It’s been a busy few weeks. We did the Van Dusen Gardens Festival of Lights, the Stanley Park Bright Lights Santa Train, the Stanley Park Carol Ride, Christmas at Maplewood Farm, and the Christmas crib service at St John’s Shaughnessy. Whew.

Today, on Boxing Day, we decided we’d go snow-shoeing. After all, Vancouver was socked in with fog and due to an amazing weather effect called a temperature inversion, it was actually warmer (and sunny!) on the mountains than down in the city.

So, we headed to Mt Seymour for snow-shoeing. We took along a newly-acquired sled in order to pull Quinlan along, but both boys ended up using it (off and on).

None of us had ever been snow-shoeing before, but that didn’t matter. It was pretty easy to pick up.

Mt Seymour had snow-shoes that fit Aidan, and as you can see, he did walk a good portion of the 2.5 km loop we did. Quinlan had a great time in (and rolling out of) the sled!

The weather was absolutely perfect and although the snow was hard-packed and a bit slushy, we had a blast. I expected the terrain to be a bit … flatter … but it was just like a typical hike in the Coastal Mountains, up and down moderately steep trails only in the snow. It sure was a workout, and we’re definitely going to do it again soon!

We took some “Christmas”-y pictures this afternoon in front of our fireplace. Given that this year is (like you don’t know) the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, we thought we’d all get our Olympic kit on.

However, between the mindful 4 yr old and the wriggly 1 yr old and the poor lighting (I gotta get some Alien Bees!) we didn’t get a lot of good pics. Some of the cuter ones, though are below:

A few Greater Vancouver parents were chatting on Twitter about how several of us hadn’t met in real life. So, we’re about to rectify that! Introducing…

Greater Vancouver Twitter Parents Meetup I
Where: Vancouver Aquarium
When: Saturday, November 7th, 10 am

Bring your kids! Bring your significant other! Bring a snack! Everyone’s welcome. If you’re planning on coming, please leave a comment below, and retweet this post on Twitter so we can have lots of people meeting!

You can also RSVP to the event on Vancouver Tweetup.

There’s a Twitter list put together for people attending:

Hallowe’en this year was a smashing success.

When Gwen’s sister Mary was here around Thanksgiving, we dressed the boys up in their costumes and took some pics down in Stanley Park:

Yesterday, we carved up the pumpkins we got from the pumpkin patch, stuffed the kids into their costumes, and went down the 3 blocks to the False Creek Co-op to Trick-or-Treat. Now, it must be said that I feel a bit guilty about this, but the atmosphere there is a million times better than around our place. In fact, we don’t think we got any kids last night at all. It’s hard to tell, because we weren’t home for quite a while, but we did leave a bowl of candy outside our door and it didn’t look disturbed at all. It didn’t seem like anyone else in our complex was handing out candy, and I’m pretty sure everyone else who has kids took them somewhere else. Contrast this with the False Creek Co-op where there are literally hundreds of kids, lots of costumed adults, and lots of in-the-spirit people handing out treats. I took some video that I’ll try to put together a bit later.

After trick-or-treating down there, we came back and took some pics of the pumpkins and the boys: