Whistler and a birthday party

Cheryl keeps posting more videos, so check out her latest post! My favorite video is this one…

Anyhow… A couple of weeks back we went to Vancouver and Whistler with Kayla. In Vancouver Stacey and Stephen were nice enough to let us stay at their place.

While we were there we had the chance to go to Ciara’s 5th birthday party. The venue was Munch in North Vancouver. This is a place that specializes in “social dining for parents and kids”. Basically they have a ton of toys, anyone that goes there knows there will be a lot of noise, and kids running around everywhere. During certain hours they actually have a nanny there to play with the kids.

They also can turn on the soap bubble machine when people start eating to ensure the kids have something to do:

Anyhow, Kayla, and the kids all had fun for sure:
 

Good times!

Saturday morning we went to Whistler. We waited until Kayla was ready for her morning nap before getting in the car. Kayla slept pretty much the whole way to Whistler, so that was great!

Here are a few pics of Kayla in Whistler:
 

You can probably see Kayla’s new “I <heart> Whistler” tuque.

Well, I did get to bike – both days. The first day my bike ran into some problems… I broke a spoke trying to tweak some air for the local photographer who was set up on A-line, and popped a spoke. I had my wheel re-built on site. Then I realized I was only getting 4” of suspension on my 6” fork, so, although I rode on it, I decided to bring the bike into the shop in Vancouver on my way back to Seattle…

Whistler actually has a nanny service, so we wanted to try it out in order to let Cheryl ride with me. It was a great success, so we will likely be using that service in the future. Kayla was very well behaved, and although the cost was much higher than we’d like, it was less than a ski lift ticket. Cheryl had a great time biking, and was able to hit up all the usual trails that she knows and loves. She did end up with a painful bruise on one of the wall-rides.

I spent some time in the ‘boneyard’ playing on the new bowl-shaped-wall-ride as well:
 

So good.

After heading out from Whistler we went back to Vancouver to visit with Kelly, and Owen:

Our ride home was for the most part uneventful, we had a short border wait, and made it home at a reasonable hour.

Whistler was so fun that we’re going back there again this weekend. We have to get our last bits of riding in before the snow starts to fall.

Until next time!

Pro pics? Ha!

Cheryl printed out some pics we took of Kayla last week at the local Wallgreens, and when we went over to pick them up the clerk mentioned that they were identified as professional photographs. This meant Cheryl could not print them off without consent from the photographer.

I believe this is to avoid people scanning their Sears Portrait Studio prints (or equivalent) and getting them printed off much cheaper.

See ‘pro-pics’ below:

Now, this probably happens to anyone with a DSLR who’s taken a set up portrait, but I couldn’t stop laughing regardless. Cheryl politely said that these were our pics, and most certainly not taken by a professional photographer.

He asked who took the photo, Cheryl pointed to me, and he said: Ok, you will need to sign a release before we can let you take these.

At this point we both thought he was joking, but he went in the back room, pulled out a release form, and had me sign it. We paid for our photos, and left the shop laughing.

That was definitely a first.

Kayla gets her first tooth

Well, I don’t actually have any good pictures of it because she keeps tight-lipped, but we now know why she’s been having trouble sleeping these last few days – Her first tooth was trying to surface. Good times :)

Kayla is as energetic as ever, crawling around everywhere, and climbing up on anything she can grab a hold of – the stroller, chairs, the baby gates, coffee tables, and of course the couch. She’s everywhere now, and the cats are now starting to understand what it means when she starts crawling their way, screaming at the top of her lungs.

Cheryl’s getting back in the swing of things at work, but has still had time to put up a new blog post with tons of photos!

I’ve still been playing around with the new camera, but it is very difficult to get a posed shot of Kayla without Cheryl in the room, so we took a few minutes one day this past week and sat Kayla down in our living room for a few shots.

Here they are:

Andrea came down from Vancouver and was nice enough to take a shot of Kayla, Cheryl, Boots, Charlie, and I:

Here’s one without the cats:

But we also have hundreds of other pics, like these of Kayla hanging around the house:

Kayla eating:

Kayla hanging out by the water:

And so forth….

This week is our first trial run of bringing Kayla to daycare, so she is going in for a few hours a day. Next week she will probably go for a full day a few times in anticipation of my return to work mid-September. So far she’s handling it great, and all the kids really love playing with her. They can’t quite understand why she doesn’t yet have hair, and doesn’t say much, but who knows, maybe she will soon :)

Well, until next time!