Gwen on , 19 Oct 2008 09:22 am

On Monday we had our friends over for Thanksgiving.  I know it seems a little silly for some one a couple of weeks from her due date to host Thanksgiving.  That being said, I love dinner parties.  Having the dinner at our house means that we can have a good time with our friends and still get the boy to bed close to his bedtime.  He went to bed a little later than normal but he had a long nap in the afternoon.

We decided to have it buffet style with as many disposable parts as possible to make the clean up easier.  There was still quite a bit that need to go in the dishwasher, but without the plates and roaster it made clean up a lot easier.

What does this have to do with a baby pool do you ask?  Well, I had been joking about a baby pool with Tammy for a little while.  She is the only one convinced that this baby is a girl.  So we decided to start a pool.  Three things were needed, the date of the birth, the gender of the child, and the weight.  The one that gets closest on all three wins a bottle of wine and we get some guilt free babysitting.  If we have the baby before my mom comes one of these lovely people will be taking care of Aidan while we are at the hospital.

So to keep everybody honest we are putting their predictions on the blogs.  We will announce the winner when we announce the birth.  If you would like to get in on the action (well with a hearty congratulations instead of the wine) put your guesses in the comments.  You need to guess the date the baby will be born, the baby’s weight and whether it is a boy or a girl. The information everyone guessing had was this:  My due date is the 30th October.  Aidan was about 10 days early.  The ultrasound technician didn’t actually say boy, but (after an hour of trying to get all the measurements that ususally take 15 minutes) she said things get in the way so I would say 80% and looked at Aidan. ( She wasn’t supposed to say anything because I was only 19 weeks 5 days instead of 20 weeks.)  In the latest ultrasound there was no room to see.  According to the last ultrasound the baby is short and has a solid body and a very big head.  Care to guess?

Here are the friends guesses:

Tammy: 25 October, Girl, 9 lbs

Carla: 27 October, Girl, 8lbs 5 oz

Chris: 24 October, Boy, 8 lbs

Tomer: 23 October 8lbs 1 oz

Ali: 26 October, Boy, 8 lbs 14 oz

Noushin: 28 October, 8 lbs 6 oz

Anthony refuses to guess.  I just want it to be soon.  Good luck!

Anthony on , , , 10 Oct 2007 10:47 pm

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.

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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:

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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:

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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!

Anthony on , , , , , , 29 Oct 2006 09:55 pm

On Friday, Paula and Jimmy came down from Fredericton. Oh, and their two cats. For those keeping count, that’s 5 cats, 1 dog, 2 permanent residents, 3 West Coast Visitors, and 2 currently-living-in-NB’ers. The people outnumbered the animals by 1.

Anyway, they came down on Friday, and it was our (the West Coasters) first time meeting Jimmy. He seemed nice! Paula seemed happy, so all was good. I didn’t get a lot of photos of either of them, but here’s one at dinner on Friday:

Paula and Jimmy

St. Pat's Church, HalifaxSaturday was the my cousin Suzanne’s (nee Zinn) wedding. The wedding was held at St. Pat’s. St. Pat’s is a beautiful Catholic Church, and one that the Zinns and Forwoods have been going to for quite some time. It was built between 1883 and 1885. You can find out more about it here.
The ceremony was nice, and the atmosphere was great. Unfortunately the church is pretty dim inside, so I didn’t get any good shots, but a few of the ones that we did get are below.

Frank, Suzanne, and Pat walk up the aisle

Aidan and Daddy all dressed up!

The newlyweds leave the church

After the wedding was a reception held at the barracks of the Halifax Citadel. Not the hotel, silly, the fortress. I didn’t know that the National Historic Site was open for wedding receptions, but guess what! It is. Anyway, the reception was spread through the top floor, with several different rooms having different foods and mingling areas. We stayed pretty much in the main mingling area, since it was a little more baby safe. Unfortunately that meant we missed much of the food, but we made up for it by stopping at that Paragon of Fine Food (yes, Wendy’s). It was at the reception that I managed to get a few more pictures of my sister! There were a few toddlers there, and one much younger baby. Aidan’s newest cousin Petranella (Anthony’s cousin Andreana’s 3 month old) was there, as was Sawyer (the “oldest” offspring of the cousins) and a few other young kids. There was one just about Aidan’s age (name now forgotten) with whom he hit it off, following her around a bit, and during the dance, dancing up a storm!

Katherine, Paula, Aidan, Kathy, and Maureen

Anyway, it was another one of these times where we’re reminded how much the boy takes from us. We actually left — the boy awake — around 9ish, well before my parents. The boy stayed awake for the ride back to my parents’ (via Wendy’s of course), and luckily, went to bed pretty normally.

Sunday was a bit of a blur. Oh wait, I remember. Thanksgiving dinner. Gwen got things going with the dinner while Dad and I took Paula’s laptop apart. It is a Toshiba, and it would overheat and shut itself down when it got too hot. Coincidentally, Mom’s laptop had the same problem. In fact, they were both Toshibas, and apparently it’s a known problem. So, with the help of some instuctions from the web, we took Paula’s laptop apart. The problem is that the air intake is on the bottom of the laptop, and it sucks up lots of cat/dog/person hair and dust. It then blows this gunk over some cooling fins, but the fins do not allow the gunk through, and it accumulates on the fins. This reduces the effectiveness of the cooler, and then the system overheats. Anyhow, to clean the cooling fins, you have to completely disassemble the laptop … right down to removing the system board from the case. So, with the instuctions from the web, that’s what we did. It took much longer than expected, something around three or four hours. But, when we put it back together, it all worked, and as far as I know, it has solved the problem. After we got done with Paula’s we tackled Mom’s. It took a little less time, but essentially by the time we were done with Mom’s (also a success) it was dinner time.

As usual, Thanksgiving dinner was great. Gwen’s mother, grand-mother, and sister were up to join us too. I don’t think we got any pictures of the event, though.

Next, week 2…