Bummer

Alas, it does not seem that I am destined to attend the concert in Seattle! I needed a few days to figure out a babysitter for Calum, and for Jeff to figure out if he could come with us or not... and by the time those things were arranged, the tickets for all shows were completely sold out.

Hopefully Howard Shore will bring his concert to Vancouver - or I can arrange to be in Toronto visiting family and friends if he brings it there. At the moment it seems that the only show planned for Canada is next weekend in Ottawa.

I had some fun this morning fantasizing about other ways I could spend the money we might have spent on the trip down to Seattle -- I still need to go to Las Vegas and see "Star Trek: The Experience"! But I think I will just enjoy listening to my Lord of the Rings CDs for free, and spend the money on something else here. There are still many new things to see and do in Vancouver.

Regardless, we have had a fun and busy weekend here in Vancouver. Friday we had so much fun on our berry picking expedition, talking with our new friends, that I forgot to take any pictures of the kids. You will have to mentally picture them with red berry juice all over their faces, clothes and hands! We have been eating raspberries in vast quantities since then. I don't usually buy them out of season - they are too expensive and disappointingly tasteless. So we have to enjoy our once-a-year binge.

Sunday, EA put on a "summerfest" for its employees and their families. They rented out a stadium and set up rides, contests, live music and free food for all. Aside from the fact that they didn't have any vegetarian options (a shame since the company cafeteria apparently has a very nice selection of meat-free lunches and dinners for sale every day) we had a really nice time. The theme this year was a country fair so they had pony rides, a pie eating contest, country and western music (I could have done without that!!) and various "country fair" themed activities. The kids loved the inflatable slide and Calum was delighted to have his face painted like Spiderman (we are still scrubbing the makeup off everything he came into contact with). We tried to take a few photos so I'll see if any of those are good enough to load onto this site.

Yesterday we had a few errands to run, including going to the mall to check out PO box. While we were there we ran into the woman we had just met on Friday during the berry picking outing, and one of her children. She invited us to come over to her place afterward, so we unexpectedly found ourselves spending the rest of the afternoon hanging out getting to know this family. The kids didn't want to leave and I had a really nice time drinking tea and having a couple of hours of adult conversation. It looks like Megan and Calum have made their first official friends in Vancouver!