Ukraine - Dinosaur and Elephant

Postcard from lopitol from Ukraine.

J and I love the little elephant making friends with the dinosaur. The stamps on this one were pretty cool too!

Storybrooke/Steveston

19.7 Go on 10 "adventures"
53.1 Visit at least two of the places in Alex's day trips book

After J’s adventures Saturday night, we let her sleep in yesterday morning (she had a 3.5 hour nap Saturday, stayed up until midnight and slept until 9:30 Sunday…) and she had a quiet time after lunch, but she fell asleep a few minutes from home. She was zonked out by the time we made it to Steveston.



Our plan has been to get there early and visit the farmers’ market that is held every two weeks and then have fish and chips for lunch. But we have a fridge full of produce and not a lot of freezer space right now and we decided J needed some extra rest so we arrived in the afternoon instead of the morning, so we just browsed the market (we’re planning on going back – maybe in two weeks) and went straight for an early dinner.



J thought the fish shaped plates were kind of neat – even if the food slid around a bit more than normal.

After we ate we decided to go see what was happening in the metropolis of Steveston/Storybrooke. Alex and I both enjoyed Once Upon a Time and always spent part of the show exclaiming, “Hey, that’s ____” so it was cool to walk around and what little bits of Once Upon a Time had left their mark on the town.



Here’s Granny’s Diner, which is actually a law office. Behind the tree on the right is a sign painted on the building next door pointing to Granny’s Bed and Breakfast.



Our little bug glasses girl wasn’t so sure about this walking around town stuff, so we stopped into the museum/post office beside Granny’s.



J was pretty excited that the tourist information centre was in there because she managed to procure one of her new favourite items…a map! Then we walked past the Storeybrooke Pet Shelter…



…to the place I was most curious about, Mr. Gold’s Pawnbroker shop.


We think that maybe this is the actual shop used in the show. If you go here, you’ll see that the wall paper and ceiling match and the canoe is in a few of the shots. I’ll have to see if I can get a better shot next time…



His shop is even a member of the Storybrooke Retailers Association, but given that he is the most powerful person in town (sorry Regina), I’m sure he’d be a member in good standing no matter what!



We stopped by the toy store (which I think becomes a five and dime) so that J could give us some ideas for her upcoming birthday. She basically ignored everything in the store except the Brio train set. Then she and her dad tried on some goofy hats!



We saw the Storybrooke bread shop – it was busy. Maybe our next trip will include a stop there!



fter an ice cream break, we decided to take a walk to Garry Point and that brings us to Alex’s day trips book. Garry Point happens to be one of them!



We stopped along the way so that J could go for a bit of a wade and play in the sand – we were kind of surprised to see so many people swimming – the water looked pretty icky.



J loved watching the kites. They’re pretty small specks in this picture, but it was a glorious day for flying a kite!



One the way back, J stopped to blow the fluff off the tops of all the dandelions…I guess she had a lot of wishes!



We will be heading back to Steveston soon I think. as we drove out of town, J noticed their massive playground and water park. So the list for next time:

• more fish and chips
  
• more ice cream
  
• water park and playground (bring bathing suits!)
  
• Mommy gets some time alone to browse the shops
  
• J would like to try flying a (much smaller than the ones we saw today) kite
  
• a visit to the farmer’s market and the bakery and maybe a visit to the London Heritage Farm

Definitely day trip worthy!

Exploding Skies

As we found out the hard way last year, the Celebration of Light/Symphony of Fire/whatever the heck it’s called this year is loud enough that you can hear it very well from our apartment. If you stand on our bed, on your tippy toes, you can maybe catch a glimpse of some of the really high fireworks. But back to the loud…it’s loud enough to rouse our sound sleeper and either freak her out or get her really excited and then it’s a bit of a challenge getting her to go back to sleep.

So, we decided to just skip bedtime last night and head down to Granville Island just like we did last year. We even dug the buggy out of storage and loaded our giant baby [well, really, preschooler], into it with some blankets.

 

We got there a bit early – it was a lovely night! It was quite warm and it wasn’t nearly as crowded as it was last year.

 

J sat in the buggy for most of the show – she eventually wanted out and we went and sat on one of the benches. She was a bit concerned about the seagulls who were squawking their displeasure all over the place and she told all the people around us that the noise was scaring them (she was right…)

 

She also decided that she probably wants to go fishing. In False Creek. Right off Granville Island. The people sitting beside us convinced her there might be better places to go fishing – like the Queen Charlotte Islands or somewhere on Vancouver Island or anywhere a little less urban.

 

[See the birds flying around in protest?] After the people beside us left, J switched from wanting to fish to reassuring the fish that the noise would be over soon and the birds could go back to bed. Could they see the pretty fireworks under the water?

 

It was a lovely night…I hope she’ll be sound asleep before they start on Wednesday, because I’m not taking her out there alone…and they start way too close to my weeknight bedtime anyway!

Austria, Germany and the Netherlands–Kangaroos, kids and balloons

Postcard from objektklasse from Austria
Description: Giant Red Kangaroo in the pouch

Postcard from Flocke2010 from Germany
Description: Game of Chess, 1902. Carl Larsson

Postcard from Hettie from the Netherlands

Denmark and Finland - toy soldiers and athletes

Postcard from Gogge1 from Denmark

Gogge1 is responsible for over 1/4 of the postcards sent from Denmark through Postcrossing. Incredible. (At the time of registering my card she had sent 5,212 and received 5,118)

Postcard from KuusenAlla from Finland

Finland - Live Love Laugh

Postcard from minkero from Finland

This postcard came with the very cool hockey playing Angry Birds stamp.

Oh, and can I just say, Europe has way better (non tourist) postcards than we do (I think we have some pretty cool tourist cards). I figured that out when I lived there, but I keep getting reminded by it when I get cool postcards in the mail. And then I go somewhere like the postcard store on Granville Island and want to cry because the postcards are so expensive!

Switzerland & Brazil–Clowns and Beaches

Postcard from Egni from Switzerland

Postcard from POSTCARDS2014 from Brazil

Description: Santa Catarina – Brasil Bombinhas: Praia de  Quatro Ilhas, Praia de Mariscal and Praia do Canto Grande

Germany, the Netherlands, Belarus and China: Five people, a cat, a dog, and a house

Postcard from starfarer from Germany
Description: Schwalenberg Town Hall in Westfalia
I love this painted (and maybe carved?) building – so beautiful. This card came with a pretty unique stamp – it’s a scratch and sniff lemon!


Postcard from alida29 from the Netherlands
Description: From “Jip en Janneke” written by Annie M. G. Schmidt
This is the second Jip en Janneke card that we’ve received. I think they’re cute! This card also came with a Postcrossing stamp. It's the third one down on the right side if you click over to the Postcrossing site.


Postcard from currant_m from Belarus
Description: Belarusian national clothes. Costume of Liahavichy region.


Postcard from Xi6ao2ban from China

I wish we had a yard

...I really do. But after seeing these baby cages, I'm super happy with what we've got.

I'll take our 36 square foot deck over one of those things any day!

Walking in the forest

19.6 Go on 10 "adventures"

We’ve been letting J pick her own adventures and today we decided that a walk in the forest was the way to go. We decided to head up to the university to park the card and go for a walk in Pacific Spirit Park.

My parking pass is valid in few spots close to some of the entrances to the forest, so we parked the car and walked in.

J’s daycare is located on the edge of Pacific Spirit Park and they regularly go for walks on the trails. There are many awesome things about J’s daycare and this is definitely one of them – having a huge forested area as a sort of extension to the play yard and playgrounds around the daycare is pretty cool!

J knows which plants are huckleberry bushes and salmonberry bushes, so there was a little tasting as we went (no worries, Mommy can recognize both as well, she double checked before anything went in her mouth)

J really wanted her picture taken by this very large root system of a fallen tree. She figured it could be a good hiding place if you could crawl right inside.

There was a lot of running around with arms wide open like this. We weren’t sure if it was just because it was so nice to run and have so much space or if she was showing us, “Look guys, here’s where I play while you work.”

On our way back to the car, we had to pass her old daycare. She peeped in the windows to see if anyone was there to play with (there wasn’t; it’s Saturday after all!)

Hey look, it’s me. And Alex. Together in the same place at the same time. I don’t know the last time a picture of us together made it onto the blog…with the opposite hours we’re working right now, this doesn’t happen all that often, but we love it when it does.

We ended our adventure with some delicious ice cream. Do you like J’s bangs? Mommy was trimming them and she moved. So they’re a bit shorter and kind of goofier than planned. Good thing hair grows back!