Reinforcements on their way

Olga is away on business in Malaysia for the next two weeks, having left a couple of days ago. It's a tough journey, flying the "wrong way" through Vancouver to Hong Kong, staying a night there (in a hotel I stayed in 11 years ago), and then going on to Kuala Lumpur and then on to Miri. She's arrived safely, if not entirely sure what day it is. She is 14 hours ahead of us in Airdrie, which puts her seven hours ahead of Lucy in the UK, who is well overdue for the delivery of her first baby. 

Olga posted this photo from her hotel room in Miri..

I was sure I could cope with the kids while Olga was away, but with more thought, and a look at the school calendar for the autumn and winter (no long half term holidays here) we asked Grandma if she had a window in her schedule to come over and help me out and spend time with the kids, so Grandma is flying in to the rescue tomorrow! Hurrah! Lara is beyond excited, and has spent the last few days making plans about what her and Grandma are going to get up to.
Grandma might get to see some exciting weather - we've been having some spectacular thunderstorms recently. They are very localized - there was one two days ago, it rained on our street but 4km away at Dan's nursery the hailstones were the size of golf balls and dented cars in the car park. Here's Lara with one of them:

Today I needed to take the kids and dogs for a walk, Lara chose to ride her bike, which is fine, but Dan's not up to that yet. He's just learning scootering, but to make sure we didn't spend ages waiting for him to catch up, I enlisted Jackson's help to pull Dan along... it worked well until we reached a slight downhill bit, where Dan gained some speed, clipped my heels, came to an immediate stop and tested out his helmet. It worked perfectly, phew:

Later today I took the kids to investigate one of the Calgary cricket clubs. It's not quite Littlewick Green, but it's unlikely I'll find a cricket club as pretty as that again, but the standard of cricket here looked about my level, so perhaps I'll have to make inquiries.. for next summer :-)

One Year Canniversary

August 7th was our 1 year anniversary of arriving in Canada.

Here's a little summary of the story so far:

We covered a lot of miles (OK, kilometres) in the first month, going back and forth to Calgary to register for this, that and the other, and heading in the opposite direction to Kananaskis, Banff and Lake Louise for days out.

We opened our bank account with Scotiabank, and used our line of credit with them to buy a 2010 Dodge Grand Caravan (with a DVD player for the kids, thank god). Yesterday we traded it in for a new Ford F-150 pickup to pull our new 31' travel trailer, treats to ourselves and the kids, and we're looking forward to many a roadtrip camping adventure.

It was a pleasant surprise to us how quickly we bought a house. We had engaged a local realtor before we even left the UK, and on our second day in Canada we started looking at properties. We looked at 14 in a week before putting an offer in on our current house in Airdrie. We used a Scotiabank broker to help us apply for the mortgage and we moved in two weeks after the offer was accepted, 1 day before our 40' container arrived from the UK.

Lara started in Grade 1 a few days later, in French Immersion, and is loving school. Getting a yellow school bus like in the Simpsons excited her too.

Last Winter was cold and snowy, but the novelty didn't wear off, although I'm sure it will in a few winters' time. We skied most weekends at Nakiska, and we've bought passes already for next season, as they had a mad sale where adult season lift passes were $199.

Spring passed in the blink of an eye, I think. There was a good month to six weeks of cloudy, warm days with rain during May and June, but since the start of July it's been hot, with the threat of thunderstorms most afternoons, though they don't always materialize, but when they do, the hail can be spectacular (and expensive if it trashes your car).

We've been "tenting" a couple of times - the word "camping" here has a very different meaning, so we've learnt!

Our neighbours are lovely, and through them we've made some other Canadian friends, and whilst we haven't yet built up the circle of friends we had in the UK, we're certainly not feeling lonely and isolated. We get out to the pub from time to time, albeit separately so one of us looks after the kids while other meets up with friends. We're not within walking distance of a pub here, so we don't have the opportunity for "a swift half" like we used to, but I'm happy to trade that for the skiing and camping. We do still get our fix of British pubs by watching Coronation Street, but it's 2 weeks behind here so I have to be careful not to talk about it when I'm skyping Grandma back in Manchester.

One year has flown, we love it here, we feel we have settled in - the truck and the trailer attest to that - we're in no rush to return to the UK, and whilst we miss nights out down the pub with friends, we keep up with gossip on facebook and chat regularly with family on Skype.
What's not to like, eh?

Lakeside Camping weekend(s)

Last Friday we packed the car to the roof and beyond (filling a new roof bag) and set off in the pouring rain towards Aspen Beach Provincial Park, on the shore of Gull Lake, 90 minutes drive north of Airdrie. The forecast for the Gull Lake area was better than for Airdrie, and it did dry up as we headed north, and by the time we arrived at our pitch at 8pm it was a nice evening.  Before we'd unpacked the tent our neighbour came over to say hello, it turned out she works in Lara's year at her school as a French language teaching assistant. It's a small world! She kindly offered to let us put anything we needed in their RV fridge, and charge any phones or tablets, as our pitch had no electrical supply.
We put the tent up without any drama, within 30 minutes, but it took quite some time to unpack all our things and set up inside, then cook some supper, and get the kids ready for bed, so it was past 11 o'clock before they were in their sleeping bags. It had only just gone dark too, so it was unlikely they would have gone to sleep much earlier anyway.
No matter how comfortable our new airbeds were, we were never going to get much of a lie-in, and soon after 7am Dan woke up, which is the alarm call for everyone. It might have been early, but it was a lovely, calm, sunny morning, and so getting up wasn't such a hardship. I took the dogs for a walk down to the lake, only a 7 or 8 minute walk, and found the other important part of the campsite - the playground. It was right on the lake shore, and whilst the water is cold at the moment, it's a shallow lake and we're assured it will warm up through the summer. Back at the tent we had a breakfast of fried and boiled eggs with salami and croissants, then set off down to explore the lake shore with the kids and dogs. We even had a little stab at fishing, though we certainly weren't expecting to catch anything. We headed back to the tent for lunch, with the intention of inflating our own 10-foot boat, and going out on the lake for a while, with me rowing, expecting the novelty to wear off for the kids within 30 minutes. We bought new PFDs (personal floatation devices - mustn't call them lifejackets!) for everyone specially for the weekend.
Chantelle, our neighbour, and her husband Serge approached us as we prepared lunch and asked if we would like to go with them on their boat for a tour of the lake that afternoon. Their boat was apparently plenty big enough to accommodate all of us, and we should meet them at the boat launch at 1pm...
While we had lunch, Lara bit down on a piece of bread and her second lower front tooth came out! After a brief discussion about whether the tooth fairy would find her here, when she's not at home, we decided we'd try it, and before she went to bed that evening she put her tooth under her pillow. That clever tooth fairy did find her, she broke into the tent, didn't disturb the dogs, broke into Lara's little personal tent, and swapped her tooth for $5.
After lunch we walked to the boat launch, it turned out Serge's boat was a 9-seat motorboat with a 275hp engine, capable of 40mph, which is fast for a small boat. We went out on the lake for 2 hours, Dan wasn't sure about it for the first 10 minutes, but then relaxed enough to fall asleep, and he only woke 10 minutes before we returned to the launch. In the meantime Serge revved the boat up to 30mph, and Lara sat up at the pointy end with Chantelle, and couldn't take the smile off her face as she was buffeted by wind and spray.

We returned to camp at 3pm and started to think about what to do for tea - everything takes longer when you're camping.  All the campsites here have firepits with a grill to cook on, so we bought some firewood from the campground office, and Lara and I set about making some kindling, and Olga showed Lara and Dan how to make the fire and light it.

While the fire got going, Lara and I took the dogs for a walk through the woods. Mishka caught site of something that he was interested in chasing, and this alerted Jackson. Lara was holding his leash, and he set off at a gallop to see what Mishka was interested in. We've drilled it into Lara how she must try to hold onto his leash all the time, when we first let her walk with him she would panic if he pulled and would let go of the leash. To her great credit this time she didn't let go, but he pulled her really hard, and she fell full-length on the stony path, ripping her trousers and giving her a nasty graze on her knee. She didn't let go of the leash, for which I was very proud of her, it would have been a nightmare trying to get him back if he chased a squirrel into the woods. She picked herself up, and with a stiffest of upper-lips she didn't cry, and we headed back to the tent. Olga cut the bottom half of her trousers off to give easy access to clean her graze, and this made us realise I'd not packed  a first aid kit, but I found one in the emergency kit we keep in the car for if we're ever stranded in winter.
Tea was burgers cooked on the grill and garlic bread cooked in foil on the fire, with s'mores for dessert - these are marshmallow and chocolate sandwiched between cracker-type cookies, cooked over the fire. Lara had a treat of roasted marshmallows for supper once Dan had gone to bed; he took some persuading to settle down, but zipping him properly into his little sleeping bag, inside his own little tent which was covered with a blackout curtain, and putting some lullabys on his tablet did the trick by 9.30pm. Ahh, modern family camping!
Lara had her marshmallows and was happy to go to bed at 10pm, with it still very light outside, and with the large group of campers in the field 50 metres away making a lot of noise, it reflected how tired she was that she fell asleep without any great problem, watching her new Lego movie on her tablet.
This gave Olga and I an hour sitting by the fire, enjoying a few glasses of wine, until it went properly dark and we retired for the night.
Sunday was Father's Day, so I was entitled to a lie-in, and it was 8am before we got up. The weather forecast wasn't great for Sunday, but luckily it turned out to be wrong, and on stepping out of the tent we were greeted by clear blue skies.
After a quick breakfast of eggs and croissants again, I was presented with my card and presents from the kids, and Lara took me away for my surprise trip down to the lake for some fishing. This meant her having three casts then heading off to the playground, but I enjoyed my hour of peace and quiet by the lake, not catching anything.
Then it was back to the tent to start the process of packing up. It only took 30 minutes to take the tent down, and it even all went back into its bag, which isn't normal. Packing all our other things up and arranging them in the car took quite a lot longer, whilst having lunch and keeping an eye on the kids, but in the end we set off at 1.45pm, just before our "check-out" time of 2pm.
We had a nice, calm drive back to Airdrie and unpacked half of the stuff straight away, but only half - we're going back to the same campground this coming weekend!

A Lovely Saturday - running, fishing, shopping, playing

We had a very nice day today, so nice that  I have to make time to write a quick blog about it.
This morning Lara's school had organised a fun run in the main park in Airdrie, Lara and I bought t-shirts to enter, and joined a few dozen other families down at the park on a lovely, warm sunny morning. Olga and Danny came along for moral support and to take photographs, though it's possible they will end up in the local newspaper - a journalist snapped them and asked Olga for their details, so we'll see what appears in the paper next week.
Lara started off at a usual 6 year old's pace, and was soon walking, but between us we contrived to complete the 1.75km circuit doing a run-walk-run, and she happily crossed the finish line before me.
After a quick breakfast of melon, granola bars and bananas, provided by the school, I grabbed our fishing rods out of the car and we passed half an hour "fishing" in Airdrie pond, in the middle of this park. It is stocked with rainbow trout by the local council but we were never going to catch one, but that wasn't the point, it was about engaging Lara, and to a lesser extent Dan (who has his own mini rod) in the activity for a short while.
Then it was time for lunch, the kids' current favourite food when we're out and about - grilled cheese sandwiches from Tim Horton's. We had this in the outlet in the local Walmart superstore, so decided to do some shopping while we were there, but that turned into a marathon effort, but everyone got something out of it. The kids got shoes, water pistols, toys, Lara got a new PFD ("Personal Floatation Device, I can't call it a lifejacket!), and we got some food for a BBQ and for a party we're going to tomorrow night at our neighbour's house.
Then it was back home for a bit of downtime, before Olga took them off to the playground, and I built my new weights bench in the garage - I'm trying to tone up a bit before my birthday next month!
Once they were back, we dug out our family inflatable boat to blow up, to check it hasn't sprung any leaks. We didn't use it much in the UK, we only went out on it a couple of times, but we intend to use it a lot more here, hence the new PFD for Lara, and Dan, Olga and I will get new ones this week, before we take the boat with us next weekend on our next camping trip.
With the boat successfully inflated on the driveway, and the kids having bounced around (and out of) it, it was time for the BBQ - at least with a gas grill there's no real setting up to be done, you just uncover it and turn it on, so I did some burgers and chicken and that was enough to keep everyone happy.
The kids have gone to sleep quickly and quietly tonight, and now Olga and I can sit down with a glass or three of wine and chill out a little too.
I just wanted to share what a nice, family day we had! I didn't take many photos, but at least here are some from this morning:

Mother's Day

Today was Mother's Day here, Lara had made Olga a handprint in concrete at school, decorated with "precious jewels". The concrete bit was so it could be kept in the garden as an ornament, which is where this one will go.

After breakfast in bed, we set off to the Elbow Valley, part of the foothills west of Calgary, just over an hour's drive away from Airdrie. I had read on a really helpful website about Highway 66 - it's closed to vehicular traffic until May 15th, so it's a perfect place to ride bikes with the kids.
Once we got into the valley, before the road closure began, we saw people had stopped by the side of the road, and were standing by their cars and pointing, or taking photographs; a sure sign there was something interesting close by. Bears are definitely up and about now, but this was a moose, close enough to the side of the road that Olga thought better of getting out and taking a photo - moose are known to charge people!
Having reached the barrier that closed the road, we parked up and got on the bikes, with Dan on the kiddy-seat with me. We cycled for 1.5km until we reached Beaver Flats campground, which is definitely in bear country, and looked deserted - like the road, it's closed until May 15th. We had brought our bear spray with us, but between Dan and Lara, we were making plenty of noise.

We stopped for a while by the Elbow River so the kids could play, throwing stones into the river was the main pastime, with Lara throwing bigger and bigger rocks, and Dan suggesting that he might grow up left-handed:

Dan was happy on my bike, and Lara was OK so long as she wasn't cycling through snow or on a gravel road, when there were a couple of tantrums, so we'll definitely do something like this more often over the summer.
On the way home, as we were leaving the valley, we passed a group of mule deer, so named because of their donkey-like ears: