My Mum and Gran visit, and other things

I've uploaded a whole heap of photos to Flickr from the recent visit from my Mum and Gran. I think they enjoyed their holiday here in Canada, though sometimes I think perhaps they sent each other a bit crazy - too alike I think :) These are just the photos from the time that we all spent doing stuff together - my Mum has loads more from their coach trip to the Rockies!

They had very good weather for their holiday, barring one day when they arrived and the last couple of days before they left, which were rainy. Since then, the weather has returned to being scorching hot again. I think this might be about the best summer I've seen here in Vancouver in 4 years, and it isn't over yet.

Last weekend was the Strathcona Gardens open day and plant sale. This is the place where we have our allotment, and Steph has been helping out a lot with the plant sale this year. On the Saturday she probably spent 7 hours there helping with the set-up, and I joined her later on for about 4 hours. It was hard work, but fun. On the Sunday, Steph helped with the actual sale itself too, for about 5 hours. I decided to take it easy that day :)

We are thinking about holidays whilst the weather is so good. There's a chance we might go away next weekend for camping on Vancouver Island with friends, but we're not yet sure if that will happen. We are also planning a camping trip down to the Oregon Coast with some other friends, which might be in a couple of weeks. Hopefully it will happen, but we need to get off our bums and sort it out!

We saw Up last night at the cinema, which is a great movie. I think it might be one of my favourite Pixar films. Tonight, we are going to watch an outdoor showing of Ghostbusters with friends, and having a picnic tea. Ought to be very pleasant.

The annual Celebration of Light fireworks displays start this Wednesday too, beginning with Canada. The UK are one of the countries competing this year, which will be interesting to see. I reckon we'll be down there as usual, oo-ing and ah-ing with the rest :)

Lynn Canyon walk

I've uploaded a bunch of photos to Flickr from a walk we did at Lynn Canyon a few weeks ago, with our friends Chris and Orla. This was our second trip to Lynn Canyon, but this time we actually walked a decent distance - last time we got lost without a map and did a tiny loop that only took an hour :)

Allotment action!

Latest photos from the allotment are now on Flickr. Thanks to lots of sun recently, things are really rocketing skywards. We're already eating kale, chard, and mustard greens from the plot which make some great summer salads. Nice.

Summer Sun

A while since the last post, I see. Too many things to do now that summer is here.

For about the last four weeks, it has been dry and sunny weather non-stop which has been wonderful. We've been making the most of it with lots of cycling, sunbathing and picnics :) Steph has gotten back into swimming at the outdoor pool on Second Beach too.

Unfortunately we've both been sick recently, with a weird cold bug that had mild symptoms but a long and lingering cough. Steph was worse than me, and is only finally getting over hers after three weeks or more. I've had my cold for probably two weeks and I'm just about over it now. Poor Steph had to sleep on the sofa for a couple of nights as it helped her to stop coughing! And she missed a whole week of super-hot weather because she was too sick to go out.

We had a couple of nice meals with friends to celebrate birthdays - one at Brix which is fine dining I guess, and one at The Naam which is a casual vegetarian restaurant with great food. Both were excellent.

Steph did a day of kayaking a few weeks back with friends Conor and Sandro. The weather was good and they enjoyed it, but getting back proved to be really hard thanks to head winds and a rising tide. There are a few photos on Flickr, though sadly none of Steph! Since then, she has discovered a website which shows the tide times and levels for Deep Cove, so in future she'll be checking first to make sure it is a good time to go.

Other big news is that my Mum and Gran are arriving on Tuesday for a fortnight's holiday in Vancouver. They are looking forward to it, and so are we. Expect to see a deluge of photos soon from our tourist adventures :)

Spring sunshine

A couple of months since our last post, and spring has arrived proper. We've had a few weeks of sunny days, although with some cold winds too. Still, the dry weather and sun has been most welcome.

Our big weekend in Whistler was absolutely great. There were 20 of us staying in three separate places, including one larger house where we cooked food for everybody on one evening - excellent fun. We completely lucked out with the conditions too, as the snow had been thin and hard the week previously but it snowed pretty much non-stop for the whole long weekend we were there, which meant lots of fresh snow every day - we couldn't have asked for more! I've uploaded a few pictures and a video from that weekend - wish we had taken more of our friends though!

Since then, we've been spending a lot of weekends out shopping for food, or cooking food, and always eating food. Yes, we love food. We've made some of our old favourites like lentil and turkey stews, some cracking pizza slices, and a fab mac and cheese. Steph also made a Linzertorte (a kind of almond tart with raspberry jam) that is gorgeous. Last night we also knocked up a lamb curry made from happy lambs from an organic butcher we discovered. Yep, we're not going hungry. Fortunately the good weather means we are getting enough exercise to stop us getting fat - I am still doing gym class twice a week, plus plenty of walking to work (about 40 minutes), and Steph has been swimming and taking yoga classes.

The allotment is coming along slowly. We've had some kale already which is nice in salads, and the garlic is growing very well. This month, Steph and her friend Marissa will probably harvest the remaining kale, and plant a bunch more stuff (vegetables and greens) that they've already started in pots, so fingers-crossed they will do well. There have been a bunch of failures so far, with some of the winter crops not coming up, but it's a learning experience so there's no real loss. I've uploaded some photos of how things are doing taken at the middle and the end of April.

Just this last week, my friend Matt who I have known for years has been visiting Vancouver with his friend Lee, and we met up one evening for food and lots of gassing about what we've all been up to. It was great to catch up after several years.

One last bit of photographic goodness with this post - some pictures and a video from a recent walk we took in Lynn Canyon Park.

Trip to Cypress Mountain

We went to Cypress Mountain on Saturday with our friends Conor and Brit. They both snowboard, and Steph skis of course, so they went off and did their thing in the Downhill area. I got dropped off in the Nordic area and did some snowshoeing in and around the cross-country ski trails. It was sunny and bright in the morning, but clouded over as the day went on. Thanks to a heap of snow last week, the conditions were great for everybody - skiing and snowboarding was good, and I had lots of soft fresh snow to tramp through. It was good practice for our big weekend in Whistler we have arranged for March.

I took a couple of photos and a few videos, and I've uploaded them to Flickr.

Wedding photos

Here are the pictures we took at the wedding of our friends Jon and Marissa last weekend. The civil ceremony was outdoors at Locarno Beach, and the weather even decided to cooperate, being bright and dry - hooray! Afterwards, there was a reception at Radha (a great vegetarian restaurant near Downtown). All in all, there was much rejoicing.

Happy Pancake Day!

For yesterday, obviously :)



What a long time it's been since my last blog post. It's almost the end of February already. So what's been happening?

Weather wise, we are having a most unseasonably dry Winter. We've had little or no rain at all to speak of which is very unusual for Vancouver, and the slopes of the local mountains are green - hardly a drop of snow in sight. A bad year for skiing so far. The last day or so it has actually started raining again, and there's been some snowfall at higher elevations. We are probably going to Cypress Mountain on Saturday (one of the local mountains) so that Steph can ski and I can maybe do my first snowshoeing of the season. We also have a big Whistler trip booked for mid-March with 18 0ther friends. That ought to be lively - let's hope there has been plenty more snow by then!

I am busy finishing Prototype which is the video game I am currently working on. Steph is still working too - her contract got extended a few weeks into March which was good news. Not much work around at the moment for when she finishes her current contract, but we are crossing our fingers.

My Mum has finally decided to come visit me this year - hooray! My grandmother might also come too which would be nice. We are currently sorting out flights and suchlike. I think it will be my Mum's first transatlantic flight - quite an adventure I expect.

Steph and I are in reasonably fine fettle, though I've been having a bunch of problems with my shoulder recently. I've always had trouble with it, but it has been a lot worse over the last month. I've had some massage which helped a little, but I'm going to the doctor's this week I expect to see what they can do, if anything.

Oh yeah - our friends Jon and Marissa got married! It was a very simple affair, but very pleasant indeed. We have a few photos that I will post when I get some time. Congratulations guys!

Until next time...

New Year Photos

Here's a bunch of pictures on Flickr that we took at New Year. Steph and I went to Whitstable in Kent for a "Shipwrecked" party at the Duke of Cumberland pub. How wonderfully English! Some of the photos are a bit small because I nicked them off our friend Tamsin's Facebook page :)

Vancouver fog

Happy New Year, by the way!

First post of 2009. Woohoo - exciting. To start the year, here's another weather image showing the fog over Downtown Vancouver over the past few days. We live near to the buildings sticking out, but under the fog sadly. It's been like this on and off since we got back.

Steph and I had a cracking Christmas and New Year. We visited England for two weeks to see all our friends and family, which was wonderful. I have some New Year's Eve photos coming shortly, and at some point hopefully Steph will sort out her Christmas pictures to upload too.

Another exciting thing happening is that Steph is working again. She started a short-term contract the day after we returned to Canada, and is enjoying the rat race once more :)