Halloween

On Saturday night we were invited by Laurie and Bob to do some pumpkin carving and watch a scary movie. Neither Steph or I had every carved a pumpkin before, so we were complete beginners. It was good fun though, and easier than I expected with the right tools. The end results were pretty good too - take a look at our finished pumpkins on Flickr. The insides didn't go to waste - we made pumpkin soup with them and it is really good. Oh yes, and the film we watched was An American Werewolf in London - not particularly scary these days, but enjoyable all the same.

In other news, the heating in our apartment broke in the on position, so it is super-hot in here all the time. We are having to open the windows in order to avoid sweltering. It's especially bad for sleeping at night. Hopefully it will get fixed soon by the building people before we waste more precious energy!

Okanagan weekend

Here finally are the photos from our wine weekend in the Okanagan at the end of October. We were hoping for a bit of late summer sun, but we didn't get it unfortunately - it was cold and wet. We did stay at a great bed & breakfast though called Ram's Ridge - highly recommended if you are thinking of staying in the Okanagan valley. We also visited a lot of wineries (12 in all I think) and easily broke our record of 9 bottles of wine from last year: this year we bought 20! Yes, we'll be drunk all winter :)

Cocktails

Here are a few more photos from Kay's visit to Vancouver - this time from when we had some drinks at the Cloud 9 restaurant at the top of the Empire Landmark Hotel. It revolves, and has a great view of the surrounding area.

NOTE: These photos are limited to friends and family only, so you'll need to be logged into Flickr in order to see them.

Museum of Anthropology

While Steph's sister Kay was staying with us in September, we visited the Museum of Anthropology at UBC (University of British Columbia). The museum is all about the Haida people and their culture, who originate from the Queen Charlotte islands in northern British Columbia. We'd like to go to the Queen Charlottess at some point, but for now we just have these photos from the museum to whet our appetite.

New nephew Zachary

Yes, I am hopelessly behind with this blogging lark. Four weeks ago today, on the 25th September, my sister gave birth to a baby boy which she has named Zachary. He's doing great (as is my sister), and apparently he looks like his older brother Jacob. Here's a picture from shortly after he was born. Go Zack! Looking forward to meeting you when I visit the UK at Christmas.

More whale watching photos

Much belated, but I got a chance this weekend to look through the photos that Steph's sister Kay left for us that she took on her camera. I've added a few more photos from their whale watching trip to the photoset on Flickr. More to come soon.

Goodbye Tom

My grandad on my mother's side was named Tom. He had been in good health all his life, but recently suffered a minor stroke which left him with a condition called vascular dementia which is similar in symptoms to Alzheimer's. For the last year or so, his condition got steadily worse. He was often confused about where he was, and sometimes wandered out of the house or got angry and violent for no reason. He also had a number of bad falls. Several weeks ago, he was admitted to hospital with a chest infection. Whilst in hospital he had another fall (and possibly another minor stroke) and sadly this proved too much. The decision was made to stop his care when it became clear that he was not going to recover from all these complications, and he passed away a week ago last Friday. He was 85 years old.

Today was my grandad's funeral. Unfortunately I couldn't be there to give my support to my grandma or the rest of the family, but my thoughts were with them. Tom was a wonderful man - strong willed and not afraid to speak his mind, but also generous and fun-loving. We will all miss him very much.