Birthday boy

Alex turned three on the 29th July. He looks so grown up in this picture.

The New Bike

All Alex wanted for this birthday was a new bike, but learning to ride it has proven to be more difficult than he had bargained for - he's getting there.

The Pavillion Cafe for lunch

We took Alex to Stanley Park for his birthday. We had lunch at the Pavillion Cafe, which is pictured somewhere in the blog from our last trip to Stanley Park. Then we took him in that long awaited minature train ride, which is within the park. We had promised to go on it a month earlier, but when we got there, the train was not operating. So we promised to take him on his brithday. Apparently it was worth the wait, because he thought it was the greatest thing out!

Alex and his Blues Clues birthday cake

Me, Alex and Olivia.

Downs

We have had our fair share of bad luck just lately, mostly it has to do with dogs. First of all, Cobie took over the weekend and had to be hospitalised and placed on a drip for a couple of days. He has an intestinal ulcer caused be stress - he has not coped with the move very well at all. I have to place him and Angus in a pet sitting place from time to time, since I can't leave them alone in these temporary accommodations. But it appears the pet sitter is extremely distressing for Cobie and after the last time he became dangerously dehydrated and very sick. Since our arrival in Canada he has lost 2 nearly 2 kilos in weight - he is a bag of bones - poor thing. His health is a terrible worry, especially with our up-coming trip to Australia.
And if that wasn't enough to contend with, bloodyAngus - the same weekend, decided to go fossicking in the basement and only found and then ate half stick of rat poison. So off to the vet we went- Cobie was still being treated there. The vets tried 4 times before they could get Angus to throw the stuff up. He did survive, but since the poison was in his system so long, it has affected his blood's clotting ability. So he has to be on vitamin K for 6 weeks to correct his temporary hemophiliac status. Can you believe that? All up the weekend vet bills cost us $1100, and that really hurt too.

Lantern Festival

A couple of weekends ago we heard about the Lantern Festival that was being held at the nearby Trout Lake. We heard that it was a pretty interesting event, so we decided to check it out. It certainly was interesting, but also alot of fun. Apparently people spend weeks handmaking actual lanterns especially for the festival. There were literally hundreds of lanterns- of all kinds. People really get into the mood of the night festival and dress up in all kinds of get ups. While there were some really beautiful lanterns, there were also so really strange and funny sites. You pretty much walk around the lake and look at the lantern displays, while other people walk around with their lantern. There was a giant worm lantern that tool about 6 people to carry above thier heads. It was certainly creative, but not very pretty! There were people dreassed up as fairies and butterflies and plenty of hippies. There was also a literal display, which drew plenty of laughs - about thirty ordinary lamps with lamp shades set up on the lawn. There was also a distinct smell of fire at one stage, then I spotted one poor bugger stamping on his lantern which had obviously caught alight - all that work, up in flames (shamefully I couldn't help but laugh - whoops). There were also lotso f interesting side things - rides fairy floss and hot donut stands, flame throwers and fire eaters, acrobats, singers and drumming, it was quite a unique experience.

Alex the artist

The restaurants here are very family firendly, almost all of them will have a children's menu, and automatically give each kid colouring books and crayons - some even ask them if they would like to take a lucky dip surprise home. It sure makes the eating out experience less stressful on the adults (and parents).

Fort Langley City Hall

Fort Langley was an important trading post for the European settlers and indigenous populations. They traded many things here, but F.L was most renowned as a fur trading place. Fort Langely is a small, but very pretty town, with lots of little shops and nice restaurants. The freight trains go straight through the centre of town. There is an old station museum there, with an old caboose that you can go in, with a model train inside. Alex thought it was the best - he just loves trains, for those who hadn't already guessed!

Fraser River at Fort Langley

McMillan Island

McMillan Island lies between Fort Langley and Maple Ridge. Most of the island is an Indigenous Reserve. A bridge joins Fort Langley to the island and then a terrible ferry service joins the island to Maple Ridge. Honestly, it would have been quicker if you had left your car and taken to swimming over to Maple Ridge. We waited over an hour for the one ferry to take us over there - what a waste of time. I would hate to catch that everyday for work.

Bruce's house

This is Bruce's house, a work mate of Ashley's. Bruce has kindly let us rent a portion of his house, while our house settles and we undertake the renovations. The level that these steps lead, is the level we are staying in. The top is rented by a woman and her teenage son.
Bruce is currently renovating the lower level and will occupy the lower two levels once it is ready. Bruce is a lovely man and we are very grateful to him for his kindness and generosity. Unfortunately Bruce was in a serious accident yesterday on his way to work. He is currently in hospital and is likely to be there for a while, and we are all praying that he recovers quickly and comes out of this ordeal as right as rain.

Trout Lake

This is Trout Lake; a park about a 20 minute walk from Bruce's house. It is lovely to have such a large park so close, and one of the many that are smack in the middle of the city. This park has dog friendly areas too, but there were too many dogs there for my liking. The other dogs were fine, it was our two dogs that were a complete disgrace - barking and carrying on like idiots.

The Backyardigans

Alex and Olivia love the backyard at Bruce's house; there is a raspberry bush on one side of the yard and a blackberry on the other side - deliciouis! It is so wonderful to be out of that hotel apartment - freedom! It has been quite warm here too - 31 degrees today, time to bring out that seized up bottle of sunscreen! Alex has enjoyed getting out and helping me do a spot of gardening too - note the rubber boots.

Logs

Here is a picture of logs in the ocean. This is at the head of the Fraser River, where is opens into the Georgia Strait. There is so much logging going on here. There are thousands and thousands of logs in the Fraser River, here and other places along the way. They stay there until they can export or process them. Many are kiln dried. If they get water logged they just sink, so who knows how many are lying at the bottom of the river. Forest products are a huge part of the BC economy, and while there are huge areas of protected land throughout Canada, I hope they know where to draw the line between dollars and environment.

Daddy's girl Olivia

Dare Devil!

Alex posing on the train

Olivia and I on the Bear Park Train

The three stooges in Stanley Park!

Horseshoe Bay

This is British Columbia's Horseshoe Bay. It is a very small village, with little shops, a marina and restaurants. It also has a great kids playground for them to play. We had a great day here. I have mentioned this area before, but we didn't actually get this far last time. This is where the ferries leave for Naniamo and the Sunshine Coast. The marina is on the otherside of this jetty. The water taxi also leaves from the end the jetty. The ferry in the picture is only small, there were some huge ones coming in and out. I wouldn't mind checking out these islands myself, but you should have seen the line-up for these boats, they were ridiculously long - kind of puts you off. But this place sure was very peaceful and pretty.

This picture was taken 5 days before the B.C ferry crash that you might have seen on TV. This is the spot! The crash happened at 10 am the day before a long weekend and it caused all sorts of problems, wih commuters trying to get back to their homes, and holidayers making their way to the many islands this ferry services. Chaos was the appropriate word to describe the effect of the incident. As I have already said, the line up for the ferries is ridiculous, so those who normally travel on the Horseshoe Bay ferries had to make the 90 minute trip to Twassassen, where the lines are equally ridiculous, and travel who knows how long out of there way to get to their destination. This is the problem with Vancouver and the surrounding area; it is all linked up by ferries, bridges and tunnels, so it only takes one thing to go wrong and it can really stuff things up.

Delta Nature Reserve (a.k.a Burns Bog)

The Delta Nature Reserve covers 148 acres (60 hectares), which is ten times the size of Stanley Park. It lies in the northeastern corner of a place called Burns Bog. The Nature Reserve comprises less than 2% of the total area of Burns Bog, and is the only part of Burns Bog that is protected. I learnt after going here that the Nature Reserve has three loops of boardwalks and trails. Apparently one hike takes you past a beaver dam, we looked out for one but didn't see it - obviously weren't on the right stretch of trail. Alex really wants to see "Jacque the Beaver" (from Bear in the Big Blue House), but said he would be happy enough to see his "house".

The cave

I was really surprised how nice and how interesting the place called Burns Bog turned out to be. We stumbled across what appeared to be a cave of all things. The loop trail we went on was all boardwalked, so you weren't damaging the habitat by traversing over it. The walk went from wide boughed trees, to the low shrubby bush with pink flowers as in the previous phots, to the tallest thinnest forest of trees reaching up to the sky like church spires. We saw dragonflies and evidence of wood-peckers. The Bog is actually an ancient lake that has been choked by all the plant life. Since the water takes a long time to drain away, it really was quite boggy in parts, while others parts i was reasonably dry, but this probably has more to do with the fact that it is summer time than anything else.

The spires

This actually looked alot better in real life, the photo has picked up way more light than my eyes did, and so the shadows are not as dramatic. It really was a lovely place, but poorly sign posted - most people probably wouldn't even know how to get here. I think it might be a closely protected local secret. Even so, it would have been nice to know where the paths were taking us. The one we went on had no signage at all. For all I knew it could have gone for miles. At one stage I contemplated turning back just in case. I did find a jogger, who assured me that it looped back to the main track a few metres further. We will be going back there to see where the other tracks take us, hopefully past "Jacque the Beaver's" den!

Stanley Park

The first of July is Canada Day, and there are a number of things to do on this day. In Steveston there is a huge and very popular fair. I kind of wish we had checked it out, but we had the dogs and it was warm. 100,000 people is the expected crowd, so we thought we would leave it for another year. Instead, we stopped at Stanley Park which is a popular park in the centre of Vancouver. I have spoken about it briefly before, but we only went to the playground on the outskirts before. This is a huge park with so much to do that you could spend all day and more taking it all in. Many people hire bikes and cycle around the park, which has a forest, lawned areas for picnics, a mini train, artists corner, creeks, fountains, playgrounds, marina, sporting facilities and more. As you can see, there was cricket being played in the park this day - it was a legitimate match. Most of the players appeared to be Pakistani. It looked very serious. This is not the first time we have seen cricket in Canada, and with so many Pakistani and Indian migrants. I can only hazard a guess that the popularity of the game is likely to gain momentum - much to Ashley's joy and my misery.

Hollowed tree

This large hollowed tree trunk is home to many of the parks creatures no doubt. We saw a racoon scavaging for food in the rubbish bin. There are coyotes in the park apparently, also squirrels, chipmunks, owls and other varieties of birds - still haven't seen a bear.

sculpture

Stanley Park is home of the Vancouver Aquarium, we will look forward to going there oneday when the dogs are not in tow, but this was a sculpture of a killer whale, carved by members of one of the first nations. I believe it is carved from marble. Many people had thrown coins into the pool below it, so I guess it has become a bit of a wishing well.

The Pavillion

This is the Pavillion in Stanley Park, it was a lovley sight. And would make a great place to have a function.

The dreaded second car!

It is truely amazing what happens when you just let things be. Buying cars for instance....
We needed a second car for Ashley to drive to work in. We only had one car in Australia and this fact was the focus of many an early morning argument and source of tension. We could have bought another one I guess, but didn't want to. We felt we had forked out enough for the car we had already. I drove Ashley to work each day and picked him up each night when I needed the car, and despite the morning panic attack to get everyone in the car and the back seat fights on our way through peak hour traffic, it mostly worked out. It wasn't ideal, but we made do. But we did vow to get a second car when we moved.
We were quite conservative with our spending on the first car, to ensure we had enough for the second when the time came. Thus far, Ashley has been taking the hotel shuttle bus to work, but since we are moving out of the hotel this weekend, the need to buy the second one was now pressing. Ashley has spent a good number of weeks researching possible car types within the price we set aside for it. And spent a fair proportion of the long weeked and some money checking out cars on our short list, but to no avail - they were all rip offs. We were frustrated and also panicked that we were using up too much of our renovation money on the futile research of nasty cars, so we decided that this was a sign that we were not meant to buy one at this stage - things tend to flow nicely when the time is right and this wasn't at all. So we decided to let it be and see what alternatives we could find to buying a crappy, but still costly, second car.
So we put it out there. Would you believe that we were offered a free car the very next day? Albeit a very old Volvo that needed a lot of work, but a car none the less. And that afternoon, Ashley coincidently received an email from a work mate asking if anyone was interested in either one of his two old cars, which he was selling for practically nothing (albeit old, but they were working and one had new tyres and brakes). Ashley considered these and thought he would buy the one with the new tyres and brakes, which he got for an eighth of what we had originally budgetted for (and that was not very much I can tell you - I am too embarassed to say how little we are paying for this car). I haven't seen it yet, it is probably a really scary car - but even if it lasts a year, it will be worth the money. Problem solvered ....maybe, you'll have to stay tuned to see if it causes us any great deal of grief. I think the odds are against us some how, but you never know.