Whoonu

Last week the Buceks introduced us to a great new game called Whoonu by the makers of Cranium. It is so much fun! It is easy enough that Nyles and Emily can play, yet Laura and I played with Carolyn and Marshall and it was great. The game is based around who knows each other the best. Check it out!

Someone else is now blogging!

Someone else in our house is now blogging, check out their blog.

Holiday hangover again!

It's Friday night and I'm experiencing holiday hangover again for the second time in month. I know I have not done anything exciting like take a trip to California, but I did get to spend a week with my family. When you work lots of hour at work I think sometimes we (or just maybe me) forget how much fun it is to spend time with your family. During this past week we have done some great things at little to no cost. We started out the week by buying a conservation pass and spent the afternoon walking in Dundas Valley. Over the next few days we went to Fifty Point with the Buceks, Christies while Laura was working and our favorite, Valens with some friends from dance class. I hope this week is a reminder to me how important family time can be.

Clouds and God

Its been years since I flown in a plane and this may sound corny, but I have never flown as a Christian before and I hope that the pictures show what I mean. During the flight to and from California I had few moments when you think that there must be a God to create such a huge thing as a cloud or a dessert with a mountain in the middle of it and how small am I in this little plane looking out at them. At the same time He has made every hair in my head and He knows
how many I have(or lost for that matter).

More Tales from San Diego: The Midway

During the competition one morning Nyles and I snuck out for a couple of hours and did a self guided tour of an aircraft carrier called the Midway. I am not a military nut, but it was a ton of fun seeing all the planes and learning how they landed and took off.



All pics are from the filght deck. Here is Nyles listening to his headset telling him about the F14 Tomcat.



Same plane.



Midway from board walk.



A cool pic! (Hornet I think)



Same plane.



The landing strip.



Snag line to stop the planes when they land. We learned that they basically crash into the carrier and then give it full throttle just in case they miss the three snag lines and need to take off again.



San Diego is full of military bases. This is a pic of the USS Nimitz in for repairs.




Well thats how Nyles and I enjoyed one morning in San Diego.

My First Post and NANC.

Well after months of thoughts and ideas I have finally started a blog. A big thanks goes out to Al Baker who helped me get this started and showed me all the computer mombo-jombo stuff that goes along with it. (Thanks buddy) I must admit that I wanted to start a blog for a long time, but I was feeling some performance anxiety ie. would people like what I write, would people read it or would they dislike me because of what I write. Well after much thought and prayers, I realized that I should just be me.

O.K. enough of an intro. If you did not already know we (Laura my wife, Emily my daughter, Nyles my son and me) just got back from the North American National Irish Dance Championship in San Diego. Emily danced there after qualifying last Nov. at the Canadian Championships. So, here is what a day looks like at a national event.






The day starts at 5 a.m. with fake eyelashes and prepping the hair for the wig.



After the eyelashes and wig, race to the venue to be there before 7 a.m. for make up and wig.



Now just the dress and she's ready to dance at 8:30 a.m.



There she was all alone on the big stage in front of 5 judges ready to dance her third dance at 3 p.m.



And dance she did, placing 45 out of 90+ girls from all around the world. Congrats Em, I'm so proud! Oh ya, this picture was taken at 11 p.m. after awards, who said being a dancer was easy.

Stay tuned for more San Diego and California pics.