Christina’s mom and brother came out for a visit this weekend.

On Friday, while I was working the rest of the gang picnicked in Stanley Park, and stopped for gelato at La Casa Gelato on their way home.

On Saturday we went to Maplewood Farm. The girls loved petting the goats and bunnies. Natalie was particularly enthralled with Casa the parrot as he could say “Hi” and “Parrot”. While there we ate a picnic lunch and watched a cow milking demonstration.

On Sunday morning we went to Granville Island for lunch. The food was great as usual and we enjoyed listening to some jazz music (part of the Vancouver Jazz Festival free concert series) and watched some buskers.

One of my childhood cats, Brindle, was finally put down yesterday after suffering with arthritis for a long time. We love you Brindle. You were a wonderful cat and I miss you already.

Who knew Father’s Day came with tests?

Test 1: Appliance repair.

On Friday night I came home to discover that the garburator in our sink had stopped working. When you flicked the switch it simply hummed as if the motor was getting power, but couldn’t move. Great… I knew I shouldn’t have been putting coffee grounds down there and it had finally caught up with me. I delayed the task of disassembling our sink until the next night when the girls were sleeping, and did a little research on the internet. Apparently our garburator doesn’t have the handy Allan key method of unsticking it, so the next best recommendation was a broom handle. I tried all kinds of tools, performed numerous cleaning cycles, but the thing wouldn’t budge. Finally I decided to take the garburator off the the sink and get a closer look. It was then that I finally saw the problem. It looked like there was some sort of metal thing jammed between the flywheel and the housing, but I couldn’t recognise it and enlisted Christina’s help. The conversation went something like this…

“Hey Christina, I think I see the problem, but I have no idea what it is.”
“Let me see… OH!” Long pause. “I thought I cleaned them all up.”

Apparently, Christina had accidentally spilled some finishing nails near the sink and one had found its way into the garburator. Well, you can hardly blame the garburator for not handling that tough task. The good news is that I was able to remove the nail and the garburator bounced right back. Test one… PASSED.

Test 2: Food preparation.

Christina went grocery shopping on Friday, and announced to me when I arrived home that she had bought salmon for my Father’s Day dinner. Or rather, she had bought a salmon. A whole one — head, fins, and all. Apparently they are cheaper if you buy them that way, and it was my duty as the man to “clean” it. Although I had seen it done, I’d never cleaned a fish myself before (at least not that I could recall).

So what to do?

Off to the internet I go…With the salmon waiting in the kitchen, I’m hunched over my laptop scouring the internet for tips. A few YouTube videos later, and I’m ready tackle my first salmon cleaning. I’ll spare you the details, but it actually went quite smoothly and we enjoyed a delicious dinner for Father’s day. Test two… PASSED.

We decided to get Natalie a bike for her 3rd birthday. However, since her birthday is at the end of July we decided to get it for her early so she has ALL summer to enjoy it. And BOY does she enjoy it!

I thought I would try my first blog post as the adventure I’m about to describe did not include Tony :(

I took a road trip with the girls last week, and we had a blast! We left Sunday and came home Friday so that Tony would be busy with work and we still had the weekends with him. The first lag of the trip was to Kamloops. We made it to my grandparent’s place just in time for dinner (great planning, eh?) and had a nice evening of visiting. The next morning we got to see my grandpa’s new nursing home, a very posh place! Next it was off to William’s Lake to visit with our good friends, the Hendersons.

We spent 3 nights with the Hendersons and the days were filled with walks, trampoline time, great food, swimming and lounging in the hot tub, playing with toys and playdough, and lots and lots of ANNIE! The kids were exhausted every night after running around in the backyard all day. Probably the highlight of our time William’s Lake was Evan’s first birthday party. Susan and I made an amazing dinosaur cake (yay for us!) and she invited a bunch of their friends and neighbours over for an awesome BBQ.

Thursday, after lunch the girls and I sadly packed up and made our way back to Kamloops. This was the easiest of our four days of driving as the girls slept the whole 3.25 hours to grandma’s! Another great dinner by grandma and quick visit with my mom, who came up from Kelowna for the night, and we we off the next morning, homebound.

We are so blessed to have such amazing family and friends and two amazing little girls to make road trips a little more adventurous.

Wow, we’re really behind in updating our blog.  Way back on the 28th of May, we went out to Kelowna to visit Christina’s family for 4 days. It was a nice extended visit and we celebrated her Dad’s 50th birthday while we were there.

We split our time between the trampoline, hot tub, touring show homes and eating tons of yummy food. Natalie had a blast on the trampoline and spent most of her time there or playing with the dogs. Overall, it was a very relaxing and sun-filled weekend.