Accomplished...

Last weekend was the big day, the day Tricia had been working towards for the last 4 months.

We headed over to Victoria on Saturday morning and boarded one of the busiest ferries I've ever seen; being Thanksgiving weekend the ships were packed.

Once we arrived in Victoria we stopped by one of our favourite coffee shops, Pure Vanilla, in Oak Bay. After our little snack we checked into our
hotel which was not willing to provide a late enough check-out, but we checked-in anyways, choosing to "deal with it later".

Since our check-in was done we headed for the registration of why we were in Victoria in the first place, the Victoria Marathon, Tricia's first full marathon.

After the registration we took advantage of Victoria and went shopping in their downtown.

Before dinner we took a quick trip of most of the marathon's route so Tricia would have some mental comfort with her enormous task of the next morning.

To cap off the evening we headed over to The Tapas Bar with the whole family and some other friends that came over for the race. The company was great, however we weren't as big fans of the food, which was satisfactory but didn't blow us away.

After a good night sleep, and early morning, and a healthy, pre-run breakfast Tricia was off and running. She managed to complete her first marathon in very good time and in very good shape.

A quick lunch at Med Grill capped off our Victoria experience and then it was off to the ferries for our trip home.

Listed

It's been a little while since I've updated the blog as we've been so incredibly busy trying to complete the renovation of our condo (pictures at dwellhere dot blogspot dot com). Well, it's done, and as such it's now just been listed with our realtors.

I guess it's now time for us to get back to all those little things we neglected over the last few months.

Renovating...

Time continues to pass and I've been so busy I haven't even been able to update the ever compelling online record of my life, but here's a quick one.

So as the title suggests, we are indeed renovating our apartment. Neither my wife nor I have ever undertaken anything like this so its quite the challenge. Every change or task as to be researched, decided, and attempted before finally being completed.

Thankfully there's plenty of great resources on the web. One of the best sites I've come across helping guide our strategy and things to think through has been on BestHouseFlip.com and their housing blog has been great to read as well. In addition to that a few experienced friends and my trusty ol' pal Google have helped us accomplish things we never would have dreamed of doing.

Wrapped Up...

May 19th brought a little bundle all wrapped up into the world. Aiden made my sister and brother-in-law parents for the first-time, Trish & I an aunt & uncle, and my parents into first-time grandparents.

He's now about 7 weeks old and growing like a weed, a cute weed, and his neck is getting very strong and the smiles are just starting to come.

Wonderful little miracles.

Quick Update

It's been nearly two months since I've updated the official blog about 'my life' and it's been a bit busy.

Trish & I have been keeping our eyes open for some real estate options, trying to figure out where we should be and what we should be doing. We were looking at houses in South Surrey for a while, with an eye for small renovations, but weren't able to find appropriate value. After exhausting that, at the very end of April we decided that a condo might be more appropriate for us, so we found great realtors, Jim & Leslie, and started looking.

On Sunday we contacted the realtor, Tuesday we looked at a couple places & made an offer on one, by Wednesday we had an accepted offer with subjects, and by the following Friday subjects had been removed. Barely two weeks later we closed on our little abode.

Since then we've wrapped up our life at C-side and moved out to White Rock. The place is several years old and needs some serious updating. We currently finalizing our plans and doing some further pre-reno research, although we've already acquired hardwood flooring & granite countertops.

One of the unfortunate sidenotes of our little adjustment is that I have had to give up fish-keeping (or for those of you that know me better than that, 'water & rock keeping'). I wasn't able to sell the entire fish tank as a package so I've been shipping & delivering various components across the country; Vancouver, White Rock, Fort St. John, Regina, & more.

The most exciting happening of the last month has most surely been the birth of my first nephew, Aiden Daniel. He's about 2.5 weeks old now and bringing a lot of joy to the entire family.

Stabilo...

So I made a little post about Stabilo the other day and made reference to their new CD coming out. Well... it's out and it's great! Of course I am a fan of Stabilo and have been for some time, and although my judgement may be slightly clouded by the fact that I am friends with some of the members, I do believe that this could be their breakthrough album.

I picked up the CD from Future Shop on Tuesday. The CD is only $9.99 in store or on-line and there's free shipping!

Also... the boys will be a part of the World Ski & Snowboard Festival's free Outdoor Concert Series in Whistler on, according to the website "Tuesday, April 17" so I'm not certain if they're referring to Monday, April 17 or Tuesday, April 18? I'm not sure of the time, but I would assume it's after 3pm.



After further research it appears that they are indeed playing on MONDAY, APRIL 17 in Whistler and that they will have a follow-up show in Vancouver on Tuesday, April 18.

Whistler

06.03 - Whistler - Epic Spring Day
Originally uploaded by sacrifice333.

We spent a relaxed weekend up in Whistler with two couple friends of ours. The six of us met at our condo around 3:30pm and got out of the city before the Friday evening rush.

It's tough to top Whistler most days, it's even harder to beat it when the top of the mountain has over 20cm in the past 24 hours and then the skies give way to glorious sunshine.

You can't time a good day at most mountains, but when you've got one, you have to try to take advantage of it. Trish & I made sure we were on the lifts at the opening and rode straight until 1pm. At that point the top of the mountain was shrouded in a few clouds and the good snow was getting tracked out so we headed down the mountain.

Since we were in Whistler for the entire weekend with some friends we decided to head back to the condo to rid ourselves of our gear before heading back to Monk's Grill for a little apres lunch of nachos. We enjoyed some great people watching from the patio.

After our apres we enjoyed the condo's hot tub, went for a walk, dozed, and read magazines in our eager anticipation of Jeff's famous sangria.

We woke up on Sunday to complete cloud cover and massive snowflakes. Amazing how quickly the weather can change at this time of year. Fortunately, by the time we checked out and headed home the temperature had warmed up enough that the roads were completely fine, especially with the Sea to Sky highway improvements that have already been done in anticipation of the Vancouver/Whistler 2010 Olympics.

Since the journey home was so easy we decided to stop at The Village at Park Royal and more specifically our favourite coffee shop, Caffe Artigiano where I was able to enjoy my favourite drink, a grande, extra-sweet mocha.

mmmmm....