Last day of school!

So yesterday morning I wrote an exam nice and early and had the rest of the day to myself. A friend (Theresa) and I decided to spend it outdoors at Stanley Park and then at Granville Island doing a little browsing and Christmas shopping! We then headed back to my place for some tree decorating and dinner with a couple of my other pharmacy friends. Here are some pictures and videos!

I wanted to name all the birds we saw for the bird nerds (Mom and Kat), but I couldn't find these guys in my Audubon Society book.

No brainer ;)

This is an oystercatcher. He was making a racket and I tried to get a video and then he shut up.

Lions Gate Bridge.

This is a common merganser.


Lots of ice! It was quite chilly and I got a bit wind/frost-bitten down by the ocean. My face still hurts today!

Yes this is indeed a large blow-dryer for your children.

After than, our tree fun began. Remi brought the tree in (it was frozen, he had to thaw it out) and then wrestled with it to get it to sit in the stand and THEN had to cut off a few of the bottom branches. The tree is huge, but it's definitely the nicest tree we've had yet.

Some friends of mine came over to help us. That's Ariel on the left and Theresa on the right.

Lots of decorating!

Remi and I topped it off.

And there's Raj! Yes, the boys are giving the finger. Not very Christmas-spirited, but this was the best picture of the five of us and Noble Fir.

Then we ate! Moroccan chicken and a zucchini and apple salad with preserved lemons that Remi made himself. Mmmm!! It was so good! Oh, and wine of course!

We're all ready for Christmas out here for the most part. A few things left to pick up present-wise for each other, but we're looking forward to some time to ourselves and some snowshoeing!! There is TONS of snow out here! Remi is thinking about heading up to the mountains tomorrow and the two of us have Friday off and it's supposed to clear up. Pictures to come!

Happy holidays everyone!

Sarah

OH! I almost forgot the videos. The first is a crow picking up a shell and breaking it open to get at what's inside. Crows are so smart! That is true - wikipedia it.

The second is us decorating the tree. It's more for my mom really because I wasn't there to help her with the tree this year.

Our province is better than your province

The sun actually shone on Thursday and Remi finished his exam early, so we decided to go for a walk on the North Shore. It was a beautiful day and Remi felt photograph-inspired so there are a few panoramics here (because everything is big in BC).




Maggie of course went swimming. Her tail seems to suck water up and so always shoots up a big stream when she shakes.

Then she wacked me in the nose with her big fat head. It hurt.

Family photo! We tried to get Maggie to sit, but she wanted to bark at us instead.

The sun came through the trees in a few locations and looked like a star-rainbow.

Another video of Maggie swimming ;)


I have one final left (Remi finished today) and then it's relax relax relax (in other words, work work work at the hospital). We haven't quite finished Christmas shopping yet, but we're close. We're getting our Christmas tree on Tuesday!

Hugs and kisses to everyone!

Sarah and Remi

Petgill Lake

There wasn't much going on at school today, so I took a professional development day and took the dog up to Petgill Lake for a quick hike. It wasn't the most incredible hike we've done, but a nice walk in the woods ending at a sub-alpine lake. Mostly it was nice to escape from the noises of the city for a short while. Here are a couple of pictures:

This is a view to the end of Howe Sound and Squamish. It's a pretty good view of the Chief.

Petgill Lake. Pretty nice, but it was windy and cold, so we couldn't stay too long.

Gala and NEW BABY!

So pharmacy Gala was last Friday night. We got all dolled up for the party. Here are a few pictures.

But more importantly, I'm an AUNT!! Kristin delivered baby Keenan Steven (5 lbs, 10 ounces) 1 month early on Sunday evening (Nov 16) at 7:12 PM. Kristin is tired and Keenan is still in his incubator, but they're both doing quite fine. More pictures to come, I'm sure!

Oh, and you can call Remi uncle too, even though he's not willing to admit it yet ;)

Sarah

Hurricane Vancouver!

Okay, not quite a hurricane, but we have a severe wind warning (>70 km/hr gusts!), so I took a couple videos. Today is also the first day we've seen the sun in a couple of weeks!! Every November we're reminded why the trees are so big and the forests are RAINforests out here ;)

Enjoy the videos, I have to get back to studying (four final exams next week - eek!).

Sarah

A couple of videos

Here are a couple of videos from the two days referred to in the last post.

Some more photos

I've been trying for DAYS to get some more photos on this darn blog, but Blogger is being difficult. So I'll try again.

Here are some more pictures of our farm day and a walk near Lynn Valley that we did a couple weeks ago :)

You'll see our hike didn't last long. I'm smiling in this photo, but I was not happy about 15 minutes later. We decided to bail. The next few photos are from our farm tour! Donkeys, turkeys and squash. We were very excited to be out of the city.


The photos that follow are from another rainy day a couple of Thursdays ago. Remi forgot his rain coat (and by forgot I mean intentionally left behind after I mentioned that he might want to take it...). Maggie got some swimming in, so she was quite thrilled.

As of late...

Hey, all. School school school about sums up our last little while. We did have a wine-touring farm day not too long ago and of course, Hallowe'en (I forgot my camera so no pictures). Hopefully now that the snow seems to be falling in the mountains we'll be out snowshoeing soon. Until then... rain rain rain down here at sea level :( We're going out for dinner tonight with some friends and next week is the annual gala for my pharmacy class. Hot dressed-up pics of Remi and I to come :)

For now, here's our hike-gone-bad, wine-touring farm day photos!

One more thing...

Remi's absolutely right, we haven't been up to anything! He has been on a few field trips with his new program (I'll see if I can find some pictures to attach here) and he went paintballing with my pharmacy pals a couple of weeks ago - I had to work :( I definitely have a picture of that!
Some jerk (not one of my friends) shot him point-blank! It got a lot uglier than this (it looked like a burn) and now it looks like it's going to scar. He'd probably tell you he got it defending my honour, but he'd be lying ;)

As for field trip pictures... He apparently has them saved in some secret location. I'll ask him to post them later.

Hope all is well with everyone!

Sarah

Stuff

We haven't done much in a while, so here's a couple videos of Maggie in the Seymour River today.

Rained out :(

So last weekend was Remi and my last weekend of the summer together. As such, we planned a sweet awesome camping trip near Whistler complete with two summits and a glacier. Sadly, it poured ALL WEEKEND (just our luck), so we were stuck in Hell (my pet name for Vancouver).



We spent Sunday shopping, eating, watched a Planet Earth and FINALLY saw the new Batman. I'm interested in how others felt about Batman... Don't get me wrong, I loved it. It was great, exactly what I expected/wanted, etc... But was it worth all the hype?? Oscar worthy for Ledger?? (I say no, but I'm interested in hearing "yes" arguments, not that he wasn't brilliant in it, he was, but an Oscar???)



Anyway, on Monday we decided to head out of town for a hike. It was still supposed to rain in the Whistler area, so we decided to stay around Vancouver where the chance of rain was less. Remi had to head to a job site first thing in the morning (I was up before 7 on my day off!!!!), so we did that and then headed off to the hike by about 8:30 or so. After wasting an hour trying to find Dewdney Trunk Rd (we found Old Dewdney Trunk Rd, which was found at the turn-off location mentioned in our guide book AND was the only Dewdney Trunk Rd on our map, so we assumed it was the same thing - don't do that in BC; it wasn't!!), we made the trailhead by 10:30 or so I believe. Then we discovered that the trunk latch was broken - AGAIN. It took Remi about an hour to jury rig it so that it looked closed from the outside so we wouldn't get robbed (which was actually quite a necessary thing because as we returned to the car, we found some riffraff digging through a pile of garbage dumped there looking for copper wire or whatever), then we hit the trail. I mention all these delays because they become very important later in helping to determine the outcome (success) of our summit of Mt. Crickmer.



It was a relatively uninteresting trail to be honest, but at least we were outside. I will continue my story with photos.




This photo is interesting for two reasons. Firstly, notice Remi's new backpack. He starts school on Tuesday so we couldn't have him showing up with a backpack from 1996 ;) Secondly, notice the giant cloud in the background ;)


This was one of the views. It was pretty much the only view we got. After seeing a giant glacier the week before this was just meh ;)



We found the scene of this distruction on another delay to the summit... I read the book wrong and instead of reading "don't take JV Rd" I read it as "TAKE JV Rd". Needless to say, I was no longer in charge of directions (Remi should know better by now anyway!!). This was down a deactivated logging road. Sad isn't it? Think about this the next time you throw paper in the garbage can instead of recycling!!!


We stopped for lunch near a bridge. Apparently this was in a box canyon, but we didn't even take picture so it must not have been that interesting. Nice waterfall though (which I also didn't take a picture of).


Off we go! Compared to most of the trails we do, this was a super-highway. We could actually walk side-by-side! And the sun was still out... For now!


And then the rain came...


And continued. It was, to use a Sarah-ism, torentiating (defintion: a torential downpour). Then it started to hail, THEN it started to thunder. We decided to get the heck off the side of a mountain at that point ;)

About 15 minutes later, it cleared up! I'd say we should have known that it would, as weather in the mountains can often be transient, but that is not always the case. Better safe than struck by lightening ;) Anyway, had we not been delayed several times (recall Dewdney Trunk Rd, the trunk latch debauchle and my shoddy directions), we totally would have made the summit before this rain set in. We figure we were no more than an hour from the peak when we were forced to turn around. Boourns!


On the way out Remi decided to look for fossils. He's still sore from my sweet fossil find from 3 years ago at Ammonite Falls on Vancouver Island. I don't have a picture of it, but it is a complete snail shell fossil. Very cool. Unfortunately, as Remi told me about eight or nine times in the span of 5 minutes, this isn't the kind of rock you find fossils in.

So that was our stay at home weekend. How do people do this every weekend!!?? We're heading for that area in Whistler (Brandywine Falls) tomorrow that we were supposed to camp at last weekend for a hike and Remi's out doing Mt. Brunswick today - the last couple hikes of a fantastic summer!

Remember to post your comments!

Sarah

The glacial lake dip

So this is the video Remi alluded to in his last post but ended up posting two of the same video instead of this one. This is rated R due to language, but don't judge the boys too harshly - it was F'in cold!! ;)