House Construction

Our annual family tradition of building gingerbread (a.k.a. graham cracker) houses ensued last night. We listened to Christmas music, constructed (somewhat) sturdy foundations, and covered candy in icing sugar and jammed it onto our little buildings. I chose a different approach this year and focused on details rather than on adding as much candy as possible. Mine is the log cabin.

Gingerbread isn't as yummy as it used to be

Have gingerbread men ever been yummy? I thought they were. I know ginger creams and ginger snaps and soft ginger cookies are. But what about gingerbread men?






They sure are fun to make though. And to decorate.

Haircuts (afro and otherwise)

John is the proud owner of a hair clipper set. His afro badly need a trim so he set up shop in the front entryway of our little apartment and buzzed it off.



Seeing him do this reminded me of my childhood experiences of having my own hair cut. Mum always cut our hair. Until we started wanting more complicated cuts (e.g. layers), we sat in a chair in the kitchen with a brown cape draped around us and had mamma snip away.

Esti was the one who cut my hair short when I was about 12. She also does bangs and trims for me these days. I'm not sure where she learned. She's probably just a natural.

Strike Lake Camp

Probably the best Labour Day weekend I've spent so far has been this last one. John and I had the privilege of spending it with Milly and Quoc in beautiful Manning Park. When I say beautiful, you may have some sort of image in your head of a cozy little campsite that you drive into next to other little campsites that are driven into by other people yearning to get away from city life by sleeping in a trailer for a night. But this simply was not that kind of camping.

The campsite we enjoyed for two nights (called Strike Lake Camp) is about 7 km from a parking lot and nestled inbetween tall tall trees. The trail to it follows three sparkling lakes through the forest and the sound of rushing water is the last thing you hear as you fall asleep and the first thing you wake up to in the morning. There are ready made fire pits, a pile of wood to fuel the fires and logs surrounding them for stools.



The food cache is where the bears hang out, waiting for an unsuspecting camper to leave the door to the food open.



Quoc made use of the fresh water for his water purifier device. It served us very well.




We ate oatmeal for breakfast, supplemented by hotdogs and marshmallows. We ate hotdogs for dinner and marshmallows for dessert. Basically, whenever we were hungry we ate hotdogs and marshmallows.







We washed in the river. It was very cold and refreshing.





We hiked back to the lodge to get more food and to eat our traditional camping trip icecream.



It has been confirmed: camping with Milly and Quoc is a good time. Despite blisters, bad night sleeps, fear of bears (that was all me I think), weiner and marshmallow diets (I only mention this one as a con because by Monday afternoon the others longed for a salad - I could have gone on eating marshmallows for another week), setting up camp at the wrong location and having to take it down and march a little further on, ash and soot coating everything - camping is worth it.



The gorgeous landscape, eating everything over an open fire, being able to see millions of stars at night, spending time with friends in a unique setting, discovering again and again how blessed we are to live in British Columbia, seeing a black bear 15 meters away - it's all pretty rad. I give Manning Park two thumbs up.