A visit to the Harbour

I had a really good day today at work. We're all ready for our workshop tomorrow. After I got back to my hotel, I decided to walk down to the Habour and see what was happening. The Habour is where the cruise ships come in and leave. These are the cruises that go up and around Alaska. Lucky for me, there was a ship that was preparing to leave. I walked around and took some pictures of the Habour. There were many planes landing and taking off. I believe that these are site seeing tours and the like.

There certainly is a lot of shopping in this area, but I find it very expensive. I'm told that the average housing price here is $750,000. I find that unbelieveable and hard to fathom. The taxi driver told me that so many people commit to these 40 year mortgages... unbelieveable...

The flowers here are all blooming. You see so many Rododendrim's... almost every house has one in bloom...It's an interesting city...

Vancouver bound....

This week I'll be spending 4 days in Vancouver. I'm right downtown in the heart of the city staying at a hotel called the Metropolitan Vancouver Hotel. It's a really nice place tucked in among many businesses. I was really surprised to see how much development is taking place here.

The flight was uneventful. I finished reading two books and I also enjoyed the movie the Bucket list. It's quite moving and very funny.

Today I'll work with my collegues to prepare them for a workshop for the next two days and then I have another meeting on Thursday to help prepare another collegue for his session. I'm looking forward to working with them as it's a different part of our business, so I'm sure that I'll learn alot.

I hope you enjoy nice weather this week. It looks like rain here.

Our Family

How blessed we are to have a healthy and happy family....

Our little angels

This weekend we had a really nice visit with Laura and Jay, Jordan and Hailey. I thought I would share with you a few of the pictures that I took. Doesn't Hailey look like a younger version of Ralph...

Some pictures from our vacation

Well yes, I've been delinquent in updating my blog. I'm sorry,but I have been crazy busy these days with work. Here are a few pictures from our holidays. Watch for further updates, but it be some time inbetween as I'm off to Ottawa this week and next week I'm in Vancouver. Hopefully things will settle down after the May long weekend.

We're home again!

Well it's over..... 2 years of planning and 17 days of vacation bliss.... We arrived home on Saturday evening at around 9:30. We had a fantastic vacation. I'm sad it's over but it's nice to come home to our family. Watch my blog for some vacation pic's. I have about 4500 to go through and I'll pick out the nicest to share with you.

Vacation update #3

Well it's been awhile since we last brought you up to date!! We haven't had access to an internet site. We went to Huntington Beach and enjoyed watching the surfers. From there we went to Venice beach and visited the Muscle Men's area and walked along the boardwalk. It is certainly a strange and interesting place.

After our Huntington beach visit we discovered that we were getting a flat tire. Ralph changed it before we started our drive up the coast to Pacific Grove. We had a beautiful drive and we stopped several times along the way. We took a tour at Hearst Castle and were in awe of the opulance that was there. While driving up the coast we saw a dog skate boarding! We couldn't believe it. We stopped to talk to the owner. It was so cute.

The next day after arriving in Pacific Grove, we went tide pooling. It was so much fun!! We saw whales as well while we were there. It was quite interesting actually because while it was away in a distance there was a lot of activity. Later on we discovered that some Killer Whales were trying to separate a calf (grey whale) from it's mother. We also saw lots of star fish and crabs. After we went for a nice drive along 17 mile drive.

The next day we were advised that our whale watching tour was cancelled due to poor weather. We were able to change our plans and went golfing instead. What a game!! It was very windy and cool. We all had a blast and although we didn't have the best of scores, we had a great time. The scenery was beautiful as the course was along the shoreline.

The next day we went whale watching. It was well worth the wait. We saw both Humpback and Grey whales. We thoroughly enjoyed this.

Our next day we travelled to San Francisco. We took many hours to get there although it's only 150 miles. We stopped along the way and watched the whales in the distance and also did some more tide pooling. We saw lots of anynimy?? and star fish....

We went hiking through the Muirwood forest. The redwood tree's are so high. Did you know that the highest Redwood is 50 feet higher than the Statue of Liberty? We then drove to Sonoma and Napa Valley and enjoyed some wine tasting a few wineries.

Yesterday we rented bikes and rode around San Francisco and across the golden gate bridge to Sausalito. What an amazing trip!! We just loved it. It was a beautiful sunny day and although there were some up hills (yes I walked my bike!) there were lots of down hills... We took a ferry back from Sausalito to San Francisco.

Today, we're off to Alcatraz and then we'll pack up and catch our flight home tomorrow.

Hope you are all doing well.