Da Kids: Part 18

I used to do kid updates more often, I think. This one's been overdue for a while, as the photos are piling up in my flickr stream. This first one is a fairly typical morning scene at our house -- a slow start around eight, breakfast together, then I head downstairs and Tannis gets the girls going on their learning projects while trying to keep Ezra from causing too much damage.

I could have used more winter this year. Ezra loved the brief bits of snow we got around Christmas, as well as skating in the backyard. He's a curious, hilarious little guy with two occasional not-so-good streaks: stubborn and mean. He's slowly getting the hang of using his potty, but only when he feels like it. Loves the library, pool, coffee shop, museums and Grandma and Grandpa's place...quite bored of our house, it seems.

In the sunshine on Saturday, our thermometer said 21 degrees -- when I moved it into the shade and let it sit a bit, it settled on 17. So we had a picnic and marveled at the weird, warm weather for mid-February. Ella has also been stoked on skating, and her art has really taken off the last few months. She's still game for anything, but seems to be more getting more discerning and independent. Loves gymnastics, play dates, and pumpkin soup. She's beautiful inside and out.

Ivy reads and reads these days, happy until we interrupt her. She's always got projects on the go; so many that it's hard to keep track of them all. She enjoys connecting with her friends at Brownies and play dates, and we've noticed that she often likes helping around the house as long as we don't ask her while she's reading. A few photos from the last couple of months: with her fiddle group, drawing date with me, violin lesson with Liz and tending to her grass-head creature.

View From the Trenches

In general, I don't seem to have caught the bug that causes Olympic Fever. However, my old boss Don Phillips took a month off work to be a volunteer in Vancouver, and his blog offers a fascinating look into what it's like to be part of the action: My Olympics Volunteer Experience.

Mini-Trip

Myron had a speaking engagement in Golden, BC last week and offered that I could tag along if I wanted to. As it sounded like a nice break from routine and a chance to hang out with him more than usual, I took a day off and accepted. In theory it's about four hours each way, but took more like five. We blabbed pretty much non-stop and the time went really quickly, reminiscent of a few legendary all-nighter cross-country trips we took in the '90s.

We checked in to the hotel later in the evening, so really I only had about eight hours to kill in Golden the next day. Rare for me to have that amount of uninterrupted free time, and it was pure joy. It's been colder up there, so I went ice hunting with my camera first thing in the morning. Back to the hotel for a hot tub and a nap, then up to Kicking Horse Resort for sushi and more exploration.

Unlike home, which has mostly been too warm this winter for ice photos in the wild, I found all kinds of cool ice shapes on the Columbia River: bubbles, curves, lattice, filaments, embossed metal, leaf veins and curtains. This week I ordered a new macro lens, which theoretically could be even better for shots like this -- looking forward to playing with it a bit and seeing if I can push the envelope...but may need to drive north again to find some ice. The backyard rink has still been yielding some interesting ice photos, but not for much longer.

The Glade

My bro is out from Ottawa right now, and we celebrated my birthday in style -- hitting our old stomping grounds off the Powder Chair at Big White for the day. He and I have a fairly volatile history together, but one that includes much shared joy on snowboards and bikes. We connect well while having fun.

Although our aging bodies threatened mutiny most of the day, we relished better-than-expected snow conditions and managed to ride trees most of the day with no permanent damage. The camera did not behave, but I did get a minute of shaky video -- consider it a sort of game to try to follow Ryan through the trees as I tried to.

Showy

So my first gallery show was opened successfully, and what fun! The gallery looked great, over a hundred people materialized throughout the evening, and we even sold a few things -- thanks to my mom, the food was excellent and we sold out of wine. Special guests included Ryan from Ottawa, Bill and Sam from Vancouver, and lots of dear friends from nearby. Also, pretty cool to meet some online friends I had never seen in person.

The editor from the Penticton Herald interviewed me first thing (story should be in Friday's paper), and the curator (whom I greatly admire) of the Penticton Art Gallery showed up and said hi. It looks like I may have another show lined up for later in the year at Red Rooster Winery, which is pretty exciting.

Huge thanks to my mom for heavily subsidizing the printing costs for the pictures -- the show wouldn't have happened without her. Hopefully we'll sell a few and recoup the costs. If anyone is interested in buying a print from the gallery, peruse the pictures online and send me an e-mail for prices and availability on any you like -- they can be shipped anywhere. The ones on the walls range from $30 for smaller prints mounted on foamcore to $200 for canvas prints wrapped on wood frames. The show runs till mid-March.

I was talking all night, and didn't get a chance to take any photos, but thankfully Andrew and Jason got a bunch of good ones.