November

The month of November didn't start out too well.

Mike and I were both quite sick, first Mike and then myself. The week I was sick Mike was at a bachelor party for a friend of ours in Montreal. I was home with the doggies. We both think that we must have had H1N1 given our symptoms. We both received tamiflu when we were seen at the clinic as well. That is definitely the sickest I've been in years! I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

In the middle of the month, we went to a friend's wedding. It was held at the Point Grey Yaught Club in Vancouver and there was a very nice view of the ocean and the marina from the room. The food and drinks were very nice as well.















We also went to a friend's birthday party. They had this homemade cake that was pretty amazing with 6 layers and yummy food to eat. There were quite a few people there from the East Coast who all knew each other so it was nice to chat with them. NB, NS and Nfld were all covered.
Also this month, Kim came to visit us with Daxton. I went to meet her a the Canada Line when they arrived at the airport.

I'd taken a few days off to hang out with her while she was here with him.

He is a very sweet little baby and this was the first time Mike got to meet him. However, it really opened my eyes to what you can do when you have a small baby like that.

You can only leave him for about an hour at the most and they will cry for you and can't be comforted by anyone else. We didn't have his car seat and typical Vancouver weather it rained almost every day so we had to cozy up inside for most of Kim's trip so I felt kind of bad that it wasn't very exciting for her. She seemed fine with it though and it was very nice to see them both. We did manage to take them out for lunch/dinner a few times and we took the ferry across to Granville Island and we watched some movies.

Kim was also hesitant to take him into public too much because of H1N1. He is too young to have the shot and people are prone to try and touch small babies.
Kim looks amazing for just having a baby (only 2 months ago). I can't just can't get over how tiny she is. I hope I'm as lucky as her when I have kids. She is doing great and is a really good Mom. I always thought she would be.

It has been raining like crazy here! It gets me a little down because it is dark when I get up, dark when I leave work and bleak and dreary most of the day. But it has been very mild so that is nice. I've been preparing for Christmas. I'm nearly done all my shopping and now I need to start boxing things up and getting them in the mail. My birthday is coming up on Wednesday. To be honest, I am not looking forward to this one. 29! uch, I still fell like I'm 24. Mike and I went out for a nice dinner yesterday evening and I think that will be it. Mom and Dad sent me a very nice package. Thank you! I am going to be good and save it for Wednesday. I also got some nice cards, so thanks everyone for those too. For my birthday, Mike got me a kindle. It is an electronic book that is made by Amazon. You can download pretty much any book and read it. I absolutely love it! I am a big reader, I read every night and this will save a few trees and eventually save us a few dollars as the books are cheaper.

To finish, I'd like to send out birthday wishes to Grampie and Emily. Happy Birthday! Hope you have a lovely day. I'm lucky enough to share a birthday Grampie.

Halloween

We had a pretty fun Halloween this year.

Tina was still here for the weekend. At work I dressed up. Quite a few people do.

I am the old hag at the front. People seemed to like my costume, they didn't know who I was.

It really scared Mike! I actually won a bottle of wine for the costume. I had a purse with knitting needles and mints in it and I kept asking people in this awful screechy voice if they wanted a mint "little boy or little girl". I also had a pretty disturbing walk going on.

Here I am back to normal. After work I went to the Costco. I wanted to buy us fireworks for Halloween. Fireworks are huge in Vancouver for Halloween. Everyone sets them off and there are tons of little shops selling them.

I heard that Costco was selling them, so I went over. they had a booth set up and there were all these big boxes. I had had a beer at the work Halloween celebration. (they provided the beer) so the biggest box looked good to me. I approached the booth and said I wanted to buy the big box and the lady asked me if I had a permit.
I contemplated fibbing, then sadly said "no". "Don't worry, we'll get you one right here!" They took my name and address and then created one online with a laptop while I paid at the cash. After paying, an attendant came over with the fireworks and the permit. He told me that they'd filled out the test for me and that I'd done great on it. ha ha!
Now the box was much larger than I thought. They had only displayed the cover of it in the booth. It weighted about 30-40 pounds.
I had to get Mike to come pick me up.


It was very short notice, but I managed to round up a few people to come over. Next year I plan on having a party and inviting people ahead of time. This was a very last minute idea.

We opened the box and we gathered supplies. Flashlights, headlamps, protective goggles, lighters and a bucket of water.

The guys planted the fireworks and set them off. Callling to eachother in different parts of the park to set them off simutaneously.
















The fireworks were surprisingly good quality and it lasted quite a while. Next year we plan on buying a few of those boxes. It was a fantastic time. We went inside and had a few more drinks.
The next day Tina left to go home. I had a great time with her. It was nice to have another girl around for a while. I watched some scary movies the next day and ate some Halloween candy that was leftover, yum! Scary movies are not as scary during the day :)
Thanks Mom and Dad for the Halloween package! You guys are a bit silly :)

U2

This week Mike's sister Tina was in town for the U2 concert with the Black-eyed Peas as an opening band. Here they are in the pic to the to the left.

She had great tickets in the "red zone" which is a cordoned off standing room section on the floor.

I went with her on the floor and we sold my ticket to one of our friends. The day of the concert, Mike became very ill. He was sick to his stomach from when he woke up until about 2:00. We even thought that he wouldn't make the concert so we started to think of people who might want his ticket. He recovered though possibly he had food poisoning, but he's much better now.
The concert was at BC Place, which is the football stadium. That is a huge venue.

The stage took up almost half of the field. There were these massive almost spider legs coming down from the ceiling.

The stage represented the symbol on their "no line on the horizon" album and gave an amazing light show.





Between the Black-eyed Peas and U2, they truned on the lights so we got a chance to take some pictures and get some refreshments.

U2 got going and below is a pic of how the display piece of their stage was working.

There was also a kind of bridge that rotated around the stage and the band members walked around it as they played. Here is Bono below making the rounds.

It was a fantastic concert. We had a great time and I'd taken the next day off so I got to sleep in after being out late.

Tina and I had a great time this week. Next post will be what we got into at Halloween! It was explosive. :)