october 2013

october 31 2013

sascha the muppet!:

october 20 2013

aly and sascha headed over to vancouver to volunteer at We Day again this week. they went a little early for a backstage tour for corporate sponsors the afternoon before. they enjoyed the tour and got a close up look at hedley doing their sound check and rehearsal.

the tour was followed up by a sponsors dinner [100 business people/global figures and aly!]. dinner was on top of plexiglass over a pool in a mansion in vancouver. aly apparently worked the room - she chatted with christy clark, the premier of the province, met kofi annan, chatted with the founders of free the children and her hero, spencer west. the speakers for the evening were kofi annan, martin luther king III, christy clark, a young girl named hanna and the kenyan boys choir sang.

craig kielburger

spencer west

marc kielburger

kofi annan

the next day was we day. they arrived at 6.30am. aly, sascha and the team from club penguin were selling fundraising items; aly was selling shirts, while sascha was selling some of their beautiful artisan items.

aly at 'her store'

they had a quick chance to pop into the disney suite and watch a little of the show. aly saw avril lavigne and met hedley afterwards.

watching the concert

jacob hoggard

at the after party, aly got another chance to talk to spencer west, and marc and craig kielburger again [and get their books signed]. she also bumped into robin wiszowaty, someone from free the children who she had heard speak at a youth summit she attended a couple of year's ago.

everybody seems to be doing well at school. zoe is still complaining about it but seems to be having a good time while she's there by all accounts. i can't believe how lucky toby is to be in the golf academy. it's a little sickening to pick him up twice a week at a country club where i'm not allowed to play.

zoe in kindergarten

toby at golf academy

we've had a lovely run of nice weather. in fact so nice that zoe suggested we went for a picnic with our teddy bears. how could i say no - especially since the front yard is a pretty nice place for a picnic :)

one day after school we discovered a new corn maze just between zoe's school and aly and toby's school. the girls and i went to check it out and then came back one night over thanksgiving with the adam's family who came to stay and made us a lovely dinner for thanksgiving.

the scareiest thing in the corn maze was this giant flock of birds who flew out of the corn en masse in front of us!

october 1 2013

aly and i at wild elements park

we had the perfect weekend this weekend - half a day of slobbing around doing nothing and the rest action packed!

on saturday toby played soccer (as goalie and got a shut out) and zoe went to a birthday party where she did rock climbing for the first time.

on sunday i dragged everyone out of bed early-ish because aly and zoe had a sparks field trip to a u-pick farm. as it turns out, i had the time wrong and everyone needed to be up even earlier so we'd missed it. fortunately, my hopelessness gave us the chance to visit gellantly nut farm which i'd wanted to go to ever since we moved here. we had a lot of fun picking hazelnuts, walnuts and chestnuts.

after lunch, aly, who is always a good sport, agreed to go on a ropes/ziplining course at wild elements play park to celebrate my birthday while sascha babysat. there were four courses in total and the first 3 were a lot of fun, but perhaps a little easy. the last one just about killed us [our friends, stephen and carrie did warn us, but did we listen?]! i thought my arms would never work again! it was a self-led course so you were responsible for your harnesses and hooking up your own ziplines which made it really quick once you got into the routine. i'm trying to talk her into doing the 'primal scream' for my birthday next year, but i might have to give the poor girl a break and comprise by doing the last remaining ziplining course we haven't done in the area since we both LOVE ziplining. hopefully i'll still be doing this sort of thing by the end of my next 40 years :-)

this was waiting for me when i arrived on my birthday :)

my birthday present from sasch - a Cube 3D printer - yippee!! [it is making a cheese shaped door stopper in this photo]

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