Christmas in California

This year the McNelson family spent Christmas in sunny Palm Springs where Amber was able to spend some quality time with Grandma and Grandpa Nelson. It was definitely nice to have a break from the cold and have some t-shirt and shorts weather again. Even nicer to have a quality visit with Marg and Roy :)

On Christmas Day Amber was very spoiled. At first she wasn't so sure about opening presents. She actually even had a tantrum when we told her it was time to open gifts! Once she opened a couple she realized that gifts are pretty great and quickly opened the remainder. She then spent the rest of the day packing her toys around the house.

This was also an especially difficult Christmas for me being the first without my mom. Although my Christmases will never be the same, I hope that I can create many great memories for Amber just like my mom did for me.

Our visit is sadly coming to an end, but we have had a great time to say the least. Great food, fun adventures (hiking and biking), and above all a fantastic family visit :)

A Halloween Recap

This year we decided to do Halloween right and headed to a pumpkin patch in Richmond to search for the perfect pumpkin :)

Once we got there Amber (in serious need of a nap) didn't want to have anything to do with the pumpkin patch....nor did she want to set a single foot on the ground. So Tim and I took turns carrying her around.

The mode of transport to and from the pumpkin patch was a tractor ride complete with live music.

Amber really enjoyed the music and was completely enthralled with the fiddle player on the way back :)

Tim took it upon himself to find the biggest pumpkin at the patch. He scoured the far back field and eventually emerged with a 40lb pumpkin!

Amber also picked out a nice small pumpkin which would later be used as the "eaten pumpkin".

Tim was the carving master this year and designed quite a spooky pumpkin. Amber and I were both very impressed :)

On Halloween Amber wore her dragon costume to Sarah's (daycare) and went trick-o-treating with her little buddies Zoey and Leiland. Although she enjoyed the two chocolate bars she got that day, the biggest hit was the play dough she was given. She also painted a little mini pumpkin :)

Once we got home and had dinner, Amber was too tired for any additional trick-o-treating so I just dressed her up at home for a quick photo op then it was off to bed. All-in-all a great Halloween!

A little of this....a little of that

Yet another delayed blog post....and started at 10:30pm no less. Busy busy - story of my life these days. I often wonder how my mom was ever able to do it: full time job (sometimes even more so), two kids, meals to cook for the whole family and more.....and yet she always seemed so composed and stress free. I try to reach that level of composure constantly, but so far I'm still frazzled and way behind on all my non-work tasks. I guess there are still a few kinks to work out in my daily routines :)

I thought as a time saving measure I would do a mix-mash update of what we've been up to these days.

Back in August I helped out my old kickboxing instructor with some advertising photos for his new kickboxing school. Apparently the photos that were taken that day didn't turn out very well (black on black - I was a floating head in some photos) so none of them will get used, but there is another round scheduled soon.

I brought Amber along to the photo shoot thinking that she would find it fun running around the dojo with all the exercise balls, but she did not enjoy it in the slightest. She cried the entire time and each photo was taken in between cry breaks. Needless to say I rushed the photographer so I could get Amber out of there!

In other McNelson news we spent a nice long weekend at our Mt. Cain cabin. It was great because we had the entire cabin to ourselves (a rare treat). Not great, however, in the fact that we had new 'guests' roaming around......mice. It's a common problem up there, but a pain in the butt nonetheless.  We managed to get in some family time in between wood chopping time.

The one unfortunate part of the trip was that Amber was teething pretty badly. So she shrieked for about 70% of the time. That's including night time - I didn't sleep for most of the weekend.

One of the only ways Amber (and I) could get some sleep!

Our most recent McNelson adventure was Thanksgiving in Sechelt. This year was my first "solo"dinner. I say "solo" because I definitely had help from my dad and Tim to get the meal to the table. It was a lot of work, but well worth the effort having everyone there with us. I think we would have made mom proud with the dinner we put together.

The next day we all went out for a walk to work off some of the dinner!

 Until next time!

Biking and Life

I went up to Whistler last weekend to ride a trail called PhD.  Had to find out if it was worthy of such a name.  It was.  Amir is a buddy who is a budding photographer and a hell of a rider.  Let the photos do the talking.  Most of these shots are of me with a few of him as well.

A 3 shot sequence of a rock ride.

This shows the view from the bottom, it was actually really steep but the lense hardly did it justice.

The same rock ride but a view from the top.

This was later in the day on a newly completed memorial trail called "It's Business Time"..

 We did a bit of posing too, Amir likes to work with the lighting which usually means squinting into the sun.

 

I love the colors (yes I am purposely not using the Quebec spelling anymore) in the forest.

We also went to this amazing treehouse in the forest.  Apparently it took the guy several years to build.  Very impressive.

Another thing that made this ride awesome was that I finally installed a receiver on the Mazda so it can take bikes.  This is a much more exciting drive on the Sea to Sky highway than a Tundra monster truck, much cheaper on gas too.

And now the life update:
Life is good. Super busy.  I'd like to think I'll update this more often.  We'll see.  A summary:  I got my dream job after a bout of unemployment.  It is amazingly challenging and days go by so fast it is scary.  I have a multi-year learning curve before I become efficient.  I love what I do and can't believe I get paid for it.

Amber is turning into a little person.  Today she spoke her first real sentence to me and I was floored.  She was pushing her Thomas the train along and I asked her what she was doing? I always ask her questions and never really expect a response, but she stopped, thought about it, and told me "I'm going back into my room daddy" and I was so blown away.  Her annunciation wasn't perfect but good enough for me to realize that I wasn't imagining it, she really understands now and can respond.


Kristy is amazing.  She lets me get out on rides like shown above which meant I was out of the house from about 9am - 7pm.  In return I make sure to be home from work in time for her to kickbox Monday and Wednesday nights. Hardly a fair trade.  But to stick up for myself a little bit, she was out on a stagette party the day before the ride from noon to 11pm so it's not like I do nothing. Here is an example of what happened Saturday when I tried to get some work done while Amber was eating.  I thought she was a bit too quiet.

And here's a shot of Amber and Kristy from 2 weeks ago when we were out for breakfast.  Amber drank that entire glass of milk.

It's been so long since I've updated that there is just too much to say.  Overall things are great although I don't go more than a few hours without thinking about how much I miss Jenny.  Things are really different without her.  We're all learning how to cope with it