North South East West

Tomas to his dad: "Next Christmas I'm going to ask Santa for a trip to Paris so I can see the Great Wall of China."

Huh? (OK, so maybe geography needs a little bit of work but I'll take either destination! PLEASE SANTA! And then Toria had to get her 2 cents in...)

Toria to Tomas: "Tomas, ya know how Santa brings presents, maybe the Easter Bunny does too and you can just ask him for the trip!"

Odds 'n Ends

HAPPY NEW YEAR
- from our family to yours!

(Many Thanks to Uncle G. & Aunt N for the gift certificate to the Keg. Todd & I were planning to use it alone but we ended up visiting Granville Island in Vancouver and they have the great Keg right in the middle- so we used it as a family and had a fantastic time!)

In other news,

On the Christmas blog I forgot to show this classic Christmas picture: Tomas writing the letter to Santa (& Toria supervising)! This is the first year Tomas been able to read/print well enough to write it on his own. They left cookies and milk for Santa and oatmeal, sprinkles, and coconut for the reindeer!... and to write the letter he had to use a red pen, of course! Too cute.

Now - it is time for a science lesson. You've always heard that we lose 80% of our heat through our heads and through the seams on clothes but did you really know???

Well, we went to the Telus World of Science in Vancouver and they have this infra-red camera that shows heat! Way cool! In the first picture Todd is in the middle and he's wearing a big puffy vest. If you look closely you can see the seams on his vest (forming rectangles). The seams show up as hot red lines indicating that is exactly where the heat loss is! On the 2nd photo - he opened up his vest and he's one hot dude!

And finally, Tomas is watching the history channel, Toria is cutting up more Christmas wrapping ribbon decoration and taping them to her bed spread so she can have a bed spread with fringe. Yep, it is a normal relaxing-only-4-more-days-until-school-starts-day in our house.

Parksville with friends

Our good friends (R &M) from Edmonton were vacationing in Parksville and kindly invited us to visit. (Yippee. Any excuse for a vacation! Even better when it is with a great family.)
What a fantastic time we all had. Their children (J.& G.) are the same ages (and genders!) as our children and everyone plays so nicely. I highly recommend the French Creek House Resort (http://www.creekhouseresort.com/) if you're looking for a clean rustic place to stay. The individual cabins have furnishings that are dated but functional. There is an indoor pool, huge playing field, lots of toys and sports equipment, and, of course, the beach right there.

The Heartbreakers: Toria and her friend, G.,

Look out boys - here they come....

The girls had a fantastic time visiting and playing together. They made sure they were dressed head to toe in pink each day (except for the ocean incident... see picture below)

Toria already misses G. and is trying to negotiate the next visit.... (I'll clean up my room ONLY if we can go and visit G.)

The boys. "Look ma! No hands!"

Did anyone say 'Hot Wheels'?

Tomas and J. have a great time whenever they get together. They love playing cars together and just hanging out. I only hope that in NINE short years from now they KEEP THEIR HANDS ON THE STEERING WHEEL!

Tomas was very sad when J. left to go home - he thinks J. should move here so they can play cars all the time.

[And a WOW to our big strong husbands].

The Beach

"Anybody got a spare dollar? Sand dollar that is?"

Parksville has a world famous beach. During low-tide you can walk for miles. The kids weren't really dressed for it but we grabbed a few sand toys and played in the sand.

Tomas & J., spent an hour collecting sand dollars. They even found a jellyfish and brought it - in a sand bucket- to show their moms!

Nice Outfit:

The cute little girls got so wet and sandy at the beach that they had to change. Unfortunately neither mother had spare girl clothes. I mean, really, when do girls ever get dirty?

Fortunately, we were able to change them into their newly purchased matching shirts (bought at the (fantastic) Errington Farmers Market).

As for shorts.... err, we each had a spare set of their brother's shorts!

And this is why God made warm summer nights:
We reclined under the sun with more Edmonton escapees.

E. & D. (who escaped Ed. winters many years ago) are friends of R. & M. They were able to join us Saturday night for dinner and drinks. This is the way vacations were meant to be. Thanks for a great weekend!

P.S: You can learn more about Parksville by reading my article(s):

http://www.islandrvguide.com/RVTripOnVancouverIslandP1.html

http://www.islandrvguide.com/Kalyniuk-WeltaFamilyP2.html

Part 3 is available in paper format but not online yet.

I also recommend Tiger Lily Farms (http://www.tigerlilyfarm.ca/index.html) - it was great. You can feed the goats, MILK a goat, play with the baby chicks, ride a pony and even feed a cow!

I also need to add the Errington Farmers Market on Saturdays was fantastic; great food, beautiful jewelry, neat crafts and live music!