Christmas snow

I have never seen so much snow on the west coast as we had this year. I took some photos to chronicle the record. Although it's nice to have a white Christmas, I don't really expect it at home, since we RARELY have any snow over the holidays. In fact, in some ways, it made it seem less like Christmas because it wasn't normal!It sure looked nice when the sun finally popped out, however it made a mess of the roads and sidewalks. Navigation was especially difficult in Gibsons, where you must traverse hills of all sorts to get anywhere.My mom and I were pretty proud that we only managed to get stuck once over the three days of bad driving conditions. We were stuck on the first day, trying to head up to the mall. Our little cul-de-sac doesn't ever get plowed, so we had to push our way through the snow and make it up the small slope at the top of the street. We didn't have enough momentum the first two tries to get up the slope, since we had no traction once we were on the slope. Eventually, on the third try, with me pushing from behind, we achieved enough speed to make it to the top and onto the main street. I just had to run after the car and hop in once we made it.We did a lot of snow shoveling while I was there. I usually get a break from that when I go home, but not this time! Since we kept on it, it wasn't ever too much work at once. Also, the snow was very light for the first few days, since it was so cold, but later in the week it rained on the snow and made it very heavy. Since we had cleared our snow throughout the week, we only had a small layer of heavy snow by the end, rather than several feet like some of our neighbours.The main problem with snow around the Vancouver area is that there aren't enough snow plows to keep the roads in good condition, and people do not clear their sidewalks of snow. Thus, walking around is near impossible unless you trek through deep snow. The other option is to walk on the road itself, which can be darn dangerous, especially with cars driving on icy conditions at times. This meant we were fairly housebound on Christmas and Boxing day, since going for a walk was slightly dangerous. We went for a small jaunt at one point, but gave up after not too long because we felt unsafe on the roads.Luckily, the snow didn't have much effect on my flight to Vancouver, although we were delayed 30 minutes so that passengers from connecting flights could get on our plane. However, the toughest part about my travel through snow was dragging my suitcase through downtown Vancouver to catch the bus to the ferry. As I mentioned, no one clears their sidewalks of snow. The snow was several inches deep at places - deeper than the wheels on my suitcase were tall. So, I ended up plowing my suitcase along the sidewalk, gathering up a goodly amount of snow in front of the suitcase as I went. This added at least 5lbs of drag as I pulled, resulting in a puffing and sweating Kim by the time I reached the bus stop.The above shot is our side yard. Below is looking down our little street.This is the front of the house:And looking up the street, over our huge snow pile from our driveway.I tried to demonstrate how high the snow bank beside our driveway was.To finish up this post, let's change topics and look at pictures of my mom's cat, Muffin. She likes to climb into boxes. At first, she tried to climb into this little thing:Nope, too big! Can't fit! Then, along came a bigger box:That's a little better!Look, it's a Muffin-in-the-box!

MacBook Nerds

I flew home to Gibsons for Christmas, arriving in Vancouver on Saturday evening. Since it would have been a challenge to catch the last ferry, I met up with Mic and crashed on his couch for the night. We went out for a late dinner at Whitespot, one of my favorite restaurants to visit when on the Lower Mainland.Mic and I had realized awhile ago that we own the exact same computers - 15" MacBook Pros. So, we took some fun pictures with our matching computers.
It actually took us a VERY long time to get the shot below - every time we tried, one computer was bright or the other was dark. I put on a white shirt to try to help with colour balance. I'm not sure if that really made a difference, but eventually we got the shot we wanted.
The only thing we forgot to do was to switch computers (heads) with each other and get another picture.

Geocaching - grass field style

Garrett and I went geocaching awhile ago (before the snow!). We went to Nose Hill Park in Calgary and tried to find four different caches using Garrett's GPS. Nose Hill Park is quite nice because you get an excellent view of the entire city. This shot is looking east over the city:See the brown smear along the horizon? Pollution!!! This shot is towards the southeast. You can see the X-trail parked there.Although Nose Hill Park has a great view, it really is a big grass hill. Like this:The first cache we found was out in the middle of a field, so Garrett found it without much trouble. This is what it looked like:1.If you looked underneath it, you found this little metal jar hiding there:We wrote our names on the paper inside and moved on to find the next one. We had to walk quite a ways to find the next one, wandering through the grass fields and following the GPS.We found the next one with relative ease.The third cache was the most difficult, since we started traveling cross-country, rather than following pre-made trails like previously. We wandered down into a ravine filled with trees, passing by some deer on the way.Here's Garrett, just before we entered the ravine and searched for our third cache, which we didn't find.We searched in amongst the trees while balancing on the snowy slope for about 5 minutes, then gave up.2.The last cache was in the middle of an open field. We had a hard time finding this one, as well, but after some persistent searching, Garrett discovered it!After our successful (well, 3 out of 4 ain't bad!), we walked allllll the way back to the car and headed home, catching this view of downtown while we were at it.

Ginger

Bonnie, Sean and I decorated gingerbread houses the other day. We bought these kits:The kits were actually a little tricky to find, but find them we did (at Zeller's). After assembling them, they look like this:And then we decorate them (and eat candy during the process). This is the front of my house - we call it the "bling house". I like the chocolate coins.Here's the roof - more bling! And macaroons. Mmmm, macaroons are my favorite.The front again.All three houses. Sean's on the left, mine in the middle and Bonnie's on the right.Close-up view of Bonnie's house.Close-up view of Sean's house.During the building process. We got icing all over the place.The backside (booty) of my house. I managed to keep from eating any of the candy on my house until three days after building it, which I thought was pretty good!

Welcome winter!

This was the weather yesterday afternoon:Note the wind chill measurement (bottom right). It's so cold out that we don't want to leave the house unless we absolutely have to. This was the weather this morning:Brrrrrr...
Not only is the outside cold, but the inside of our house is cold too. We have ice along the inside of most of our windows. My bedroom:Kitchen:Living room:Kitchen:This was the temperature in our living room this morning. It's one of the hardest rooms to keep warm, even with the space heater on.Lots of warm clothes, lots of layers - that's how you survive the cold snap.

New Department Website

My department just launched a new website and asked the graduate students to update their profiles. You can check mine out here (just scroll down a little bit). You may notice that mine is more thorough than many other students. I don't really understand why other students don't include more in their profiles (or for some, anything at all), since we get so little opportunity to brag about our accomplishments, we might as well do it on the website when they ask us to. Anyway, check it out if you are interested!

Wedding!

On Saturday November 29th, 2008, Joel Hoeksema and Kaylin Ostermeier were married! Garrett was the best man, so I took all of the photos from the church ceremony. I think I got some really great shots, since I got to sit in the front row with the family. I would have had a good shot of their first kiss as husband and wife, too, but the darn official photographer got in my way then!Kaylin looked beautiful and looked very composed, although I'm sure she was a little bit nervous at least.After the rings were exchanged, we sang some songs, listened to a sermon on love and sang some more songs. Below is a picture of Joel and Kaylin kneeling while we sang a song.Next, they signed the marriage registration. First Joel:And then Kaylin:(p.s. Actual events may not have occurred exactly in this order. But it's all mixed up in my head). Joel and Kaylin waited while Garrett and Rhonda, Kaylin's maid of honour, signed as witnesses.During the signing, Kaylin's sister Marieka played the flute.After the marriage certificate was signed, the minister congratulated Joel and Kaylin and gave them their certificate.Then Joel kissed his bride! But I missed that shot. Oh well!! I have lots of smooching pictures from the reception, so I'm satisfied.
After the ceremony was complete, we filed out of the sanctuary and into the foyer, where we walked down the receiving line to congratulate the newlyweds. There's Joel with his Mom and Dad:Family shot! Except for Garrett, who took the picture, so I guess he's there in spirit too.We enjoyed some sandwiches, snacks and drinks in the foyer for the next hour or so, chit chatting with some of the relatives and friends that I knew. Then we had some family photos in the church again, before the wedding party took off for photos at another location. I helped cleanup some of the stuff at the church to take it to the ceremony, then we headed off into town to run a few errands before the reception. Usually when I say "we" I mean Garrett and I, but for this part I actually mean Garrett's sister, Sarah, and I. Garrett was off with the wedding party, being his handsome self in all those photos. Sarah and I changed into our casual wear for the casual reception and then went down to Fort Edmonton early to help set up. However, once we arrived at Iggy's Barn (very rustic! Hence the "casual reception") we saw this:Luckily for us, everything was basically ready to go already! So...we were early and had nothing to do...so...we wandered around Fort Edmonton and had an interesting time. But that's for a follow-up story later, so stay tuned.Here's the head table. Garrett got to sit there.I also had some extra time to take a few shots of the wedding cupcakes (which were YUMMY!).The reception invited guests to arrive early to partake in sleigh rides, however since we've had basically no snow this winter so far, the plan was amended to wagon rides. First, the wedding party arrived and went out on the wagon for some last minute photos. Unfortunately, it made the whole party a little chilly in their light clothes, despite the relatively good weather for the end of November (it was above zero! But windy windy windy!). Here's the wedding party on the wagon:Here are Kaylin and her bridesmaids once they disembarked the wagon.Once that crew finally moved along, the rest of us monkeys got to go on a wagon ride. I went on with Sarah (top) and Heather (bottom):Here are the horses. Their names were Nick (left) and Maggie (right).They're Belgian. Well...Belgian something kind of horse. (not the technical name, no).Here's a movie I made of our wagon ride! It was a little cold actually.
The large building we head towards eventually was Iggy's Barn. The reception was held upstairs and the food buffet was downstairs. They had yummy food, including pulled pork sandwiches! Not your standard wedding food, but I liked it.
After the wagon ride, we headed back inside for the dinner and reception. I got a nice shot of Joel with his top hat:This is Garrett's flower from the wedding - he was very proud of how much it opened up during the course of the day. It was very pretty.Sarah and Joel - the top hat made its way around on many people's heads that night.
Kaylin looks bored here, but really, she was having a great time!This guy was the Master of Ceremony. He's Kaylin's brother-in-law.Instead of running your standard "clinking of the glasses means the bride and groom have to kiss" gig, Kaylin and Joel had a jar where you could put money to see them kiss. All of the proceeds went to the Stollery Children's Hospital. I think they thought this plan would mean less kissing for them, but I think it backfired. People were more than willing to put 5 bucks in to see them kiss! They raised over $120 that night!I made a movie when someone put a twenty dollar bill in the jar, since they had to kiss for longer than the standard five dollar entry.
Here's the bro's, during an intermission:Kaylin's sister ran a little game for them. Joel and Kaylin each had one of each of their shoes. When Kaylin's sister would ask them a question (eg. Who will do all of the cooking?), they would each answer with the appropriate shoe. It was funny.8.Next came some speeches. Garrett did the "toast to the groom" and pulled off his speech marvelously. I think people are surprised at how funny he can be, considering he's such a quiet guy usually. Of course, I know how funny he is!Here's a peak of the first part of his speech:
Next, the maid of honour, Rhonda, gave the "toast to the bride".
Both sets of parents gave a welcoming speech and reminisced about Joel and Kaylin's childhoods.Hey, who's that monkey?Kaylin's family sang a song for her (it was nice).Other than that, Garrett and I ran the slideshow movie he made with old photos of them (which was only two songs long and tasteful, so people actually liked it), Joel and Kaylin said some thank-you's and the whole shindig was done by 8:30pm. We all helped to clean up and pack up the cars, before heading out the Garrett's parent's house for an after party.