overdue

To all our friends.

I’ve been thinking about it for a while now. But I kept putting it off, pushing it back a day at a time until now where it’s been well over two weeks of not doing it, not saying what I should. So here goes.
Usually I hum and hah it away, or just ignore or avoid it, but today I want to just say it out loud.
You are important to us.
We are incomplete without you.
It is not an issue of worth because you are not a commodity to be used up or a valuable to be stored away.
Yes, it somehow involves value, but it also goes beyond that.
Some of you have helped us to be where we are (in life, not in location) and some of you haven’t but somehow we have a connection. I believe it is because we (mankind) were created to live out our lives in community. A symbiotic relationship between people.
Some of us are joined by common interests and dreams, some by ideals and faith, some by blood, some by a shared past, and others by a shared future. But whatever the source is, we share a commonality. Somehow, for some reason, we (you and me) were intended to share our lives together.

And so we want to say “thank you” and “bless you” and “we love you”.

We appreciate who you are to us.

“Fall”ing

it’s in the air

Well it’s definitely in the air.
For a while it was just a hint, an allegation, a whisper over your morning coffee or a comment shared between confidants.
But then the rumour mill fired up.
Soon everyone knew something. I mean, how could we have not known about it, the writing was on the wall.
Maybe we didn’t want to believe it. As though by denying it we could somehow prevent it.
How arrogant.
But now here it comes. Bearing down on us all.
It’s not even subtle anymore. It’s obvious, it’s blatant, it’s even abrasive at times.
Too bad I like it so much.
What’s not to like?
Well okay, so there is some fairly drastic differences between what came before and what is coming. But still, change is to be embraced, even revelled in.
And so I do.
Hey, it’s not like it’s forever.
I’m fairly certain it won’t last. And even if it stays longer than expected it would be fine with me.
After all, it’s in the air.

Detours

These past few months have been rather eventful. When life gets busy for us, something that usually helps to retain sanity and lengthen shortened fuses are little day breaks (detours) where you just take off to do something as a family, it may be a bike ride or swimming or a hike or whatever… it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you get away from your everyday life and do fun stuff with your family. One of our all time favorite detours is hiking, it’s cheap (just some good shoes & gas money), healthy, interesting, and usually results in a great sleep. Over this summer, because of where we now live, hiking as become a lot more accessible, with a much greater variety at our disposal.

Here are some photos of our adventures at the old growth forest in Kokanee Glacier Provincial Park…

And here’s a few photos of our most recent adventure… a quick trip up to Kokanee Creek Provincial Park, with our friends Sheldon & Nadya and their sweet little daughter Hannah, to see the fall salmon run (really incredible to see but hard to capture with a camera).

shopping, the zoo, and visitors too.

On the labour day long weekend we had a brief chance to escape to Calgary for a few days where we had opportunity to meet up with Angela’s parents while staying at Tara Manor (Angela’s aunt Gail & uncle Brian’s place). Unfortunately I didn’t get the Friday prior to the weekend as well so that we could have trekked off to S’toon for my cousin’s wedding, but we did have the rest of the long weekend off, so it was off to Calgary for us. Without delving into the sordid details of power shopping, Saturday was shopping for us all. However, the real fun was saved for Sunday… Sunday morning Ang and her mom took off for a full day at the mall, and the plan for the rest of us (Dad M , Aden, Cadel, and Aisha) was to spend our day at the zoo. So we were just finishing our breakfast when “the surprise” occurred. Derek & Nicole surprised us with a visit, it was awesome! They snuck in the house and while I was getting toast, they came into the kitchen and said hi to Aisha. It was a wonderful surprise. We all went to the zoo together (mmmm… should have left much earlier – there was a huge lineup) and had lots of fun checking out the animals.

After our day was done we went back to Tara Manor to connect with the shopping duo (Ang & mom). Since Ang wasn’t around for Derek & Nicole’s surprise visit in the morning we planned a surprise for her too.

When the shoppers returned we showed Ang a photo of the crew at the zoo, and while Angela wondered about who was in the photo, in walked Derek & Nicole… it was so fun to observe her excited reaction to seeing them. So we hung out for the evening and had brunch on Monday and then it was off to home for us. A much too short weekend that was lots of fun.
On the trip home we stopped for a short leg strech at Sparwood, BC, home of the world’s largest dumptruck the Terex Titan.