Where did the year go?

Over the past few months I kept thinking that I needed to put an update on the blog... however I couldn't find the time! What I noticed however was that I felt that people knew what we were doing anyway because Facebook has become the daily blog!

The only problem with relying on FB to update our friends and family about our life in Canada is that not everyone is on FB (yet) and in FB we tend not to give details about what is happening, it is merely quick snapshots of life on the run!

So, I am in the midst of preparing the Christmas letter with the year in review. One of the features is that life has become as hectic as it ever was in Australia and we are tired! More to come...

Let's hit the road!

After the birthday party was over it was time to clean up and hit the road. The Summer holidays have arrived and we started the road trip to Jasper, Canyon Hot Springs (near Revelstoke) Seattle, Tofino (over 2000km in 5 days!), then back to Edmonton via Panorama while Will and Helen (Anita's Mum) caught the train back to Edmonton from Vancouver. A total of 4300 km.

The map below depicts places we visited (green), places we stayed (blue) and places we ate (cup and cutlery). There are photos linked to many of the placemarkers. These are similar photos to the slide show in the subsequent post.


View Helen's Trip to Canada 2009 in a larger map

Alec's 50th birthday 28 June 2009

We celebrated Alec's 50th birthday with friends AND family on the 28th of June. Alec knew that Helen (Anita's Mum) and Stephen, Fiona, Seb and Nic (BIL/SIL and nephews) would all be here from Australia but he was totally amazed and delighted to have his best friend Duncan Shave over from Australia for the event.

A huge thank you to all our special friends in Canada too for coming and celebrating with us, this fantastic milestone!

Happy Birthday Alec!

Grade 9 Celebration at Vic

Curling

In April 2009 we had a try at curling at the Saville Centre, Edmonton.
They call it a funspiel which means "fun play"

House renovation, the journey so far...

As many of you know, we are renovating the basement and kitchen. It started awhile back and has been happening in spare minutes around work, studies and kids' lives. This three-day weekend we made excellent progress on the kitchen and even had time to share it!
PS: typing errors throughout the slide show are embarrassing but this was a rushed effort!

Ottawa (aah-da-waa)

This week Anita went to Ottawa to present at the Canadian Network of Innovation in Education conference. It was an excellent event, held at the Chateau Laurier in the centre of Ottawa. Even Brian Mulroney was staying... he was in town to (try to) defend his reputation!

Ottawa is a beautiful city with stunning waterways (lakes and canals and rivers) and as it was Spring and the annual tulip festival there was colour everywhere.

Photos tell a better story so I'll add pics!



View of Parliament buildings with the circular parliamentary library behind
Lunch in the Byward market district with Jessica Goertz, Rob Kelly and Erika Smith


Looking down the Rideau Canal towards the Ottawa River

Anita and Jessica Goertz at the Rideau canal, the Chateau Laurier is behind us.

Visit to Hutterite Village

I will post pictures and a story about our visit to a Hutterite village

More photos from Jasper

Sammy at 5th Bridge on the way to Maligne (pron: Mah-leen) Canyon (Sixth bridge is where we had supper on March 31st)
Sam and Anita at the top of a waterfall at Maligne Canyon, we had to slide down to the Canyon, holding on to the fence as we didn't wear cleats and the stairs had become an ice-ramp. We borrowed cleats to get back out of the Canyon and threw them back to our friends in the Canyon so they could get out!!! Thanks Tania and Nic :-)

Nic (he is an Aussie on teacher-exchange with his family from Inverloch) had a go at ice climbing... up the face of a waterfall at Maligne CanyonThis is behind the waterfall in Maligne Canyon, we are standing on the frozen river taking this photo. On the left hand side is rock, on the right hand side is the frozen waterfall. This is the waterfall that Nic is climbing in the photo above! It was was brilliant!!!

This is Sammy heading down the slopes, she makes it look too easy! Almost final run for the holiday, boo hoo... back to reality.

Anita's Birthday

For the second time in my life I am skiing on my birthday. The first time was when I learned to ski while on exchange in Japan, in 1983 (Yes... I turned 17!) Today, somewhat older I went skiing with Sammy at Marmot Basin, Jasper, AB Canada. They say that it has been a terrible season here, ha ha, if this is what they call a terrible season then I don't know why they even open resorts in Australia.

We are missing you both Will and Alec. Sam and I wish you were here enjoying the snow with us. For dinner we went with our Aussie friends Nic and Tania, Genevieve and Alek Ryan ( a family on teacher exchange from Australia) to have a bbq in the bush at Sixth Bridge on the road to Maligne Lake.

Tania makes her very fist SmoreSammy cooking marshmallows The BBQ sausages... they were GOOD!

Sammy on Sixth Bridge
Sam and Genevieve prepare snowballs to pelt Alek (Genevieve's younger brother) with

Nic with Cindy Hamilton(Cindy is the Ryan's neighbour in StAlbert and is also skiing with them)

Earth Hour 2009

Tonight we marked Earth Hour by cooking on the BBQ and having a fireside picnic in the backyard. It was a lot of fun. By 10:00pm we decided to come indoors as we were getting a bit chilly in the snow!

Video of the final cheer comp for 2009

Will is in the stunt group front left, Sam is in the stunt group back right. You will see that Sam's group does not do all stunts. This is because she is a "alternate" and if 75% of the team does a stunt then it is scored as 100%. If they attempt it, but fail it is marked down. The scoring is very technical!

Sam holds the "V" in the cheer part of the routine, she then moves to the front row, central, then over to the right and then up top for the last part of the routine. Will is at the back left in the stunt routine and then lifting the girl on the top on the left hand side of the screen.

The screaming throughout the performance is the parents!

Final Cheerleading Competition!

Sam and co, waiting to hear the result

The Prize!

The kids competed in their final cheerleading competition last weekend. It was a two-day event, with each team performing twice and the result being the total from both days. Friday's performance was great but when we arrived on Saturday morning we found out that the two top teams were even on score and the Saturday performance would need to be perfect to beat the arch rival school. These two teams have been neck and neck all season, which meant that every time they took the floor it could go either way. A very healthy rivalry, mixed with respect, emerged. The wonderful thing was that when Vic won, the other team from D.S. McKenzie came over and hugged them all. Winners!

Lazy Blogger!

I am now officially a lazy blogger. These days I think about things to blog but don't get on to them! I'll add some pictures and write about them... OKAY!

Anita attended the edubloggers awards ceremony in Second Life. Here is her Avatar (Annilou Szumski) sitting front and centre in this picture. Sam helped Anita find a nice virtual outfit to wear. The TechnOT blog came second in its category.

Alec has been working on his PhD coursework and is over half way there! the best bit is that Univariate and Multivariate Statistics are both almost complete, done and dusted!

Michael Iwama, a very popular and likeable OT came to visit the University of Alberta. Michael created the Kawa model with Japanese OTs and spoke to us about its applicability across a range of cultures and areas of OT practice.

Every now and then it would snow... and then snow and then be cold (-38) and then be warm (+8) and then snow some more...The kids performed in several cheerleading competitions. In this one here they came first! It was help at West edmonton Mall on the covered Ice Rink!

Anita co-authored two chapters of a fieldwork book with her Deakin University colleagues. Writing a chapter was really great fun and Anita really hopes to do more of that!!! this is the model she developed with Helen Larkin.

Pictures of holiday in Kimberley BC