Can my readers make a difference?

Aviva community fund is holding a competition. Aviva wants to make a positive impact on Canadian communities by donating large sums of money. They want you to vote on the ideas you feel would improve the communities. My brother in law Rob has been working very hard for almost ten years now to build a skate park in Nelson BC. Their main obstacle is funding. So.....if you know a millionaire that would be willing to give them a hand leave a comment with your contact details and I'll be speaking to you right away . If you don't but would like to help please please please register to vote here. Its simple, you just register to vote and then keep voting everyday for ten days. The deadline is in 12 days so please don't put off until tomorrow what can be accomplished today in just a few minutes. It would be a heartbreaker if they got this close and didn't win the funding. Rob has realised how important a skate park would be in Nelson. So watch the video and hear for yourself what Rob has to say.


Please don't make Rob wash 20 000 cars!

Happy Anniversary

Mardy and I have been married for 6 years! Ooops I've gotten a little ahead of myself because I've been telling people for months that we've been married for 6 years. Heres the stats...... In the 6 years we've been married we've lived in 3 countries, moved 8 times, visited 7 different countries, 5 1/2 years of school for Mardy in 3 different universities, we have one wonderful daughter and made many new friends oh and this year alone Mardy has had 3 different moustaches. He says, "in October Women wear a pink ribbon to help raise awareness for breast cancer, in November the men wear their ribbons on their upper lip to help raise awareness for prostate cancer." I guess that means every Anniversary my wonderful husband will have a moustache.
Last night we went our for our anniversary with Matt and Hannah. We went bowling, Matt won the first game and Mardy killed in the second (he beat me by a hundred points). Then we went out dancing. It was funny to see Mardy just standing there holding our jackets. Finally I convinced him to put them down and come and join me. We didn't stay too long but it was fun. Last night we got a babysitter for the third time since we've been here. As Kimmy was putting her to sleep Raven was doing her Peppa Pig snort and a really big "Ah-shooo". Funny kid.
Raven is doing very well in school. She loves to go and I think she has a little crush on a boy named Rabar. She loves her teachers and she's learning new things every day. She knows more sign language than me, okay actually she's the one that taught me all the sign language that I do know. Raven can count to huit in french and diez in spanish. She asked me for her papillon the other day, I had know idea she was talking about a butterfly.
We're getting low on our funds here so now I really have to find a job. I found one, sort of. I'm invigilating exams (helping get the exams ready and watching the kids and to be there if they need any help). The only problem is that its for a few hours every few months. I have applied for my x-ray registration over here, I won't find out until February if they've accepted me or not. I'm afraid they will think my schooling is too different but I'm still crossing my fingers. I've applied for a few other jobs here but I've had no luck. For every job I apply to there are about a hundred other people applying. Mardy is thinking about doing a placement next year. That means he'll work for a year and then go back to school the following year to finish off. We're hoping that he'd be able to stay around here. We love Bournemouth and it would break our hearts to leave.

Halloween 2010

In the morning Raven had a ballet class and instead of learning their normal routine they learned part of the thriller dance. Let me tell you it sure came in handy later that night. After learning the dance all the kids came out to show the parents and Raven basically just stood there in her bumble bee costume not knowing what to do. Such a cute kid.

After the ballet halloween party we came home for lunch and then we were back out to go check out the halloween events in the lower gardens. After standing in line for an hour and a half for the free face painting, yes that was how long we stood in line, Raven fell asleep in my arms. I'm so glad Mardy was there or maybe I'm not because I wouldn't have done it without him. No way am I going to stand in line for an hour and a half and not get my kids face painted so I told the lady to paint it while I held her. The first coat of paint was fine but then she started painting the eyes and the lips and every time she tried that Raven would wipe it away with her hand. After a bit or prodding Raven finally woke up with a big smile on her face. She was so happy that she was getting her face painted like a bumble bee.

Later that night we went to a church fancy dress party. Mardy was a police officer, I was a convict and Raven was of course a bumble bee. It was fun to see everyone so dressed up. There were lots of games for the little kids and dancing where Raven was able to display her incredible thriller dance. Then we had trunk or treat in the parking lot. The best part about the entire evening, getting home by 8:30! I put Raven right into the bath, got her ready for bed and then Mardy and I watched the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which I've never seen before and yes I did have nightmare's all night long.







Happy Halloween!

Bike Ride

Today was an absolutely gorgeous day. Two of my favourite things to do on a gorgeous day are either going to the beach or go to the forest. Mardy found a place to rent bikes in a small village called Burley in the New Forest which isn't too far from us so we headed to the forest. While we were there we saw lots of New Forest Ponies but not only that we saw lots of baby ponies so Raven was really excited about that. Sorry no pictures of the ponies this time, I don't know what I was thinking. We ended up going on a 9 mile bike ride around the village, up a few hills and past where the Burley Dragon once lived. It was such a fun day and I may have fallen in love with Burley Village.

When Zela comes to town

Its always nice to have visitors but its extra special to have sisters come for a visit. I'm so glad that we don't live in Saskatchewan because I am sure that we wouldn't have had this many visitors as we've had here. We've been so lucky.

For Zees visit we walked from Lulworth cove to Durdle door, went exploring in London for the day, horse back riding on the heath and eating fish and chips on the beach. Wednesday was a cold and rainy day but Zee Zee was determined to go swimming in the sea. It was the only day we could fit it in. We hid inside McDonalds sneekily eating other food while the hardest part of the rainstorm hit. Mardy came to save us with umbrellas and as we were walking in the lower gardens the rain let up and by the time we made it to the beach the sun was peaking in and out of the clouds. That was enough for Zee and in she went. Well I couldn't let her swim alone so I went out with her for the first time since living here. It wasn't nearly as bad as I imagined it to be. Finally we took a long drive through the countryside and ended up in Bath for the afternoon. We saw a man painting portraits by the Bath Abbey and Raven wanted to get hers done so she sat on my lap for twenty minutes while he painted her picture. Raven loved it and still loves looking at it all the time. The next day we had to say goodbye to Aunty Zee Zee and she is now home safe and sound with her little family.

We sure had fun with Aunty Zee Zee. Raven loved having so much attention.

Land's End

We have found while living here that being unemployed has its advantages. We have free time to do whatever we want. So on Sunday I said to Mardy "I've been thinking about this idea for about three minutes now and I really like it." I went on to say that we should buy a tent the next morning and go camping somewhere. Well we looked at the map and decided that we should go and see Land's End. It is the furthest point west in England. I have to say its beautiful. I loved the cornish culture and the undeveloped landscape. Here are a few pictures from our quick trip.


Raven posing with one of the Merry Maidens. There are 19 stones in a circle. Local legend says that these stones were once girls turned to stone for dancing on Sunday.








One of the many abandoned tin mines along the Cornwall Coast.










"New York is that way"

Why we love Malta

As some of you know we just returned from our trip to Malta. We loved it. So we've decided to put up a blog about why we loved Malta so much. Here are the top 5 reasons we loved Malta with pictures to prove that we were actually there.

The Mediterranean Sea


For those of you who do not know where Malta is, it is a tiny series of Islands in the Mediterranean at about the same latitude as Damascus that you read about in the Bible. It is further south then the northern most part of Africa which leads us to the first reason we loved Malta. The Mediterranean Sea is simply amazing. The water can be so incredibly blue. From the Blue Grotto (Where Mermaids used to live), to the Blue Lagoon, to the Azure Window, and all the way up to Xlendi, the water was beautiful. It was so clear you just wanted to jump in... until you realized another benefit of crystal clear water, you can see the Jelly Fish.

These first two pictures are at the Blue Lagoon. Amazing water to swim in, you just need to get early if you want a spot on the small beach. It is worth is though as the sand and views are amazing and worth it.

These last two pictures are of the small fishing town of Xlendi on the Island of Gozo. The water was so clear and so blue that is almost begged for you to jump in for a refreshing swim.



As you can see the Mediterranean is beautiful. Charlotte even ventured in for a swim and that means the water must have been nice.

The Churches, Architecture and History

This category is a little bit of a cheat. It kind of can include everything. The history of Malta is linked with the Knights of the Order of Saint John. These were crusaders who left the holy land and were eventually given the islands of Malta as their home. They successfully defended it and have given these Islands the strong catholic presence that is still there today. There are 359 different Churches in Malta and all of them are very elaborately decorated. The main Cathedrals and Churches are simply mind blowing. Some of these are to the equivalent of those found in Rome. Here are some of our favourites.
Saint John's Co-Cathedral in Mdina



These are the Church of Xewkija. The dome is the 3rd or 4th largest dome in all of Europe.


This is a tombstone is St. John's Cathedral in Valletta. It reads "Those who trod on me will soon be trodden on." Definitely what I want on mine. The picture above is of the alter in the same Cathedral.

This is the Church in Mellieha. It was another cool church up on the hill top. It also has a statue of Moses with horns coming out of his head.


This is the Citadel that the citizens of Gozo used to have to stay in at nights so they would be stolen and sold into slavery.







The rest of these pictures are just random ones of either the architecture and style of buildings in the area, Valletta and the harbour, or Raven sitting at an ancient temple that dates back to 3600 BC. There is also one of the fishing village of Marsaxlokk and it's picturesque harbour.

The Landscape

How can you not fall in love with these cliffs and ocean views. On calm days some of these cliffs would be amazing to jump off of. However if "The seas was angry that day my friends" it would not be something that you want to do.










These are the cliffs at Dwejra, Weid iz-Zurrieq (The Blue Grotto), Xlendi, and the North Shore.

Our Villa

Whilst trying to decide where to stay on our trip Charlotte came across private Villa's that were available for rent. Genius. I don't know if I could ever go back to staying in a hotel again. For less then the cost of a hotel we stayed in our own private villas with private pools and private BBQ. One even had big screen TV's with Italian satellite hook up so we could watch our world cup matches in either Maltese or Italian. The second one we stayed at was pretty sweet. Stone houses are so cool. An a pool in the back yard was amazing. I mean look at that view and tell me how you couldn't fall in love with that.




I mean would you love to wake up to that view every morning?

Mediterranean Eye Candy

I won't lie, this was everyone's favourite part of the whole trip. There were so many more pictures taken but for the sake of keeping this site clean I will only put up Charlotte's favourites. Enjoy.
Oh that is cute, Charlotte took a picture of me swimming in the Mediterranean

Wait a minute I don't think I was the focus of that last picture

Oh well that is just nasty, does he seriously think that looks good?

Oh you want more skin do you?

Giddy Up!

As you can see, there is a reason Charlotte usually doesn't get me to do these blogs. I put up way to many pictures and ramble on for way to long. So yeah, hope you enjoyed looking at the pictures, Malta was great and if any of you ever get the chance to go there do it. It is so different then anything you have ever seen and you will love it. Just watch out for men is speedos.