Family Snowshoeing at Manning Park

Today we decided to take the kids snowshoeing at Manning Park. It was the first time we have taken the kids out so we thought Manning Park was a good spot because we knew it was pretty flat around Lighting Lake; so that is the route we took. The kids whined a touch but I think that is par for the course, they did say  they had lots of fun and I am sure the more we go the less they will whine. As mentioned above we did the Lighting Lake loop and it was great. The snow was awesome, the weather was perfect - cloudy with a few flurries falling and minus 5 degrees. The kids were pretty stoked just to play around in the snow and every tree we walked by the smashed the snow of the branch, and there were A LOT of trees. We stopped halfway through the walk for a break and some hot chocolate. There were a bunch of Whiskey Jacks around where we stopped, I think that is the type of bird they are, and the kids were laughing their butts off when they ate from our hands. One of the birds landed on a tree above Cohen and a bunch of snow fell down on him, pretty funny stuff. After our break we continued on and finished off with sandwiches on the back of the truck and the kids got to spend more time playing in the snow. We are looking forward to going again but for now enjoy the pictures below...

Christmas Fair With the Kids

Today after running some errands the kids and I decided to brave the rain/snow/sleet and see what was happening at the Christmas Fair in downtown Chilliwack. Considering how bad the weather was there were still quite a few people down there. I didn't let the kids go on any rides because it was too wet but we did get to see Santa, ride the Rotary Train, see the gingerbread house display and do some crafts. Kyah was a bit hesitant with Santa again but she did tell him she would like an Xbox for Christmas and Cohen asked for Lego Ninjago; I guess we will have to see what the fat dude in a red suit brings them.

Once we were cold enough we scooted home and the kids got a chance to play in the first real snowfall of the season, hopefully it is the first of many and the rest are much bigger! Enjoy the pictures...

Cohen and Devil Childs Christmas Play

Cohen and Kyah (Devil Child) had their Christmas play for kindergarten tonight. All the kindergarten classes were the warm up to the big show. As Kyah was in fine form this evening we only watched the two minutes they were in, not that you would want to see random kids in a play anyways. Also, if you look closely at Kyah you will notice a certain 32 year old brunette took her to a certain store in a certain mall and got two certain holes in two certain parts of her body. A certain 34 year old male brunette was dead set against a certain 5 year old getting these certain holes until at least 12 years old but I guess we now know for certain who wears the pants in our family...and it is not me or Chelsey!

Anyways, Christmas play is in the video below and I hope you all enjoy it!

More Props to my Marathon Running Pops

This is a post I have been meaning to do for a month or so. Anyways after completing his first half marathon earlier this year my Dad finished his first marathon in October at the Royal Victoria Marathon at the ripe young age of 64. He finished in a time of 4 hours and 45 minutes and 42 seconds. Not too shabby if you ask a run hater like me! To top it off this past weekend he did the Bear Mountain 10k which is said to be the toughest 10k in Canada due to the hills; he came fourth in his age group! Below are some pics of that man himself, first two from the Victoria Marathon last two for the Bear Mountain 10k. Way to go Dad :)

Kyah & Chelsey's Campout

I thought I would post this on Chelsey's behalf as I figured she would not do it. As many of you know Chelsey and her friend Nadine are "troop leaders" for Promontory Sparkes; i know nothing of it so my terminology might be off. Anyways, this past weekend they had some "training" and such at one of the Girl Guide campsites on Sumas Mountain. When Chelsey got home she told me how much fun they had and all these cool camp cooking things, etc that they learned. She said she was super excited to go camping...as long as she has the right clothes and equipment. Obviously, I was absolutely stoked to hear this and am already looking forward to going camping with my newly reformed wife. She even asked if I wanted to go for a hike yesterday in the rain with the kids! Chelsey has always liked getting outside and stuff but this is a step more so I am stoked! We didn't go for the hike as this past weekend I was sicker than the smell of a dying cats piss. Anyways, here are some of the pictures of their weekend; they are limited as I did not want to randomly post pictures of other peoples kids. Enjoy...

A Few Shots of our New Truck

Our San Diego Trip 2012

After spending 4 nights at Disneyland we hopped about an Amtrak and headed down the coast to San Diego. We stayed at a cool hotel that was a two block walk from Mission Beach and it was awesome. Having not been able to swim in the warm ocean since I was a kid I was super stoked to get there and get bowled over by the waves. It seems Cohen is just like his Dad as he loved playing in the waves and all he wanted to do was swim in the ocean; the bad part was Kyah preferred swimming in the pool.

While we were in San Diego we went to Seaworld and I must say Seaworld was a huge disappointment after visiting Disneyland; next time we will go to the zoo or spend an extra day at the beach! We also rented cruiser bikes and rode down the boardwalk and we were happy to find out that it looked like we were staying close to the funnest beach. The kids really enjoyed the bike riding, especially Kyah who is a bike riding fiend.

Our Disney Trip 2012

As most of you know we spent last Friday through to Tuesday morning at Disneyland and then Tuesday through to Friday at Mission Beach in San Diego; this post will be dedicated to our Disneyland trip and a San Diego one will follow.

Having not been to Disneyland since I was 5 I was not sure what to expect but I must say it was way more than whatever I was expecting. We all had so much fun and can not wait until we go back. On the Friday we rolled in to the hotel just before two and then went straight to Disneyland. I could write in detail about everything we did but I will try and keep the post brief. The first big ride we went on was the Thunder Mountain roller coaster and initially Cohen hated it and was scared and Kyah loved it, as they days went on Cohen began to enjoy the roller coasters a bit more and Kyah was fearless and would go on anything and everything she could. Cohen's favorite rides were anything where he would get wet; this may have something to do with the fact that we hit the hottest day of the year on Saturday when the temperature hit 41 degrees!

September Long Staycaction

After the kids had so much fun at the pool party at Chelsey's Auntie Marg and Uncle Ken's last Sunday they invited us to spend the weekend there this weekend so the kids could have some more fun. Knowing how much fun they kids would have there was no chance we could say no, not to mention how much fun we have too!

Kyah is getting really good at swimming without her life jacket and Cohen is a real riot to watch as he launches himself in the pool anyway he can. Other than swimming we also got up to a few other things. On Saturday we went to the Richmond Farmers Market and got some wicked produce at really good prices. I even picked up some pickling cucumbers and have now made my first batch of pickles. I will let you all know how they taste after I let them age for a bit! After that we went to the Buddhist Temple in Richmond to  check that out. It was the first time our family had been there so it was pretty cool, lots of weird questions coming from the kids though.

The other thing we did was on Sunday when we were able to knock number 11 of our 50 Things to do in BC Before You Die list as well as number 37 from the 50 Things Your Child Should do Before 12 list. We took the kids down to the seawall in Stanley Park where they rode their bikes and Chelsey and I chased behind them. It was a gorgeous day so it was obviously packed but still lots of fun. We stopped for awhile at one of the beaches where Cohen and I spent a lot of time looking at crabs and other creatures in the rock pools. It was pretty neat watching him flip over the rocks to see what was underneath and he had no problems telling me to move the bigger ones! While we were doing that Chelsey and Kyah built sandcastles and picked up shells. All in all it was a great weekend and everyone had fun. Enjoy the pictures...

Cohen's First Hockey Practice

Cohen had his first day of hockey practice today so I thought I would share a few of the pictures. We are not sure what the name of his team is yet as we find that out next week. It was pretty funny to watch all the kids out there skating around and falling over. It took Cohen a few tries to figure out how to get up after falling down with his stick in his hand but he eventually got it. He said he had lots of fun and he also seems to be the smallest kid on the ice, no surprise there! In most of the pictures it is hard to tell who is Cohen but you get the gist of the cuteness of it all; if it helps his shirt is all black and he has white socks with a thick dark blue stripe. Enjoy...

Cohen Can Fly

It took him a little bit to grow a set but this picture makes me so proud of my daring little boy that I had to share it!

Our Trip to Hells Gate Airtram

Last Sunday, the 19th, we decided to take a trip to check out Hells Gate Airtram. As per usual it has been a pretty busy summer so we have not had much time for local family day trips so we were all pretty excited for this one. 

I can't remember if I had ever been here before, other than driving by, so it was pretty cool to check out. Once you get over the river there are some pretty neat things to look at on the other side and quite a few pieces showing the history of the area. The kids had tonnes of fun crossing the bridge as it was super windy; if you do it make sure you eat your ice cream first. One thing that amazed me was the marker showing the highest level the river had ever been, I think it was in 1948, and it was high; I have been meaning to check out the impacts that had down stream.

After a good time at Hells Gate we took off home with the traditional stops along the way for a quick geocache hunt. And, as you will see in the pictures below, Cohen and Kyah can not walk on a trail without leaving their mark! Enjoy the photos...

Prospera Valley Gran Fondo - Check!

Today I finished the Prospera Valley Gran Fondo and I was pretty stoked to get it done. I started road riding back in February/March as I was not losing, or maintaining, my weight by mountain biking; probably had something to do with driving or taking chair lifts to the top of the mountain and riding down!

Anyways, my time was 5 hours, 31 minutes and 49 seconds which placed me 151/333 males who started and 41/76 in my age group with an average pace of 29km/h throughout the whole course; I was more than happy with that outcome considering my longest ride prior to this one was just shy of 100km.

Chelsey and the kids did not get to the finish line in time to snap any pictures but I have copied a map and hill profile below for those who care.

Also, one of the things on my 2012 Bucket List was to do a downhill mountain bike race but since I have spent so much time on my road bike I have not mountain biked much so I am going to count this as the "race" instead; I feel no guilt as the Gran Fondo was a lot harder than ripping down the trail, in my opinion.

Oliver Trip 2012

As most of you know we spent last week at Lake Side Resort on Tuc El Nuit Lake in Oliver for our 2nd annual Woods Family "camping" trip. Just to recap this is the same place Chelsey went as a kid and her Mum also went there as a kid and I am more than willing to continue on the tradition. I was unable to do the daily blog update this year as the wireless was too slow and I was having to much fun!

It is hard to believe but this trip was even better then last year.We had so much fun and the place we stay at is the perfect place for families, I cannot explain how awesome of a time we had. The weather was a tad warm but it made the lake that much hotter. The kids spent a bunch of time swimming and riding their bikes and due to the extra pedal time Kyah is now off her training wheels and Cohen is very close behind! This year friends from Chilliwack came so Cohen and Kyah and other friends to play with the whole time, their names were Lilly and Logan. The kids also met some more pretty awesome friends at the lake that they spent the week with and reconnected with a friend they met last year. One of the little boys got an Angry Birds board game for his birthday and Cohen was more than happy to spend a number of hours in the shade playing with him; he had a little sister that Kyah played with and it is so much fun watching the kids make friends and spend the time playing with them. Last year we spent a few days doing trips to Penticton, etc. but this year we spent a lot more time at the lake and it was a very wise choice; we did make sure we took two trips to Tickleberry's though!

One trip we did take was to the Desert Model Railroad in Osoyoos. There are a bunch of pictures in the slideshow below but these pictures do not do it justice, the place is absolutely amazing. We spent about an hour in the place checking things out but I could honestly have spent another 2 hours. The place is 4000 square feet choc-o-block full of trains, it took them over 11 years to build and is a must see for anybody driving through the area.

Canada Day 2012 Campbell River Trip

With us leaving for our trip to Tuc El Nuit lake tomorrow (I hope our house sitter remembers to water my vegetables in this heat!) I thought I should post the pics from our trip to Campbell River last weekend, so here it is.

Auntie Kim had her "lady stag" and with Chelsey helping organize it we had to venture over for the long weekend. We caught the very a tad late on Friday and rolled into Campbell River far too long after midnight; the positive was the kids were great. The girl stag was on the Saturday so after a relaxing morning I took the kids mini golfing in the afternoon as I had promised Cohen I would take him. After a bunch of fun mini golfing  we scooted off to Miracle Beach Provincial Park for some Geocaching. While I could "legally" cross Miracle Beach off our BC Parks list in the spirit of doing things right I would rather spend some more time there before we do. When we were Geocaching I found a robins egg on the ground and after checking it out Cohen asked to look at it, not knowing any better he squeezed it and it broke and splattered all over his face; while Cohen was not too impressed I thought it was very funny. After having dinner with Uncle Nick, Grandpa Darcy, Hunter and Easton I took the kids back home for a nice sleep.

Cohen & Kyah's Pre-School Grad

As promised here are some still shots and 2 short video clips of Cohen and Kyah's pre-school "graduation." Due to my stupidity the video's are sideways, sorry, but you still get the full effect of their cuteness. Enjoy...

Cohen & Kyah's Year End Play

Last week Cohen and Kyah had their big Pre-School graduation. Part of the ceremony was their year end play. Chelsey forgot to bring the camcorder so I taped it with the camera. If you have 12 minutes to kill sit back and watch the poorly filmed video below. Their actual "grad" ceremony blog post to follow shortly.

Fathers Day 2012

My blogging has been non-existent lately as I have been short on time due to my excess bike riding in preparation for the Valley Gran Fondo and the Vanouver-Whistler Gran Fondo. That being said, with the long weekend and a weeks holiday coming up soon I should have more time to keep you up to date.

As per the title this post is in regards to last weekends Fathers Day. It was a pretty fun day that started with Kyah making me breakfast in bed. After having a slow morning we decided to spend the day at Science World and it was an awesome choice as the kids had a great time. It was so much fun watching them run around playing with all the different exhibits. The funniest thing was Cohen's facial expressions when something happened that he didn't expect. They still had the Da Vinci exhibit on too so there was some good adult orientated stuff as well; not that Chelsey and I didn't have fun with the other stuff too as we did. I have a few other posts I would like to do so I will just cut to the pictures. Enjoy...

My New Girl...

And just like Chelsey she is gorgeous and likes to be ridden hard! :) My new ride finally arrived today and I am stoked to ride it. I will have to wait till Sunday as tomorrow is jammed but it should be worth the wait. The only downside is the more bikes I accumulate the worse my golf score gets...Oh well.

Congrats to my Dad

I meant to post this last week but kept forgetting; better late than never. Anyways, at the young age of 64 my Dad completed his first half marathon in a time of 2:07, pretty damn good if you ask me. It was the Oak Bay Half Marathon which was held last week on the Island. The rumor is that he will now begin training for the  Victoria Marathon this fall. Yay Dad!

May Long Weekend - Day 3 With no Mum :(

Today Aro and I got up before 6:00am to go fishing with Uncle Nick and his Dad while the kiddies slept in a bit; or at least that was the plan as the kids woke up before I left the house so I had to put cartoons on so they wouldn't wake Grandpa Steve.

Fishing was lots of fun as always and we caught a whole bunch of fish; the only downside was only one of them was a salmon, hauled in by Nick, and the rest were cods. We also found out that Aro has a mean streak and likes to torture fish. As you will see from the pictures he smacked one so hard with the fish bonker to knock it out that the eye socket exploded and he got brain crap all over his face.

May Long Weekend - Day Two no Mum

Day two with no Mum went well. The kids once again were great and they have sure made the weekend easier by not being noddy. Today we woke up and went to Comox for the Highland games they had. We watched some of the events, the kids went in the bouncy castle and we just hung out and had lunch. It was pretty cool as it was actually the first Highland Games I had ever seen.

After that we took the scenic route back to Campbell River, grabbing 3 geocaches along the way, and then went to the pier for ice cream; for some odd reason Aro only ordered Vanilla Ice Cream, weird Spaniard! 

May Long Weekend - Day 1 With no Mum

This long weekend the kids, Aro (Rotary Exchange Student) and I decided to hit the road for Campbell River and leave Mum at home for a "relaxing" time, even though she has to work a bit. I think this is the longest time the kids have been away from Chelsey so we shall see how they are by the end of the weekend; I have taken them camping for two nights and to Salmon Arm for two nights but never away for three nights.

After working for a couple of hours this morning we left Chilliwack at 9:00am and although we made no stops for gas, coffee, lunch, peeing, etc we still did not arrive in Campbell River until 4:30 - Thank you BC Ferries. Luckily though there is lots of stuff to do at the Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal so the day went very smooth. While we were waiting for the ferry we grabbed a quick geocache and played at the park. We also grabbed some pizza by the slice that was $1.79 and actually tasted damn good.

Kids 50 Things #49

As you may recall there was an article in the Globe & Mail earlier this week that listed the 50 things your child should do before 12. Wanting to get a head start on the list we did something easy today and headed down to the river for a bike ride and to hopefully grab a couple Geocaches. I needed to take it easy today as yesterday I partook in some manual labour as part of my volunteer work for Rotary that included shoveling and moving gravel, soil, etc. as we helped build and fill garden plots for the local community garden; problem is I am not used to manual labor and somewhere in the process I hurt my wrist.

When we head down to the river the kids usually last for about an hour but today we spent almost two and half hours at the river just playing around and exploring a lot of the side trails. We ended up finding 3 caches on the day, we are up to 131 now; pictures of today and a few other randoms below...

50 Things Your Child Should Do Before 12

Loyal readers of this blog will by now be familiar with our 50 Things to do in BC Before You Die challenge; those of you not familiar with the list can view it and our progress here. So with that in mind you can imagine my excitement when I came across this Globe and Mail article today highlighting 50 things your child should do before they are 12.

After discussing it at great length with Cohen and Kyah we decided we should embark on trying to complete this list too. Much like the "before you die" list, we have already completed a bunch of the tasks on this new list but in the spirit of fun we are going to start from scratch. Also, like the "before you die" list I will create a blog post as we complete the tasks and cross them off the list and link the list to the appropriate blog post. As you are all so anxious to see it here is the list that we look forward to finishing...

Easter Weekend Fun

Mum and Dad were over for the weekend and we have our Rotary exchange student too so we did our best to keep busy this weekend. On Saturday morning we took Aro (not his real name just what we call him), our exchange student, and Robin, another exchange student from France, fishing on the river. As per usual our fishing trip just turned into a nice walk along the river.

Saturday afternoon we spent lots of time playing outside, gardening and then started prepping for our Easter dinner which we had on Saturday night. On Sunday morning we got up early and the kids did their Easter egg hunt and then Chelsey and Aro went dragon boating. The plan in the afternoon was to show Aro the Othello Tunnels and then do some geocaching at Emery Creek. When we got to the Othello Tunnels the tunnels were still closed due to the rock fall hazard so we just played along the river for awhile. We had the same problem when we got to Emery Creek as the park/campground was not yet open for the season. To ensure the trip was not wasted I took a detour on the way home up the old BC Nickel Mine road to grab a couple of geocaches. Enough of my gabbing here are the pictures...

Lindeman Lake in the snow...With a 5 year old

We have our Rotary exchange student from Spain staying with us for a month and it was decided that today was a nice day to go for a little hike. As we were getting our shoes on Cohen decided that he wanted to come, not wanting to break the little dudes heart I decided to let him. I was a little hesitant to take Cohen because I knew the trail was steep in spots for a 5 year old and I figured there might be some snow close to the top.

It turns out there was snow from top to bottom and I must say that Cohen did amazing. Cohen hiked from top to bottom with his little stick and barely whined. I was so proud of the little for his accomplishment. Anyways, even gloating here are some pictures...

Walking along the Fraser River

The weather was nice today so we took the kids for a walk along the Fraser River to grab a couple geocaches. Not much to report on the walk so I will just show you the pictures. There is also a picture of my indoor greenhouse; I have some things started early that I will transport outside in the Spring.

Geocaching at Dog Poo Lake

Today the kids and I went geocaching at Albert Dyck Lake in Abbotsford. There were a bunch of caches on the trail that went around the lake so it was a good chance for a nice walk and a haul of caches. As you can tell by the title of this post there was dog crap everywhere. I managed to step in only one big pile which was quite the feat; even the people that did pick up their dogs shit were pigs as there were full poo bags everywhere - on the side of the trail, hanging from trees, in the fence, etc. Other than the dog crap it was a nice place for a walk and we ended up getting 6 caches on the day so our total is now 122!

There are pictures of our day below as well as some of the kids "mini-golf." The kids made up this game on Saturday where they place empty plastic plant pots around the front lawn and then hit their golf balls into them; they call it mini golf, aren't they clever! Enjoy the pics...

Fun at the BC Mine Museum

Trusty The Phamlee readers welcome to post three of three on the day!

This was my favorite stop of the day and one I have been waiting for since my birthday! Ever since they upgraded the BC Mine Museum I have been dying to go there and it was well worth the wait. There are a bunch of different exhibits that give you a good history on the mine and the two town sites that supported it. You get to go on a guided tour underground through some of the tunnels where they show you some of the old drilling equipment and how it worked, they even turn it on so you can hear how loud it was. The tour continues to one of the old core sample tents  that still contains a bunch of the old samples in there original trays with the original numbers on it - super cool. You also get to see inside one of the mills and it is crazy to think this was built with the technology they had back in the day.

As per usual the kids had their cranky moments but for the most part they had a great time. Lots of the exhibits were interactive so it kept them entertained pretty well. Some of the neat facts I learnt include:

50 Things to do in BC Before You Die: #15 - Gawk at Squamish Eagles

Trusty The Phamlee readers welcome to post two of three from our awesome trip to Squamish yesterday.

Our second stop of the day was to check out the eagles in Brackendale. This is number 15 on our 50 Things to do in BC Before You Die list and I was pretty stoked to knock another one off has part of my plan for 2012 was to knock 3 more things of this list.

We probably could not have picked a worse day to check out the eagles because it was snowing pretty hard at the time we arrived so the visibility was quite poor; while I will check it off our list it is in the back of my mind to go back. It is a pretty neat set-up as they have volunteers with telescopes lined up so you can really get a good look at the eagles. While we were able to see the eagles through the telescope the pictures did not turn out too well, see below for that. They even had step ladders setup so the kids could look through the telescope too which was pretty cool

I was speaking with one of the volunteers and she mentioned the number of eagles that returned this year was quite low and it is all due to the lack of salmon in the rivers. Obviously, if there is no food source the eagles will go elsewhere or die. Keep this is mind when you think of the Northern Gateway pipeline which is proposed to cross a number of salmon spawning streams and rivers in BC and it does not take much oil to kill off a stream. Anyways, not too much to right about this adventure so I will just show you the view pictures we took, but we will be back.

BC Parks: Shannon Falls Provincial Park

To all you trustworthy The Phamlee readers this is the first of three posts I will do today regarding our awesome trip to Squamish yesterday.

While the main purpose of the trip was to go to the BC Mine Museum at Brttannia Beach (more on  that in post 3 on the day) our first stop on the trip was at Shannon Falls Provincial Park. While I have been here number of times before I really wanted to go again to officially knock it of our BC Parks list as part of our 50 Things to do in BC Before You Die challenge. The other reason I wanted to go today was I have never seen it in the winter when it was starting to freeze over so this gave us the chance.

The weather was gross yesterday as it switched between heavy snow and heavy rain with some brutal wind mixed in for fun. Even with all that the kids were troopers, most of the time, it was a quick walk in the snow up to Shannon Falls and they kids enjoyed it. I tried to find a few geocaches but gave up pretty quick when I realized it would be too hard in the snow.While the falls were not completely frozen over it still made for a nice view.  Below are a few pictures of this little stop...

More Chilliwack Weather & Some Random Kyah Pictures

So today the big story for us was the -30 degree temperature with the windchill, -14 without, and all the blowing snow. While I was at work this morning I was keeping an update on the roads in town via twitter and one after another they were getting shut down due to snow drifts, etc. So at 10:30 I left work just to ensure I could make it home. One of the pictures below is of a self portrait as I stopped on the way home to help some dude out. I was outside for maybe 5 minutes helping somebody dig their car out of a big snow drift. The road was next to a farm and had no protection from the wind and it was the worst wind I had ever felt in my life, even worse than mountain peaks in the middle of a snowstorm. When the wind really blew you could not see the ground or your hands and that is not exaggerating. It was pretty cool and in my opinion what winter should be! The fluff on my hat is usually black and my snot and eyes have never frozen like that before.

There are a few other random shots like our front steps which I had shoveled yesterday and our fort which is slowly getting covered by snow drifts. All the other photos are ones Kyah took when she was playing with the camera. She has a bit of a cold right now and I just thought she looked so cute in her self portraits.

I must also say that the City of Chilliwack has done a great job updating the public on the road conditions via twitter and even though our power has blown twice BC Hydro has had it back on within two hours both times; I feel sorry for those dudes out there working in this.

Our Awesome Forecast and a Few More Snow Pics

So we got a bunch more snow last night here in the land of Chilliwack. Sorry to you Aussie readers but once again the weather has proved to be more fun in Canada! Anyways the snow has now given way to really cold temperatures and I must admit I really enjoy battling the elements. Below is a screen shot of our forecast (windchill of -31 for tomorrow yippee!)  for the next few days (it is going to be very ugly when it rains and washes this away) and a few shots of the snow after I shoveled for the second time today. As you will see our awesome fort needs to be dug out which may be my task for tomorrow after work. The pics were taken with my phone so the quality it a tad poor. Enjoy...

Fort Woods & Birthday Pictures

The kids had their birthday party this past Saturday and we had it at the Chilliwack Gymnastics Club. The kids go there for their Gymnastics lessons, which they love, so we thought it was a great place for their party. The club had a supervisor to make sure no one got hurt but other than that the kids were able to go nuts and have a great time which they did. Pictures below...

Also, we got our first batch of snow on Saturday and the forecast was calling for lots more snow so Cohen and I decided to build a snow fort. While I busted my balls to build the fort Cohen made snowballs with the intent of throwing them at me. We got a decent size fort built after almost two hours playing outside and I was pretty stoked to see Cohen spending that much time in the snow and having fun.

Sunday we built the fort up a bit more and then Cohen and Kyah decided to use it as their base for a snowball fight. The fort is high enough now that they can duck behind it and it is almost impossible for me to get them; little buggers.

We got another big dump of snow today and as I assumed the kids were in a mad rush to play in it when I got home from work. While the snow was too dry to pack the kids still had a good time making snow angels and helping me shovel the driveway and sidewalk. All the pictures of our fun weekend below and wait until you see the awesome job Chelsey did with the cupcakes...

Snow Shots

Just some snow shots from my not so lucky Aussie friends and family. The weather forecast is looking better by the day.

New Year Geocaching!

The kids wanted to go Geocaching again today so we scooted out to Cultus Lake Park as it is nice and close. All the caches we found were around the Maple Bay campground at the far end of the lake and we ended up snagging 5 for the day. Since everything is shut down for the winter it was pretty cool wondering around as all the trails were covered in leaves and there were lots of trees down across the trails. I was super stoked at how good the kids were as we wondered around for close to 2 hours and they whined very little. They must have had a good nights sleep because the have been chasing their Zhu Zhu Pets around the living room for the past hour and they are by no means taking it easy; hopefully that means they will go to bed good tonight.

Pictures of our adventure as well as the beginnings of my "Chilli-Con-Cupboard" below; I made a wicked ham and bean soup yesterday so thought I would give Chilli a whirl tonight...