Karate Camp

My friend, Kathy, gave me heck because I haven't updated my blog page in a while....so here I am!

The most exciting thing we've done in the last few months would have to be our trip to Vancouver for karate camp. It was attended by all the Canadian clubs as well as some from the US, and we had the big wigs come out from Japan to share their expertise and experience. I would have to say that this was the most intense, physically hardest weekend of my life! It was also extremely exhilarating and tons of fun!

This picture is all the ex-South Africans in the group!

While we were in the area we decided to go to the martial arts supply store, and came out with a decidedly lighter purse! We all got new gi's and Aimee was very excited to get her very first gi!!



While we were there we also took the kids all around Vancouver and showed them all the places we lived in and all the places we used to haunt. It was wonderful to visit memory lane and there were a few moments of sweet nostalgia. Then, the rain started and we remembered why we left for the prairies! Ugh!!
We did a lovely slow drive around Stanley Park, stopped at a few of the lookout points, had lunch (where we had an encounter with a very cute raccoon) and then had a bit of a walk along the Seawall.

We then drove around North Vancouver for a bit, and reminisced about our haunts there. Drove up Mount Seymour but the mist forbade us from that spectacular view.


We visited Warren's cousins at their home in Squamish. The drive out there was awesome, we drove along the West Vancouver coast for a lot of it, until we had to join the Sea to Sky Highway. The drive back was not so good, it was raining, dark and there was a ton of road construction! Needless to say, my stomach was in knots by the time we got back to Burnaby.

We came back via Sicamous. We booked into the hotel there and then drove a bit further to the Enchanted Forest and SkyTrek Adventure Park. I would have to recommend that for the adventurous person. Aimee did the kid's course and had an absolute blast. Warren and Micci did the adult course. It took them about 3 hours and each level got higher and slightly more challenging. Micci was fantastic! She went through the entire course, at times with her heart in her throat, but she still did it.


The next day we headed home. To our nice comfy, familiar beds, where we needed 2 days to recover from our grueling week away!

Last bit of May...

I have a few minutes to update a bit more. I think I was still in May. After the Ancient Egypt field trip, we had a wonderful field trip to the 1881 school house in Edmonton. It was fantastic! The teacher was playing the role of an authentic school marm from those times, and the children (and us "older" scholars) had to respect all the rules that would have applied in those days. If a question was asked, hands had to be raised, and when called upon, the child would have to stand and respectfully say, "M'am, the answer is....". Girls were seated on one side of the room, and boys on the other. They had to all sit with their backs ramrod straight and have their hands on top of the desks at all times. At first the children were a bit intimidated, but after they got into the spirit of it, it was great. What amazed me was how well they responded to the discipline...maybe we could learn something as a society!! 

The children got to write on slates and had to go up to the board for a spelling bee. They also had to answer math questions on their slates. It was great. I had a super time, and so did Micci.

On the 31st, we attended the local rodeo. It was a first for all of us. We picked a nice spot to see from, but it also happened to be a great spot to get sprayed with dust and dirt from the horses! We got to taste the experience!

Warren was having a good laugh at his girls because we were all rooting for the cows, instead of the cowboys....lol

Our favourite part had to be the mutton bustin' ! How absolutely cute! The little ones trying so hard, in vain, to hang on to the sheeps' coats.

A good time was had by all.

Catching up....

I thought it about time that I sat down and updated my very frugal donations to this page.

Well, we have been super busy the last few weeks and there have been so many things going on that I am going to try and put them in order and I am doing this by consulting my trusty calendar.

I think I will do this by the month so I will start with May.

Firstly, an anniversary of note. Warren left South Africa 10 years ago on May 9th! Holy cow, I cannot believe that it has been so long, but then it's almost inconceivable that our little girl is 11 years old. It seems like time has just flown by like sparkles of sand in the wind, but in so many other ways all the things we have done seem to have been crammed into those same short years!

Micci had a field trip with an awesome outfit called Educational Adventures. They did a workshop called Ancient Egypt's History Alive. All the instructors were dressed in costume and they did all sorts of amazing things with the kids like make games that were played back in Ancient Egyptian times, as well as build a paper pyramid. I forgot to take my camera so I have no cool pictures to upload. I will see whether Karen has put some up from that day on her website and ask her if I may borrow one to put up here.

I think I am going to leave it here for now. It is 10:15 pm and it is probably over 30 degrees inside here with no breeze. The weather has been extremely muggy today and I think it's about time that I go and hang out in the cool of the basement and read my book.

Eeeek! Now I have to think of something to say!

This is my very first post on my very first blog. The reason for this whole experience is so that I can keep our activities up to date for our facilitator. We lead such an active and full life that I very rarely get the opportunity to write any of our exploits down. Hopefully having to keep this blog active will force me to record all the fun we have and my girls can look back on it some day and enjoy it all over again!

I will be a while uploading pictures as we are in the country and haven't got high speed in our neck of the woods yet, so as you can imagine, getting the pics up is a whole lot of painful!