when dad's away...

Dad's off to Ontario for a few days at Muskoka Woods, so on Saturday mom went for the "most activities in one day" approach to distract us from the fact that he wasn't around....or maybe it was to distract herself from the fact that it's their 18th wedding anniversary weekend.

We started early in the morning by checking out a possible venue for my birthday party: Go Bananas in Richmond. It was pretty neat and not too crowded, although they won't let us bring a birthday cake into the venue unless we hire a party room for an hour. Like it would take an hour for six year olds to eat a piece of cake. Really.

Once we started to get hungry mom was finally able to drag us away by promising us a visit to the Que Pasa factory store. That means salsa and corn chips to the uninitiated. Being a gorgeously sunny day, we didn't eat in the cafe there, but headed down to the river for a picnic...and some rock throwing....and some stick collecting...and some dandelion blowing....

What Ollie and I didn't realise was that we were just around the corner from two of our favourite places in Steveston: the bumps and an excellent playground

Being a really hot and sunny day the park was kind-of crowded and we had a bit of a scary moment when we lost Ollie. It was only like about five minutes before we found him, but it felt like a LOT longer. Although it was a bit frightening for everyone, we still wanted to stay and play some more, but mom said we needed to go somewhere a bit quieter. Our very nearly final destination of the day was our most favourite park in Richmond - it has cool water features, excellent climbing stuff. It's just great.


Of course then we didn't want to leave, so our FINAL destination of the day was Wendy's for dinner. A guy's got to eat after all this exertion!

Terry Fox Run

Today was the 30th anniversary of the Terry Fox Run, to raise money for cancer research. I really, really didn't want to do this. I thought we were going to have to run all the way from Jericho beach to Stanley park - which is a LONG way. I did my best to persuade mom and dad to let me stay home today, but it was no good. They did say they'd come with me though, so that was almost a win :)

When the time came my teacher did a really good job of explaining where we go going to run, how long it would take, what we needed to do if we wanted to overtake someone, what to do if we got tired and needed to walk for a bit. In fact after everything had been explained i couldn't wait to get started.

The photo is of me and my friend racing ahead of everyone else during the first lap...after a couple more laps i was in the lead all on my own!

Mom only ran one lap with me because she got busy breaking up a fight between two of the bigger kids, but dad stepped up to do my last lap with me.

Despite my initial misgivings, it was FUN!

Bayview Grade One

This whole back to school thing has been pretty stressful this week. Both the morning and the afternoon Kindergarten classes from last year got together in the library while we waited to find out which class we were going to be in. One Tuesday there were 30 kids in there sitting on the floor, more than half of whom i'd never met before. By the end of the week, only half that number were still showing up.

Not knowing whether they were going to be with their friends or not, and not knowing who their teacher was going to be made a few of the kids pretty anxious. You never knew what was going to happen next. One guy ended up crying one morning in the hallway, hiding behind the whiteboard and he wouldn't come out. Lots of the girls have been crying too.

I've been very brave when i'm at school, even when someone took my lunch and ate it, but the late afternoons and evenings have been a bit tricky at home.

After a week we finally found out who our teachers were going to be. I really lucked out and I'm now with Peter and Laleh in Division 11, which is a Grade 1/2 split class with Ms Jung. It's going to be great. Eventually.



Mom was a bit wierded out seeing me sitting on the same bit of carpet that she sat on 6.5yrs ago for prenatal classes


My first school lunch. Mom did pretty good for a first attempt. I even got a juice box :)

Fun in the playground:

back to school

There are a number of reasons why i like living in canada, but foremost in my mind right now is the fact that my cousins all went back to school some time ago, while i went back today...for a whole hour....

and they had to wear this:




while i got to choose this:


Enough said!!

Anvil Island

Anvil means many different things to different people, but for me, Anvil is ALL about the rope swing. I spent pretty much every waking hour here, especially when mom and dad were busy doing other stuff

Dad being busy:

Other than the rope swing, i really liked seeing fireworks for the first time, making new friends (you know who you are!), climbing on the ropes course, jumping on the water trampoline, but best of all - going out in the speedboat. Woohoo - i could not get enough of that!!



PS Mom - i know the wetsuit wasn't the bargain it might have been...but it was SO worth it