Hiking Weather

We've had absolutely gorgeous weather lately; last weekend Aaron took Lucy & Noah on a hike and here are a couple of pictures.

Hooray for fall weather!

P.S.

Here's a little story about Lucy that I'll tell since she's pictured in this post.

On Sunday while I was fixing her hair for church, Lucy was singing: "La cucaracha, la cucaracha, oh yeah life goes on... La cucaracha, la cucaracha, oh yeah life goes on..."

I said, "Umm, what song is that Lucy?" and she said,

"You know that song Mom, it goes, La cucaracha, la cucaracha, oh yeah life goes on... La cucaracha, la cucaracha, oh yeah life goes on. I'm pretty sure it's by the Beatles."

Lucy is so unique, and so darn cute. She manages to crack me up every day!

Thanksgiving

We stayed in town for Thanksgiving this year and ate with my mom's side of the family, at my grandma's house in Phoenix. We love going there! She had recently gotten new patio furniture and there were plenty of places for everybody to sit. I didn't take very many pictures but here are some of the people who were there:

Brooklyn, Molly, Zoe, Presley, Noah, Keeton Aaron, Jamie, Eric, my dad, Crew Ashley, Javier, Phil, Cuatro (2 months old; cutie!!), Stephanie Me, Grandma P, Joan, Lindsay And afterwards, enjoying a little post-turkey naptime & football, here's Aaron, Zac, Crew, Eric, Javier, & my dad I missed getting a picture of my uncle Kit, and Ashley's 3 kids Christopher, Marley, & Jaxon - and my Lucy, my Mom, and Lindsay's husband Ralph... but they were all there too!

We always have a fun time at GiGi's house; she's an excellent hostess and cook! She makes the best gravy of anyone I know.

I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving!

Veterans Day Weekend

On Friday the kids were home from school since it was Veterans Day. I wanted to do something to commemorate the day, so we went to the East Valley Veterans Day Parade, in Mesa. It was great! The kids weren't super thrilled about the prospect of going, but within the first few minutes of arriving, this cool WWII bomber flew overhead and they were hooked.

There was a good-sized crowed lining the streets of downtown Mesa, and although we had to park pretty far away, we got a great spot.

There were several military vehicles in the parade, which the kids thought was pretty cool.

I teared up a few different times, but mostly at this point in the parade (below). Jr. ROTC squads from a few different high schools marched by carring banners that each showed a fallen soldier, which I assume were all from AZ. There were probably a couple hundred of them at least, that marched by. It was very poignant, and I couldn't help thinking about the families that these soldiers left behind.


The kids also really liked the high school marching bands; there were 4 or 5 of them in the parade and it was really fun to see/hear the drum lines.

After the parade, which was about an hour and a half long, we got some fast food for lunch. Then that afternoon we went to see the Lion King in 3D at the dollar theater. Since we don't have the Lion King on DVD my kids haven't seen it much, so it was almost like seeing a new movie -- and the redone 3D edition is fun.

On Saturday a pretty cool event happened; this old steam train came through town! It was the last steam engine ever produced for Union Pacific and was built in 1944 (I think). It stopped for an hour in downtown Gilbert, and then later stopped in Tempe and Phoenix. In this picture, that's the mayor of Gilbert dressed in the conductor's uniform, behind my family. Aaron took the kids to see the train, while I stayed home making applesauce (it was my annual applesauce day - 34 quarts this year!) Long after I assumed the train had left, I heard its whistle from my house (the tracks run right behind our neighborhood) so I jumped in the car and drove to see it, and I was excited to have gotten there in time to watch it leave and chug away to Tempe. It is MASSIVE! Really cool to see up close.

All in all it was a really fun weekend.

Seattle/Vancouver Trip Day 5

We slept in Wedesday morning and then walked up and down the street to find some souvenirs for the kids (there were several souvenir shops near our hotel). After we checked out of our hotel we had time to drive around to see some different areas of the city. After having been fortunate to have beautiful sunny skies for most of our time in Vancouver, it rained a little on us that last day.

We thought this was Vancouver's version of "Occupy Wall Street" but they seemed to be protesting high housing costs (and had nothing to do with American OWS'ers). The city library; awesome building! Not too far from the nice areas were the not-so-nice areas; this street was full of graffiti and had bars on every single shop window. Vancouver has a big Chinatown; it went on for quite a while. I neglected to mention before what an international city Vancouver is; walking down the street it's not uncommon to hear several different languages & accents. One day when we were flipping through radio stations we heard a couple of Asian (maybe Cantonese?), French, and Indian stations, and one night flipping through the channels we saw the Cantonese edition of the nightly news on one of the main network stations. Chinatown "entrance" Chinatown Gas is expensive; $1.378/litre = $5.22/gallon I took a picture of a 100 km/h sign for the kids -- they don't drive nearly as fast as we do in the US; 100 km/h was the fastest posted speed limit on the biggest highways (62 mph). We'd be flying out of Seattle so we spent the rest of the day making our way south. This "peace arch" is near the US border. The line at the border crossing wasn't too bad. The US takes a LOT of pictures of each car that comes across the border -- we were impressed with all the cameras! This strange sculpture made of wire, an "invisible billboard" is right at the border. I don't know the significance; I think it's just art. Definitely makes you do a double-take. Home sweet home! Back in Seattle... here's the Space Needle during the day under typically cloudy skies.
Downtown Seattle. The mid-afternoon traffic was awful, and around this time we started to worry about making it to the airport on time! Luckily we did make it in plenty of time... and we had a nice view of Mt. Rainier from the plane. We had an uneventful flight home and were glad to see the kids again that night. Many thanks to my mom and sister for taking care of the kids while we were gone! It was a fantastic trip!

Seattle/Vancouver Trip Day 4

We spent Tuesday morning at Stanley Park which is right in Vancouver. It's basically the same idea as Central Park in New York: a big sprawling beautiful park right in the middle of the city. (I just looked it up: Central Park is 843 acres and Stanley Park is 1001 acres.) Here's part of the Vancouver skyline from Stanley Park. Canadian geese! I'm not sure the significance of these totem poles but I think they have something to do with the local Indian tribe (Squamish). Looking north from Stanley Park you can see North Vancouver, a whole other city, across the harbor. We wondered who these middle Eastern gentlemen were; they arrived in three cars and they had three or four very alert bodyguards with them (so I snuck this picture from inside our car). The bodyguards' alertness was evident when Aaron got out of the car to take some pictures of the city! They didn't say anything but they assumed a protective & more alert stance around their dignitaries, upon the arrival of a stranger. The famous Hollow Tree in Stanley Park We saw lots of squirrels there and they were all black! We drove back to our hotel midday and decided to walk to lunch. Next to our hotel was a new residential highrise under construction, and there were ads on the wall for the different apartments available; pretty pricey but I guess that's what you get if you want to live in downtown Vancouver. This is the mid-priced one, starting at $1500/mo for a 600 sf apartment.
We went to a cute little crepes place for lunch; I ordered a spinach, ricotta, & bechamel crepe which was delicious but a little heavy on the spinach. Belgian chocolate crepe for dessert; oh my. It absolutely melted in your mouth. We spent the afternoon in North Vancouver; this is one of the bridges over the harbor. All the lanes are variable depending on which direction rush hour is going. At a lovely reservoir in North Vancouver.
Lynn Canyon Park, in North Vancouver, is a neat place: dense forest, rivers and waterfalls, and hikes. We spent quite a bit of time there. Here's Aaron on a suspension bridge. The river below the suspension bridge. More pretty water. By late afternoon we were back at our hotel. We had a concert to go to that night (Foo Fighters!), and decided that the best way to get to the arena was to take the city bus. Right across the street from our bus stop was this gym; go Steve Nash! (He grew up in British Columbia.)The Foo Fighters' three semi trucks, outside the arena. We had general admission tickets (floor) and were right by the sound/roadie guys' area. Here's the previous bands' roadies (Cage the Elephant) packing up their stuff and the Foo Fighters' roadies setting up in between sets. We had a great view of the stage; it was an awesome show. Dave Grohl came out on this mini-stage right next to us several times during the show; that was pretty cool. The end of the show. The Foo Fighters played for almost 3 hours, and with the two opening bands plus time in between sets the whole show was almost FIVE hours long! But it was so awesome.By the time we got outside to catch our bus it was midnight (forunately the downtown busses were still running). When we got back to our hotel we decided we wanted some hot chocolate but the nearby Starbucks was already closed (I guess that figures; 12:15am on a Tuesday night!) so we walked to a convenience store to buy some hot chocolate mix and some snacks to have in our hotel room. It was a late night but we had a really fun time.