Early Christmas

We had Christmas this weekend as all the kids were in the same area at the same time. Here's Nana handing out the presents.

Here we are with our seven grandkids.

Jonah trying his hand at babysitting.

When we got back to our place, a Toyota Highlander didn't make the corner and landed on it's side, just missing a pole. Accidents seem to happen around us. Tonight we went to Olive Garden with George, Della, James and Doris, who came down from Dawson Creek. When we came out of the restaurant I noticed we had a flat tire. I dreaded changing it in a snow storm. George had a air compressor in his car and filled it up enough to get to a gas station. We were plotting the next gas station on the route home when the fellow parked beside us offered to fix the tire. He had a plug kit and in a couple of minutes we were back on the road, from Langley to Abbotsford in a snow storm. The rest of the trip was uneventful. Thank you everyone.

Another New Grandchild

Today we had grandchild number 7 arrive. He's a boy born to Melanie and Darrell. Carol is staying at their house watching the other 2 boys untill Melanie comes home from the hospital in a few days.

Zada's Birthday

Before we left for the coast we had Zada over at our RV for her 5th birthday.

Friday the 13th

Friday night we were going towards our daughters place, and half way there we came across an accident that had just happened. Cars were pulling over to help. A mid sized car crossed the center line on the freeway right into a pickup coming from the opposite direction. The people in the car were pronounced dead at the scene. A 69 year old woman and a 10 year old boy. It shakes you up so close to you.

New Job

I got a job! Really it's a little contract with the city to do traffic counts at certain areas. Today I hired Carol to help out. It's just a five or six day job, which suits me just fine. And being a government job, it's a good wage plus I work for four hours and get paid for six. Sounds good to me. Little extra spending money and gives me something to do.

Pumpkin Patch II

Now we are in Vernon with the other grandkids, at the pumpkin patch here.

Here's Carol's new snake. We call him Gourd.

Pumpkin Patch

Monday we did the annual trip to the pumpkin patch with the grandkids. There's a hayride to the patch, where the kids pick out a pumpkin. Next week we will do the Okanagan grandkids.

Melanies Ultrasound

Today Melanie had a 3D ultrasound done. What was cool was we could see it broadcast live online. Baby is due November 19th.

Connor is Home Today

Today Connor turned 3 weeks old and got to go home early from the hospital.

Awake

Funny what a few days make with Connor. He's out of level 3 care to level 2. They are just waiting for a bed in Abbotsford and he can be moved to a normal hospital, out of Children's Hospital. Scary though, as they have excellent care here.

Connor Update

Hi everyone!!
This is the first time I have internet, Lexi is sleeping, I am not at the hospital and I am still awake!!
As you know Connor has arrived and is doing better then thought.
His head is not as big as they had thought and so far nothing else seems to be "wrong".
He is breathing too fast and shallow so they had to intibate him for one night. They also put some kind of med's in his lungs at this time.
He seems to be breathing better most of the time.
The Dr's are not as concerned about his shunt operation right now because his head has not grown at all since he was born.
They will hold off the operation until his breathing improves.
Mandy held him for the first time yesterday.
Mandy was released today and is bunking with Roy, Lexi and me at our RV. (Chris is also here when he is able)
We are at a RV park in Burnaby. The same one that we where at last year April.
Please continue to pray for Connor's breathing.
Once his breathing improves they will do the shunt operation and he will be able to go home soon afterwards.

Lexi found a few entertaining things at the hospital.

But the most entertaining thing was the suitcase back at the RV.

New Grandson

Today Sept 9th (09/09/09) we got a new Grandson. Connor Bryce. He missed the time 09:09:09 but came around 11 am. He was 6 weeks early and 6 lbs, 8 oz. and 19.69 inches long for all the women who want to know every detail that men don't know. Tomorrow he has an MRI. This makes grandchild #6.

Waiting

We are currently waiting.
1. For Mandy to have her baby. They're checking half week by half week, monitoring it's progression. They had some good news, that the baby is not growing as fast, but news changes at every visit.
2. Also we're waiting to figure my hospital visits out. I was in and out. As soon as they stabilize me, they let me out, without going to find the root of the cause. Last week end I was back in as the pain was so great and they stabilized me with morphine and sent me out at midnight. I explained I had to be back by 8 am for a scope, but that didn't matter. I made them leave the i v tap in as they have trouble finding veins and dig around in there. At the scope they were happy with my idea. The surgeon said the scope was negative and that's a good thing. We don't want him to find any problem there. But that leaves us at square one.

As these pictures show, we are staying in the yard (acreage) of our friends, Art and Margaret. Carol went to school with Margaret and they were (rural) neighbours. When I first met Carol, she was walking home from school with Margaret (grade 9). We are grateful to have friends to help out.

Also we celebrated Lexi's 3rd birthday party. Now we have 3 grandkids 3 years old.

Wired

Talk about change of plans. I've been having stomach pain for a while. In Whitehorse, Montana and here. So Carol took me to emerg when I could not eat and doubled over in pain and they're trying to get to the bottom of it. The xray showed a hiatus hernia and the cat scan showed a gall stone. Then they did an ultrsound to confirm. They let me out for a few days and then I have an appointment with a surgeon. They plan on taking my gall bladder out and leaving the hernia for now. I'll know more tomorrow. At least I have high speed internet in my bed at the hospital. With the morphine shots I didn't need high speed internet. Good ole Canadian medical system. We have coverage but they drag it out as long as they can.

Change of plans

We came back to the coast on Wednesday. We stopped out of Merritt on the Coquahalla at a stream. Mocha was beside herself with delight. She jumped off a rock into the water at let out a yelp of delight as she sailed through the air. Today I took her to the creek here by Cultus, but she got too rambunctious and skinned her front leg on a large rock. At least it settled her down. Carol went with Mandy to Vancouver and they said they will have to deliver the baby early. So Connor will be here in a month or sooner, depending on the next tests. So we decided to stay and support her during this time of uncertainty. And we have to be here for the delivery. (Of coarse). We just have to figure out where to stay. Abbotsford doesn't have an RV park. I miss Vernon. It's probably hotter there, but they don't have the humidity like here, so it's more bearable. There I can sit in the sun and have my coffee, but here I have to hunker down with the air conditioning. My joints hurt like crazy here.

Evacuations

Yesterday they evacuated a whole area affected by the Terrace Mountain Forest fire, which is across the lake from us. We went to work for the City of Vernon, who were taking care of the evacuees. Our shift was 6 pm to midnight. I was the floor supervisor. Workers checking in the evacuees had to get their papers signed off by me, and I had to answer any questions the workers had. Carol was placed as supervisor for acquisitions. Her group of ladies made arrangements with all the hotels for lodging. Roughly 240 families went through the system and others that did not need services (food or lodging), could phone into a separate call centre. Today the fire retreated enough for half the people to go home, but they are still on alert to leave at a moments notice. We made some good contacts here for the future.

More Smoke

This is what the smoke looked like the next day. Kristen said it looks more like a volcano. At least the sky was clear straight up in the evening, as we went to the park and watched the space shuttle, attached to the space station fly directly over Vernon. It took four minutes to fly across the sky and was way brighter than the brightest star.

Forest Fires

First off, Carol found a car for sale. It is a Mazda Carol. She fell in love with the name.

The air is thick with smoke here in Vernon. There are three forest fires burning. This one is the Fintry fire. I took this picture from the east side of Okanagan Lake, up a mountain. The plume is coming up in the left side of the smoke. Forestry has one crew here on the fire, as there are no houses close by. All the other crews are working the two Kelowna fires as it is more populated.

The smoke drowns out the sun. Looking at these fires, I'm itching to get to work, but we have travelling to do.

Contraption

Here is a picture of my internet contraption. I mounted a dual antenna wireless into the inside of a wok. Acts like a satellite dish for internet. I saw one in Montana. I get someones signal from 7 km away. With normal wireless I get 3 connections but with it I get 17 here. I'll have to find a different mount. This is on my car wash brush, which works great. It has an extendable arm. I mount it to my roof ladder on the rv for height, and I can swivel it for range.

I took Lenny to the local Nissan dealer to take pictures with the Nissan Cube. My S-Cargo is the predecessor to the Cube.

This is my favourite place (My happy place).

We celebrated Jonah's 3rd birthday in Vernon.

Here's Zada and Jonah at the Vernon Car Show where I had the S-Cargo on display. It got alot of attention.

We could see the Canada Day fireworks from Micah and Kristens diningroom window.

Then we went to the coast for Lincoln's 3rd birthday.

No, this isn't a tribute to Michael Jackson. It's Caleb in his favourite Batman costume.

Vernon

We're back in Vernon for the next month and a half. Back in the warmth. On the way here there was a whole pack (20 or so) of Harley Bikers that passed us through Rogers Pass. About fifteen minutes up the road we rounded a bend and I saw a big puff of dust in the trees and all the bikers scrambling down the bank. I assumed one didn't make the curve. I was right as we approached Revelstoke two RCMP cars come towards us, and an ambulance and then a fire highway rescue truck, all with lights and sirens.

Canada

Today we are in Cochrane Alberta. Can't say I've been here before. This is the view out our RV door. There's a walking/jogging trail along the river which flows just the other side of the trees in the picture. Last night we made it to Canada and stayed in Lethbridge Alberta. Today we headed north to Calgary where we had lunch and a visit with our son Ken and his girlfriend Megan. Cochran is just half an hour northwest of Calgary but there is not much for good RV sites between Calgary and Vernon. Tomorrow it's a six and a half hour drive to Vernon according to the GPS.

Snow in June

What a difference from the beginning of the week. I got a nice tan refresher Tuesday, and yesterday and today it was snowing. It didn't stick but it was still snowing. The high was 3 today. Some new friends we met left for Alberta today. Two other Albertans are here at the mine. Too bad we are going back, I could have a job here running the RV Park all summer.

Back at the Mines

Thursday morning we left Lakeview and headed north, after breakfast with some of our Bend Friends. We stopped for lunch at Pickle's Place. They had the best hamburgers ever. Made Carol feel like a kid again. Then we went to Boise ID for night.

The next night we made it to Dillon Montana. Here's some graffiti in town.

It's quite an old town with old buildings in perfect shape. It used to be the capitol and has one of the oldest universities in the US.

One of our outings there was a field of these old cars.

Saturday we made it to Basin to the mine and spent an afternoon mining down the road. We got some crystals.


Here is a video of our campsite, along with the rushing stream.

Wouldn't you know it, a Kayaker came by just as I stopped the video.

Carol finished her baby blanket during one of our Radon treatments in the mine. Yesterday was our first day and it will last for ten days. We might go to a sapphire mine next week, in Helena Montana.

In Idaho

We left Lakeview Oregon this morning. We had a great time all week. The men did the cooking. We had real man's chilli. It was good to catch up with friends and deepen friendships.

Tonight we are in Mountain Home Idaho. This burrowing owl was in the field by our RV site.

U.S Bound Again

We spent a few days in Vernon, before heading out on another trip. I got new mags for my van we call "Lenny", and did some promotional shots for an RV dealer selling tear drop style trailers. In Kelowna we went in a car show with Lenny. Some people said it was the most interesting vehicle there. Also on our down time we got a recall looked after on our RV fridge and got new brakes on the RV.

Then Mocha said it's time to hit the open road.

There was the usual traffic stoppage close to Summerland where they are widening the highway. Also this was the first time they searched the trailer going through Customs at the border crossing. Heaven forbid if we bring over anything with beef in it or any form of fruit. They did do a double take on Carol's hemp seeds.

After a night in Yakima we made it to our friends in Bend Oregon. We spent the night in their house and in the morning assembled ten RV's at Gordies Truck Stop for breakfast, before our convoy south.

Here's one of the small towns our convoy converged upon. There were two antique stores here so we could stretch our legs.

Then we made it to Lakeview Oregon. This is the working ranch with an RV park we stayed at last year, and met the people on this convoy. We're having a great time with these friends. This year the men are in charge of making dinners, so I would expect a lot of meat. I did dessert last night (sponge cake with fresh cut strawberries and whipping cream), and next Tuesday I'll be making a cherry cheesecake. After here (May 27th) we are going to Boulder Montana to the Radon Mines for 10 days of treatment.