Thank you mom for being there for my brother and I over the years, by teaching us how to swim, driving me to and from dragonboat and outrigger practices (until I knew how to drive), being at every local regatta. I may not always say it, but thank you for everything.

Instead of the typical Mother’s day bunch my brother and I decided to take our mom out to the movies this evening.

Happy Mothers Day to all you moms out there.

What do you have planned for Mother’s Day?

It’s been a busy last few days, I was hoping to have this post up on Monday but got busy.

Since I was the one buying the chocolate easter eggs this year, I was the one who was controlling how much chocolate was coming into the house. So I gave my mom and her dragonboat team the bag of chocolate that I had and I used what was left over. Why should I go overboard on chocolate when I barely eat the stuff?

The kidlet got a good mix of toys, books and of course chocolate, even my cats got spoiled they got some more treats and the youngest one got a new collar and of course I got myself a bag of mini eggs(yum) and some more sunscreen.

The wine I got in South Africa

Easter dinner was great not just cause the great company but the food was amazing and the wine I brought, had great reviews from everyone who had a glass.

How was your easter/long weekend?

Anyways, Back in June/July I heard that my best friend and her family were planning on heading back down to South Africa to spend Christmas with some family. Since my friends brothers girlfriend and I’ve never been, we were invited to tag along as well. Some days I wish all my flights, I book were direct flights this way I wouldn’t have to deal with long layovers but of course it doesn’t happen that way. We had about a 4 hour layover which wasn’t that bad since there was 6 of us. We always had someone to talk to/look after our bags if we had to head to the washrooms etc. Plus free booze on long flights is a bonus.

Once we landed in Johannesburg, a family friend came by and picked us all up and gave us a quick tour of the city and dropped our gear off at my friend’s aunts place as we were staying there. That afternoon we went to a amusement park and took the mining tour. Trying to stay awake for that was hard but it was nice to walk around and getting all the joints moving again.

Check out my flickr account if you’d like to see more pictures

Once we got back into Johannesburg, the next day we spent time at one of the local museums, like with all museums there are parts you just skip pass and other parts you could just look at all the articles/artwork all day. Even with 2012 just around the corner there you can still find that racism is still around, may not be as noticeable as it once was globally but it’s still around and with that once you get your ticket to enter into the building you are either white or non-white and gave us kids (who didn’t grow up with the whole colour divide a view of what life was like).

The flight to Cape Town is about two hours, which wasn’t that long but it was long enough that we given a real meal, none of this pay $5 by a credit card for a few slices of cheese and crackers crap that all North American airlines do to save a couple of bucks. Once we landed in Cape Town, we were surprised by my friends cousin who met us at the airport. Once we got our two rental cars we drove did a quick tour of Cape Town as we were heading to my friends Grandma’s place.

The next day or so, we (7 of us) packed up again and road tripped it across South Africa to the town where the Grandma grew up in. It was really neat but creepy that we were staying in the house that she grew up in. I only say it’s creepy as it’s now a hunting lodge and since none of us hunt, we were just grossed out by the animal skins all over the place. Traveling with 4 vegetarians can be interesting at times.

While we were there we (the four kids) went tubing and I re-flamed my shoulder/arm up again… Stupid move I know.. On the way back we did a cave tour, did a lot of swimming at all the local beaches, another highlight was the paragliding (I didn’t go), hiked up Cape Point, did some winery tours, saw some wild penguins and went to the local aquarium.

Managed to see some dragonboats while I was in Cape Town which made my day, sure they were just at the dock but I didn’t care as we were at the wharf mid afternoon when we spotted them (to early for teams to be practicing).

If I ever do go down there again, I’d bring two suitcases one for my clothes and another one for all my purchases.

PGN written in the sand

Near the end of the trip, we did find ourselves at a different beach almost every day. It was really nice to be able to enjoy the summer like weather by doing something other then being stuck in a building sightseeing and or drive from point A to B to C all the time. Since I wasn’t really keeping up with my dryland training (crunches,jogging etc) I just used going to the beach to be my dryland training with some swimming, I also mixed it up a bit by doing some body surfing when I wasn’t able to rent a bodyboard.

Some of the beaches we went to were jammed packed with people and others had barely anyone on them which was quite nice as your not always dealing with huge crowds. We did a lot of our swimming when we were traveling along the Eastern coastline/Indian Ocean. I do have to say it was really nice to be swimming in a warm ocean for once. Having brought my Chawel towel with me on trip, I found that changing on crowd beaches a lot easier then having to wait to use a change room.

My Best Friend and I, after a few hours of swimming

An afternoon of Body Boarding

My trip to South Africa was just amazing and even the 6 hours I spent walking around London, England between flights was incredible. It doesn’t seem surreal that I was just in both countries less then a few days ago (got back on the 23rd). I’m currently going thru over 3000 pictures, I’ll write more about the trip soon …. I promise.

Since I’ve been back, it’s been jammed pack busy, on the 24th my family and I meet up to visit my Nana at her care home for a family lunch-in. It was great seeing her even thought she doesn’t recall who we all are anymore. And since I was in London had I had to get her cookies from , Christmas Morning was at my Mom’s and tonight my Aunt is hosting Christmas dinner and then on the 30th, we are going to another family dinner.

Didn’t really have had a problem with jet lag since I’ve been back, well my sleeping pattern has been weird since I normally work night shift/early morning. But I’m glad to be back home

Thank you to all of you who sent me Christmas cards this year. You all rock!!

There wasn’t much of a culture shock when I first arrived like I thought there might be. Johannesburg just reminded me of Home (Vancouver) and a bit of Calgary and Seattle mixed all together, just from the buildings to the landscape and how green everything is and how friendly/polite everyone is.

I do have to say I’m having a blast and I’d love to come back here one day to do more sightseeing.

How are you doing?

Some of the highlights of the night were:
- Everyone who walked along my street all stopped and looked at my yard display (yay)
- A tot who came to the door with his older sister (who was maybe 5yo), the tot could only say “tricker or tricker” and the sister was no it’s “trick or treat”. It was cute!
- Over hearing some of the kids mention to their parents after coming to the door was “She has purple hair (insert mommy or daddy)”

There are more pictures on my flickr account.

Comment for a Cause (C4AC) is back for it’s 4th year. C4AC is my way to raises funds & awareness. This year I’ve picked BC Children’s Hospital as my charity of choice. Each comment this site gets equals $1 that I will be donating at the end of the month.. Don’t forget to keep up to date by subscribing to my rss feed

I’m all for emailing, texting, twittering, facebooking someone but sometimes picking up the phone and talking to someone is way better conversation then just reading words on a screen of some sort.

Since Easter is coming up and I hadn’t hear what my family was doing so I was looking into doing something else with some friends, so I decided to write onto my facebook page tonight about who’s wanting to come over for Easter… mostly as an inside joke with my closest friends who live elsewhere.

Within seconds of posting that my cousin decides to text me not pick up the phone and mention that didn’t you hear we are hosting Easter this year.. They thought that his mom was gonna mention to my mom and then have her pass on to my brother and I about this dinner? Hmm No! That’s not how it works buddy.. After telling him that no one in my family knew about this dinner, he quickly phoned my mom to make sure she knew about the dinner.

Now personally I really wish I didn’t learn about this dinner and been a no show. I don’t care if that’s rude but if you don’t take the time to personally invite your guests then how would they know if you got the invite?? But I guess I should go since I just received an invite via text and now one on facebook.

What are you doing for Easter?

In all my years of flying I’ve never had to deal with a deicing which made me nervous as we were delayed 45 minutes before we even got into the air, and of course the second plane I had to catch was at the other end of the second terminal, I was able to make it with 5 minutes to spare before we were loading that plane. By the time I got off that plane I hadn’t eaten all day and I wasn’t pleased that if I wanted a snack on the plane that I had to use my credit card for a $3 dollar item instead of cash. So I went to Starbucks as I was waiting to be picked up. Walking out of the Airport and my allergies weren’t pleased with me.

We didn’t do to much yesterday, because my friends are big Colts fans we went to a well known sport bar chain out here in the Midwest to watch the game. I noticed on the menu they had a Canadian beer and I was craving something from home so I order a drink and the waitress didn’t have a clue what I was talking about or allowed me to order as I didn’t have an American ID, nor my passport on me (I’m sorry I hate traveling with my passport), just because they had a problem with Mexican’s using fake id’s. So we left and went to another restaurant and they were a lot friendlier and I can see my friends going back there again.

Hope everyone had a great weekend

Happy Thanksgiving, :turkey: hope your having a wonderful time with loved ones this weekend.

We had our thanksgiving dinner last night injunction with celebrating my late gramps and aunt birthday who both passed away 4 years ago. My cousin’s girlfriend wanted to try her hand hosting a family dinner for 13 but with a twist. Everyone had to bring something to the table and since she didn’t want to cook the turkey, my mom did and so that means I just have to visit my mom for leftovers instead of my cousin. LOL.