Birthday weekend

Last weekend we celebrated both Opa's and Sara's birthdays here in Ottawa. Joining us for the festivities were Oma Jason and Tante Christine (aka the Strongest Woman in the World). The weekend consisted mainly of eating, opening presents, eating while opening more presents, watching a movie or two, snacking, and a trip to Costco. Needless to say a good time was had by all. Now on to the photos...

Happy Birthday guys...





Opa puts his new coveralls to the test (note Tripper does not look overly impressed)



This was all that was left of the 2 packages of President's Choice Thick-Slice Bacon following Sunday morning's mega-breakfast. That can't be good.

Corkstown family hike

This morning I took the family down one of the trails off of Corkstown Rd. The birds were out looking for handouts so we raided a nearby feeder. After about a 5km round trip we found ourselves back at the van just as the rain started to fall.

Hair the colour of dead oak leaves...



Feeding the birdies...



The beginnings of a birch bark canoe...

Cold caulking and birthday balloons

I had the ladder out yesterday to do some caulking around some of the windows. Note to all you blog readers out there, cold weather does nothing for your caulk (pun intended). It was like working with sticky gum. There was some cursing.

Anyhow I figured since I already had the ladder out I might as well put up the Christmas lights. Well they're up now and as a bonus this year I managed not to scare the neighbours half to death by falling off the ladder into the front shrub. Likely had something to due with the fact that I ripped up that evil eye-sore last summer. Revenge is sweet.

Here's a shot of the lights later that evening.



Saturday afternoon Sara had her bithday party with 4 of her school friends. We took them to see Chicken Little at the new Barrhaven theatre and to make a long story short there were some mix ups and after the movie we were given several free admissions and one adult refund. Cha-ching.

Five 8 year old girls, 25 balloons, and no flash... chaos!



Happy Birthday Sara.

Closing of the 2005 hiking season in Gatineau Park

Spent the better part of Friday hiking with a friend in Gatineau park. The weather was amazing considering it's Remembrance Day.

Here are some of the pics... oh, if you're looking for an incredibly simple and cool way to stitch together your panoramic photos check out Autostitch. All you do is snap all the photos that you want to use for your panoramic view (up down, left right, just keep clicking away) and then just drop them in any order into Autostitch and BLAMO! Instant pano. It's truly amazing.

Lac La Peche


Hello from the Shores of Lac Curly





Wading over to the island on Lac La Peche.



Damn right it was cold, but it was the perfect spot to enjoy the view, a refreshing pint, and end the 2005 hiking season.

Proost!

C'est quoi ça?

Today, after attending French class now for 8 1/2 weeks, 7 1/2 hours a day, I finally cracked. It all started as I polished off another box of Smarties that I stole the night before from my kid's Halloween bag. As I ate the last red Smartie and listened to my classmates butcher Canada's deuxieme langue, I sat staring at the empty box when BLAMO! I had a brilliant idea.

I quietly grabbed my pen and drew a little picture on the inside of the empty box. I then took hold of the box between my index finger and thumb and started to roll it gently back and forth making the tiny cartoon BvT "dance". This was all fine and dandy until my fellow classmates noticed and started to laugh hysterically thereby disrupting the entire room. Le professeur only grinned and announced that it was time for a break.

Running from the storm

I was out hiking with the kids around 4pm last night and we nearly got caught in a wicked thunderstorm. The sky went from light to an eerie black in less than 10 minutes. Luckily we weren't too far from the van before I yelled RUN!! There was some panic among the masses as the lightning cracked and the thunder started to rumble but I still somehow managed to snap off the following pic.

Busted by Officer BvT

I was clicking through our digital photo collection and stumbled across some classic pics. Here's one of them...



Yep, that's my wife in the back. Unfortunately another officer let her out. ;-)