Dear Santa!

It had to be done! Merry Christmas everyone! And before you ask, yes I think Santa was Asian... :)

Bright Lights in Stanley Park

Every year the BC Fire Fighters do a fundraising light display in Stanley Park for Christmas and the miniture train in the park decks out its tracks and you can go for a ride and have a look.

I swear most of the lights were older than me and unfortunately the video I took of the train ride was no good so sorry its photos only.

This was pretty cool :)
The train all decked out. The trip was really pretty cool and nicely done.

This is part of where you walk around.

Gingerbread house, yum!
Big kid with the big blowup snowmen.
It was definately cold enough for penguins!
Santa and Mrs Claus Big kid with the Big Guy.
This was in one of the ponds.
The Disney Gang.

Nothing tooo exciting but it was a nice way to get in the festive spirit plus we got to try roasted chestnuts for the first and last time!

1065 West 12th Ave

Welcome to our new place! Its pretty big by Vancouver standards, only bugger being that we don't have a laundry in the apartment only downstairs but thats no biggie. Its literally 150metres to work for me and only 2 extra blocks to work for Jesse.

The hallway, obviously...

Our bedroom. Its really big plus we have a massive walk in robe - mint!

Yes mums, we eat at the table :)
Our huge lounge...

And here's the big fella cooking me pancakes for breakfast - YUM!

Its really Christmas now!

It really feels like Christmas here now that we've put up our tree and downloaded 'Snoopys Christmas'!

You could go nuts here buying stuff cause its all sooo cheap ($5 for 100 lights!). I've managed to control myself but have bought us some special ornaments to remind of our time in Canada when we come home.

This is our welcome in the hallway...

Santa is our angel on top of the tree. I bought him at Granville Island and the lady personalised him for me by painting Vancouver in the star, Canada on his coat and 2007 on the brim of his hat.

Here's our snowy window. This snowflake transfer things are cheap as at the dollar shop and the snow flake lights are just too classy!

A snowflake - they actually look pretty cool at night against the dark.

Thanks Aunty Robyn and Uncle Ian for the nice reminder of home :)

As you can see we got this little dude at the Market in Seattle.
We got this at the Original Christmas Shop in Victoria when we went there in October. The shop is amazing!
Had to get the mini Starbucks snow globe - its just too cool!
And here it is.... Ta da! The tree skirt we bought is awesome, all felty and lovely. Thanks Mums and Dad for all the presents under the tree - they are all still wrapped - promise!

Christmas Elves

Thanks Megan for this great blog post!

Turn the volume up and click on the link below - enjoy!

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1230254409

White Christmas for us?

I woke up last Saturday to a very excited Jesse trying to wake me up to tell me it was snowing! We got about 3 inches.

This is the tree outside our lounge window all covered in snow. Unfortunately we got no other pics because 80mm of rain came the next day and washed it all away :(

Here's hoping for a White Christmas...

Santa comes to Vancouver

Last weekend was the Vancouver Santa Claus Parade. Us big kids went along with Emma and Gareth for a gander - they wanted to see if was better than the Invercargill parade... :) As you can see by the winter woolies it was about 3 degrees!

These are a range of pics of the floats. We were really amped that it was gonna be totally awesome but to be honest I've seen better... There must have been about 20 brass bands!

We didn't get much love from Santa...
How cute is this! He is a trained helper dog for disables people.

Yay Pooh!
Rudolph :)
Only the Vancouver Police would have a SmartCar! The Police Motorcycle guys did a pretty impressive display with their bikes - it was just like Eric Estrada on CHIPS in the '80's

The Mounted Police.
Pretty little dancing girls - they must have have been freezing!
A big chocolate Hedgehog - YUM! And yes they were giving free chocolate...

No McDreamy for me...

We ventured to the home of Greys Anatomy and McDreamy for the long weekend. Seattle is about 3 hours drive on a good day from Vancouver. It took us 5 hours to get there cause of the big delays at the US border... Interestingly Seattle is also the home of Google, Microsoft, Nordstrom, and Amazon.Com.

This is Peace Arch that the border crossing is named after. I think it's some sort of war memorial. This is the official boundary - at one stage Hayley was in Canada in the back seat and we were in the US :)
One huge bonus of visiting Seattle is that my friends Nathan and Therese live there. We had such a great time catching up with them and making lots of nice memories of Seattle with them. This is the view across the city from the roof of their apartment.

Those of you who watch Amazing Race will know that Seattle is the home of the Space Needle. Being the tourists we are (having an accent is sooo handy!) we had to visit it.
It was built to celebrate the World Fair in 1968 (I think).
Me and Miss Therese from Texas at the top.
Tourists!
We picked the best day to go up the Needle - it was nice and clear but freezing!

Looking back over towards the North.

The CBD.
Bloody tourists again.
We timed our trip nicely for the sunset - at 4.30pm!

Mt Rainier - we will visit it on our next trip.

Looking up the Needle at night.

Ew... Boogies!
We went to this fab restaurant called Icon for dinner. We had the most incredible Ultimate Macaroni and Cheese (a US classic) to kick off then I couldn't resist having Southern Fried Chicken - it kicked KFC's ass! The decor and atmosphere was awesome - they had all these chandeliers made from old lamps and stuff with loads of mirrors to reflect it all.
One of the girls at work was trying to remember the name of the place in Seattle that makes this famous 7 layer cake. What do ya know - we found it at Icon and it was insane!

This is the Sundae that Jesse took on - the cone was filled with fudge sauce!
Yum - cake!
Sunday saw us venture to Seattle world famous Pike Place Market.

This is Nathan and Therese is action walking past the Home of Starbucks! Yes indeed Starbucks was born in Seattle so of course we had to get a coffeee from there. This is the original store and in pretty much unchanged from when it was built.

Whats up Piggy Wig?
The famous sign with the tourists in front :)
One of the many fish shops that the Market is famous for (see the post below for more fishy stuff).

Can you believe it?
Sitting on the pig :)
Downstairs there was a musuem thing about the worlds tallest man - Jesse's a midget next to him! You can't really get the perspective but this was the tallest man's shoes!
More tourist shots.
The girls.
The other famous sign.
The market has loads of flower stalls. This one was selling these cool wreaths made of chillis.
After the market we went for a tour of Seattle's underground. Long story short, Seattle was a wet boggy town so they filled in the old town and built a new town on top - the second story of the buildings became the new top story but the old shops kept operating underground.

So you'd be wondering back then with no power how did the get light down there - this is one of the old skylights in the 'new' footpath that they built. Looks pretty scabby hey?

Here's all the light that same scabby looking skylight lets in!
The underground was condemned in the 20's (I think) cause of disease and rats and stuff so in turn became a dumping ground for everyone's stuff and is a bit trashed but some stuff is still well preserved. This shows the old tellers cage.
The original sign for the Pub.
More tourist shots with some dickhead in the background.
The square around where the tour is based - very like Gastown in Vancouver.

This is some old seat from the old pub.
Crapper.
Jesse in the old Salon.
Walking along the street.

Pretty obvious.
Except its wooden... Yuck.
This wall is identical to the one above it really highlighting the fact that this used to be the street. Bath anyone?
This is the original doorway from the law firm that still operates upstairs.
This is the basement level of one of the stores that operates today. The level that we were touring thru is still owned by the shop owners and the tour company rents it off them.
The original wooden footpath.

Another of the shops that still uses its basement.
A photo of one of the shoe stores that used to operate underground.The old printing press from when the newspaper published underground.
An original porcelian Thomas Crapper toilet.
Seattle's icon by night.
One of the main things that bought us to Seattle was going to see an NBA game between the Seattle Supersonics and Dallas Pistons.
The pre-game entertainment was some Christian college singing the national anthem.

They're more patriotic than Canada!
We had great seats in the nosebleed section.
Action shot!

Shooting a penalty.
Not only was there the Dance Squad but they also had their own break dancers to provide time out and half time entertainment.
They also have this crazy mascot that looks like Chewy for StarWars. Couldn't get a shot of him cause he moves too fast but the fact that he has a thing to launch t-shirts into the crowd was pretty cool!
All day Monday was shopping... Makeup and stuff that we think is cheap in Canada is even cheaper in the US so we had a stock up at Macys and Nordstrom before hitting the outlet stores...! There is a $$ limit to how much you can bring back to Canada but luckily we were under. Could spend a ton of $$ though cause the Canadian dollar is awesome at the moment hence everyone is flocking to the States.

This is the Peace Arch at night as we waited to get back across the border - only took an hour and a half...

Had a great weekend and again thanks to Therese and Nathan for showing us around Seattle - we had a really good Rememberance Day weekend.