Thursday, January 27, 2011

Work Christmas Party

Our staff party always occurs after Christmas every year as part of our company specializes in servicing other companies Christmas parties. Our event this year was held in Hall D of the Shaw Conference Centre. We had a great spread of food with extra decadent desserts made by the Head Pastry Chef of the Culinary Team of Canada.
A couple of lovely co-worker couples.
GQ with our new student intern (right) and her friend.
Renee's famous dance move.
Pop-pop, Renee and Mike Miller.
Probably my favorite picture of the evening. GQ throwing down a creeper look over Tara and Chris's shoulder.
Like any good Christmas party too much food and drink occured.  It's easily the best 'work' day of the year.

Monday, January 24, 2011

New Years Eve Pics

Obviously I am way behind on postings so lets pretend that this was posted a couple of weeks ago.

For New Years Eve 2010/2011 we took things relatively easy.

The night started out at Christina's for a nice little photo op. 
 Then Christina and I had lobster for dinner.
 Before putting on my best ugly sweater for a party at a buddies place.
 Jen and Jeff were our hosts for the night. They put out quite a spread of booze and appetizers.
 Jennie was in a party mood.
Both Adam and Jennie doctored up their ugly sweaters to make them even more ugly with custom pictures of our host Jeff from Movember.
  When New Years came I took this quick shot of the New Years babe.
A great start to the new year. Thanks for the hospitality Jeff and Jen.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Cold and Snowy

It's been really crappy outside the last week or so. Constantly below -20 degrees celsius, plus windchill.
This sign from Steeps, a tea place, here in Edmonton really speaks to me.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Nikki and The Leap of Faith

I'm not exactly sure what led to my niece Nikki bungee jumping at West Edmonton Mall.
  • Did her boyfriend Luke really want to bungee jump and convinced her that she wanted to as well?
  • Did Nikki have a few too many 'pops' one night and started talking brave and then eventually had to back it up?
  • Did her brother Matt arrange it all as some form of shaming, thinking that she wouldn't go through with it?
  • Did Nikki not get the coward of heights gene that her Uncle Stuart has?
Whatever the reasoning, it was something that my sister Monica and I had to witness.

Nikki and Luke getting ready for their tandem jump.
 View of the platform over the wave pool at West Edmonton Mall.
 Looking out over the wave pool.
The jump (sorry on the poor quality footage).
One thing I always wondered was how they got the jumpers off the cord. It turns out that once the jump is done they give them slack at the top and the jumper has a rope that they pull themselves to the ledge with. Luke did all the work. Good man!
Nice work Nikki - You're way ahead of me on the non coward list.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Christina's First Day of School

Christina scared of stagnation decided to take a University of Alberta course this semester for personal development (insert puberty joke here).  As the class is downtown I thought it would be nice to make her supper in between work and her first day back at school.

After supper, in honor of Monica's tradition I took a picture of her outside my apartment building near my address sign. She's getting so tall...

Here is little Christina on her first day of school.
If you click on the picture you should be able to see the lunch/snack I made for her. I made sure to give her some veggies and some cookies to trade with to make friends.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Saskatoon Christmas - Part 3

Christmas for me is all about hanging out and having fun with the family over the holidays.

Liam is addicted to playing mini-foosball. I take the opportunity to beat him now before he inevitably destroys me when he's older.
 My fashion statement outfit for winter sledding.
 A whole gang of us went out sledding by Forest Grove school.
 We tried to make Ren and Claire walk back up the hill every once in awhile. That was our plan to tire them out so we wouldn't have to stay on the hill all day.
 Of course, it wasn't just the small kids having fun. All the big kids got into the action as well.
 Liam was really ripping and I caught him catching a little bit of air off a jump.
 Liam talked a big game but Christina crushed him in a race down the hill.
On boxing day Randy got back from the lake and we all went bowling. Liam had some difficulty with 10 pin bowling but excelled at 5 pin.
Amelia was a remarkably good bowler. The first game of the night she broke 100 points in 10 pin and got about 2 or 3 strikes. I'm still amazed at how she could huck that heavy ball down the lane.
 Lawrence the only lefty of the group never disappoints.
 As you can see, Amelia gets her fine form from her father Randy.
 I really like this "Something About Mary" hair gel picture of Christina as she gets windswept by the blower.
And in case you were wondering, I had the high score in both 5 and 10 pin bowling. As the great philosopher Bryan Possberg once said "You don't bowl to lose".

And that was Christmas 2010.

Sunday, January 09, 2011

Saskatoon Christmas - Part 2

I spent Christmas 2010 in Saskatoon this year and had a blast hanging out with family and friends. Thankfully the weather was excellent so I got some quality time outside.

Skateshack at the Bez! Free skate borrowing services on site!
Skating at the Bez is a Saskatoon classic and is easily my favorite outdoor rink.

Walking in the Meewasin Valley. Note: Christina forgot her tuque and was forced to wear my Roughriders headgear. She has never looked better.
Christina wanted to check out the bridge the the cross country skiers use. I captured her running back towards me and converted the pictures into a GIF.
make animated gifs

Another great Christmas activity in Saskatoon is visiting the Western Development Museum. They dress up the main area to look old timey Christmas like. 
A cool attraction is the old department store window displays. My sister Monica describes them; "They were originally built for Eaton's in Winnipeg in 1946 and I first saw them probably in the early 1980s when they were displayed in Saskatoon's Midtown Plaza." (She has tons more really great pictures on her website Through a Lucky Mama's Viewfinder
On it's own the museum is quite fun - and a good photo op place.
Here's Monica "working the streets".
 A haircut and shave for 2 bits is a hell of a deal.
 Christina driving the steam train.
 Dare I say - the place is so fun it's criminal. Insert rimshot.
 More Saskatoon pictures to come.

Also: This marks my 100th post. To all the people who doubted I would actually keep blogging after a month: Suck It.