They must have been Good

When they're not around their mum and dad our kids must be pretty good, just to get their average up in the fat guys eyes. Here are the kids with the bounty from this silly season.They were up at 7am and storming into the living room. The biggest hits were the piano keyboard, MP3 players for the girls and an RC jeep for Cam. My personal favourite is Cam's model rocket kit (did I say Cam's?). You can't buy these things in Aus so when I saw it at ToysRUs in the US I just had to buy it for him/me :-).It comes with 2 motors, good for one shot each, and we got a pack of 3 more, so come some calm weather and blue skies and we'll shoot this puppy into orbit! It has a sensor pod in the nose that tracks the maximum speed and shows it on an LCD display after you recover it, how fricken awesome is that? Yeah okay, you got me, I'm more excited that the little guy... who says christmas is just for kids? Hope yours was a good one and your kids, if you have em, were good.

Andy, out.

Winter-een-mas?

Our chances of a white Christmas are officially zero. Check out the view from the back step, a beautiful December 24th day, about 10 degrees. I hope the fat guy doesn't suffer from heat stroke in all his winter gear, should trade em in for thongs and boardies.We've been lucky enough to be invited to several Christmas parties so far and have had a great time. Last Friday saw us staggering home at nearly 2am after a decent effort at Alex and Kents. Safe to say that yesterday was pretty quiet, just the thumping in my head for background noise. Below are Clive and Sarah, ex-pats from the UK, and some party crasher.
Tomorrow we're off to Garry and Laura's for Christmas dinner which should be awesome, those guys know how to make us feel at home. Then on Wednesday we're invited to Ross and Joan's in Orangeville for a few wobbly-pops, nice! My plan for the rest of Christmas Eve pretty much involves the couch, remote and NFL football. Merry Christmas everyone and Go Patriots!

Andy, out.

Seasons Greets Peeps

Thanks to Anth for this one, nice -

From me ("the wishor") to you ("the wishee") regarding the wish(es) ("the wish(es)")

Please accept without obligation, implied or implicit, the wishors best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, politically correct, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practised within the most
enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions of any or either.

Further, the wishor wishes the wishee(s) a financially successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2007, but with due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures or sects, and having regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religiousfaith, choice of computer platform or sexual preference of the wishee(s).

By accepting this greeting you are bound by these terms that:-

1. This greeting is subject to further clarification or withdrawal
2. This greeting is freely transferable provided that no alteration will be made to the original greeting and that the proprietary rights of the wishor are acknowledged.
3. This greeting implies no promise by the wishor to actually implement any of the wishes.
4. This greeting may not be enforceable in certain jurisdictions and/or the restrictions herein may not be binding upon certain wishees in certain jurisdictions and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wishor.
5. This greeting is warranted to perform as reasonably may be expected within the usual application of good tidings, for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first.
   

The wishor warrants this greeting only for the limited replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wishor.

Any references in this greeting to "the Lord", "Father Christmas", "Our Saviour", "Rudolph the red nosed reindeer" or any other festive figures, whether actual or fictitious, dead or alive, shall not imply any endorsement by or from them in respect of this greeting, and all proprietary rights in any referenced third party names and images are hereby acknowledged.

This greeting is made under Australian Law.

In short, I hope your Christmas is all you wish it to be.

You Don't Know Jack

This is hilarious, enjoy! And check out the site at - You Don't Know Jack

Cruising into Christmas

Christmas in Canada is not like the summer season back home where you expect people to take long holidays. It's winter and most of us are working through, pretty typical for up here. Saving the leave days for warmer weather. No snow since the last 2mm and the days have been pretty warm, around 5-6 degrees. But bugger the weather, we all went skating last weekend down at the HarbourFront Centre. It's right on the lake in front of the Toronto downtown skyline. It's $12 to park but free to skate on the huge refridgerated rink. We were all a little shakey first up but got into it again quickly after a 6 month break, just like riding a bike I guess. Cam complained at first and then found his hockey legs and was the last to get off the ice, 'I love skating Dad, I wanna do it every day'.Work is progressing nicely, despite a frustrating week, and it looks as though our client will have enough work to keep us busy for the next six months. In any case we're definitely not home in Feb, looking more like June, just in time for winter :-). We'll stay as long as they'll have us, but if we get extended more than June I'd expect us to come home for a visit at least. I'm really missing the cricket, as you've likely seen from my emails. I didn't need my mate Mike telling me that he was about to dive into his outdoor spa, turn on the TV for the 3rd Test and start on the first of many of Carltons finest the other day... bloody hell mate you know how to turn a bloke green.

Xmas lights are up outside (a bit pissy really but I'm not buying heaps of 110v stuff that wont work back home) and our tree is looking a treat, just waiting for the fat bloke to lob. Best to all of you, our great family and friends, missing you and our great country terribly, put a lamb chop on the barbie and a think of us.

Andy, out.

The Black Parade

Hey everyone, this one took a while to get finished. We all think it's a pretty good glimpse at our recent brutal/awesome roadtrip through New England and Atlantic Canada, hope you like it. Watch out for the moose!There's a higher quality version if you're ultra keen, check the video links below on the right (scroll down a little). Love that track, 'Welcome to the Black Parade' by My Chemical Romance.

Andy, out.

Giving Thanks in Pennsylvania

We're back from four fantastic days with our great friends the Ballesty's in Wattsburg, PA. We arrived at Joyce and Dan's around 9pm Wednesday evening after a fairly decent 3hr commute down the QEW (Queen Liz ExpressWay), over the border into the states (just having missed the hockey crowd) and down I-90 through New York State to Wattsburg in rural Pennsylvania, about 20 miles south of lake Erie. Joyce out-did herself with a massive ThanksGiving feast on Thursday and I lapsed into a food-coma in the later afternoon with roast turkey, baked yams and pumpkin pie oozing out my ears. Magic stuff! The kids immediately settled into their familar routine. Frankly it's pretty amazing, I don't think I heard a single harsh word, let alone any fighting, for the whole time we were there. Joyce and Dan, always amazing hosts, kept the food, drink and fun coming and we'll have a hard time delivering pay-back.
From left, Liam, Erin, Cam, Jazz, Abbie, Elise and DeclanDan and I spent Thursday working up a ThanksGiving appetite/thirst by hanging around 50-60 metres of white lights along the roof line to put Casa del Ballesty into Xmas mode. After the kids hit the hay Dan and I moved into the basement and somehow thought it was a good idea to put together a HO scale train set that Dan had been gradually constructing. Our long-suffering wives had to put up with the noises of circular saws, drilling and hammering until about 2:30am when, exhausted and knees completely shot from scrambling around on all-fours, we ran a loco around the whole circuit. I agree with the kids assessment the following morning, as both Dan and I nursed our aching kness and pounding heads, that the track was 'awesome!'. Later that day, while Jo and Joyce headed off to Erie for some Black Friday shopping, we took the kids down to the local school for a bit of soccer, roller blading and general mucking about. Sadly for poor Erin we weren't long there when she had a nasty fall on her skates and had to be whisked off to hospital where Xrays confirmed a broken arm!The following day saw the arrival of Dan's brother Dave and his wife Barb, who like Dan and Joyce are great people, and we had a nice walk through the parks of Penn State university and threw a frisbee and gridiron ball around. Dave showed some form with the boot being an ex-Navy diver and rugby player while Dan tried to drill passes into the small of my back, through my chest, he has a decent arm. We could have stayed a month but we had to push off this morning and had a very quick trip back (why is it that coming home is always quicker?).After a quick 20 minute stop at home we changed and drove off again to help celebrate Aditti's 2nd irthday. Aditti is the ultra-cute daughter of our teams PM and our good friend, Srini, you can see some more photos on Flickr.

Andy, out.

Car Park Blues

Man, it's been a while since our last post but after such a recent flurry of activity things have died down a little. We've had a couple of lazy weekends, mostly involving partying with Garry and Laura. Last Saturday Ross and Joan, good friends of G&L, invited us to go to the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in downtown TO. We left at around 13:00 and thought it would take 45 minutes to get to Exhibition Place, just west of downtown, but we were wrong. Toronto has exploded over the last 10 years, the immigration targets just keep going up and people from all over the world are flocking to Toronto looking for better opportunities for themselves and their families.

This makes TO a great cosmopolitian city but the rapid growth has not been met with rapid upgrades to infrastructure. The roads just suck. The 401 Expressway is the second most heavily used road in North America, the 1st is in LA. If you want to see 16 lanes of traffic at a complete stand still just come to TO at peak hour. The same can often be said of the Gardiner Expressway, the main freeway into downtown, but on Saturday it was pretty clear. Our problems started as soon as we took our exit and turned onto Lakeshore Dr, about 1.5k's from Exhibition Place where the Fair is held. It took 90 minutues from there to make it to the car park where only one parking attendent was collecting $10 for the privilege. No traffic management at all, tiny little single lane streets, not a cop in sight to help with the snarls. After leaving home at 13:00 we walked into the fair at around 15:30, I was steaming by the time we got into the Fair.

The fair itself is a mini version of the Royal Melbourne Show held completely indoors. The kids enjoyed the horses, cows, sheep, chickens etc but the rest of the show was mostly produce and gadget stalls goading you to buy things which after an entry cost of $50 further ticked me off. Anyway we had a nice afternoon with Ross, Joan and their kids. Cam and Morgan, their youngest and real cutie at 2yo, got along like a house on fire and were all over each other. Ross is a chopper pilot, usually off in Africa hammering around in the bush for mining companies etc. Joan is a great girl, she and Laura sure know how to party and she's really made Jo feel like one of the girls. We know that when Garry and Laura say that Ross and Joan are coming over that we're in for a good time. I must remember to get some photos of them the next time we're together, we took our cameras to the Fair but I clean forgot them after the parking debarcle so I don't have any new pictures to post.

Anyway that's us up to date, pretty dull at the moment and looking forward to our Pennsylvanian trip next week to see Joyce, Dan and the rest of the Ballesty crew in Wattsburg.

Andy, out.

Sugar Rush

My feet hurt. Two and a half hours of walking the streets with the kids scoring a huge mound of loot. Cam bailed after about an hour, he was the lucky/clever one.We made quite a haul, enough junk food to last until Christmas at least. Jazz dressed as a Midnight Fairy, Abs a Teen Witch, Cam as a Cheetah and I was the evil Foo Man Chew, nice!Not a long post tonight, I need a beer, but there are some photos of our evening on Flickr, thanks to my buddy Garry for most of them as I didn't have a still camera. Happy Halloween!

Andy, out.

Cap'n Cam, scourge of the Seven Seas

We are great parents, I don't think I'm overstating it, we rock. Sure Cam's birthday party was a little later than his actual birthday (31 days but whose counting?) but once again, as we did for the girls, we went all out. A pirate theme was settled on and Cam and I dressed for the part as seven of his mates rolled up for three hours of scurvy-free fun. The obsticle course in the basement, followed by a search for buried treasure worked out. Unfortunately the treasure was buried in a huge box filled with 3 cubic metres of bean-bag-balls (my bright idea) and of course the 5-yo's thought it was more fun to throw this than to actually find the loot.One incredible mess later and it was time for sinking some battle ships. The ships, made from foam with paper sails, were the targets for the 50 of so water balloons that we filled (that was fun I can tell you). The weather was a little on the cold side so we did battle in the garage which still contains some of the debris, safe to say that the kids didn't leave any foe on the battlefield, and it took a day to dry the garage out again [grin].Jo out-did herself on the cake front with a sandcastle creation made from cookies-and-cream icecream and crushed buscuits for the required 'sand' effect, Cap'n Jack Sparrow making an appearance on top for good measure. Keeping those kids amused for 3 hours was a real treat, especially after we had handed out foam swords for everyone. At one point I think every kid was trying to hit me as hard as possible at the same time, and they weren't pulling any punches, I tried hard not to cry.Jo and I are glad that our birthday season is now over having organised three fairly complex affairs this year. I'm thinking Macca's next year... Oh and just to make our Saturday complete we then dragged the whole family off to Toronto to help celebrate Rishahb's 1st birthday. Ram and Aruna put on a great night out at The Host, a fantastic Indian restaurant in trendy Yorkville. The kids loved the food and the SpongeBob pinyata, photos posted on Flickr.

Horror on the Streets

We really miss out in Australia, no houses decked in spider webs, no front lawns dug up like graveyards, no witches splattered on the front of 4WD's, no laughing groups of kids fancy dressed up to the nines... no halloween. Our second fright night is almost upon us and the kids are ready to go. The weather is going to be problematic, today is nice, crisp but sunny, but tomorrow is threatening late rain so the kids might be rugged up over their outfits. I'm planning on walking them around the neighbourhood this year and I have a suitable costume planned myself, hopefully I can freak some kids out while Jo mans our front door and keeps the seething hordes of candy monsters at bay. I carved our pumpkins a week ago and I stuffed them up. In trying to be really detailed I hollowed them both out too much, making the wall too thin, and although the level of detail was outstanding the pumpkin wall shriveled overnight and now you can't make out what the heck they are, bummer. So I have to carve two more tonight, it's a labourious process but pretty good fun. Here's a link to a pumpkin template website, some of these are really cool and I've used two of these myself. I don't know what they call the species of pumpkin that's used here, it's very different from the classic style we get at home, not much flesh inside to make soup (or pie) with and much rounder rather than our squat versions. Anyway let the horror begin! Trick or Treat!
Above is our creation, the PatchMaster...

Andy, out.

We're gunna be a part of it...

As usual currently stumped for music to use in the recent holiday video, but in searching I came across a cool remix of the Cult's She Sells Sanctuary and I just had to use it. So I recut the mix from 6 minutes down to just over 2 (the Rockhard Remix I call it [grin]) and used the video we took in New York last July. Hope you like it. YouTube below, if you're after better quality scroll down the page and download the larger MPEG4 version on the right.So back to music, I'm after a track that says 'RoadTrip' and is pretty rocky. If you have any suggestions leave a comment by clicking below, you don't need to register or login to do it.

Andy, out.

A Ship's smoke on the Horizon

That was brutal. Brutal but worthwhile. We left Baddeck in Nova Scotia yesterday at 5:30am and planned to travel to Marlyborough in Massachusetts, about 12 hours away. Well it got to around 3pm and I asked Jo if we should just keep going... and she, like me, was caught in the gravitational pull of getting home. So we cancelled our hotel and decided to just drive all the way back home in one hit.We arrived home last night at about 2:20am, 21 hours after leaving Nova Scotia, having driven over 2,000 klics through New Brunswick, Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and New York state. The kids were outstanding. The weather was not. After leaving Maine we ate dinner at a dodgy Chinese resturant (dodgy to look at, great food) and as we drove back onto the interstate the rain and wind hit really hard. I'd just taken over driving from Jo, who had dealt with some hairy traffic coming through southern Maine and New Hampshire, and had to overcome some seriously harsh conditions for the next couple of hours. The number of trucks hammering along at breakneck speed added to the excitement of not really being able to see and travelling at over 70mph. I guess after our trip to Ottawa in the ice storm last winter we can drive through anything, maybe we could drve home to Australia... need to wind the windows up. Anyway we survived and hit our own beds happy to be home after a fantastic turbo trip of the north eastern US and Atlantic Canada. We'll put the last photos up shortly and I'm downloading the video to you'll all have to suffer through another video clip really soon now :-).

So I need to relate the last few days of our trip. We crossed over the Confederation Bridge (at 13k's the longest in the world over frozen waters) onto Prince Edward Island and stayed two nights in Summerside. We needed the extended stay to recharge a little. Still popped out to Cavendish to see the house that inspired Anne of Green Gables and had a nice walk through the Haunted Wood nearby. I spent a few hours in the pub, had a couple of nice local beers and watched Texas thrash Baylor Uni (63-31)in an ultra high scoring game of college football. Next day we travelled 90 minutes along PEI to Wood Islands to catch the ferry over to Nova Scotia. We could have taken the bridge back ($40.50 is the toll!) but the ferry was a nice way to do it too. We rolled the car on and settled back for a lesuirely cruise over to Pictou in Nova Scotia. A few hours later and we were on Cape Breton Island in northern NS and settled into our loft for the evening. Next day we rose and left a little late but set off on our circuit of the Cabot Trail. It's a fairly rugged coastal route like the Great Ocean Road home in Victoria, the 300km road cuts through the cliffs of the Cape Breton National Park. We stopped and did a 2.5 hour walk along the Skyline hikiong trail and were lucky enough to see two moose, a bull (who only really showed us his huge antlers as he was sitting in long grass) and a cow who was browsing for food. Some hikers we had seen earlier had warned us about the moose who can be very agressive, especially the bulls as it is rutting season and they just want to pick fights like boguns at the Burvale. This freaked our two girls out a little and we had to really work hard to encourage them to continue the walk after our brief close encounter. As it turned out we didn't see any other moose, and appeared to be pretty lucky as everyone else we bumped into didn't see any at all. The view from the boardwalk at the end of the trail was pretty awesome, check out the 180 degree panoramic shot below, click to zoom.Speaking of which we've taken quite a few panoramas and I haven't uploaded them before, you can see them here if you're interested, some are pretty decent, be warned some are pretty big. We had hot dogs and fries on a beach and then wound our way back to the loft where an early night was on the cards, we cooked spagetti and watched a movie. And that was the trip, a total of 5240 k's in 11 days, 7 hotels, 4 billion calories in food, 8 very long walks, several chimpmunks, a witch trial, one very used iPod, 2 hours of video, 241 digital photos... 5 very tired Stiffies. Fall in north eastern america is a sight to see.

Andy, out.

Rocks and Mud

Just a quick post this time. We've arrived on Prince Edward Island (PEI), after a trip over the thirteen kilometer Confederation bridge that links it with mainland New Brunswick. Yesterday we visited the Hopewell Rocks, unusual formations carved by the extreme tides in the Bay of Fundy. Took heaps of photos, probably too many :-). The tides push a heap of mud around and Cam couldn't resist stomping around in it, we still have to finish cleaning his runners. Also met an Aussie couple and their kids who are on an extended holiday motorhoming it across Canada. It was nice to have a long chat as both our families took the long walk along the rocky beach. We're staying on PEI for two nights which is a nice change after heaps of single night stops and today might pop on over to the site that insprired Anne of Green Gables (the author was a PEI native). Tomorrow we take a ferry from Wood Islands down the coast and over to Nova Scotia.

Maine-ly fine

Once again here I am, connected to wireless internet, this time at the Holiday Inn in the city of Saint John in the Canadian province of New Brunswick. Sitting by the pool actually as the kids needed a swim after yet another day of driving and then an hour or so of school work. We popped over the border back into Canada this afternoon from northern Maine. Sadly the weather has turned and it rained this morning as we left Ellsworth, the forecast isn't much better for the next few days as we continue to head north. Maine was great, the fall colours and little New England towns were all we could have hoped for, heaps of white weather-board houses and little white churches with those distinctive steeples. During our stay at the B&B the kids all developed a taste for chess, playing on the main sitting area for a few hours.We parted our Naples B&B on Tuesday morning and headed for the coast. We drove to Brunswick and then followed the coast north on Highway 1. After a winding drive down a peninsula we came across the remains of Fort Popham, built from granite during the Civil War, and smelt something we haven't smelled for a long time... sea air. Ontario is not completely land locked but unless you drive a long way north of Toronto to Hudson Bay you wont see the ocean, the great lakes are of course fresh water (and pollution). So it was nice to see the Atlantic Ocean.We continued north to the Acadia National Park and stopped at Echo Lake where we took a pretty hairy walk up a rocky trail. We stopped short of the summit on reaching a steel ladder, the trail was getting too dangerous for the kids. Luckily the walk through a steep rock fall was thrill enough for them (and us) and we managed a good long walk to shake off the long drive.We stopped in Bar Harbour for dinner and I wished that I'd planned for us to stay there the night, it's like South Yarra at Philip Island, really nice place. Dinner was more clam chowder and lobster bisque, I had some buffalo shrimp too, awesome, the kids were over seafood and stuck to the pasta for a change. A short drive back to Ellsworth, further inland, and we stopped at the Comfort Inn for the night. we were supposed to have ajoining rooms but they couldn't find the key to the door so we left the kids in their own room and gave them our room phone number in case of emergency, Jo and I enjoyed a rare night of relative peace. Woke to driving rain this morning and got moving after a far more successful continental breakfast than the last one. Luckily the rain stopped when we did at Schoodic Point and we jumped out of the car and into a hard wind to watch the Atlantic waves smash against the rocky shoreline. Our search for a cute costal village, complete with fish and chips and quaint antique shops failed pretty badly. We mostly found badly run down coastly villages that had seen better days and the antique shops were mostly of the junk variety. We didn't stick around long and decided that the best idea was to get to the border quickly, have a late lunch and then push on to Saint John, our stop for tonight. Lunch was at Calais on the US side of the border and we quickly jumped back into Canada where Jo and I immediately stopped at Timmies for a coffee. Shortly after entering Canada the fog and mist rolled in and we drove the 100 of so K's to Saint John with about 100m visibility. Tomorrow we plan to head up the Bay of Fundy to Hopewell Rocks where the highest tides in the world are, the difference between high and low tide is usually 12 metres and can be as much as 16m. Low tide is at 11:40 in the morning so hopefully we can walk out to and around the rocks which are uniquely carved by the massive tides. Plenty of new photos on the site.

Andy, out.

Which Witch is Which?

This is pretty nice. I'm sitting on an antique sofa in the main sitting room of our B&B, Inn on the Lake in Naples, Maine. This is the most expensive nights accomodation on the whole trip and you can see where the money goes. It's an amazing house, four stories tall, years old and beautifully restored and decorated. Jo and I have a huge four poster bed, the little guy is in the ajoined sitting room on the couch and the girls have their own room with two single beds. Anyway we left Boston around 9am on Monday morning and set off on the short 30k journey to Salem. I'm sure you know the story, 1692, a hard winter and young girls driven perhaps by boredom or jealously or maybe even fermented wheat flour induced LSD halicinations.Despite the tribute to Samantha Stephens/Elizabeth Montgomery, of Bewitched (above), most of the witchery in Salem is a serious business. The Salem witch trials lasted 13 months and left 14 women and 5 men hanged for witchcraft. Today Salem is still a fairly small town only a short drive north of Boston and naturally it relies on it's colourful past to support it's fairly mundane present. The number of witch museums, shows, displays, t-shirts etc, is staggering. Sadly most of these are variations of 'piss-weak world' and really not worth the hard-earned. We went into the Witch Dungeon thinking it was a different show (one we had heard was good) and were pretty disapointed, it was pretty crappy. Luckily later in the day we found the show we were after, where we took part in a pre-trial hearing and could actually question the actors who would impro the answers.The cast was excellent and Abbie asked a few questions, in the end we acquited the accused, an outcome that surprisingly only happens in about half the performances even in these modern, and apparently enlightened, times. I think the highlight for the kids was 'Samanthas' shop, stacked to the rafters with awesome Halloween costumes, masks, toys and heaps of spooky stuff. We bought the girls new costumes, Jazz is to be a Night Fairy, Abs a witch crossed with Clueless, sort of a junior high wica. I even got something for myself, you'll have to wait for the Halloween pictures to find out what. In all it was a long day and we hit our motel around 6 pretty zonked. Chinese take out was the go and it was pretty good, the rooms were pretty average and the AC didn't work which was not great given that the day was a warm 26 or so and the evening no much cooler. After a fairly rough nights sleep, Jo's sore throat not improving, we packed up the Dodge and shleped across the road to the resturant that provided the continental breakfast included in our room rate (the motel had no food at all). The breakfast ended up being coffee, juice and some donuts and danishes, no toast or cereal for the kids and I was pretty annoyed that this was advertised as a continental breakfast, the motel will get a nasty phone call from me shortly (and perhaps a bad write up on TripAdvisor). Whatever, Salem didn't leave me with good vibes, glad we visited but happier that we were leaving.

From Salem we headed north this morning through a sliver of New Hampshire (not much coastline for NH) and quickly into Maine. 200k's later we were in Naples, our destination for the night, but before that I had a driving tour planned. Stocked up with sandwiches and cherry pies we headed off into the mountains of south western Maine. The fall colours are at their peak and honestly it's an amazing sight. There's nothing like it in Australia, perhaps you get a tiny taste of it in Kallista or Sassafras where there's a few introduced trees but here it's just forests of them as far as the eye can see, all blazing in yellow, orange and fiery reds.I'd hoped to get us a decent view from atop a ski resort chair lift but they weren't operating them despite us hearing that they were open, maybe only on the weekends... So we drove down the road a little and trespassed onto a lake shore property. There were three weekender-style lake shore houses at the end of a driveway, a nice sandy beach and fantastic long, large lake. I could just imagine how much fun the skating would be in winter, assuming you could move the likely 5 feet of snow of course. We headed north to Grafton Notch State Park and the kids had some fun at a few waterfalls, jumping over the rocks and generally glad to be out of the car. On the way back though the whole family had started to fade, Jo feeling pretty crappy with a possible cold on the way and so the amazing scenery through White Mountain was a little lost on my crew and we didn't stop. I got a bit of video of the road through White Mountain and I hope it comes out okay, of course it wont do it justice, frankly it's one of the most picturesque roads I've ever driven. Dinner was in the local Naples pub, they brew their own beer there and the dark Porter was sensational. Tomorrow it's on to Ellsworth and a more coastal journey as we plan to head further north through Maine before punching back into Canada into New Brunwich and Prince Edward Island by the end of the week.

Andy, out.

Beat in Beantown

Wow, how the heck did we survive the last 36 hours? An 820k drive from Toronto to Boston, then a harsh nights sleep (Jo with a sore throat and Cam with a nasty cough) and now here we are after walking back and forth through downtown Boston three times. The drive was actually pretty good, we left as planned just after 5am and made good time across New York state. Following the Interstate and then the Massechusetts Turnpike we hardly saw a single town, both sides of the freeway where mostly bordered in trees turning on their fall glory.We arrived in Boston after 2pm and after settling into our hotel the kids hit the pool for a dipo before dinner. My mate Ram had recommended Legal Seafoods for awesome New England cuisine and it was good stuff. Better yet it was across the road from the hotel so the walking distance was spot on for our pooped troop. We all had some clam chowder, and even Abs enjoyed it after initial fear. Jasmine had a 1 pound lobster to herself and finished the sucker before playing with the shell like some gruesome puppet :-). Cam has demanded popcorn shrimp at every meal since. Jo's crab cakes where decent, though perhaps not as good as the ones I had in Montreal. My stuffed shrimp was a disapointment, I should have had the lobster. Oh well we're headed for Maine so there's a lot more opportunities for seafood over the next two weeks.Boston is a great town, not a big city but there's a heap of history here. The American Revolution started in these streets and they celebrate it proudly. This is the town where the declaration of US independence was born, home to Paul Revere, Sam and John Adams, Benjamin Franklyn (yeah the guy with the kite, he had a hand in writting the Constitution). The war of independence, made inevidible by the Boston Tea Party, started with the battle at Bunkers Hill overlooking Boston harbour. It's a great town today, centered around the 42 acre Boston Common where we walked in the awesome sunshine today. A day that started off pretty cold actually and we shivered a little as we ate breakfast outside at Thornton's, none of us could stand to wait in line for a seat inside. Breakfast Burito, banana pancakes and Amareto-Vanilla French Toast later we were fueled up and ready to see all that Beantown had to offer. We walked down through Boston Common and took up a guided tour on the far side of the park. Cost about $40 for us all and worth every penny as the tour guide, dressed in full 1770's garb, gave his all in delivering the history of Boston as we walked the 'Freedom Trail'.The trail is a red brick or painted red line that wanders 2.5 miles through Boston and passes all the major historic sites along the way. Our tour lasted about 2 hours and covered about the first mile or so of the trail. One of the burial grounds had over 12,000 bodies planted in it and it was only about 1/2 an acre in size, they used to stack em in the old days... Ending the tour near Quincy Market the kids somehow found themselves hungry, after the size of breakfast I have no idea how but... So as they chowed down on a hot dog, or Boston Barker to be more precise, we were entertained by a street performer. Cam ended up volunteering to help and was a star of the show.Now it was time to head back across town to near where we had breakfast, we had tickets for the 3:30pm tour on the Boston Duck. The Duck's are WW2 amphibious vehicles converted into tourist buses. We enjoyed a guided tour of the city, a lot of the places we had already seen on foot, and for added excitement the DUWK (that's the real name of these beasties) hit the Charles River and we cruised through the water and got a unique view of Boston. As an extra treat all three kids had a turn driving the Duck for a few minutes.Sadly we didn't visit the memorial at Bunkers Hill, it was too far from downtown on a day where we asked the kids to walk a fair bit. And more walking was in store as we walked back across town again to the market and Durgins Park resturant for some genuine New England cooking.Wow! We all enjoyed our meal here, Cam had more clam chowder (pictured above), Jo a Shrimp Caesar and I had the Yankee Pot Roast (melt in the mouth beef). The place is a really genuine down-home eatery, no frills here just great New England comfort food and friendly service. The Boston Creme Pie lasted about 15 seconds. Anyway we're back in our room, kids bathed and ready for bed hopefully. We don't have to start really early tomorrow as the drive to Salem is less than an hour, but we only have tomorrow there and have to leave Tuesday morning for Maine so if we want to make the most of Salem we have to try to get away in good time, maybe by 9am. Mmmmm, must sleep. Heaps of photos on the site.

Andy, out.

Canadian Pie

I've been whinging about how summer's over and how it's getting cold, all the while secretly looking forward to a winter of skating and skiing fun. Today was an exception to some recent drab, overcast and cold days, a perfect autumn day with pure blue skies, golden sunshine and hardy a breathe of wind. It might be less than 10 degrees but when you're in the sun it's T-shirt weather.Jo and the kids had been invited to go apple picking at Chudleigh's Orchard in Milton by Aleks, one of her tennis buddies, and I tagged along for the ride. The kids had a ball riding around on the back of a tractor which stopped every so often to drop people at various points around a huge orchard, each stop offering a different apple variety. We picked some apples, but let's face it there more excitement in a haystack maze, petting zoo and huge playground that there is in simple manual labour.Safe to say that the kids had some fun and hopefully enough autumn air to tire them out a little, they have a long sit in the car tomorrow on the way to Boston. The kids should be pulling bits of hay out of their clothes, hair, ears etc for the next few days. We ended up quite a crowd with Aleks' friend Kim also along for the ride and Victoria and Brenden topping us off at a team of 12.It's about 900k's to Boston, similar to a Melbourne-Sydney trip, and we hope to leave around 5am to avoid a hold up at the border as we need to renew our US visas. I was a little worried a few weeks ago that autumn was coming quickly and that by the time we set off on our holiday all the leaves would be gone. But I think we'll be fine and with the weather looking like it's going to stay good into next week, at least until we leave the witches in Salem, we're looking forward to seeing Maine in all it's Fall glory. With luck we might post a few entries while we're on the road over the next two weeks so continue to stay tuned guys, cheers.

Andy, out.

Go Speed Racer

Holiday weekend beckons, it's ThanksGiving here. The girls had a school sports day today and both of them competed in cross-country for the school at a regional track meet. Jazz had a great result finishing 112th out of over 200 kids and Ab's blitzed the field finishing 10th over all and 1st for River Oaks Elementary. Fair to say that we're pretty happy with our girls after a short preparation.Tomorrow the kids have a day off and the plan is to go apple picking, Jo has the skinny on a place with a corn maze so hopefully that'll be a bit of fun before the road trip begins.We picked up our Dodge Caravan today, basically a Tarago, and we're packing for our trip east. Weather is looking good so far, around 20 in Boston for Sunday and so far no rain into next week, hope it stays that way.

Andy, out.

Autumn or Fall?

Fall is with us and seemingly pretty early this year. We arrived just over a year ago and we remember it being warmer and the leaves less colourful 12 months ago. The view from my window at work is pretty awesome as we look out over a ravine full of trees towards Toronto Airport. The word on the street is that we're in for another mild winter, although that doesn't mean no snow as snow mostly falls when the temp is 0 to -5 anyway. We wont be too disappointed if the temp doesn't hit -30 as long as the ponds freeze and it snows a lot. Public skating, which closes over the summer, has re-started so we'll dust off the skates soon and try to re-find our skills.This weekend is Canadian Thanksgiving and Halloween is at the end of the month, the kids are planning their costumes and pumpkin carving tools are on sale at all the stores. It's a pity that we don't do Halloween back home, everyone really gets into the spirit over here and has a great time, we'll make sure we get some good photos of peoples houses, front yards and cars this year. I know the kids would love to bring the tradition back home with them but it's hard to do unless everyone in your neighbourhood gets into the spirit, maybe they can do a reverse Halloween and hand out the candy rather than collect it (did I say candy?). Oh and Jazz was on crossing duty at the school this week, a task only given to Grade 5 kids, our chick on guard below.Back on the winter sporting front we've been thinking about putting the kids into skiing lessons in the new year and just need to work at the total cost before we plunge in. We might be running out of time to decide as the classes fill up pretty quickly. There's a Friday evening class that goes for eight weeks and includes a lift ticket for the evening, the whole hill is fully lit so you can ski under lights every night. Then Jo and I can buy a weekday lift pass for the season and we can all ski together after the lesson (of course Jo and I will need some lessons too, we don't ski :-)). Cost is the main factor of course, as the lessons etc don't include equipment hire, but whatever the cost it's heaps cheaper than skiing in Australia so most likely we'll get with the program.

We have been sweating over getting our Canadian work and study permits renewed. When we originally applied in Australia we were granted 2 year permits but on arrival Canadian immigration, for reasons best known to themselves, only gave us 12 months so we've had to re-apply. The normal waiting period is 30 days but currently they are 60 days behind. With our existing permits expired in August we had been advised not to leave the country as there was no guarantee that we'd be allowed back in... a major hurdle for our up-coming holiday into the US for Boston, Maine and all points north-east. Luckily we received the new permits in the mail yesterday so we're good to go and plan to leave around 5am this Saturday and head south over the border on a 9 hour drive to Boston.

I watched the AFL Grand Final last Sunday and enjoyed every minute of it. It was great to hear the crowd roar and see the new Northern Stand, the G looks awesome. I can't wait to get back home and go to a game, hopefully the Bombers will get their act together next year. NHL Hockey is starting this weekend after a low key pre-season and the NFL is in full swing. Sadly I'm not watching as much football as I'd like but I am playing a fair bit of golf so I have to think about spending more time with Jo to compensate.

Has it really been just over a year? Time flys...

Andy, out.

Four no more

It's all over, our Super Champ is not going to be four ever again. He went from half Abbie's age to half Jasmine's age overnight, that wont ever happen again either :-). Just a very low key family night tonight, Jo and I haven't finished organising his party yet (I know, we're bad), but the preparations for a Pirate Party are well underway, Jo is being mega-creative on this one. The big fella scored a new bike and helmet from us (his old 2nd hand bike was pinched from the park when he left it there overnight a while ago) and a 'Luke blue' light sabre from his sisters. Of course he prefers the $7 light sabre to the $100 bike, I'm sure he'll be sleeping with it tonight. Thanks to all of you who sent Cam best wishes, frankly I think he's a little chuffed.Not much else to report, still not sure how long we're going to be over here, a decision has been delayed due to some negotiations that impact the project (not negotiations with me). Had a great night last night, our IBM PM, Srini, arranged to get the project team into IBM's Platinum suite at the SkyDome to watch the Toronto Blue Jays play the Boston Red Sox (baseball, in case those team names aren't ringing any bells). The suite was sweet, and a few of us continued after the Jays victory (5 to nothing), getting home around 2:30am this morning... I was a little delicate at work this morning, but I just had a long run and am firing on all cylinders now [grin].

Andy, out.

Soaked at Niagara

Got three tired and grumpy kids, that's what a day down at Niagara Falls gets you. We've been waiting for some decent weather to go back to the falls and ride the Maid of the Mist boat and today was 26 and mostly sunny. Niagara is about an hour down the Queen Elizabeth Expressway (or QEW to the locals) and we arrived around 11. The kids were up fairly early this morning and so were after some food as soon as we arrived so we dove into Burger King and had a pretty average fast food stop. The main drag at the falls is called Clifton Hill and unlike it's Melbourne name-sake it's crammed with tourist traps, mostly in the haunted-house, wax museum and Ripleys Believe-it-or-Not variety. The kids loved all the haunted houses but we went directly to the Maid of the Mist promising to come back later.We got onto the boat pretty quickly and the cost was pretty resonable at around $44 for the family. We slipped on our blue souvenier water-proof ponchos and the boat left the dock. The seem to be about 3 boats operating at a time doing a loop from the dock, passed the American Falls up to the main Canadian/Horseshoe Falls and then back. After we passed the American Falls we hit a wall of rain from the main falls, they call it mist to be cute, it was wet! The view from below the Canadian Falls is awesome! We must have been only 30-40 meters from where the water was hitting and the view looking up is even more impressive than from the top looking down. Cam said 'This is the best day of my life!' so it must have been good. We got soaked and so did our cameras but we managed to get them back alive and have some video and decent shots of the trip.On the way back up Clifton Hill Jo and I tossed up going in one of the haunted houses, especially as they stay open through winter and the day was so nice that we didn't feel like spending it inside. In the end we said 'No' and Ab's was pretty dissapointed. But then at one of the houses the woman said $5 each discount rate so we went in. I'm glad that the lady gave us a little torch, the idea is that you really can't see where you're going and stuff is hung in your way, brushes your face, the floor is wobbly in places etc. Then there's the blasts of compressed air, the howls, screams, bodies popping up etc. Jo and I were mildly amused, the kids were terrified! We had a crying Cam and a freaked out Jazz and Abs, luckily we had chosen the mildest house on the street. We beat a hasty retreat and jumped back in the car once the kids had calmed down a little.On the way back home we took the turn off to Niagara-On-The-Lake, a very picturesque little town on Lake Ontario in the wine growing reqion. Lots of vineyards made us feel like we were driving through the Yarra Valley and the main drag of the town was more like a slice of Toorak if it was placed in the Dandenongs Ranges back home. Really nice town, great shops ans the kids had huge ice creams from the 52-Flavours store, scary house now completely forgotten. Had a great day, might be about beer-o'clock...

Andy, out.

Fore!

Thanks to our excellent client, Bell Canada, quite a number of us spent yesterday afternoon hitting little white balls around. The venue was Brae Ben golf course in Mississauga, once the site of a dump, now the highest point in the greate Toronto Area and a truely nice golf course. The very hilly course tested our skills, or in my case tested my lack of skill. If you miss the fairway on this puppy you should just dive into your bag for another ball, the long-stuff eats them alive. We played 3 groups and the idea was to combine the lowest scores for our best holes as a team, the lowest combined total would win the day.We were promised good weather and although the clouds stayed grey and pretty solid all afternoon (the sun peeked through a few times) the temp was excellent for golf, nice and cool. I started off in style with two drives sliced straight into the rough stuff, didn't even hit past the laides tee (I had to buy the first round). But my game improved from there and I ended up with a few pars for the round although my game wasn't nearly as good as a round last week where I hit 8 over for 9 holes. Still, everyone had a good time and had their own share of sensational shots. My group with Shyam and Joe ended up taking out the prizes at the end of the day, no doubt solely due to Joe's fantastic short game and Shyams crushing driving on the back nine, I came along for the ride. Many thanks to Paul for the bar tab at the 19th hole, Phil for the prizes and Shyam for organising the day, outstanding gents.Today I'm a bit sore, 3 rounds of golf this week (36 holes) and two runs totalling about 14k's and the bod is complaining a little. I can see a lazy day ahead... I'm sure there's a game on TV.

Andy, out.

Skippy Parcel Post Delivers

Got a call last night 'Hi this is Skippy Parcel Post, we have a delivery for you, wanting to make sure that someone will be home tonight...' what the? My good mate Anth's mum, Pat, is in downtown Mississauga (next town over from Oakville where we live) and wants to drop by. Awesome, great to see Pat as it's been a while since we last saw each other, and of course she arrived bearing gifts from below the equator. Thanks to Anth and Shane (and I think the Bastard and Lisa might have had something to do with this too), the kids will love the Twisties, Jo and I the Tim Tams and we'll all love the Vegemite and best of all the Monbulk Raspberry Jam! Nice touch guys, the jam here just isn't quite the same and we've been missing it.Anywho it was really nice to catch up with Pat, we yakked until after midnight, hope she enjoys the rest of her trip, greets to the wider Reeve clan.

Andy, out.

Say Goodbye

What is it with you guys? We leave the country for a few months and you let some stellar people slip through your fingers. While I wasn't a fan of his TV show, and I can tell you I'm in the minority over here in North America, Steve Irwin was as far as I can tell a pretty decent bloke and dedicated environmentalist (despite what that nut-bag Germaine Greer and her jaw that flaps in the wind might say). You have to feel for his wife and kids... Then Brocky totals himself in the Targa in WA, com'on ppl what are you doing all day? Take better care of our tall poppies will you please? Cheers Brocky, you were an ornament to your sport. At least both those boys went out doing what they loved, if only a little earlier than we'd all have liked, cheers fellas.

On a different note another Aussie has been making the Canadian news, Toby Rand pub singer from Melbourne, contender for the lead singer of SuperNova. Jo and I didn't watch the series from the start and got into it very late. But thanks to Bit Torrent we've caught up and are now eagerly awaiting the final shows this coming week. Everyone is tipping Toby to take it from the media-un-savvy Dilana, dark and brooding Lukas and cool but boring chrome dome Magni. You've just gotta love this version of Rebel Yell, check it out on YouTube below.



Andy, out.

Abbie Knieval

Poor Ab's, she was playing hide-and-seek and was standing up in the box that my golf clubs came in (tall, thin box). It was a complete accident but the box fell over and of course her arms couldn't move so when she hit the floor her head hit the carpet (without underlay on a concrete slab). She ended up with a decent concussion and was off to the hospital in an ambulance after Jo called 911. Luckily after a CAT scan all is okay, just a really nasty headache and some vomitting. Little chic really gave us a scare but today, as if to prove that it's all forgotten, she bounced off the school (complete with a note pardoning her from contact play for a few weeks).

And summers over

There was a TV ad playing in early spring, it showed an winter outdoor scene with falling snow etc for about 15 seconds, then flashed to about 1 second of a summer scene then back to winter again... the message? 'Summer goes by quickly so make the most of it and buy this'. Well there was truth in advertising there, summer is over and it wasn't around for long. To make the weather more miserable we were hit with the remnants of hurricaine Ernesto, a storm that had worked it's way up from the carribean, toyed with Florida and then blown itself out while moving up the US east coast. By the time Ernesto made it to Canada it was just a pile of rain, but the timing sucks as it's hit right in the middle of the last long weekend of the season. So we didn't make it to the airshow or a drive-in movie due to the weather, but hopefully we're not headed directly back into winter and autumn stays with us for a while before the temp drops.Our friends from Pennsylvania, the Ballesty's, made a surprise, flying visit to see us last weekend. Jo got the call and kept mum about it so none of us knew they were coming which was really nice. On Saturday we headed down to Toronto to see the buskers festival and spent a great day in the streets near the St Lawrence Market, eating (mmm steak sandwich was awesome), drinking (coffee of course), walking and watching some decent street performances. The kids have a ball together, Erin, Elise, Liam and Declan are great kids and ours love them to death. We are hoping to head back down to PA in November for US Thanksgiving, looking forward to it already.I spent four days last week in Montreal again and I think I'll be back up there again in late September to run a couple of days of intensive training for the Bell folks before we go live in October with our biggest release. We should hear in the next week or so how long we'll be staying on for. Could be just until Jan or might be extended into Spring next year, as soon as we know you will too.

Just posted a heap of new photos including some from a great walk we had yesterday along 16 Mile Creek, just a stones throw from our house.

So that's about it, the kids are having a mellow day today, back to school tomorrow (was that Jo I heard going 'Wooohooo!'?). They wont be back for too long though, as we have a trip to Boston, New England and Atlantic Canada planned for the second week of October and will be taking them out of school for that.

Andy, out.

Geo-tagging! WTF is that?

This got my geek antennae all excited... flickr.com is where we have started to upload and store our digital photos and they've started allowing geo-tagging of every image. Geo-tagging allows you to map exactly where each photo was taken. I've spent some time updating the images we've uploaded so far and in most cases I've located each image pretty close to exactly where it was shot. So for example if you view the image of Jo on a bridge in Central Park you can click on the [map] link (on the right) and up will pop a window with the exact location marked on a satellite photo. So for that image you can see exactly where the bridge is. Man that's awesome! Clearly I need to get out more...

Andy out.

Boomerang'ed to Montreal

Andy here, I'm back in Montreal for the next four days. On my own this time, I think Jo's glad to have the car for a while. The kids are on their last week of summer holidays as they go back to school next Tuesday, Monday being the Labour Day holiday (awesome! holiday weekend!). Our weekend is looking busy as Toronto has a 'Melbourne Show' style event going on at the moment called the Canadian National Exhibition (or CNE for short). There's cultural displays, rides, fireworks and an airshow. An F-22 Raptor is performing on Saturday (1st time ever outside the US) and there's also going to be an F-117 Stealth fighter flying, both of these aircraft have never made it to the Avalon airshow back home so that should be cool. Also planning on going to the local drive-in theatre, maybe Sunday night, should be a hoot as we've never taken the kids to a drive-in.

Anyways I flew up this morning so I'm pretty stuffed after a 5am wake up call, luckily work wasn't too stressfull today so that's a good thing. I was going to go out for dinner and hit Baton Rouge, the outstanding ribs place, but it's a bit of a walk from the Hilton and I don't think I can be stuffed frankly. NFL pre-season is underway and the Greenbay Packers play the Cincinatti Bengals in about 40 minutes, so I might just order room service, raid the mini bar and settle in for the game. Yeah, there's a plan.

Andy out.

IBM Party boys

Okay so the title over-states it a little... Below is a picture of the IBM engine room at Bell Canada, from left to right, Kshema (reporting legend), Srini (proj.manager extraordanaire), Joe (Oracle guru), Ram (Callidus quarterback), Samrat (maintenance miester), me (team mascot) and most importantly (cos he paid :-)) Pierre (deal broker)! Nothing like a team lunch when the partner pays, thanks Pierre, my surf and turf was outstanding. Sadly, for us not him, AJ is still on his honeymoon so he's not there.

New York City - no kids - Part 2

About time I ran through some more of our NYC trip, I'll try to keep it brief. We woke on Saturday morning to apparently clearing skies and set out seeking a New York diner breakfast. Walked over to 8th avenue and found what we were looking for, one dirty big fry-up later and I'm firing on all cylinders, Jo went a slightly more health route, too bad for her I say. So now walking is the go, gotta burn off the 2500 calories I just ate. First the bus though, we bought a 2 day bus tour ticket that let us take any of the 3 different tours of Downtown, Uptown and Brooklyn, you can hop on and off the double decker, open-top buses at any stop, usually another bus is a few minutes away. So this is a great way to get around and costs about $45 each for the two days. So we head off downtown and see the courts (Law and Order filmed there), Greenwich Village, Soho, Chinatown and end up getting off at Ground Zero, site of the ex-World Trade Centre.Frankly I didn't expect any real emotional feedback, I love the Yanks but they do try some peoples patience internationally and enemies will use whatever means at their disposal to counter-attack... it's a pretty brutal world and we westerners are very sheltered from it, we think that civilians are innocent and not valid targets, well our own civilians anyway, ask a Lebanese how he feels. Having said that I was moved by the very temporary and low key memorial, I had expected USA USA USA, not so. The photos taken of firemen dragging people from the rubble just before they went back in again, never to return, tugged the heart-strings pretty hard. Still, the site is now a flurry of building activity as they put in the foundations on the Freedom Tower, I wonder if it's a symbol for the whole planet, or just for the US... Anyway as I said I love the Yanks, they're as lovable and flawed as the next guy, and they have big guns.

We walked to the Hudson River and gazed across the half a klic or so to Jersey, Liberty Island and that famous green statue were just visable through haze. We walked around to Battery Park and the rain hit us pretty hard. By the time we found the bus again we were a little wet but the sky cleared and we stayed on board as it took us down the end of Wall St and around under the Brooklyn Bridge, past the United Nations ('Hey Kofi, give us a wave!'), by one of The Donalds many condo towers and eventually stopping outside the Rockafella Centre where we spotted that Lexington Ave had been blocked off to cars and had several blocks of street market set up. We had a burito for lunch, not bad but not great, Jo bought some cheap jewelry for the girls and walked on to Central Park. We had the obligatory horse and carridge ride around a very small part of the park, frankly it wasn't that good. Then we walked through the park, really only through about a quarter of it, and it's an amazing place. You can always hear the buzz of the city but for most of the time you can't see any buildings, roads, cars... it's a fantastic park, and it's huge! We then hoped back on one of our buses and tripped through the Upper West Side, Jerry Seinfeld territory, then through Harlem and back down to Central Park. Frankly we were a bit pooped by this stage and it was getting late in the day.Dinner was a Hell's Kitchen Thai place that I'd seen in a local resturant guide. The place had seating for maybe 12 people and that food was awesome, some of the best Thai we've ever had, price was right too, really cheap. Fired up after this, and watching the Toronto Blue Jays kicking the New York Yankees butts at baseball on a pub TV, we were primed for our next stop a late night comedy club. Saw a pretty good show, 2 of the 5 comedians were fantastic, one was okay and two were average. Drank two Long Island Iced Teas, what else, and Jo had two Manhattans. Rolled into bed late and slept well. Oh I almost forgot, slept well in our 16th floor suite, I'd complained about the street noise from our 5th floor room and had been upgraded free to a full suite well above the street, truely outstanding.

Thats' enough for now, one more day of NYC to come... tired now, must sleep...

Andy, out.

New Video online

Okay it's good to go. You can check out the new video below courtesy of YouTube, I'll put a higher quality one up tomorrow and link it to the blog. It's footage from January this year through till the girls birthdays. We have heaps of other footage from New York, Montreal and Quebec City but that can keep for a second vid.
Summer looks like it's ending, days are a little cooler and we spent this evening around a fire at Jo's cousins. The kids had their first smores, toasted marshmallows and melted choc-chips between crackers, and the girls are staying for a sleep over. I'd better push off myself, it's after 11pm and I'm stuffed.

Cheers, Andy out.

Back from the Beach

It's nearly 10:30pm and the kids have just hit the hay. Cam needed to be carried from the car as he was out-of-it, into bed easily. The girls had to have a shower to get the sand off. It took over 2.5 hours to drive to Wasaga Beach from home, but only just over 90 minutes to get back, the traffic going was really bad, even for Toronto and trust me traffic sucks here. Coming back I was on 130 most of the way, xlnt. The beach is on the south eastern shore of Georgian Bay, actually a very sizable lake that's considered a bay of Lake Huron. So being a lake the water was fresh but the beach was long and clean with very fine sand. The kids could play pretty much anywhere with the depth still only knee height 100m out. Say 'hi' to Deb, Ron, Andre and Ali below, our friends from Oakville who invited us along.So we had a few beers and glasses of red on the beach and enjoyed an overcast but warm day here in late summer. There's quite a few more photos from today, and a handfew of Cam on his camp bus, up on Flickr.

Living a Bollywood Movie!

We never imagined going to the other side of the world, to Canada to experience a taste of India. Now feeling like quite the connoisseurs of fine Indian food thanks to the likes of "Shiraaz" (even the name teases makes my mouth water), we had no idea of the fun we were to have at the wedding of AJ and Reema.

To try to blend in (like i could) i went shopping with Aruna for a sari. I thought shopping just for a western dress was hard, until i saw all the beautifully coloured and bejewelled sari's. It looked as though someone had been using their bedazzler they got for Xmas, as Aruna pointed out the Indians like their bling and there was heaps of it. After going from one shop to another for over two hours I actually settled for one that i saw in the very first shop (how typical is that). I bought the blouse, skirt,bracelets and necklace to blend in and not match as you couldn't go with perfectly matching colours ;at this comment I looked at the shop keeper and said "I don't think that i'll worry about looking perfect." So the only other thing to do was to learn how to put the set up on.

Here's the part when i actually used Google (amazing huh Andy?) and low and behold I now have the know how of millions other of people! The night before the wedding we were out at a BBQ, where I brought along my get-up and the girls and I played dress ups. Thank goodness for Laura and Andrea who help me get the gist of it so that the next morning at 6am I would be able to get dressed. It really felt lovely, it was colourful and thank goodness the day wasn't the 40 degrees that we'd been having earlier in summer so i felt pretty comfortable too.

So I've written so much and we're not at the wedding part yet, and you may have noticed that I had mentioned 6am. On our invitations the ceremony started at 8am about 45mins from where we were so we thought to get up at 6 with the kids to set off on time (I know how unlike me)but we didn't want to miss anything; and by 7.30 we were gone. Now this may be the time to let you know that Indians run on I.S.T, that is Indian Stretchable Time, a little fact we only became aware of when we rocked up thinking we were a few minutes late but ended up being an hour and a half early. 8am means some time before 10am. Yes nothing like getting the kids early out of bed after a late night and finding out that you didn't have to, anyway I'm still feeling good about my attire but a little obvious and standing out needless to say.

When the guests started arriving and we noticed AJ's onterage we went over to say hello. In traditional style he was to arrive by horse and was dressed in a spectacular outfit complete with a headdress that covered his face. I'm sorry that I cannot name any of these, I only know sari! With all the groomsmen dancing and clapping AJ followed behind by horse and went to an outside ceremony for a meeting of male relatives from the two families. With this part over we were all led into the temple (we all had to cover our heads with scarves) for supper. Thank goodness our kids like to try stuff and they happily went to the tables and ate some great Indian food. Soon a buzz came around that meant we were to enter the temple for the wedding ceremony, so with bellies full we moved on.

In the main room the bride and groom sat infront of an altar holding the Holy Book, as we entered the ladies moved to the left and the men to the right and the girls and i found a place on the floor to sit. Man, it was so hard to keep the end of my sari over my head, not that I was alone... every woman there shared my problem, in the end I just let it slip off and hoped that I looked innocent enough as it covered the back of my head. The ceremony was interesting with a series of prayers and the couple circling the altar four times and then they were officially man and wife. All that was left was to congratulate them and go to the supper room for lunch! Well we just congratulated and took the kids back home, as we had been there for a few hours over everybody else.

Part two, The Party/Reception

Once again for the night time activities I dressed up in my sari, we then dropped off the kids with Gary and Laura who had kindly agreed to have them over night (we are returning the favour guys I promise) and set off to party on. Trying to reduce this a little we were savvy to I.S.T. and arrived hideously late by western standards (actually more my style). AJ and Reema arrived to be seated at the most romantic setting I've ever seen, they were on a elevated floor and the speeches started straight away. All the typical greetings to families who had travelled (one sister who came all the way from a little place called Wantirna, Victoria, Australia!)There were approx 650 guests so there was a bit to get through. We had a slide show from the groomsmen and then the bridesmaids set the couple on the side of the dance floor and the 6 of them danced for the couple in true Bollywood style it was awesome and quite touching to watch. Pretty much from then on the party had started and people got up to dance.

I have never seen so many men actually dance really well as I did that night and I used to go clubbing a long time ago. It was wild fun and after getting over feeling like a fake I too felt pretty Indian and bopped around. The night was filled by routines of speciality dancers who danced as money was thrown at them, ladies danced with a flame on their heads, it was just so loud, bright and colourful and the music was quite hypnotic pretty much the same beat with a guy on a drum making the music seem alive. People were able to go and eat dinner from a buffet table whenever they wanted, so once the dancing started nothing else interrupted it, it was fantastic.

Sure enough the evening came to a close and we had to leave but we felt so honoured to have been invited. Even though we were among 650 guests we felt special as we would not have been offended if we had not of been invited as seems the case in big weddings; and knew the invite was because the couple wanted us there. Mind you Andy and I are tempted to become Indian wedding crashers saying that we are some distant cousin of the Maharajah, they are that much fun.

In Post Production

We've taken a lot of video since we've been here. Our poor camera, now four+ years old, has taken a beating and doesn't record in widescreen mode anymore. Getting it repaired is likely to be expensive, and I have my eye on a cute Hi-Def model :-). But that puppy is more than a few bucks so I'm gunna have to wait, hmmmm maybe a Christmas present to self... In the meantime we've been collecting footage and so far only published clips for the end of 2005 and our Disneyworld trip (see the links for these clips on the right). Jo and I got busy last night and burnt the midnight oil cutting together video from last winter, spring and summer, including the kids skating show, our trip to Ottawa, the girls birthday parties and other highlights. We should have it ready in the next day or so and hopefully I can upload it to YouTube. We've got about 1 minute left to edit and we're really happy with the result so far, so check back here in a day or so to see the final clip. Cheers.

Here's the Disney clip loaded on YouTube, if you haven't seen YouTube yet you should check it out...

When I said 'kicked out' I meant...

Darnit, I was trying to be funny and just ended up being stupid. We didn't get kicked out of our house, I was referring to the fact that we've moved websites, namely moved to this one. Sorry for the confusion! And thanks for the emails of concern. Next time I 'll say what I mean and not be a smartarse (well I'll try anyway).

Here's a shot of Jo and our friends all dressed up for AJ and Reema's wedding, doesn't she look smashing in her sari?