She's Here!

Well its been quite a week.
Tuesday we were shocked to find out that a very dear friend of ours passed away suddenly. Carla was the wife of a childhood friend of ours, Len, Who was the Best Man at our wedding. Actually Keith was also their Best Man. Her passing leaves six young children motherless. What a tragedy. We are still waiting for results of the autopsy to find out WHY? As far as we knew she was perfectly healthy. This loss really puts my other little worries into perspective.
Then the next day, My washer went on the fritz. I had put in a load, then an hour later when I went down to put in the next load I got a nasty surprise. Unfortunately, the stupid thing had continued to fill and overflow all over that end of the basement. basement. It took me six hours to shop vac up all that water. We had to rip out the laminate flooring in Keiths "MAN ROOM" and also he had to cut out the bottom couple of inches of drywall all around. Fortunately his treadmill is on feet so it was okay. So now we have to pay for new flooring and we are getting a new washer. Guess we can consider that our early Christmas presents! But you know, after what happened the day before to Len and Carla, I was'nt even phased by this, Its just a set back but not worth getting upset about. At least we have eachother and thats all that really matters.
On to happier news....
Cousin Lee arrived from Scotland on Wednesday. She will be here for a few weeks. It is the first Christmas since her mom passed away. I am glad she decided to come over to be with us instead of being alone over the holidays. Thankfully my Dad had come down that day so he was able to pick her up from the airport while I finished sucking up the flood waters!
Yesterday we went for a toodle at the river. It was a beautiful misty afternoon. But the sun was out making the forest so magical. It sure was stinky though with the few remaining Salmon washed up on the banks. The water was running high and fast, but had receded a bit since a week ago. Leaving 3 foot long, spawning salmon sometimes 20 feet or more from the waters edge! Watch your step!

We will Remember them

We went to the Remembrance Day ceremonies. Here I share a few images of the day.

Fallen

Its been an interesting couple of days to say the least.

Dreadful news out of Texas today about the mass shooting at a US military base. So many people killed and injured so senselessly. What an awful needless tragedy! My heart goes out to the families of those affected and all at the base.

On Tuesday, Our nephew Nick fell off a trampoline and badly broke his left arm. Luckily he's a righty. He had to go in for reconstructive surgery Wednesday. They kept him overnight and he got to come home today. Poor little guy.

Also on Tuesday, Heidi was riding her bike in town, and was hit by a truck coming out of a driveway. Fortunately she wasn't hurt at all. But the driver never gave her his info and of course a kid on their own isn't going to know to ask for that. He didn't even offer to call somebody to come for her. She thankfully seems to be just fine.

We are having a huge storm tonight. Amazingly we still have power. The lights flickered a few times and Heidi and I ran around lighting candles, which so far haven't been needed! We did however, loose the cable TV. We were halfway into the first period of the hockey game when the signal cut out. It is still not back on now, three hours later. I looked online and at least we beat Minnesota 5-2 . Todays wind has ripped down the last of the leaves on our Maple. With our tree so bear, it looks like winter is here.

A Day At The Fair

Isn't that a pretty September sky? Yes that's right, September! So it took me long enough to post them, eh?

The fairgrounds in Vancouver Is Called the Pacific National Exhibition or as the locals call it...the PNE .There are shows, free concerts, dogshows, childrens venues and farm animal s on display.

The girls gave us lots of goofy faces every time I tried to get a photo, so here, Heidi is all gums. Stephanie is all neck muscles? Both very flattering portraits!!!!

We timed our day at the PNE to coincide with the Johnny Reid concert that was held on the grounds.

Johnny is one of our favorite country artists and he put on a fabulous show at the Global Ampitheater. If you look closely, you can see the moon rising above the stage. He performed some of our favorite songs, including DANCE WITH ME which has a beautiful violin solo and the very poignant THANK YOU. (Click on the bold letters to view that song.)

One of the biggest highlights of the fair has to be PLAYLAND, the amusement park. It features one of the oldest wooden rollercoasters in the world. From up on top of the ferris wheel, the view of Vancouver Harbour is stunning. from the water the eye is drawn up to the ski lights of Grouse Mountain and Mount Seymour.

Here Keith looks over one of the shipping terminals where he works.

The grand finale was the beautiful pyrotechnics show of fireworks. Do you have anything like this near you.

Toilet trouble.

The weekend before last, keith took the kids for a very rainy couple of nights camping. He got home on Sunday and after stowing the camping gear decided(with my persuasion) that his workbench needed reorganizing. No sooner had we taken everything off the shelves, that the incident occured. The upstairs toilet started to leak! I am so glad I am married to a handy guy. Can you think how much it would have cost to get a plumber in on a Sunday evening!!!??

Anyway, he got it taken care of. It was the wax seal, needed replacing, which is weird because the toilet is solid with no rocking at all. I had two bathrooms to disinfect, as the leak went through the floor down the walls of the downstairs bathroom! Yuck! Poor Keith, why do these things seem to happen when you are already tired. We finished with the bathrooms and then put everything back on the workbech shelves nice and organized and finally got to bed after one in the morning.

My dad has been here all week. He dropped my Mum off at the airport on Thursday morning, and will be here until he picks her up on Friday this week. Here are a few pictures of our walk on the dike on the 31st. What a nice day it was.

Two Daves and Llary, thats Binzen in the distance. The red in the feild is blueberry bushes. They go such vivid colours in the fall.

The Eve of All Hallows Eve

It's a dark and stormy night here in Maple Ridge, on the eve of All Hallows. The wind howls round the eaves and the puddles aren't shallow! (Ok, Im not a poet).



The Pumpkins were polished and washed of their muck.Dave saw the task at hand, exclaiming, "OH SHUCK!
To heck with small knives and wee cutters you fools.What this job requires is ye olde POWER TOOLS!"



With earnest concentration, this Birthday gal drew, a face that when carved and completed , might just say meow.
Disembowling the gourd of its putrid insides,
Caused this boy some queasiness and attracted some flies!
We picked out the seeds, which we will wash and will toast. To offer tommorrow to all hungry ghosts!
What fun they did have carving Jack o Lanterns. And were careful enough to not need interns.
The entire event was overseen by young LLary, The carvers and cutters, made sure not to tary!

Lit up by their candles on the front porch they sits,
To scare away all of the evil Spirits!

The month so far!

Keith's brother, Mike and his family have recently moved to a wonderful home close to the beach. Possibly an area we would like to go to when we are ready to downsize. Then we have a week of visiting and over this weekend , had 11 people sleeping at our house! Only two were shortstay. And I wonder why I was thinking we should downsize. More about that later though. Back to our visit with the beach bums.

We took Nick and Lexie out to see their cousins at the new place. We had a nice walk to the beach where, with help from Nick, the girls found a few new additions for their ``Beach Glass`` collection.

With the new bridge, it is only a 40 minute drive to their place. Before the Golden Ears bridge, it was near a 90 minute trip!

We had a nice quiet Thanksgiving day, with just Keith's brother Norm and his three kids for dinner. Also the little boy from next door. Then Keith`s Mom and Dad, Sister Donna and her kids, came by for dessert. Heidi had made homemade pumpkin pies and lemon almond cookies with cream filling! SOoooo yummy!!!

Then, this past weekend, we celebrated my Dad`s 65th birthday. Mum and Dad spent a few days here and we had a party on Sunday. My sister Carol made him an incredible cake decorated with a space theme, which of course is one of his favorite topics.

It was also my younger twin Sisters, Sheila and Cathy`s birthdays. Cathy couldn't be here, so Sheila got all these cupcakes just for herself!!!

Carol is so talented with anything she puts her mind to. She is trying to get into cake-making as a side line. I think she will do well once word gets out how nice her cakes are.

After cake and presents, the kids got out Pictionary and had a great time playing together.

On a more serious note, a dear friend of mine is recovering from surgery. We were friends from way back in grade 5. Sometimes it takes something to shake us up to remember how much we love someone and to remember to make more time for each other.

Our Daughters best friend lost her Grandad this week. We were at the service today. Heidi has spent all week with Stephanie, for comfort and to help with arrangements. They are such close friends and their relationship reminds me very much of the one I have with my afore mentioned dear friend.

Back to work tomorrow.

Thanks for stopping by.