The Scientist

Star Trek

2009-05-18T19:00:00.000-07:00

We went to Vulcan, Alberta last weekend. Here are some of the shots from our trip!Garrett and his co-workers.The Hoeksema Crew and me!Post office in Vulcan. Some of you should get a post card soon!What a good cadet!We had lunch here:They only had one Star Trek-themed burger - the Spock burger. I ordered it. It had salsa, mushrooms, bacon and cheddar. It was pretty good!In the Enterprise Family Restaurant, with my Vulcan ears on!Mmmm...Vulcan eating a Spock burger. Is that wrong?Garrett's a Vulcan, too!Mural of the doctors of Star Trek, on the side of the pharmacy."Dammit, I'm a doctor, not a mural!"Dr. Beverly Crusher, from Star Trek: The Next Generation.Some Klingon words to consider.

The new Tyrrell lab

2009-05-13T21:51:00.000-07:00

Our lab JUST moved into our new building on Friday and Monday of this week. We are mostly settled in, with some minor kinks to work out and supplies to set up still remaining. Here are some pictures of our new lab.

Here is my new desk:The view from my desk:My bench part 1:My bench part 2:Here is my lab bay. My desk is on the left side, Kristen is on the right and Adrian's bench is the closest right side. We call ourselves "Team ZFP":The hallway, looking right:The hallway, looking left:My new locker:The new lunch room:The new ladies washroom:The hallway looking WAAAYYY back to our old building:The atrium, attached to our building:Tim Horton's is down below:

Kathy's babies

2009-04-13T21:10:00.000-07:00

My friend Kathy had twins awhile ago. Here are some photos of them:Paige in on the left and Luke is on the right.They don't really smile for the camera (they see the camera and all smiles are gone).Kathy tickled them in the above photo, so we got some smiles.Here's Paige, looking stony-faced for the camera.Here's Paige and me:Luke and me:Very cute babies!

A little bit of ski, a little bit of snowboard.

2009-04-13T20:39:00.000-07:00

Garrett, Sarah, Chris and I went snowboarding/skiing on Saturday at Sunshine Ski Resort in Banff.
Sarah is Garrett's sister and Chris is her boyfriend. This was during the car ride in the morning.This is at Sunshine Village at the base of the ski hill, although at the top of the gondola ride up to the ski hill.We started the day off on an easy run. This is Garrett and Chris:Garrett's relaxing in the sun before we start off.Sarah was the only skier among three snowboarders.On one of the chair lifts:Same chair lift.View #1 from the chair lift.View #2 from the chair lift.View looking back to the base of the gondola and the parking lot.Garrett, at the top of the hill with the view behind him. Sunshine really has fantastic views all around. All of the next series are photos of Garrett or me (and one with a stranger) with great views behind us.This is the one with the stranger. He was in my way when I took this, but I wasn't patient enough to wait for him to move.After skiing all day, we went to the patio for an apres-ski beer. There was this little bird guy flitting about, stealing food from plates."Beer is good!""Don't notice our helmet hair!"There was a bison inside the pub.After skiing, we tried to go to the hot springs in Banff, but it was crazy-busy. Instead, we went on a tour of the Banff Springs Hotel, since Chris is a tourist.Some cool dudes and dudette on the stairs in the hotel.On the deck of the hotel.View of from the deck.Another shot of the hotel.

Fernie ski trip, 2009

2009-03-09T18:24:00.000-07:00

We went to Fernie on the weekend and had a great ski trip. There was 2 feet of snow in the few days before we arrived. The ski hill was complete with powder up to our knees at places. It was really great conditions! Here we are in some powder:Mel and Bindi on the chair.Getting the gear on at the start of the day.The dark speck in the middle is me.Garrett, in knee-deep powder.It snowed all day.Bindi in the snow.Garrett ski-jumping.Mel skiing.Mel in the snow.Catherine skiing through the trees.

Snowshoeing in Banff

2009-03-03T21:08:00.001-08:00

On Saturday, Garrett and I did a snowshoe hike looping from Moose Meadows upwards and back down through Johnston Canyon. Highlights included a beautiful day, warm weather and sunshine, eating snow, frozen waterfalls and ice climbers.

Bargain!

2009-02-21T16:13:00.000-08:00

Bonnie and I went shopping today for purses, and didn't find much we liked in most stores since the style right now is for quite large bags. I don't want a purse that is larger than my backpack!!! Anyway, we finally found some that we liked at The Bay, for a decent price. Aaaannnnddd, it being The Bay, we both got extra discounts off at the till.

Guess how much my purse cost?$13.50!! It was on sale for $22.50 and then went down to $13.50 at the register. It's actually a deep blue colour, but no matter how I tried to photograh it, it just looked black.

Guess how much Bonnie's purse cost?$10.00!! It was on sale for $19 and went down at the till too. We were quite excited.

Guilty!!

2009-02-18T19:38:00.000-08:00

That's right, I'm guilty of sloth. My dedication (and interest) in blogging has declined, so I think I will take a break from it until I am motivated again. I am thinking of posting pictures occasionally, so my family can check them out if they don't have Facebook. But other than that, I'll go quiet for awhile and will come back when I have lots of energy to do this blog justice!

Some shots from the weekend

2009-02-16T19:42:00.000-08:00

Old-ish pictures

2009-02-15T19:18:00.000-08:00

Some shots from Garrett's staff post-Christmas party in January.

Who's that dapper gentleman?

The lab

2009-01-16T21:49:00.000-08:00

It's now time for a tour of my lab. I've shown you some of it before, but perhaps a more thorough job is in order.

Here is my desk:I would like to claim it's usually more tidy than this, but it isn't. It's a workplace, with papers here and there. My lab book is on the left, open to some relevant page. You can see pens and highlighters, sticky notes and mess all around. It bothers me sometimes, so I clean it up, but inevitably it returns to this state of entropy.
This is my UBC travel mug. Bonnie gave it to me when I moved to Edmonton and I've used it every day since then. I mostly drink water in it, but I also take it down to the coffee shop or Tim Horton's and get tea or coffee in it.This is my new Christmas mug. Garrett's Mom gave it to me from their trip to Niagara Falls. The bottom is signed by the artist. I like it because, some days, it's just the right size for a warm drink.These are my textbooks. On the rightmost side are textbooks from undergrad that are still moderately useful now. I've actually used the orange one numerous times during grad school, so it was worth the money I paid for it, but the other ones - not so much. In the middle are booklets from conferences that I've attended, and on the left are the textbooks I bought during grad school - Field's Virology. It's only the most comprehensive textbook on viruses out there! I know, I'm a nerd.This is my drawer with my files. Mostly journal articles and protocols, but also scholarship applications and random forms. Manuals, certificates...all that junk.This is the top drawer of my desk. Pens, pencils, scissors, tape, paperclips, thumb tacks, comb, etc etc etc.This is the very top shelf of my desk. It holds old posters of my data, textbooks and notebooks from undergrad and grad classes that are relevant to my field and a stack of re-usable paper on the left.This is my snack shelf. I have tea, hot chocolate, popcorn, fruit bars and crackers. The little yellow jar is sugar, to add to my tea or coffee.This is my cartoon cat calendar. I've had this same style of calendar for two years, and just purchased a new one again for this upcoming year. Even though the cartoons don't always make sense to me, I just like them for some reason.Moving out into the lab, here is my lab bench.It's one of the tidier benches in the lab. Even though I can't seem to keep my desk very neat, my bench is always pretty clean, at least at the end of the day. When I'm actually doing bench work, it can be messy as all heck, but I always put everything away at the end of the day. At the end of my bench is a microcentrifuge (for spinning liquids). At the near end of the bench is a vortexer (beige coloured square in the bottom right). The plastic beakers are discard bins for waste and the blue boxes contain plastic tips that go on the end of my pipettors. I'm not sure if non-scientists have any idea of what I'm talking about, but I don't know an easy way to describe all this so I just won't.

These are my pipettors. Also know as pipettes, I suppose. They measure volumes from 1 millilitre down to 0.5 microlitres. You can also see a box latex gloves in the background too.These are my containers of microfuge tubes, along with my tube racks - colourful! Over the last few years, I've collected some great coloured racks. I like them. I guard them from theft from my lab mates.This is just a couple shelves of my bottles of reagents. Most I use on a regular basis, some are used less frequently. I try not to keep stuff around too long if I'm never going to use it again, since other people might need the bottles for themselves.Now onto some of the equipment in my lab. This is a thermocycler. It holds tubes and can be set for a large range of temperatures for different amounts of time. It's mainly used for PCR.This area is our radioactive area. We work with radioisotopes around here. You have to be trained to work with this stuff to make sure it's safe and clean.This bench holds (front to back) our shaker platform, 42 degree C water bath, 37 degree C water bath, microcentrifuge and hybridization oven.This is my shelf in our freezer, with all my boxes of samples.This is one of our biosafety cabinets.Here's our tissue culture room with more biosafety cabinets. That's Rineke!This is our lab microwave. We use it to heat water and agarose. Don't heat your lunch in that sucker!This is our plate reader. Basically a spectrophotometer that reads 96-well plates.This is our warming cabinet (37 degrees C) for warming media or incubating certain reactions.This is our flammables cabinet.This is our Lightcycler for quantitative PCR. It's sadly out of date, but we should be getting a new one soon.This is our desk area. We are cram-packed in there now, since my supervisor hired a bunch of new people and we have two undergrads kicking around too. But we manage and it's nice to have a fun group of people to work with.This is one of our microscopes. It's in the tissue culture room and we mostly use it for looking at cells. It doesn't have high magnification - our other microscopes are better for higher magnification.This is our countertop centrifuge, for larger tubes than the microcentrifuge will hold. It doesn't go past 4000rpm, so if you need to spin faster than that, you'll have to use our large format centrifuge or our ultracentrifuge (very high speeds). Ya, we have a lot of centrifuges.This is our tissue culture cell incubator. It keeps the cells at 37 degrees C with CO2 to buffer the media.And for the grand finale, here's a video of how fun science can be!!

I'm igniting nitrocellulose membranes that are leftover from experiments. Hooray for science!

Snowshoes and Engagements

2009-01-13T21:30:00.000-08:00

Alright, it's time for me to spill the beans. Garrett and I got engaged on New Year's Eve! Since I'm such a modest person, I didn't want to just talk allllll about myself here, so I put off writing an entry. However, I can't avoid it anymore! Well, I could, but I won't.

On New Year's Eve, Garrett and I took our brand new snowshoes out to Kannaskis country for a day hike. The weather was thankfully warmer than usual, with temperatures around minus 7, although the wind was pretty strong. While driving to the trailhead, we were faced with some tricky driving, since the blowing snow completely obscured the car ahead and behind us. We were a little worried a few times when we couldn't tell if we were about to rear end the car in front, or whether we were about to be rear ended by the car behind us! Fortunately, there weren't any morons on the road and we all kept our distance from each other.

Once at the trailhead, we suited up. It took us a few minutes to figure out the bindings of our snowshoes - they were new, after all - but other than that we were ready to go. We were going to hike the Chester Lake Trail, which was approximately 8 km round trip and boasted both snowshoe and cross-country ski trails. The start of the trail is common for both type of trekkers, but shortly we turned off onto the snowshoe trail. Here is Garrett hiking ahead of me:There was a lot of nice fresh snow to hike through and the trail was fun to travel - lots of twists and turns. We hiked up and up for a bit, traversing some steep terrain. Our snowshoes, however, had heel lifts for climbing, so we snapped those into place and had an easier time of it (although we both found our fitness levels to be sadly lacking - haven't been exercising enough lately!). Here's Garrett in nearly the same stance as the above picture! We're just about to leave the trees into a large clearing, where the howling wind ended up giving my face some wind burn.This is near the top in an open meadow.Garrett played in the snow here by going off the trail. It was actually pretty deep out there and he sank down below his knees.I made a movie of him trying to climb back to the trail.

Here's a shot looking down the trail back at me. I always tend to follow Garrett when we hike, since he sets a better pace than I do.Here's a shot of Garrett's head with some snowy mountains in the background. He had his camera along as well, and took some shots of me, but they are at his house and I don't have them for this blog yet. I'll post them later sometime.More snowy mountain.At the top we ran into a lot of people. The trail was quite busy that day, but we managed to find our own spot to sit and have lunch.Although it looks comfy, it was actually quite cold to lay around and eat our lunch. My hands got really really cold, although the hot chocolate thermos Garrett carried up sure did taste good and warmed us up a bit. This is a shot of my feet:I have girly snowshoes, all nice and blue and pretty. Garrett's snowshoes are manly colours, like red and black.

Once we had eaten our lunch, we packed up right away and headed back down the trail. We were just that cold - my fingers took awhile to warm up after lunch, but eventually I got feeling back. After heading partway down the trail, Garrett suddenly turned off the trail and starting walking around a tree. I followed him, not really sure what was up, but it's always fun to wander around in the snow with your snowshoes on, so I thought that was what we were doing. He stopped walking soon, though, and took off his backpack.

"What are we doing?" I asked. "Am I taking a picture of you in the snow?"

"Sure," he replied. So I took this picture of him standing:Right after this shot, he reached into his backpack and pulled out the ring box. After some appropriate words and getting down on one knee (with his snowshoes on, in the snow), he asked me to marry him and I said "Yes!".

Pretty exciting, hey?

So, now we're engaged. I'm not sure how much I'll write here about our wedding plans and whatnot, but eventually we'll have photos up once the big day arrives.

Some of my favorite photos by Garrett

2009-01-11T10:11:00.000-08:00

Green River, Utah.Feather on sand.
Blue Heron flying. Green River, Utah.
Blue heron standing. Green River, Utah.
Frog under canoe. Green River, Utah.
Delicate Arch, Arches National Park, Utah.
Wall Arch, Arches National Park, Utah.
Petroglyphs, Moab, Utah.
Sunset in Moab, Utah.
View in Canyonlands National Park, Utah.
Red slick rock in Canyonlands National Park, Utah.
View from our campsite at Sandflats Recreational Area, Moab, Utah.
Halgreave glacier, near Mount Robson.
Hoary marmot.
Iceberg lake near Mount Robson.
Another hoary marmot.

Flower at Mount Robson.Iceberg lake and glacier at Mount Robson.
View of the valley from Whitehorn campsite.
Waves at Pebbles Beach in Gibsons, BC.
Pebbles beach, looking at Gospel Rock as the sun sets.
Moonlight over Keats Island, seen from Gospel Rock.
Sun through rushes, Gibsons, BC.
Gibsons harbour.
Mallard.
Two eagles in a tree at Porpoise Bay, BC.
Eagle in flight at Porpoise Bay, BC.
Ripples in sand at Porpoise Bay, BC.
Foggy road in Northern California.
Elk sticking out tongue in Northern California.
Looking up at misty redwoods, Northern California.
Whaleshead beach, southern Oregon coast.
Whaleshead beach.
Southern Oregon coast.
Lighthouse at night, Oregon coast.
Lighthouse through the fog, Oregon coast.
Oregon coast.
Oregon coast.
Oregon coast.
Oregon coast near Lincoln City.
Sunset over Georgia Strait, BC.

Truck grill in Rowley, AB.Door on church in Dorothy, AB.

Dislike...

2009-01-10T13:17:00.000-08:00

Recently, there was a list on the whiteboard in our lunch room called "The Christmas Hate List". While I love Christmas and most of the stuff associated with it, there was one item on the list that I could agree with: "people who write Christmas letters from the point of view of their pets". Yes, that IS annoying. But you know what is even more annoying? People who write BLOGS from the point of view of their pets. I found some recently. Sadly enough, they are finalists for the "Best Pet Blog" category of the 2008 weblog awards. Here are links to a few.

Simba King
Daisy the Curly Cat
Boo Casanova

I'm not sure why I am putting the links here, since you will likely be annoyed once you read those blogs. Maybe just check them out briefly to see how inane they are. I hope my blog don't come off sounding as stupid! And if I ever start writing about Pumpkin in the first person and describing myself as "Mommy", please shoot me.

Santa Pumpkin (update!)

2009-01-05T21:42:00.000-08:00

The Santa Pumpkin strikes again!

Christmas snow

2008-12-26T11:56:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-21T11:50:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-18T14:50:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-15T20:17:00.000-08:00

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!

2008-12-14T10:14:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-12T19:41:00.000-08:00

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!

2008-12-04T19:48:00.000-08:00

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.

Christmas tree 2008

2008-12-03T18:23:00.000-08:00

We decorated my fake Christmas tree on the weekend! It was nice to use both mine and Bonnie's decorations this year, since it makes the tree look less bare than previously. Here is the stand:The tree, with built in lights!Bonnie started the decorating:I'm not sure what Sean is doing here - some dancing? He loves Christmas. It's nice.Good job guys!Who's that handsome guy?Pumpkin likes the tree, too.Here is the completed tree, mid-afternoon:And here is the completed tree in the evening, with some mood lighting.Merry Christmas!

I get too much amusement from this

2008-12-02T20:57:00.000-08:00

The other day I went on a shopping extravaganza, completing a majority of my Christmas shopping. My last stop was at the pet store to pick up kitty litter, where they had TONS of fun Christmas items for pets. I couldn't resist picking up this little darling:
Since I also purchased a nip toy that was in the same bag as the santa hat, Pumpkin had some love for the santa hat at first:
However, she shortly came to dislike the hat, once we stuck in on her head. I did find it surprising (annoying!) that she ripped off a piece of fluff within two seconds of seeing it.
Who couldn't love that face??There's my little baby!After we put her down, she quickly started getting it off of her head.
I felt a little bad when she finally ran around the corner in defeat. I retrieved her to take the hat off, which had become more similar to feed bag than a hat.
After I took the hat off, she was still moderately interested in it.She even played with it afterwards for awhile.
Stay tuned for more pictures. I don't think I'll get tired of this toy for awhile - at least not before Christmas, anyway.

Here she is!

2008-12-01T22:21:00.000-08:00

There she is!The little sneaker kitty. I haven't written a blog entry about Pumpkin in awhile, but she's been pretty cute lately. I thought I would post some pictures of her being cute and snuggly for you all to enjoy. Under the tree, one of her favorite places nowadays:Chilling on the couch.Some more chilling.A belated Hallowe'en picture:Snuggling on the bed!Chillaxin'.Wink wink to you, too, little lady.And lastly, my favorite: the grumpy Santa cat: