Our trip to Victoria

Well, I'm back to blogging, knock on wood. I'm now using Amazon cloud services for storing photos. It involves an extra few steps so it will take me a little big longer to update my blog. Patience please, dear readers. :)

Before we left home I created a list of things to do while in Victoria on this trip and we actually did ALL of them!
- Victoria Bug Zoo - great for little boys.
- a visit to a favourite consignment store to look for American Beauty (ironic name) china. I found 2 plates! Victoria is a terrific place to find china.
- Fort Rodd Hill and Fisgard Lighthouse

- Hatley Castle

- the Festival of Trees at the Empress Hotel
- Murchies Tea
- supper at Swiss Chalet - known for roasted chicken dinners
- a visit to our favourite bookstore - Bowlen Books
- visit Munro's Books

My parents and the boys.

Our weather was good overall. Not too much rain or wind. We were able to go on two outdoor outings - Fort Rodd Hill and Hatley Castle, both located northwest of Victoria.

On Saturday the weather was gorgeous. J and the boys had breakfast outside in the warm sunshine at Village Restaurant in the Oak Bay neighbourhood.

Amazing for late November! According to J, the food was delicious, albeit kind of pricey. They provided blankets for patrons to put on the metal chairs, a nice touch. There was a cute gift store across the street called Bungalow where we found a lot of TinTin memorabilia, including a book not available in the US which we bought for A.

For our return trip on Sunday we weren't able to take the return ferry from Sidney, BC (pictured below)

to Anacortes. That ferry was booked up in advance so we drove a little ways to Swartz Bay and took the BC Ferry to Tsawwassen, BC (just south of Vancouver) and then drove south on I-5 to return home. We were thankful that this option was available and since the wait for the ferry was short we were able to leave at the same time as the other ferry left. We saw a pod of whales on our trip. It was funny. The ship's captain announced that whales could be spotted on the port side. J and I wondered if the very large ferry would tilt to one side with everyone going to see the whales. :) It didn't.

Going through the lower BC mainland meant we could make one more trip to Tim Hortons before we returned to the USA. The boys love the donuts and J loves the coffee. It was good to be back in Canada again.

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Our Nontraditional Thanksgiving

As many of you know, my husband and I are Canadian, born and raised. We've lived here in the US only since 2000. Therefore, American Thanksgiving isn't something we grew up with. (In Canada, Thanksgiving is celebrated in October.) For many of the last few years (not all) we have travelled to Victoria to visit my parents during Thanksgiving break. The main reason is that the kids have time off from school and J has time off from work. We don't have a traditional thanksgiving meal with turkey and all the trimmings. This year one of my kids had a bit of a hard time reconciling this fact. We assured him that he would still be eating well and the main point of thanksgiving is being with your family and being thankful. Don't you Americans get exhausted by making a big meal in November and then another one only one month later? :)

I plan on blogging more about our trip (including photos) but Blogger says that I've reached my limit for photo storage. Boo! I've been blogging for seven years! I hope to find a way around giving money to Google in order to solve this problem. :)





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Silhouettes

I recently told my husband that as a Christmas gift idea for me, I wanted help creating silhouette images of our boys. I thought it would be possible to do using some photo editing. I was so surprised to find out (by reading the upcoming events listed in Red Tricycle's e mail) that silhouette artist Karl Johnson was coming to our area.

Our appointment was at 4 pm on Friday afternoon in Bellevue and it was raining. Not the best time to be driving! I was very glad that I made the effort and I also think they were worth the price. They were $42 dollars each, including mounting and framing. I especially love how he did C's glasses! Also note that he did A's eyelashes.

He was amazing to watch. My kids took turns sitting for their portrait and Mr. Johnson just took a black piece of paper and his scissors and cut out a silhouette in less than 5 minutes. No drawing. He told me that this is his main job, that he travels 7 days out of every month.

You can e mail him a photo to have a silhouette made. For more information, see his website. He's also on Facebook - "Karl Johnson Cut Arts."

I treasure my silhouettes and may even get new ones done when my boys area few years older.Pin It

{this moment}

My oldest son with his original writing which he read aloud in language class. All the kids read their stories (over 2 days) and parents were invited to the classroom for "Author's Chair." His story is called Northwest Trek Adventure. I blogged about that trip here.  The compliment he received from his teacher was "A is a mature writer with an amazing vocabulary." :)Pin It

Halloween 2012

For my alter identity this year I was a flapper.

I found the dress and headband (with the feather sticking up) for less than $20 at JoAnns. I had planned to wear a bobbed wig but when I took it out of the package, it was obviously cheap and would need a LOT of styling to make it look right and I don't think you can style plastic hair very much. :)

J's work had a Halloween party during the day so I went to it. Unfortunately, the participation level, aka people wearing costumes, was pretty pathetic. There was one exception. J's colleague Chris was a "wookie monster," a cross between Chewbacca and the Cookie Monster.

Here is J carving a pumpkin.

He carved a mosquito which ties in with the company's work fighting malaria.

Here are my cuties in their costumes:

I made A's big bad wolf costume. I found the idea here. The felt pieces were hot glued onto the hoodie so it wasn't too hard. When we first talked about what he was going to be, he said he was "too old for Halloween." ?? He's only nine! I'm glad he changed his mind.

I made part of C's costume. I used iron on letters to spell SWAT on the front of the black turtleneck. I had a little trouble figuring how to iron them on but I'm a pro now. The helmet came from the party store's Halloween section. C already had the gun (a rubber band gun) but I painted it black. Our neighbor/friend N's costume was also a swat policeman.

J put together a costume (for going trick or treating) at the very last minute. No pictures, sorry. He wore his black trench-like coat, his fedora hat, and added some black sunglasses. He was a spy.

The boys joined their neighbour friends to go to a few houses on our street before supper. After supper we joined some friends who live in a nicer neighbourhood than ours and trick or treated with them. One of the kids was a sumo wrestler which was pretty funny. You can see him in this photo - he's on the right.

Here's C with our friend J:

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