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

Long Overdue Update

I think it's safe to say that a McNelson family update is long overdue! The delay is partly due to general craziness with work and life, but mainly due to my computer finally giving out on me. Now that my new computer finally arrived the McNelson blog is back!

Amber and Papa going to the beach

We are slowly getting back into the swing of things around here. Although the memories (and sadness) are still fresh, Amber forces us to live in the now and keep us moving forward.

Amber is now into running everywhere, however, her legs and feet don't always have the coordination and/or speed to keep up. So now she has two large goose eggs on her forehead and her knees are covered in bruises and scars. I have to hand it to her though....she always gets right back up and keeps running after a few quick sobs.

Another milestone that Amber is reaching is the super chatty phase. I guess she has always been a chatty girl, however, now a lot of it makes sense and she's starting to form sentences. It's nice not having to guess at what she wants all the time. That being said, I do still guess wrong from time to time and am promptly awarded with a forceful "Noo!!" - a word she mastered months ago.

Now that both Tim and I are working full time the weeks seem to fly by in the blink of an eye. It's all we can do to get Amber to bed each night, feed ourselves and then call it a night. Hopefully I can keep up with my promise of 'regular blogs'!