2012 Bucket List

As 2011 nears an end I was looking through the blog and came across my 2010 New Years Reso; I never had any resolutions for 2011 I guess. Since I never accomplished anything in my 2010 list (I guess publishing it does not make it easier to accomplish!) I thought I would give myself a head start this year and begin 6 weeks early. Also, I am going to call it a 2012 bucket list as it sounds less formal then "resolution." Finally, as losing weight is "so last decade" I am going with a number of things I would like to check off which, if completed, should result in better health; in my opinion better overall health is better than losing X amount of pounds. The bucket list is...*insert drum roll here*

1. Do a downhill mountain bike race -  Did the Gran Fondo instead.
2. Bag two more mountain peaks - these don't have to be super hard but harder/longer then what we accomplished this year; Needle Peak and Mount Thurston come to mind as two I would like to tackle
3. Knock three more things off of our 50 Things to do in BC Before You Die List
4. Break 90 at Sandpiper
5. Find 150 more Geocaches which would bring our total to 253
6. Catch a Steelhead - The Fish of 1000 casts!
7. Continue on my trek to "Be More Green"

While some of these things will require some luck to go with my lack of skill (catching a steelhead & breaking 90) I think this should be an achievable list time permitting. As long as I do not commit myself to too much volunteer duties the time should be there for me, as well as for Chelsey to accomplish her bucket list. Lets start checking things off!

Manning Park Snow Day

I have been pretty busy lately so have not spent as much time with the kids as I usually do. With that in mind I wanted to make sure we did something fun today and gave them the option of a couple things. The two choices were the Power Dam at Stave Falls out in Mission or playing in the snow at Manning Park. Proving once again that they are their fathers children they quickly said play in the snow.

Cohen had ice skating lessons at noon so we packed up some stuff and planned on heading out right after skating. The snow level was super low with things turning white before we reached the Hope Slide and after taking it easy we eventually made it to Manning Park. All the kids wanted to do was make snow angels and throw snowballs so we went up to Lighting Lake as it offered lots of space to screw around. After screwing around for a bit I pulled the kids along the trail for awhile but did not want to go too far in case they got cold.

After turning around and spending some time sledding down a little hill we packed up with the hopes of finding a hot chocolate. The restaurant was closed but we were able to find some chocolate milk in the lobby which was good enough. With the snow around we didn't both looking for any geocaches, maybe we will do that tomorrow. Pictures below as always...

Green Cleaning

Need some tips on "Green Cleaning?" I found the "recipe book" while trolling the internet. Click Here.

Foley Lake "Fishing"

Today the kids and I took Grandpa Darcy to Foley Lake in the Chilliwack River Valley in the hopes of finding a few geocaches and hopefully catching a fish. I knew there were fish in the lake but not sure what you have to do different to catch lake fish in the winter...Anyways, as is usually the case we did not cash any fish but we did find a geocache.

It was my first time to this lake and I must say it was quite a nice area. I always like heading into the mountains in the fall because the mountains usually have snow and any of the garbage left behind by the summer pigs is usually covered up by leaves. It was a pretty chilly day with most of the ground frozen but over all I think it went well. Enjoy the pictures

Something Funny for your Saturday

This is pretty funny and well worth watching the full clip. Sit down and enjoy!

Halloween 2011 - Our Mario Bros. Family

Mario, Princess Peach and Princess Daisy

Rainy Day Geocaching

I love walking around the forest when it is raining so I figured the kids do too! With that in mind we scooted out to find a couple Geocaches today. I got an e-mail stating a new one had been hidden by Cultus Lake so we decided to try and be the first to find it; and we were!! It took 101 tries but we were finally the first to find a new geocache! There are only a couple of pictures as our batteries started dying on the GPS so we were only able to find 2 caches. I could not find the camera so I had to use my phone, but the pictures look pretty decent anyways. Enjoy!

The things you find in the woods; this car was from the 50's or 60's  but the kids found it cool.

At the site of our first find of the day and our first FTF!

We all thought this was pretty cool. In the background to your right you can see the roots of a big tree that got blow down.  Obviously, it was a big tree as the roots were pretty big.

Cache 102 for us. October was a slow month for geocaching but we have been very busy with other things. Hopefully we can do better in November.

More Greed

And people wonder why there are protests going on everywhere and why the middle and lower class are getting pissed off at the upper class. This chart should help reduce some of that wondering and is half the problem with society today. People are so caught up with money and trying to keep up with the Jones' that they forget what is important; they just want more, more, more and will screw over anyone beneath them to attain more. Obviously the CEO's of the healthcare companies listed below, and most other Fortune 500 companies for that matter, are as money hungry as the buggers on Wall Street.

Geocaching Chilliwack Lake

After Chelsey pulled a fast one and gave me the shaft today the kids and I decided to do some geocaching. When the weather stinks I like to find caches that are grouped together or close to the car so we don't get too wet. Todays location of choice was Chilliwack Lake as it offered some of both. Not much to describe on the day so I will let the pictures do the talking. But, in general we all had a good day and we found our 100th cache; yay us. 

There is also a couple of pictures of a fish I caught in the river last week. The picture kind of sucks as I knew I had to release it and I was by myself so I did not want to have the fish flopping on the rocks while I took a picture so I just kept it on the line and tried to snap one. 

I also have a video of Cohen ice skating that I have been meaning to upload to the blog but just have not found the time recently; will try and get it up soon. Enjoy the pictures...

Sunday Funday

My Mum has been in town for a few days and for the most part we have been pretty busy with the kids activities, soccer, skating, etc. With nothing going on today we decided to head out to Hope as my Mum has yet to see the Othello Tunnels and it also gave us a chance to do some more geocaching. On the drive out we were able to pick up two geocaches before reaching Coquihalla Canyon Provincial Park which is home to the tunnels.

We walked through the tunnels and then on the way back Mum became a leaf monster and started scaring the twins. Personally I thought she look more like a moose, but what do I know; pictures are below so you can decide for yourself. After hitting up the tunnels we went and looked for a geocache at the Nicolum River Provincial Park which is now permanently closed. It is still on our list of provincial parks that we have to visit for #43 on our list of 50 Things to do in BC Before You Die so we made the trip even though it was closed.

There was one other geocache I wanted to find before we went home and it was along a forest service road just across the street from the Nicolum River Provincial Park. The GPS said it was only 1KM away but I forgot that was as the crow flied. We made it to the geocache which was closer to 5km up the road which was a little dodgy at parts; then I thought that it is almost a tradition to take Mum up dodgy roads when she visits and that made me feel better.

Kyah fell asleep on the way back down so Mum and I had a good laugh at her head bouncing around as we made our way back to civilization. We started filming her to share it with you, which I do below, but then she smacked her head and cried so that made me feel bad. Mum being Mum just started laughing even harder, can you believe it?!? I need to start bringing her a pillow when we go on these drives.

Enjoy the pictures and short video clip...

Camp Kindawoods

Before I dive into our "camping" adventure I need to explain that I am very superstitious. I will never walk under a ladder, avoid the number 13, etc and I am a big believer that everything happens for a reason and that you should follow your gut. The other day when I was walking into the office I saw a crap load of crows flying around, I have never seen crows flocking like that so I was kind of creeped out. The first thing that I thought was something was going to happen, like "The Big One" or something. I have heard people say animals know when something is going to happen so I assume that is why I thought of that. Anyways, a few hours later that big earth quake hit off of Vancouver Island; weird eh.

So...The kids have been bugging me for weeks to take them camping. I kept promising I would but either the weather sucked or something else came up. Not wanting to be the Dad that promises but never delivers I figured we should head up this weekend. Last night the weather forecast for tonight and tomorrow was rain so I figured if we could get the tent set-up when it was not raining we would be safe. So I loaded all the camping gear up last night with the intent to scoot off after Cohen's skating lesson if the weather was ok; as a side note, Cohen rocked at his skating lessons today!

So last night while I was sound asleep fighting my sleep apnea I had a dream that we were out camping. In this dream we went for a walk and Cohen got attacked by a bear. It was a pretty vivid dream as I remember crying in the hospital hoping he was ok; so with my superstitious attitude and the experience with the crows the other day I was a little freaked to go camping when I woke up. When I was making the kids breakfast I told them that if it was raining we couldn't go camping and it was raining pretty good this morning. Trying to be the trooper I packed up all the food, pillows, etc before we left for skating with the intent of still going camping but secretly wishing it would snow or something...

Fossils, Fires and Frogs

Today I gave the twins a few choices to find out what they wanted to do and the decision was to look for fossils and treasure hunt (i.e. geocache); I first had to explain what fossils were. Kyah just wanted to go to a park so she was easy to please.

There was an Earthcache, which is a type of geocache, up the Chilliwack River Valley by Slesse Creek which was at an area where we could look for fossils, we decided that would be our destination. After a quick stop at Timmys we headed up and into the bush. There were some people camping on the forest service road where we had to park to hunt for fossils, but other then that it was all quiet. We spent a good hour or so looking at rocks on the side of the creek and the kids had a great time throwing twigs and leaves in the creek and watching them float down; Cohen's favorite part was "saving" the leaves.

After looking for the fossils, and I think we found one but you have to look below for a picture, we cruised back down to the Chilliwack River for some traditional geocaches. The first one we looked for was around a unofficial campsite and it was absolutely disgusting to see the amount of garbage that was left around. The worst part was the ass hats who stayed there must have just left because their fire was still burning. It never ceases to amaze me how disrespectful people in this world are becoming. The fact that I can go camping with two 4 year olds, both of whom know it is "noddy" to litter, and not leave a trace while grown adults can not even put out a fire or pick up their garbage is mind boggling.

After searching around for the cache we gave up, took a quick peak at the Slesse Creek Cave, and headed off for our next cache. We found another cache up another forest service road, once again it was littered with garbage and yard waste, then took the back roads home through Mount Slesse, up the Chilliwack Army Forest Service Road, onto Chilliwack Bench Forest Service Road which took us to Ryder Lake. We took a break at a park up on Ryder Lake where the kids got to play on the swings and slides before heading home.

We had friends over for dinner which included the salmon I caught in Campbell River as well as some fresh Chilliwack corn; how can you go wrong with that! Thats all for this weekend folks; time permitting we will be heading camping for a day or two next weekend! Enjoy the pictures...

Skating, Geocaching and...Sharting!

Busy and fun day with the kids today. Cohen had his ice skating lessons at 12:00 so we decided to leave the house early and grab a couple of Geocaches. For our morning session we grabbed four and then headed off to skating. As Cohen had not skated all summer we were a little concerned that he may have forgotten how to stand up and stuff, but he rocked it and did great. After skating we went to a park by the rink real quick for some playtime and to find another geocache...Yay! Then it was time to go home for lunch and some quiet time; aka I needed a nap - I blame it on the sleep apnea! When nap time was over we went and played a little mini golf and hit up the driving range, the kids love mini golf but I think it was a little too hot for them at the driving range; it has been in the low 30's the past few days.

After our fun golfing we had some dinner and grabbed a couple more geocaches on the way home. We found a total of seven today which is a new record for us; our grand total is up to 82. I told the kids that we got a new record after the seventh cache and then had to spend 15 minutes explaining to Cohen that we do not receive a tangible item and that "record" is just a word; obviously he wanted something for our achievement.

The last cache we found was at a park so the kids played around a bit. As Kyah was coming down the slide she ripped a big one and we just laughed it off even though she has had a funny tummy for most of the day. Two minutes later I hear Cohen screaming that Kyah poohed. I ask her what happened and she said when she farted pooh came out (the good ol' shart - to view the Urban Dictionary definition of the shart click here). When she showed me her panties she had dropped a wet load, I told her to take them off and put them in the garbage and that resulted in pooh down the leg. After throwing water on her we booked it home for bath time! Enjoy the pictures, I still need to screw with the settings on the camera as the picture color is looking dull...

File this one under WTF.

It seems the In-Vetro Fertilization business in the United States is about as well regulated as their financial sector. The link below is to a New York Times article about this not-so-regulated sector. One dude has 150 kids from his one "load." Obviously, this type of idiotic behavior increases the chances of incest by a large margin (i.e. banging your half sister you did not know was your half sister) and based on the people in Wal-Mart this may have been going on for a while. You have to read it...http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/health/06donor.html

Random Video of the Kids

I have not posted much of the kids lately so thought I would create a quick random video of them goofing around tonight to quench your thirst. We are hoping to squeeze in a night of camping this weekend so hopefully we will have something more enjoyable for you then. For now, you get this...