Carla and Tomer’s ringette team had a free skate last night for friends and family and invited us to come.

So, we did! It was Aidan’s first time on skates and ice, and he was looking forward to putting on the “skate shoes”. We all borrowed skates from the equipment room and hit the ice.

Gwen knows how to skate and even has taken adult figure skating. I can stand on skates and even glide a bit, but I’ve never really learned. Aidan, as mentioned previously, had never been on skates.

It went really well. Aidan was quite excited and thrilled, although it was a little frustrating for him. The rink did have some of those learn-to-skate pushing-things (I’m sure there’s a name for them, but I don’t know what it is). They helped a bit, but Aidan kept getting his skates forward and rode a bit on his heels.

A little bit later, some one gave him a small plastic hockey stick. This was icing on the cake! He absolutely loved passing the puck back and forth with Mommy, despite the fact that Daddy had to hold him up while he was doing it.

After some 30 or 40 minutes on the ice, we got out of the skates and sat in the stands drinking hot chocolate while some of the team changed up positions and had a chance to try some different things. Well, some of us sat. Aidan spent the time running up and down the bleachers.

It was well after 8 pm when we left, and after 8:30pm by the time we got him to bed. With the excitement, and sugar, I figured were in for a battle royale for bed.

Instead, he was asleep within 15 minutes, perhaps the earliest he’s been asleep all week. And he slept for 12 hours. Go figure.

Oops, missed it.

This past weekend was busy. On Saturday, Gwen had a choir practice, then her hip-hop class (seriously) and after that, we all packed it up and headed to Port Moody for our first geocaching event!

The caching event was the GeocoinFest Multi Event (GC14J5X). The event consisted of a bunch of geocoin collectors getting together and showing off their coins. On top of that, there were two local vendors, Landsharkz and Worldcaching, and just general cachers from around “Metro Vancouver”. It was essentially a meet-and-greet in a small scout hall with a few dozen cachers. There was also the opportunity to “discover” all the coins and a number of travel bugs by writing down all the tracking numbers of everything there, but that seems a bit like cheating to me. We’ll continue to discover only those things that we actually discover at caches.

We met some of the cachers whose names we recognized from various caches, and I have to say that I was surprised that many of them were younger than I expected. Also, a good deal of the cachers seem to be middle-aged women, once again proving that I know nothing.

We bought a number of things from the vendors, including a number of cool geocoins and some other trinkets:

• A small tube (see: buffalo tubes) that will be used as a micro cache somewhere around town.
• A first-to-find prize (a “BC in Blue” keychain) for our first cache hide.
• A neat gecko light that needs to be seen to understand.

Sunday was, of course, Thanksgiving. What I didn’t mention was that Saturday night we spent (well, Gwen spent) making rolls and pies. A few dozen rolls (that turned out better than any Gwen’s done before!), 2 apple pies, and 2 pumpkin pies. I wasn’t a complete bad husband — I peeled, chopped, and prepared the apple pie filling — but Gwen did the lion’s share. On Sunday, the turkey was stuffed and prepared before Gwen went off to church, leaving me to put it in the oven and, um, supervise its cooking.

In the end, I think it turned out pretty well:

We had Carla and Tomer, and The Vet and The Brit over for dinner and after-dinner Wii and euchre. Fun times. Bowling, Smooth Moves, and Brain Academy. Fortunately there’s no video evidence.

Monday was shockingly fine and sunny … so we went caching! We headed down to the south shore of Vancouver (on the north bank of the north arm of the Fraser) and picked up a bunch of caches. We met a group of people at a cache called “Kid Cache”. These people were huddled around a single GPS. A mother, father, a set of grandparents, a toddler Aidan’s age, and an infant — quite a sight and not exactly inconspicuous. It was pretty obvious what they were doing so we offered some assistance. The cache was an easy find (Gwen found it!) and the other caching group joined up with us as we collected a few others in the park. It wasn’t our first experience meeting other cachers while on the hunt, but it was the first time we found other caches as a group. It was fun, and as it turned out, the other cachers were newbies … the Kid Cache was only their 7th find. After 3 DNFs the day before, I think these three finds buoyed their spirits considerably.

On the river bank, there was some drift wood that sure looked like a Sad Goat:

And now, we’ve prepped and placed a cache nearby — our first! — and if it passes the review process, I’ll blog a bit about it.

TTFN!

After the world’s. Slowest. Drive-through. Service. we made it to the drive in last night.

The first movie was “Hairspray” (not bad, but not great)l. It started at 8:30pm and ran for two hours.

And Aidan thought it was great. “Look!” “Movie!” “Dancing!” “Singing!”

For the whole two hours. We cuddled him. We strapped him in his seat. We created a “bed” for him in the trunk with blankets and his pillow. The movie, and trucks, and people were just too distracting.

At 10:30pm, between the shows (the next one was “Rush Hour 3”, more or less forgettable) we tried in earnest to get him to sleep. In the end, Gwen crawled in the back with him, and eventually got him to sleep.

It was after 1pm when we got home (the third show was “Transformers”, but Gwen didn’t really want to see it, and I don’t think I would have stayed awake…) and the boy into his own bed.

And, wouldn’t you know it, for once he cooperated! It wasn’t until 8:45am that he woke up this morning.

Final verdict: not a raging success, but also not a disaster. Certainly better than the last time!

This morning (GC14TA3), then the PNE, then this evening (GC14TA8).

It’s been a good day.