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Snow. Lots and lots of snow. Yep. It snowed overnight Friday, and it snowed all day yesterday, and it snowed this morning. I'll spare you another picture - just imagine evergreen trees, frosted white, standing in white. White as far as the eye can see.

Nuff said.

For those of you who recognise this fellow, you will know that he has a large heart, a big laugh, and can tell a wonderfully good story. He felt comfortable on a motorcycle and was passionate about supporting our troops.

Sadly, Glenn (my sister's husband) passed away in his sleep on Wednesday, February 18th, at the age of 52. He will be greatly missed by family and his many friends, and will be fondly remembered. Our thoughts are with you, Erin.

We had some snow today - maybe 5 cm. So everything is white again. We did have some lovely sunny weather, though, while the rest of the Lower Mainland had fog. This usually happens about once or twice a year, but we had almost two weeks of this. Here are a few pictures Derek took.

This one is looking south - under the fog lies Burnaby.


This one is looking east. The edge of Mount Baker is visible in the far right.


This one is looking northeast, with a bit of Coquitlam visible on the hill.


And Derek went for a bike ride - two of them, actually. He went to UBC on Saturday with Sean and rode some cross country trais. There was a fair bit of snow, but it was hard packed and very sticky. (I know - who knew snow could be sticky?) His knee felt really good (yes, he wore the brace) so he couldn't resist riding with some more people on Sunday on the Burnaby Mountain trails. They did some cross country trails and then rode up the hill, climbed over snow banks to get to a trail head, and then rode back down again over some "pretty deep snow" and frozen dirt trails. Derek reports that the new bike "is awesome" and that "it's really good to be back on the bike and to see some of my riding friends again".

Some of Derek's riding friends are planning an Italy biking trip in 2010. Derek is thinking of going, and I certainly would be happy to go kick around Italy for a while (although no bike for me!).

And you might want to keep an eye out for Moose Jaw's famous Buck and Wanda's Knives of Death.


I took this picture from the television of a recent Bpnes episode, where Bones and Booth went undercover as circus performers from Moose Jaw. You know, I never realised until I moved away how famous the Moose Jaw name is.

And back to work on Thursday - yikes!

A very happy New Year to everyone! I hope your holidays were restful - ours were wonderfully so. Except for the snow. Here are some highlights from the past week. A warning: this post is picture intense (but with a picture being worth a thousand words, just think of all that reading I'm saving you!).


I tried for days to get off the mountain to go wander around the mall (malls have become something of a novelty) but gave up trying to get there before January. Derek didn't go out much either (except to shovel snow) and, of course, to barbecue.




This next picture should give you a good idea of the height of the snowbanks in front of our house on Dec 24.




On the 30th, Derek decided to tackle the snow on my car. It hadn't been cleared of snow for a week, and I was a bit worried of what he might find. But he soldiered on and managed to find my car amongst the snow. Here are the pictures he took with his Blackberry:


Not to worry, Derek managed to clear away the snow, and moved my car to a plowed spot - just in time for more snow.

On Friday, we went to Courtney to visit Shayne, Erin and Tori. Here's a picture of the "back road" from our place (as opposed to the "main road" which goes between all the condo buildings. The back road continues on from there through the trees and loops around).



And just to spice up the near black and white photos are a couple pictures of Tori. In this next one, you can see one of her favourite spinning toys. She's really into spinning things these days.


And here she is reading a book. Really - she was holding the book and turning the pages.

Tori is doing fantastically well these days and seems really happy to be home.

We left the Island on Sunday and enjoyed a windy crossing. This picture says it all, I think (this is a colour photo):


Other than the wind, the weather was okay. The roads were wet, and it was snowing lightly. By that evening, we had another good chunk of snow (in the 8 inch range):

Campus security temporarily blocked the roads to SFU so that the crews could do some road clearing. And then this is what we woke up to this morning:


Yep, another huge snowfall. The University was closed today, buses were running sporadically (after not running for a while in the morning) and Derek worked from home for a couple of hours until the road was plowed.

Here are some photos from a mid-day walk around the building. It's hard to convey just how much snow there is here, but hopefully these photos will give some idea.


Looking north along the back. The pathway is at least 5 inches thick.


Looking south along the back.


The hump to the right is the barbecue, to the left is the planter box, and in the foreground, a plain old snowbank.


Looking up the back pathway leading to the park.


The courtyard. There's playground equipment somewhere under the snow.


Looking east towards the road in front of the building.


Still looking to the road.


The snowbanks are ginormous - at least as tall as I am (and taller!).


This is the road in front of our building. You can barely see a work truck wedged into the snowbank.


Same road, same direction - just further back.


Looking up the "main road" towards the "back way" - this is the new building beside us.


Looking down the "main road".


A view from the intersection of the main road and the road in front of our building.


Looking back at our building from the front road.


One last look at the enormous volume of snow.

So there you have it. Lot's and lots of snow. May you too know such frozen white bliss.

Well, first off, it wasn't midnight - it was 1am. And second, 'adventure' is an euphemistic term here. Take a look at this picture:



What's wrong with this picture? Yep, you guessed it - can't put anything past you! A pink towel is where the lock should be. When we got home late Monday after visiting with some neighbours, we found ourselves locked out of the house. Yep, 1am, no car keys or money, locked out of the house. The key simply would not work - the lock would not budge. Derek kept trying it while I scouted out the possibility of getting in through the second floor. Not good. Really not good. After 15 minutes, the lock finally popped and we rushed inside. We have a replacement lock, and the original lock is back in place for now.

Next up - more snow. Now, I know that all of Canada has been snowed upon, and that folks in the Prairies are shivering with ridiculous windchill values. But this is Vancouver! (Okay, Burnaby.) And yes, it's a mountain, but it's only a 1200 ft mountain. We've been inundated with snow. Derek, who has been shoveling much of it, can verify that for you. Here's the view from our front door (I should point out that we woke up to another 10cm of snow, and it's been snowing all day):


I guess it's better than dreary rain. And we stocked up on food a few days ago so we wouldn't have to go out.

Here's a screen shot of the intersection at the top of the hill taken at 12:45 pm Pacific time:


Of course, such weather is conducive to Christmas baking (I finally got started on that today - I got most (but alas not all) of my Christmas Holiday cards out yesterday). And the weather is also wonderful for knitting - lots and lots of knitting. And one of the best things to knit at Christmas is warm, woolen socks. Here are a couple of pairs I knit recently:


If you've never knit a sock before, I encourage you to do so. They're fast, pretty easy, fun, and feel wonderful. There's something quite remarkably pleasing about being able to knit something so functional.

And now, back to the baking. Hope everyone is doing well!

It's been a wonderfully reasonable fall - some rain, but not too much; some wind, but not too much; some cool temperatures, but not too cold... until today. It is not (yet) cold here (and yes, before you say it, we know that other parts of Canada are shivering if their boots) but as of noon today, it was very, very snowy.


In other, holiday-like news, we were at a rather special 1st birthday party a couple of weeks ago. Yep, Tori is now one year old. And... Shayne, Erin and Tori will be going home for Christmas. Hard to beat that for a Christmas present! Here are a couple of pictures from the birthday party: Derek hard at work getting smiles from Tori, and Tori playing "jolly jumper" with one of her favourite nurses.

Sometimes in life, things can seem a little overwhelming. Like Spanish. It's a lovely language, but honestly, learning it is like learning a made-up game devised by 5-year-olds. "I know, let's play store. I'll be the owner and you be the customer. Except when it's morning you can be my assistant. You can call me Marty but when I'm wearing red call me Mary and if you like you can spell my name Maree but only when my sweater is striped." You get the idea.

So when things get tough, I turn to Rosie, aka Rosie the Riveter.

Rosie's strong. She's got that "roll up your sleeves" and "can do" attitude.

Flighty Spanish rules don't bother her one bit.

Problematic political discourse research doesn't phase her.

She's not bothered by the time of day.

And hey, she's got those fantastic biceps.

Rosie, we salute you and thank you for getting us through. We can do it!

See Derek bike
bike, Derek, bike!
up the mountain
down the mountain
bike bike bike!

See Derek walk
walk, Derek, walk!
up the mountain
down the mountain
walk walk walk!

See Derek run
run, Derek, run!
up the mountain
down the mountain
run run run!

I think you get the idea by now. Derek has been zipping up and down the mountain the past few weeks - clearly, his recovery is coming along well. His recent time for a walk/run combo is under 50 minutes. I think he's secretly training for some sort of Iron Man competition.

Happy Hallowe'en everyone! You can see in the picture on the left that we have a bit of a ghost problem. Derek has captured the scariest looking one, however there are still ghosts lurking outside our door, peering into the windows.

Derek also made some "mini pumpkins" - small pumpkin-like ornamental gourds with scary faces. They've been a big hit with the under 4s. Add to that some candles and tea lights (no electric lighting here!) and it's pretty spooky.

Hallowe'en is great fun here. Most of the kids are too little to really get what's going on, but the parents are having a great time! (We do have a few kids in the 4-8 range though.) But they're incredibly cute in their costumes.

Boo!