Still standing

With one day remaining before I begin my christmas vacation I am still alive and blogging. As the snow gently falls I have shovelled, swept and put down six more layers of spray on our ice rink. I have been in to work and prepared for tomorrow. I have even watched a bit of the christmas concert, not a packed house but a good crowd and a great show. One of our grade nine students has the potential to be a superstar. She had a solo number where she sang and played the piano. Holy cow. Talent.

As for today's gustatory delights I first bring you lunch.
Mine is on the left and was wicked awesome. An assortment of leftovers along with a egg stirfy/omelete on the bottom and some onigiri covered in furikake and some chopped up muffin above. With a piece of fruit and a yogurt it makes for a lovely lunch. It also brings a smile to my face. The daughter had noodles, with some pork and cheese. She didn't finish it as she was having a bit of a fussy day. I on the other hand practically licked mine clean. Imagine having that lunch and then coming home to this dinner.
The miso soup was bracing on this cold day and as usual hit the spot. The salad had some hard boiled egg chopped and crumbled over the top for a little added flavour and protein. What you see on the right is filo pastry stuffed with a tomato based vegetarian sauce/stew mixture. I loved mine. I actually ate three and I was even eyeing up the daughter's. She as was previously mentioned was having a fussy day so I cut a deal to eat her carrots. I was sure she would turn her nose up at the turnip but when she was reminded of its japanese name, daikon, which she loves pickled, she dug right in and even finished before her brother. Who was also having a fussy day.

Managed to keep the rudder firm and flew straight through today. Hopefully we can keep our head down for one more day and sail in to the vacation. Stress be gone.

June 19th and 20th

For the sake of brevity I will wrap up whole camp trip in one blog. Hope this works for you.

Ah the first camping trip of the year. We plan to go again pre-Japan. It should be out at Kettle River provincial park. Should be some good tubing. Some good marshmallow roasting. Everyone is welcome. No set date yet so if you want us to plan around you we can get it done. Just has to be in the next four weeks. This weekend Texas creek provincial park was great for us. Swimming, fishing, more swimming, more fishing, roasting marshmallows. Telling stories at bed time. (no ghost stories yet. We need the kids to sleep) We did not catch any fish but time spent at the river side/lake side with the kids messing around was awesome. Some day we will catch a fish and eat it and it will be great. I don't know when and am not willing to make a forecast but I am pretty sure it will happen. Had a bite that even jumped out of the water. It got away and was pretty small but it is a start. So that was camping, now for dinner.

Camp night one. The set up. Seeing as we arrived at 5:30 and it had been a regular work/school/home day I didn't think we would have it in us to cook after setting up. So the wife mentioned the roast chickens that you get at a local grocer. Still warm when we sat down to eat. I shredded and the children consumed. I think we had other food. Some veggies and dip. Some home made onigiri (rice balls). And of course the requisite beer. Can't have camping without beer.

Camp night two. We went all out and had the classic camp fare. The lipton instant noodles. They are called side kicks now but they still make great camp meals. All you need to bring is the milk and margarine and you have instant flavour. The daughter slurped up about 1/3 of all noodles made. Wifes comment, "she loves MSG." We also roasted smokies on the fire. These were the mozzarella filled smokies. The cheese dripping out and sizzling on the fire provided great amusement to the kids. Sliced and whole we went through six smokies. Most were eaten cut up into chunks. For dessert we had roasted and unroasted marshmallows with milk chocolate. We skipped the graham crackers. No big loss. The fire and my years of experience provided for some molten marshmallows that never got black. All in all a good weekend of camping. Two nights was good. We had to be back for a birthday party. I think we will stretch our next outing to three nights.

Pre-game Meal

We had ultimate tonight. It has begun. When we lived in Vancouver we loved playing ultimate. We made teams and joined teams and even played some pickup once in a while. Then we moved to Japan and it kind of dried up. We have been pretty much shut out since that time. Then about three weeks ago we got the new Rec-Commission pamphlet and there written large (okay the type was the same size as all the other activities) was an invitation to community ultimate. We have been anxiously awaiting this night since then. It was worth it. There is another die hard in town and we had two beginners who seemed eager. Now if all five of us can bring two friends then we can play seven aside. By the next week if each of those fifteen can bring two people we can have a three team league. And so it will go until everyone in town is playing ultimate every night of the week. Mathematically it should only take about 8 weeks. Give or take.

Oh yeah the meal. We had stir fried vegetables, rice, onigiri (rice balls with a little something special inside) and my wife even fried up the leaves from a daikon (japanese radish). Nice light fare.