august

august 29

we're just packing up for a 7(ish) hour road trip to seattle for a couple of days, then taking the ferry from there to victoria for the long weekend. in our infinite wisdom we've decided to take a slightly longer route back to seattle. we'll get to see a little of osoyoos and for my part, won't have to practically drive past where we used to live to begin the drive to seattle!

we've had a lovely 10 days with good friends who've been to visit. first the adams family came for a week. we did a birthday celebration for both boys (since their birthdays are at the beginning of september), did some geocaching, visited the heritage home where connie's mom grew up and went to the beach (of course). after that, the ramanathan family came by for the weekend and we finally got to see one of the amazing wineries in kelowna and also pick some peaches at a local orchard.

aboard the ogopogo! [that's the okanagan equivalent of the loch ness monster for all you non-british columbians!]

the boys birthday meal at montanas [best ribs in the world]

the angry birds at the birthday celebration!

mission hills winery [thanks to ram for these winery photos]

after a change of heart [from toby], we registered toby at the local elementary school yesterday. this will likely be his last year of elementary school since california is on a middle school system too. we also went to visit aly's middle school since she's not going to be here to attend her orientation tomorrow. staff at both schools were fantastic so that's a good sign. we had met the lovely principal at aly's new school last time and aly's old principal [the wonderful mr sakai] has apparently called him and asked him to take good care of aly!

august 13

zoe enjoying the breeze out on the water

besides being glued to the olympics for the past 2 weeks, we also watched the back to the future trilogy for the first time in 20 years. [they stand the test of time surprisingly well]. watching the olympics was so reminiscent of the vancouver 2010 games. the security concerns and uproar about spending before the games, the stress about whether it would go well, the complaints about empty seats and despair about the lack of medals once it starts and then the elation once the medals start to come in [for GB rather than Canada in this case, obviously!] and the unused seats were quickly filled. The amazing excitment of being the country hosting the olympics and relief, pride and emptiness once it's over. well done britain! it's just about time for the children to pack up their webkinz medal winners and put them back in their rooms! no doubt toby will be trying to return to his self proclaimed state of '100 percent inertia'!

last week, after 28 years or so, i finally got to see my favourite elementary school teacher, bob oldfield, who only lives half an hour away from us here. it was great to see him and his wife, lin, and talk about the old days [from our 2 very different perspectives!]. they were also a fountain of information about the education system.

we had a great day on saturday - there was a street party downtown which we went to and then decided to take a lake cruise since we are sadly lacking a boat of our own here :( it was a beautiful day to be out on the water and good to finally be looking at kelowna from the lake rather than vice versa.

august 1

sculpture outside the kelowna library

we've been doing a little more exploring - BC orchard museum [smallest museum i've ever seen], heritage museum [better than expected after the orchard museum!], main library [slightly more books than the other branch!], kasugai garden [lovely hidden japanese garden where we watched the coy carp being fed], farmers/crafters market and mission creek park.

kasugai garden

mission creek park was beautiful and we even managed to squeeze in a quick geocache before everyone got too hot!

mission creek

playing pooh sticks in mission creek park

zoe suddenly decided last weekend that hairdressers were not a terrifying species and demanded a hair cut. i've cut her hair 3 times in her little life [and somehow she didn't realize i was doing it any of the 3 times]. anyway, we found a fantastic hairdressers called beaners which has movies, a ball pool and coin operated rides [which only turn on if you've sat nicely for your haircut!] and she had just enough hair for us to be able to donate it to the BC Cancer Agency. she actually wanted it shorter 'like toby's' but i think we compromised on a good length!

we watched a forest fire just over the ridge earlier this week. i was very relieved that they put it out quickly and we didn't have to evacuate!

the view from the balcony

in other news, toby swept the board at his golf camp this morning winning all 6 'olympic' gold medals!

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