Last weekend was the May long weekend in Canada (Monday was a day off). After getting our Nexus cards (similar to Privium in NL) we decided to go to the US. We usually lost 1-2hrs at the border. With Nexus it took us 5 minutes!!.

Below a video of the weekend. Make sure to follow the link to YouTube and view in HD!

Robin and I (Bas) went for a quick overnighter at Mount Seymour. Snowcamping in shorts and a T-shirt is pretty special ;-)

Ge-an was competing in the Stevens Lake Regatta in Washington, USA. Like last year we joined her and camped Friday and Saturday night. This year we camped at Wenberg State Park. We dropped Ge-an at 7am in Stevens lake and Robin, Jamie and I went for breakfast in Everett. We then made our way to a nearby state park with a cool playground.

This playground was so much fun that we went back on Sunday ;-)

A video to give you an idea, make sure to click it to jump to Youtube and select HD:

I'll hopefully edit a few older videos into one large video in the near future. This video has a trip to Whistler and a visit to Lighthouse park in West Vancouver. Click the embedded video to jump to the Youtube site. Recommended to watch in 720p (HD) video

Click to get full images

Robin and Jamie

More R & J

Good thing that Tooth Fairy came!

Noticed that Seymour received a good dump of snow last night. Went up to have a looksie at the end of the day!

Three hours later (!) I was as good as new and we where on our way....

But with a heat wave in Oregon we decided it would be better to start at the coast hoping it would cool down before heading inland (or just delay going inland).

First day brought us close to the Oregon border so we would get to Cannon Beach early next day. Cannon Beach is probably the most photographed/visited location on the Oregon coast and since we did not reserve any campsites, we thought it would be a good idea to arrive early. Worked out OK and we found a nice commercial campground close to Cannon Beach.

Cannon Beach is a typical "badplaats", quite nice but very busy.. The good thing is that the beach is massive, so on the beach it's not as crowded as in Europe. We obviously had to see the famous landmark "Haystack Rock", a pointy rock (a remnant of the basalt flows of ~ 300k years ago) maybe 50 meters out in the water.

We explored some of the other beaches (there are many!), hardly anybody around and some neat things. Kids had a lot of fun (what a surprise):

After two day we drove down to Florence (OR) to see it's famous sand dunes. We camped at a very nice State Park in the actual Dunes area. A short hike away we climbed one of the higher dunes:

It was still a few days until Robin's birthday, but we got him a kite that he put to good use on the dunes :)

After Florence we headed east for the Newberry National Vulcanic Monument a large area with vulcanic remnants. Some of lava flows where relatively recent (~1300 years old) with very little vegatation on them. Most impressive was the "obsidian flow" where an amazing amount of obsidian was deposited in a fairly large area. Obsidian is an absolutely amazing material that we took a lot of photo's off. The obsidian was interspersed with pumis ("puimsteen"), Robin had a lot of fun finding piece that were super light.

Just before closing time we also visited an impressively long lava tunnel (1588 meter)

This tunnel has no electric lighting, you can either rent a gas lantern or bring you own light. This was very, very cool. Jamie was not entirely happy, but we (and Robin) loved it. We where turned around just before the end because it was closing time. I really wanted to take some nice pictures, so we decided to come back the next morning exactly at opening time.

We where the firsts ones in that morning:

The last 200 meters required crawling to get to the real end. Jamie refused to go any further the last 10 meters. Ge-an and Robin made it to the end (Robin would tell everybody we saw on the way back out we where the first ones in, and made it to the end ;)

Getting a good picture was tricky:

Sometimes it's not much fun being our children, for example when we take them into a very cold cave in shorts and sandals and cary them so they get even colder, and only realize this after we get out from the cave. The picture below shows how happy Jamie was:

We went for hot chocolate afterwards (did we mention the heatwave had disappeared between us leaving Vancouver and arriving in Oregon).

We drove thru a desert where we planned to see some fossils (John Day fossil bed). But we had so much rain (!!!) that we decided to move on:

(Picture not from desert area, but same crappy weather. As you can obviously see this was a viewpoint along the route :)

Our last stop in Oregon was the Hells Canyon region. The Hells Canyon was less impressive then expected, but the campsite in Joseph was really nice (in retrospect we should have stayed, because the weather was great as well).

Since this was Robin's real birthday he also got another present:

Jamie was so disappointed that he decided to beat Robin up with a big stick (beating each other up is actually a favorite pass time of them)

On the way back Ge-an really wanted to see Mount Saint Helens:

I guess we will have to go back (it's not that far from Vancouver).

We stayed another two nights on a nice Forest Services campground in Snowqualmy county about 4 hrs drive from Vancouver:

If you wonder why we have the clothes over the fire... Jamie had not been cold for a while so we threw him in the river (or maybe he just fell in trying to catch a fish):

The next day we had some fun following a hike where the river had taken out the bridge that provided access to the trailhead:

The tree in the background was used as a bridge to cross the main river.

And now back to work tomorrow

Last week Ge-an was rowing in a Ouwetaartenrace close to Seattle. On the way there we passed thru Lynden, where 50% of the population is from Dutch descendants.

To continue in the theme we visited the Tulip Festival today...

We managed to arrive there around lunch time. After a bit of searching we found a restaurant that served pannekoeken (Dutch pancakes)!! They didn't pass our Real-Dutch test, but pretty good.

Funny to walk around in Lynden, windmill, clogs and a "Postkantoor":

We camped on the Rivers Meadows campground, around 20 km from Lake Stevens. We dropped Ge-an early in the morning for her races. Robin and Jamie packed up the tent and played for a bit. Around lunch time we headed for Lake Stevens again (so that Jamie could fall asleep in the car).

After an extended, scenic drive (Jamie had a long sleep :)) we saw Ge-an's last race:

This weekend brought very nice weather so we where looking for something outside. On a website we found the "Tulips of the Valley Festival" near Agassiz (a 100 min drive from us).

Not long before we left to Canada we had taken pictures of Robin in a Dutch tulip field. Below is a scan of the 6x6 slide from that day:

We are guessing the nice weather was the reason for the crowds that headed for the Tulip Festival. Visitors where predominantly Asian, the owner however are probably Dutch since the lady at the entrance gate answered us in Dutch when she overheard us talking Dutch ;-)

Below a selection of the pictures we took. A larger selection can be found as a PDF slideshow. This file is 30MB large, so it could take a while, but well worth the wait if we might say so :)

People who have been in our house will recognize what it is ;-)

We guess it will take another weekend to get it all down, but then we can start with putting drywall back up, painting and all the other fun stuff (like getting rid of the waterfall)

JRGB

A very quick updates. The old server was having serious issues and needed regular reboots. I've moved to the new server yesterday. But not all websites etc are up. Canablog seems to be OK now ;-)

This post is:
- A test to see if notifications still work
- To let you know our mail has moved to a new server, so if there are issues, that is why
- We have put a new movies up on http://www.brijn.nu -> Video

The video is made using our new HD camera. The preview (DivX web) is down converted to SD resolution. I highly recommend the larger download :)

Bye for now

JRGB

One of the other things we did was add a picture rail. People who visited us in Rotterdam, The Netherlands might remember the large Innemee we had on the wall:

We bought and where given two smaller works by Innemee that are not in the Rotterdam picture.

We wanted to give them a nice spot in our new house. The straircase was the only place where there was enough room to properly show them.

We just finished hanging them and are pretty happy with the result!

So time for an update, why today you might ask....

With all the fun thing we did we said, well now we must really update our log, but never sat down long enough.

So an overview of all things and persons coming up. First up is Jamie. He started to babble at first, then talk, grew about 10 cm, and looks more and more like his brother.

The talking bit is very funny. If he wants to drink he says 'water?'. If he wants to eat something he says '(h)ap', and a hug becomes 'ug'. At first everything was 'no more' if he wanted us to stop doing something (like changing his diaper). NO MORE, NO MORE, NO MORE, NO MORE! Then it became 'no way'. The same way repeating it 4, 5 times very loud. Now he's in a phase of stomping his feet. Not being very good at it yet, it's a very funny sight.

We also applied for a Dutch passport for Jamie some weeks ago. The most challenging part was getting a picture that was acceptable. What with all these new rules about how the picture should exactly look.... Try to get a 20 month old toddler to sit still and close his mouth and look at the camera long enough. Especially the closed mouth was a bit of a problem for Jamie. There were sooooooo many interesting things to see in that photo shop! Ohhhhhh and ahhhhh with his mouth wide open. Like my colleague said; they just make you look like a criminal beforehand, to make it even more difficult to get into the US. Well here is pirate Jamie at his fiercest (still cute)

I must say he kind of reminded me of Mr. McDust here.

Then there is Robin, who is 'a big boy' now, but not yet as big as the bigger boys. He's also grown at least 10 cm, can do hand signals on his bike, and is getting ready to start school!

It amazing to see how his skills keep developing. In January we went skiing, and after a week of lessons, Robin was able to come down any green run with us. We kept the skiing up back in Vancouver where he's coming down the occasional blue run as well. He loves skiing! It seems winter is his most favorite time of year.... Maybe Christmas has some influence there too. Though to other day he was making 'snow' angels on our bed, and asked us when it would be winter time again so he could make real snow angels.

This winter was also the first time he did a long hike going up mountain in the snow. He had set his mind to climbing 'the highest mountain' (for those of you familiar with kids TV... that's right out of Dora the explorer), and so we did. This was a 7 km. round trip gaining about 400 m. height. It took us 3.5 hours to get to the top and only 1 hour to get back (bum-sliding included; hooray for gore-tex!)

The most exciting thing for Robin though is still to come. Robin will start school in September. In Canada all children start school the year they turn 5. And they all start September first, not on their birthday, but all at the same day. Every municipality has it's own school district, and they all have their own way of dealing with registration, and what kind of education they provide.

We had the options:
- Regular english
- Full day english (Kindergarten only)
- French immersion (because Canada is officially bilingual they offer a school program to educate children to be functional bilingual. This program start either in Kindergarten (5y olds) or in Grade 7 (12y old))

Because many parents are interested in French immersion they have to keep a lottery. And after that, apparently many parents decide later they don't need/want a spot in french Immersion anyway. Which in turn means the school district keeps waiting lists. We were on a waiting list and got a call just before we went on holiday that they now have a spot in french immersion for Robin. So when we come over in December he'll be fluent in three languages ;-)

And then there is Bas and I.... we basically try to get as many days off as possible. Which considering the number of holidays we get is not enough. I get 15 days this year, woohee, 5 more then last year. Good thing my manager is very easy when it comes to taking unpaid leave. So besides the 3 weeks in December I had 1 week in January and 1 in June.

Luckily for Robin and Jamie, Oma had a lot more holidays (I'd say she's got an indefinite number of holidays), and she came over for 6 weeks. So they both did have a longer holiday. Robin was very exited to go camping with opa and oma in 'the campertje' as he called it. After 6 weeks, he was using a lot more dutch words again. Very funny.

Bas, Jamie and I joined them for 1 week. We went to Yoho National Park and Glacier National Park. Both beautiful. The best of the best pictures:

For more picture check Gallery!

And I promise, the next update will not take this long again :-)

That happened about 2 weeks ago. And you know what, kids are the fastest healers. The stitched dissolved in about 5-7 days after which he only had a small bandy for 3 more days. And now he doesn’t even need that anymore. The main thing that is still noticeable is that he is missing a fingernail, but otherwise you hardly see it.

….. And we were Elfed again. Just Bas and I this time, and again we did it to ourselves. Bas parents are over for a winter holiday, and to us that means we have some time for the two of us. We used this to go snowshoeing to Elfin Lakes.

Since before we moved here Bas has had his eyes on Elfin Lakes as a winter destination.. After two years we had still not made in there, so preparations where made (including a last minute shop around by my father to get snow chains, it was a little harder to find the right size then we would have guessed).

It would be our first wintercamping trip, with all new gear. So Elfin Lakes was ideal in that respect as well, if something did not work out well, we would just move to the hut.

Gear consisted of a Big Agnes Madhouse 2 four season tent, a set of (heavy) MEC hybrid sleeping bags and a smart selection of clothing.
Somehow we managed to keep the packs to a really nice 10 and 12.5kg without water.

Friday 8pm we left for the Elfin Lakes parking lot, we planned to sleep in the car and then leave Saturday morning early.

There was not much snow on Mamquam road, but we decided to put on the chains anyway, you never know what the situations would be coming back, and it was easy to put them on now. Rest of the way up was quick, we really would not have needed the chains. Our new car is just big enough to sleep in:

Saturday morning we wre pretty slow to start, the two kids usually wake us up before 7, so we slept in a little ;-)
We got going by 9 o'clock with suprisingly only one group skiers and one set snowshoe'ers in front of us.

After a short while we where greeted by this nice view on Squamish:

It took us 4.5hrs to get to the hut, we put our tent up 15 meters away from the hut:

To our surprise there was hardly anybody in the hut, several people would shop up later, but total count was around 12 I think. Never seen a big propane stove like that before, but it worked really well. Hut was super comfortable.. BC Parks had put up a sign that the system would turn of above 20grC. I think they has some problem with people leaving the heater running full force all day (and night)..

We went to bed really early and slept really well. It was not very cold, so we had quite a bit of condensation in the tent. We did leave several things open. But it's a small tent, so two people apparently produce enough moisture to cause trouble. I have no idea how that work out over a longer duration trip.

Next morning was cloudy:

After a slow breakfast, we broke down the tent and headed out (at around 11:00), the sun tried to show for a few minutes:

but didn't win the from the clouds unfortunately ;-)

Trip down was a lot quicker then the way up, only took us slightly more then 2.5hrs to get back.
In the parking lot the Park Warders asked us to wait for a bit because the grader was coming up. A bit later he told is it would take a little longer since somebody had managed to sneak past the roadblock that apparently is setup when the grader goes up, and then that same person tried to overtake the grader:

didn't work out so well for him.. There actually was another car on the other side of road, seemed stuck as well..

Anyway, the chains helped as get down without any issues at all..

We made it back to Vancouver after an eventful drive. Looking back at an amazing first wintercamping trip.. We want to go back when we get AT gear. Because it looks like perfect terrain to get some practice..

Piggy had been playing all afternoon in the playground. The relaxed chair swing was his favorite playground thing ever. At first, he was sure Robin had been there with him. But now Piggy could not find Robin anywhere. Piggy looked everywhere, on the slide, beneath the slide, on the seesaw, on each single swing, but Robin was gone.

Eventually Piggy climbed all the way on top of the bars above the swing. And then he saw Robin. Robin was on the boat, and the boat was sailing away! Poor Piggy.

Piggy looked as his friend sailed away further and further, till he couldn’t see Robin anymore. Then Piggy was alone. All the fun of the playground was gone. Playing all alone was no fun at all. So Piggy stayed on top of the swings and waited. He hoped Robin would remember and come back for him soon.

But Robin did not return. Night fell and Piggy was still alone on top of the swings. Piggy was almost crying, because he missed Robin so much. Then he thought of all fun things he and Robin had done that weekend. And with that, he fell asleep on top of the swings.

The next day Piggy woke and he heard someone calling his name. Was that Robin? I sure didn’t sound like him. Now he heard it again, somebody was calling him.

Then he saw Robin friends! They were looking for him. Piggy waved and then they saw him too. A minute later Piggy was snug in a warm car with Robin’s friends. They took Piggy home with them. Piggy got to do so many fun things, he hardly had time to miss Robin. But he did send Robin an e-mail each day with a picture of everything he was doing.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Day 1: piggy@island.ca

Dear Robin,

Today your friends taught me how to drive tractor and use the digger. That was awesome! I could ride the tractor all by myself. Look at me in the tractor. I dug a hole as big as Africa! Hope to see you soon.

Love Piggy.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Day 2: piggy@island.ca

Dear Robin,

Look at this!!! Do you see the motorcycle? I got to ride it! First we had to fix the old motorcycle. After that we cleaned it so it was all shiny.

Once it was fixed and cleaned we took it out for a ride. I learned how to use the gears. But I could drive it all by myself.

That night two more friends came over: Bear and Wombat. Did you know Bear and Wombat can read all by themselves?

They read me a bedtime story, just like your mom always does.

I hope you and I learn to read soon to. Then we can read our own stories.

Love, Piggy

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Day 3: piggy@victoria.ca

Dear Robin,

Today your friends took me on a trip. At first I thought we might be going home to you, but it was a short trip only to the city of Victoria.

Though I really liked it there I look sad in the picture. It would have been great if you had been here too.

Here’s a picture of me at the city sign…. The flowers there were beautiful.

Love Piggy

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Day 4: piggy@victoriastation.ca

Dear Robin,

Another fun day today! Just look at the picture and you will know exactly how much fun it was! This train is at least 100 years old!Hope to see you soon.

Love Piggy

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Day 5: piggy@bcferries.ca

Dear Robin,

Today we went for another trip. It was a long drive this time. And I was getting very tired. I thought it would be another fun adventure, but instead it was a boring long drive. Good thing I was not driving, and could just rest my head on the dashboard.

But can you guess what surprised me after the long drive? What made me really happy? Maybe you can guess it from what you in the background in this picture. You have to look very closely…. What do you see?

And what does that mean? Do you know?

Love Piggy

P.S. The answer is a boat… And this boat is going to Vancouver, which means I will see you again very soon! That’s what made me very happy!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Day 6: piggy@baswork.ca

Dear Robin,

I didn’t think I would have to send you an email today, but I do. Let me tell you what happened.

Your friends took me to their family and they in turn took me to the office where you father works. You can imagine how excited I was!

Your father showed me your picture on his computer. I had to wait the whole day, but at least this night I would see you again. Or so I thought.

He showed me the office and we had lunch together. After lunch I helped him. I fixed some computers and I answered the phone for him.

But guess what happened at the end of the day. Your father forgot to take me home with him! At least I have enough computers here to send you an e-mail

Love Piggy

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Day 7: piggy@baswork.ca

Dear Robin,

Just a very short e-mail today. Your father said he was very sorry he forgot me yesterday. To make it up he said you would come here today to make sure I won’t be forgotten again.

So I will see you in a couple of hours….. I can hardly wait! As you can see I will be looking for you all day.

Love Piggy

Piggy had a friend. His name was Robin. Everywhere Piggy went Robin went with him. They went to school together and they went on holiday together......

The End