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 :)

Vancouver snow

Just a couple of pictures of Downtown Vancouver after the recent snow.

Merry Christmas!

The year is almost over, and the last few months have been lean on posts, I know. We've been occupied with job and life stuff I'm afraid.

Winter has landed hard on Vancouver - yesterday was -20C with wind chill. I thought my nose was going to freeze off! Today we've been watching the snow fall from our apartment and wondering whether our flight home to England is going to leave tomorrow. There have been loads of cancellations and delays today. Tomorrow's weather forecast is a little better so we are crossing our fingers.

We are flying home for a fortnight to see family and a few friends in the UK. We originally had our flights with Zoom.... and then they went bust. Our new itinerary means less time at home, so we won't get to see everyone that we'd like to.

A big Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from me and Steph to all our friends and family, and just for you here's a delightful Canadian treat - a grizzly bear tree ornament :)

See you in 2009!

Halloween (better late than never)

It was almost a month ago now, but here are this year's Halloween pics.

Firstly, there are a few photos from our pumpkin carving efforts that I've uploaded to Flickr. We went over to our friends' place for lots of food and drink, some pumpkin carving, and also to watch Halloween (the original movie). It was a very enjoyable evening.

Secondly, we went to a Halloween fancy dress party with some other friends of ours. You can see the pictures on our friend's website.

Photos from Big Island

We uploaded two more sets of photos from our Hawaii holiday to Flickr.

The first set of photos are from our stay on the east side of the island, near Hilo. The highlight on this side was undoubtedly the volcano, but we also did lots of sight-seeing too.

The second set of photos are from our time on the west side of the island, close to Kona. The end of our holiday was deliberately more relaxed, with lots more beach time. Highlights of this last part of the holiday were probably our trip to the summit of Mauna Kea, and the lovely self-catered apartment we stayed in at Chez Marquis.

Ah Hawaii... we miss you!

Photos from Kauai

We've uploaded photos from the first Hawaiian island that we visited on our recent holiday - Kauai. We spent 6 days on Kauai, and 8 days on Big Island. I think Kauai was our favourite. It's the oldest island in the group, which makes its landscape some of the most beautiful. It's also a small island, with our very relaxed atmosphere. The highlight of this part of the holiday was probably the helicopter flight we did with Jack Harter Helicopters - brilliant! You can find the photos here on Flickr.

First Hawaii photos

It's been a long haul, but we're getting there. We've been pretty busy since we got back, and it's taken longer than we expected to go through all the photos we took in Hawaii. Here's the first lot that we've uploaded to Flickr (or at least Steph has - she's done all the work on this one). They're a bunch of photos Steph took with underwater cameras whilst snorkelling.

Still to come (once we title them all) - lots of photos of Hawaii itself :)

Back from our Hawaiian getaway

Yes, it's all over. We got back to Vancouver on Friday at lunchtime, after a long but uneventful return trip. Hawaii was incredible - the best holiday I think we've ever had. There was jaw-dropping scenery, volcanoes, loads of gorgeous beaches, stunning waterfalls, tropical fruit and beautiful fish. I'm running out of superlatives. And it was lovely and warm too!

We are currently wading through over 500 photos and an hour of video, and once we've sorted it all we'll upload the best stuff. Until then, it's nice to be home but we kind of wish we could have stayed a bit longer...

:)

Holidays

Steph's parents left last Thursday after spending a two week holiday with us. I think they had a good time (they certainly had some good weather), and we enjoyed having them to stay. Steph went away with them on a trip the week before to Powell River and Vancouver Island, and I've uploaded some pictures from that trip to Flickr. The weekend before they left, the weather turned a bit dodgy and we ended up doing a rather soggy walk out at Deep Cove, but it was fun nonetheless (pictures also on Flickr). We also had a superb meal together at Brix last Tuesday - it's been ages since we've been there but the food and service are still great.

Only a few days now until we are off to Hawaii - woohoo! So it's panic stations as we hurriedly sort out all the holiday-related stuff we've been putting off due to other things :) I'll be glad when the preparation is all over and we finally get there, as I get rather stressed out by at all - the opposite of what a holiday should be about!

In other news - we got ourselves an allotment! We went to a work day on Sunday again (our second so far) and there was a plot free so we got it. It's actually a triple plot and is 21 feet by 15 feet in size. Right now its a mess, though we spent a good couple of hours on Sunday cleaning it up a bit. There'll be more cleanup required before winter comes though, I expect. We're hoping that a couple of friends who are interested will help out too. When we get back from holiday, we'll have to post up some photos. Let's hope that next year we'll be eating lovely home-grown produce :)