It’s snowing again. April 21st. Vancouver. Snow.

It *must* be Monday.

Today, we joined 59, 176 other people and participated in the annual Vancouver Sun Run. A record size crowd on a record cold day (at 9am, it was 2 C, with a -6 C windchill!). This is Aidan’s third Sun Run and our fourth. Read about last year’s Sun Run.

Here’s a shot from Flickr in the middle of the crowd many blocks back from the start line. We were about another 3 blocks further behind where this photo was taken.

And a shot from the start line, taken from the band stand (also from Flickr). We crossed the start line about 1 hour after the first runners.

Here’s a shot Aidan took using his camera around kilometre 8.

And another from Aidan:

And one of Aidan using his own camera:

On the plus side, I didn’t have to carry Aidan on my shoulders for the last two kilometres. On the minus side, Aidan started asking around kilometre 2 if we were going home. And asked continually until we got to BC Place. And of course, we walked home back across the Cambie Bridge and nearly for the whole length of the bridge, Aidan was crying that he didn’t want to go home. Sometimes, it feels like we can’t win.

We crossed the finish line outside the Plaza of Nations about two hours after we started. That’s a pretty good pace pushing the stroller and with a bathroom break and refreshment break thrown in for good measure.

Completely unrelated but on the walk back across the Cambie Street bridge we got a pretty good look at all the construction happening at the future Athlete’s Village on the old industrial lands on the south side of False Creek. Count the cranes. There are two more out of frame to the right…

Home again, and we rocked out with two hours of Rock Band after two hours of ‘nap’ by The Boy and relaxing by The Parents :)

If someone ever asks you what spring time in Vancouver is like, point them here.

This is 11pm, 18 April 2008.  Note: APRIL.

Current temperature: 0.3 °C.  Snow falling at about 5 cm/hour.  Flurries forecast for the rest of the weekend, including the Sun Run, a 10 km charity ‘run’ involving over 57,000 people on Sunday.

(Most of these were taken with 8 to 13 second exposures, so you can’t see the snow actually falling until the last shot…)

I have only one question.  What the hell?

With child #2 on the way, I’ve started paying attention to blogs about gear again.  However, a stroller starting at 2 grand isn’t really in the cards.  I have to say that if not for the price, they’d be the type of stroller that I could see Gwen’s brother Steve pushing, though.

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As a testimony to how cold and dark this spring has been, or to how little attention we give it, our Christmas Cactus is starting to bloom again.  Maybe a little bit of both.

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According to The Boy, he is 3 years old (finally got it into his head!), Daddy is 34 (thanks Mommy, for getting him to remember that one), and Mommy is 2 1/2.  Mommy doesn’t mind in the least.