A & K misc

Oh christmas tree

2011-12-09T21:41:00.000-08:00

So last year we kind of overbought on our christmas tree.

You think maybe this year we kind of underbought?

It is a living blue spruce. Kevin was more into spending our money for a live tree, which I thought was ok too, but by the time we figured it out, all of the larger trees had been purchased. And we were kind of lazy and cheap and didn't want to drive all over town or spend more than around $30. It doesn't smell all pretty, and it's not very big. Kinda makes me sad. I prettied it up on a little table with some lights, so it feels a little more christmas tree-y.

I do have hopes it will grow in the future, and someday we'll have a pretty awesome, large live tree...

Deer in our backyard

2011-12-09T21:24:00.000-08:00

A few weeks back, I woke up Sunday morning, looked out the kitchen window and saw a ton of tracks in the snow. It was far too much to have been our cat Norman. Then I thought I saw something move. But it being early, and me still being bleary-eyed, I figured I was just imagining it. Then again I thought I saw something move. And sure enough, a buck walked into view. So I sat on the dining room floor taking pictures, with Norman sitting next to me watching the deer. Out of the corner of my eye I caught the doe under the deck. They wandered around for a bit, then walked on to the next house.

Last week on the way to work we saw a doe & younger fawn wandering through the yards of our neighbors. Their white tails were huge.

Christmas 2010

2010-12-18T18:50:00.001-08:00

Some Christmas photos -

At Manito Park conservatory:

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on our back deck

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our tree was bigger than the car...

had to move it to the stairs to get the angel and upper lights on

Norman thinks the balls are his toys

notice upper branches look even with the entry into dining room - they are even

our stairs

We slept in the living room under the tree last night - think we'll do it again tonight.

Haircut

2008-09-07T17:50:00.000-07:00

I had been wanting to get my hair cut for quite awhile, I just didn´t know what I wanted. I consulted with a friend on where she gets her hair cut. I finally called the place on Friday to schedule a consultation. They asked when the best time was for me to come in, I said Fridays, because I don´t work. They scheduled me for 12:30p. This was 11:15a when I called.

So, I went in, not knowing what to expect, and not sure if I really wanted to get it cut then. I also figured that there was no better time than now, since I didn´t have any better ideas. The girl talked to me about what she thought my hair could look like, and I said sure, sounds good. And I came out with an awesome cut. She straightened it with a flat iron.

I got a straight iron, and straightened my hair on Sabbath. I didn´t manage to get it as well in the back. I think I may need a smaller iron for the back, since it´s so short.

Today I´ve washed it and let it air dry. It´s not too bad. I´ll need to play with it a bit to see how it works and get a style that works for days I can´t straighten it.

Overall, I am really pleased with it, and would definitely go back there again!

Lookin' good

2008-06-28T15:29:00.000-07:00

us recently at a friend's wedding

Flowers

2008-06-28T14:48:00.000-07:00

Weather

2008-06-23T12:41:00.000-07:00

About two weeks ago, we got home for the evening. As we were coming home I saw super dark clouds in the east. I was making dinner in the kitchen, and saw it getting darker and darker out. So I went to take pictures.

(dark clouds coming from the east)

(Looking to the north)

I went back inside, and a couple minutes later, super strong winds came flying through, whipping the trees around.

Then, it started to hail. Lots of large hail.

The hail began to melt, and it also started raining. It started backing up from the street into our driveway.

It runs down the drain, then empties into ours and the neighbor's back yards. Here's out little pool area that's flooded 6 feet out into the yard.

(within 30 minutes, all the water had dissipated)

And as suddenly as it all started, it stopped, and the sun came out again.

And even more snow

2008-01-31T21:33:00.000-08:00

It snowed again last night. I (A.) got up at 5:15am and saw it snowing. I figured there were at least 3 inches of new snow . And it was still snowing. I was watching the news to see if they said anything useful, and got the call that the office was closed today. So instead of shoveling, I went back to bed.

I woke later and K & neighbors had snowblowered/shoveled our driveway, plus the neighbor's driveway and sidewalk. Another neighbor drove his truck w/ snowplow attachment up and down the street, making it pretty flat. Neighbor said he'd measured 7 inches new snow.

We continued to shovel out our sidewalk. We realized road wasn't too bad and we had a few things we needed to work on at the office, so headed off there for a few hours. By 11:30am when we left home, it was 35 degrees and snow was getting slushy. Roads had lots of water on them, and some large puddles. Once we got so much water on the windshield we totally couldn't see out. Other than that, roads were great.

(standing at the garage, looking out.)

(the huge piles that are only getting bigger)

(the branches had a lot of snow on them. I wanted to knock it off. So far we've lost one branch on a tree due to snow being too heavy.)

(You could lose a child, or in our case, a cat, in this!)

But you have a Subaru

2008-01-31T20:49:00.000-08:00

Last night we came home from work, and as we drove down our street, we were kind of surprised. We'd left in the morning on a fairly compacted street. When we came home 11 hours later, we were driving in 6 inches of ruts. We almost wondered if it had snowed again.

We got in front of our house, trying to turn right into our driveway, and couldn't get out of the ruts. We turned slightly right, and slid a little, and then we were stuck, kind of perpendicular in the roadway, within 12 feet of our driveway. We tried moving the tires left and right, hoping to move on out of the rut and get turned. We tried rocking it, we tried pushing. Nothing but spinning tires. Front driver tire was spinning, rear passenger tire was spinning. So we pulled out the shovels and for the next 20 minutes proceeded to dig around the tires to try to get a pathway and get out of the ice.

(so close to our driveway)

(yes, that is a patch of the actual road)

Finally, with great clearance around the tire, and with a push from the back, we made it out and into the garage.

We found from our neighbors who started out to help us that there were others who had been stuck earlier too. We realized it was the trash and recycling trucks that made their way through the neighborhood that had caused such a trashy road again.

and winter seriously hits

2008-01-29T21:30:00.000-08:00

It began snowing sometime around 11:30am Saturday. It didn't stop until 5:30pm Sunday. We already had probably 5 inches of snow on the ground from storms within the last few weeks. We got another 4-5 inches today. The snow comes up to my knees. The snow in the road is higher than the sidewalk, by a good 8 inches. While shoveling this morning (5:45am) neighbor man said to me "I'm having trouble finding places to put the snow". Me too, man, me too. Our main piles are taller than me, and I'm having to try to fling the snow up and over further into the yard.

And the weather people are predicting more snow Thursday and Saturday.

(sitting on the basement floor, looking outside)

Shoveling the driveway/sidewalk three times within a 24 hour period = not fun. We shoveled probably 4 inches Saturday afternoon, another 6.5 Sunday morning, then another 3 Sunday afternoon. And then we shoveled out into the street 10 feet to where the neighbor's tire tracks were so we could get out of our driveway. And it was heavy snow. Great for snowmen and snowballs, but heavy on the shovel. The snow today was much lighter.

Still causes the tree limbs to bow down though.

We did have sunshine yesterday, which made it super bright outside, but really pretty!

We did get a snow day from work yesterday, and then got to leave around noon today. Kind of "come to work if you feel safe driving in the weather" rules. (And everyone seems to freak out because, crap, it's winter, and it's snowing, and I live in the NW. Whoa!)

All this leaves us with very lazy cats. Every so often they go crazy and run around the house freaking out from boredom.

But overall, I'll take the snow. If it's going to be winter, it better be snowy and cold. I'm not a big fan of looking at dead grass for 6 months, or being soaking wet in the rain...

My car makes me laugh. It looks so dumpy with all the snow on it. (what's on the ground in front fell off the hood, and that was just the first time.) I actually saw a car that looked like this, with only the windshield area wiped off, driving down the road. As it passed I saw the handicap sign hanging off the rearview mirror.

Birthday party

2007-12-26T11:03:00.000-08:00

Fun birthday party for Kevin:

Reading card from parents

Yummy strawberry scented candle

Opening gift from grandma - awesome picture!

Opening the helicopter from Keith & Jen

Turns out this one didn't work, so we replaced it with a nice yellow one that does work (Click here to see video)

So excited about sweater & socks from me :)

But he does look good in his new sweater

Challah - eat up!

Snow Chucks (one for each of us, for a fair fight) - neighbors thought it was so cool they came out to play too.

Party in the house

I had invited over 30 people, and about 25 showed up. Most had little kids age 10 and under. We don't need kids toys, we have stairs! And cats!

Cute babies for the adults to pass around

Two big pots of beans, one pot of cheese sauce, 5lb of chips, olives, salsa, guacamole, sour cream, peppermint brownies, apple pie cake, nut bars - yum! (note to self: 30 people won't eat 5 quarts of sour cream. Get less!)

We had a great time. Totally surprised Kevin. Filled every chair in our house. Ate tons of food. Laughed at the kids playing together. One little guy walked up to the Christmas tree and just started kicking it - for no apparent reason. Another took a header into the Christmas cactus. Only broke one little limb of the cactus.

(Kevin did get presents from others of you, but sorry, I didn't get those on camera.)

Trip to Banff/Jasper: Day 1

2006-09-09T15:56:00.000-07:00

We left on Friday morning headed for Whiteswan Provincial Park, British Columbia, Canada. We'd done a little research - this park looked better than others we'd found along the way, and this park had 5 campgrounds, which upped our chances of a campsite over Canada Day weekend. We were planning to stay there Friday-Sunday, so were hoping to find a nice campground with nice sites. We did find a great campground along the river and with fewer people than other campgrounds (we weren't on the lake, so not as popular).

Here's our tent.

Notice the golf club and rocks? The ground was far too hard to get a tent stake in, so Kevin was creative in keeping the tent secured to the ground. The golf clubs were originally brought along to hit rocks, but I think we only ever used them to aid in holding down the tent.

The campground had a road that led to where the old bridge used to cross the river. It was really pretty there. You could climb down to the water level and there were tons of trees, branches, etc that had been washed by the water. Kevin found a cave man stick, which really does look like a cave man club, fatter on one end and all.

Our campsite was nice, however the sun comes up there at 4am or something crazy and unfortunately our site was in the sun in the morning. So by 8am it was roasting. The afternoons were nice though, since we were in the shade and could cool down some. (It was in the low 80s when we were there.)

Friday night our across the way neighbor in a trailer decided he needed to listen to old 80s music with his generator going. That began around 10pm and carried on until 2am. Between the river noise and the generator, we mainly just heard the thump thump thump of the music in our tent, but it was a bit annoying to keep waking up to. Saturday night wasn't as bad, though he did go over to the river and shoot off fireworks around 11:30pm (happy Canada day!).

Trip to Banff/Jasper: Day 2

2006-08-10T19:26:00.000-07:00

Sabbath we got up and were going to see if we could find a road to hike up a mountain. We drove up the main road, but didn't see anything that looked like it could get us where we wanted to be. We found a logging road and decided to follow it. Through the wildflowers/weeds growing in the middle of the road we went. It was a fairly narrow road, and quite steep in places, and there were deep ruts that had been created earlier in the year, along with some pretty deep rivets from water flowing across the road.

A couple times we got out to move rocks in the roadway so as not to scrape off the bottom of the car. The Subaru did very well climbing the hills and fording the rivets. We did finally hit one though that we felt we couldn't get over and then back down, so we stopped and backed down until we could find just enough space to turn around.

We decided to scrap the climbing the mountain part, and head to the hot springs instead. On the road to the campgrounds we had passed Lussier Hot Springs, and a man had told us he thought it was a really nice hot springs (plus it was free!). There are three pools - one hot, another a bit lower which is about the same temp, then the third that is fairly cool. Or you can step outside the rock "barrier" and jump right into the icey cold river.

Notice the man in the straw hat (behind white head man). He's seriously skinny/bony and was wearing a speedo! It just wasn't right...

The hot springs were normally something like 100F, but they had cooled a bit and were now only like 85 or something. We hung out for awhile at the hot springs, then were kind of tired and hungry so headed back to camp. We ate lunch and packed up, just in time for a thunderstorm to come blowing in. We hid out in the tent, starting out reading, but then ending up asleep. We awoke a few hours later to sunny skies and cooler temps, which was nice.

We went for a walk out to the old bridge again, and found a older man across the river pushing on a log trying to get it into the current to float away. Kevin thought maybe he had pulled it from above where he was and had thrown it into the water. We watched him try to push the log with another longer stick, which didn't work. We watched him try to jump on another log touching it to get the one in the water to move, which again didn't work.

Finally it moved out a bit more into the current and floated on down river. This all after at least 10 minutes though. Then he proceeded back up river 10-15 feet to his fishing pole and net. He took his net and began "catching" pieces of bark and tree that were floating in the river. He'd get them in his net, then dump them on the shore beside him. We watched that for awhile, not sure exactly why he was doing that. It seemed a bit odd.

Trip to Banff/Jasper: Day 3

2006-07-29T18:44:00.000-07:00

Sunday we were up and ready to head into Banff National Park. A few hours later and we were in. Just after getting into the park, we stopped to look at a river and found Mr. Big Horn Sheep. We were standing at the bottom of a rocky hill, and he was at the top. Looked pretty cool. He started coming down, and it seemed he was looking right at us. Kevin said I should offer him some of the Slurpee we had.

Mr. Big Horn Sheep kept looking at us, and then began running down. I (A) was wondering if he was going to come flying down and ram me! Instead he ran on down and then across the road and on the sidewalk around the corner until he could kind of run up another hill. I think he was just scared because there were too many people around in his land suddenly.

Scenery began to slowly change from dry and arid, to rivers and mountains. Large, rocky mountains.

(REAL mountains i.e. jagged peaks, snow all year, over 5,000 ft - hooray!)

We continued on up the road and made it to Lake Louise, but there were something like 10 million people there, and we didn't even bother to try to find a parking spot. We headed back a couple miles to Moraine Lake. It is so beautiful! The water is amazingly blue/green.

There is a trail from Moraine Lake to Consolation Lake. It's around 4-5 miles round trip. Consolation lake is very pretty too, but very rocky (large rocks) around the edge we end up on.

After our hike to Consolation Lake, we headed back to Lake Louise, as it was 3+ hours later and way less people there. The Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise is super fancy. We were a bit grungy from hiking, camping and no shower for 2 days, so didn't go inside. Someday we'll go back and check it out though, plus hike around the lake and go to the Tea Hut on the other end.

We ended up back down the hill camping at Lake Louise Campground. Was a nice campground, and had showers, which we enjoyed (although they are on one end of the cg and we were camped on the opposite end, so to walk there was about a half mile or something way too long to walk!).

Trip to Banff/Jasper: Day 4

2006-07-29T16:03:00.000-07:00

Monday morning we got up heading on north. Not too far up the road we came across Bow Lake. We decided to stop and take a look.

At the far end of the lake was a big waterfall, and we decided it wasn't that far to walk, so we took off for it. Here's the lower part on the way to the falls.

Towards the end there was a pretty steep hill we had to climb, then down the other side and across a rock land to the waterfall. Alodia was ahead of Kevin, and stopped to wait for him. Only he had followed another path and ended up ahead. After Alodia called for and waited for Kevin for 5 minutes, she finally realized maybe he wasn't around. She glanced down and saw at least 15 mosquitoes on her legs. That added another 20 mosquito bites to the 7 she already had...

Finally made it to the waterfall. Turns out it was a bit farther than expected, but well worth the walk. We had beautiful views of the lake and mountains.

We stopped at Jonas Creek Campground that night. We met a man (with his family) from Darwin Australia, another couple from Germany, and a church group of teen boys bicycling from Jasper to Banff. We also kind of learned a new game from the boys. Was the smallest campground we stayed at, but with the most diversity of people. Pretty neat.

Trip to Banff/Jasper: Day 5

2006-07-21T20:56:00.000-07:00

Monday night we had decided that we did in fact want to go check out the town of Jasper, so Tuesday morning we started out.

We stopped at Athabasca Falls, and found the following sign. We love the picture. It's greatly amusing.

There's a nice walkway around the falls, allowing you to see just about every part of it. There's a cool little canyon area to walk through where supposedly the water went through ages ago and now does not.

The falls themselves are quite spectacular. The river's pretty wide, but funnels into one area to drop off, then divides and keeps dropping. It was really loud, and creating quite a bit of spray. One young man died there a few years back - he was hiking and somehow fell in. They now have a bench dedicated to him.

We made it on up to Jasper and stopped at Snaring River Campground. It was a fairly large campground, but relatively empty. We found a nice shady spot (as it was roasting by then), set up the tent, ran around looking at the town of Jasper, came back to camp, had lunch, and refilled on water. A few of the campgrounds we stayed at had huge water "buckets" like these:

At first we were slightly skeptical of them, but the water seemed to taste fine (though not super cold) and others were using it, so we figured it was fine. Apparently the best way to haul water into a campground without running water.

Sitting in the still air of the campground, we decided we needed to cool off somehow. Luckily there was the Snaring River on the edge of the campground. Beautiful, eh?

We waded around in the cold water and cooled off. Alodia sat in the shade reading, while Kevin decided to busy himself with creating rock towers. There were half a dozen already built, but they were small rock towers - 4-5 smallish rocks creating the tower. Kevin set about making a few more with larger rocks.

However Kevin had found a "perfect" rock for a larger tower. The way it sat wasn't adequate as a base, so Kevin scooted around the whole rock digging smaller rocks out from around the edges.

He tried moving it then, but it was still stuck in the ground (I suspect the moving water around it didn't help any). So he wandered off and found a couple sticks upstream to use as leverage.

He dug around the rock with the sticks, and then shoved one around under the rock and pulled on it as a pry bar to get the rock moved a bit out of the ground. He got it enough that he could push on it with his hands and that seemed to work better, until he shoved it so far over without moving himself that he got high centered.

(notice both feet off the ground! It was so hilarious - I barely got this picture I was laughing so hard!)

Victory!

After "rolling" along a few more large rocks, building "ramps" from rocks to help lift them onto the stack (almost getting a hernia along the way), rearranging and rebuilding (they have a tendency to fall suddenly) he had built quite the rock tower!

Overall he made about 15 or so rock towers varying in size. Was kinda cool as you walked out to the river and suddenly see a whole bunch of rock towers. The next morning Kevin went to check on them, and only a couple had collapsed.

Trip to Banff/Jasper: Day 6

2006-07-17T20:37:00.000-07:00

Wednesday we headed back south towards Banff. We had heard of Mt. Edith Cavell from a coworker. We also had read about a nice walk around by the lake there. So we drove about 15 miles up a steep, narrow, winding road to the top. We hiked a bit around above the lake on some trails, then headed down to the lake. Angel Glacier feeds the lake.

(notice how the glacier does look like an angel with wings spread)

Kevin had been joking with a coworker about going swimming in a great lake filled with icebergs. When we got here, Kevin realized this must be the lake, so stripped to his swim shorts and swam out to the nearest iceberg.

He sat on it for a couple minutes, then swam back. It was icy cold!

(this iceberg was melting like crazy, but was still huge.)

As we were walking away, we heard what kind of sounded like thunder and turned around to see part of the glacier along the edge of the lake falling in. It was really neat to see.

(notice it shattering off on the far side)

We then noticed waves coming across the lake. (As did a few others who were sitting along the edge. They started scrambling and grabbing their stuff and running back. Was hilarious to watch.) Kind of a real life idea of how a tsunami/tidal wave could happen, and on a large scale, could be seriously scary!

(on the far side notice how much ice fell in)

We traveled on south to Columbia Icefield. We could pay something like $8 each to ride a snowcoach out to the glacier, or we could park low and walk a hill to get to a lower part of the glacier. We chose to park and walk. The glacier is still really huge, but has been receding over the years.

If you went down across the parking lot, across the 5 lane highway, down the hill to the glacier parking lot, then walked up the hill, you'd make it to the edge of where the glacier is now. (Estimate - about 1/4 -1/2 mile it's receded.)

Quite a few signs along the way warning of the danger of glaciers. Not so pleasant. There actually was another sign that said they had had a number of people falling into crevasses and the people died of hypothermia because they couldn't reach them fast enough. The most recent was a few years back and a little kid.

(This water was so cold! Leave your fingers in for 5 minutes and they'd be frozen!)

Old snowcoaches and current ones

As we were in the parking lot, we saw these lovely vacation goers...

The back end of that car was SO laden down, we wondered how it made it over bumps.

We continued on south. We enjoyed the falls at Tangle Creek.

We decided to head back to camp at Lake Louise Campground again. We tried to go to the evening program at the campground, but since we weren't 6 years old, we lost interest really fast!

Trip to Banff/Jasper: Day 7

2006-07-17T20:13:00.000-07:00

Thursday we drove down to Banff to check it out. We stopped at Cave & Basin National Historic Site. There's a cave under their visitor center and it is some of the main feeder for a hot springs. We didn't pay to get in and see it, or smell the stink.

We wandered the paths of the place and that was nice.

This is going apparently into the cave area (for authorized personnel only). Notice what the sign next to the door says:

Yes, it's "Gas mask inside basement corridor". Man, really makes us want to go in now!

The Fairmont Banff Springs - this place looks like a HUGE castle! (maybe someday we'll go stay there, it's as low as $400 canadian per night!)

We went and saw the Hoodoos - rock formations kind of carved from water, wind, etc. They were neat, but we saw even better ones near Fairmont Hot Springs.

We also hiked up to a lookout, and along the way we heard, then saw, this crazy bird in it's nest in the tree. It was chirping like mad.

You could hear it long before you got to it, and even if no one was around it, it was chirping. If it would have been quiet, no one would have known it was there. Was rather amusing. (We recorded it on the camera, so, if you want to hear it, we could probably share.)

Cool view of Banff as the thunderclouds rolled in

Shortly after this picture was taken, we went back to the car and drove down the road a few miles. It got super windy and really dark. Then started to pour. We went into town and were going to check out the shops. Got our rain jackets on, walked around stores for 20 minutes, and then the sun was back out and it was nice.

We next stopped at Johnston Canyon Falls, which was about 15 minutes from our campground. There was a lower and upper falls, with even more if you wanted to hike in further. A really neat place. (lower falls)

They had done a lot of work to make catwalks through the forest and alongside the river clear to the upper falls (~2 miles in).

We drove Highway 1A, and it was neat. At times, the lanes split and there was only your lane headed along, then a mile down the road they joined up again. We wished we had a sporty little car to speed through the turns and pretend we were making a commercial.

There also were tons of daisies all along the roadside. Alodia loved them.

Trip to Banff/Jasper: Day 8

2006-07-17T19:46:00.000-07:00

Friday morning we headed back home. We wanted to be home, yet were slightly sad our fun time was over. We saw a lot of really beautiful country.

The town of Radium has some cute little chalets along the road

A couple of our favorite signs from the trip:
found in Sandpoint, ID. Looks like the Moving Sale sign is pointing to the trash pile.

"No, I'm sorry, you've got the wong building..." found in Jasper, AB.

We had some coworkers that went through the same area we did about a month later. They had rain and hardly got to see the mountains the whole time there. We feel quite blessed to have had such great weather!