to leave the keys in the car for us!

• We were starving when we finally got in at 2am on Friday so we headed straight to a drive-through – only to discover the windows had all frozen shut!  There were also some issues with the turn signal freezing. At least we’d been able to get a car – the rental company kindly agreed to leave the keys in the car for us.
• Bus stops are completely enclosed which seems like an excellent plan
• Bologna was offered on all the menus we came into contact with. Interesting.
• Parking lots come with power outlets so you can plug you car in to keep it warm.

It’s a pretty small town, but it was a lot of fun to revisit where Sascha used to live and go to elementary school. It was the only place he’d lived growing up that he’d never been back to.

 

Fort McMurray is an oil town and also the site of huge wildfire this past summer. Weirdly this meant that little had changed since he was here. The oil industry has had it’s ups and downs since, but he had been here pretty much at the peak of the boom so there hadn’t been that much development. There was a huge amount of fire damage, but mostly in the new areas. Entire developments had, sadly, been wiped out, leaving just a few scattered homes with the sidings melted off them.

 

It must be very strange to still live in your home when the majority of your neighbours’ homes are completely gone. There are definitely a lot of new homes going up but it made me wonder where all these people have gone in the meantime.

Last week wasn’t the best week, especially after having to have Merlin the rabbit put down. So it was really nice to get away from it all and spend the weekend together. Dani and Toryn kindly came over the hang out with the kids while we were gone – thanks guys!