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On Wednesday we went to Calypso water park. It was very cold (about 14ºC if I remember correctly), cloudy, and it even rained quite hard for a while. But a combination of warm water, a lot of stairs, and great company meant we still had an awesome day. There were NO LINES. I think the max time we had to wait was about 5 minutes, and really most of the time we just climbed right in. We got to try every slide, and lots more than once.

We climbed SO MANY STAIRS. It was especially apparent after climbing the new slide tower two times in a row with no breaks. Rosemarie calculated that we climbed the equivalent of about 170 stories throughout the day! OMG! No wonder my legs were all wobbly.

Mandatory water park shot

The new waterslide tower. 10 stories tall!!

AQUALOOP!!!

4 toilet slides (2 with tubes, 2 without)

Family slides are the best slides

Mega racing, and two mega wedgie inducing slides

The park was soooooooo busy. Haha

Oh and the lazy river, kids play area, and crazy wave pool were also awesome. We went in those about every 4 slides or so to warm up.

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After the party everyone left but Scott and I got to stay at the Monnon’s overnight. We watched the video my dad made (which we forgot to get a copy of… oops!!) again and looked at some of the pictures from the day. Then we crawled to our guest suite, aka the Monnon’s enormous campervan that is actually 100 square feet BIGGER THAN OUR APARTMENT. IT HAS A KING SIZE BED! Unfortunately it took me about 5 hours to fall asleep from all the adrenaline of the big day, and possibly the chocolate cake.

The next day was warm and sunny so (after a quick couple games of Settlers) we headed out into the water for boating, tubing, kneeboarding, and jetskiing. It was awesome. They even let me drive the jetski!

Life jacket issues

Calm

Medium

EXTREME!

Out on the boat

Chillin'

Then we came home, ate party leftovers for dinner, and played games with Rosemarie.

Up to Tuesday now. We did some typical tourist things during the day. Picnic lunch by the river, War Museum, market, Lois N’ Frima’s. I’d never been to the museum before, so that was neat. I learned some things that I don’t think I caught in Mr. Couturier’s grade 10 histoire class. I have to say thought that after finishing the WWII section I was quite war-ed out and was ready to leave. So we caught the bus to the market and scarfed down some ice cream before it melted down our arms (semi successfully). It was really hot out.

View from Mackenzie King bridge on a muggy Ottawa day

What a great look for Scott

Then bused over for dinner at my aunt and uncles’ house with my cousin as well. Lots of chatting and quite delicious veggie burgers (Costco brand!). I’m not sold on those weird thin buns for burgers though. :D

Since Rose didn’t have to work the next day we stayed up quite late playing the new game she gave us, Carcasonne. I like it so far, but we’re all still getting the hang of it. It’s not as complicated as some of the others ones though, although we did have to do some Googling for tile clarification!

Playing Carcasonne

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The main reason for our Ottawa trip was the ‘wedding-ish’ party. Scott and I were married almost a year ago in Australia, but because of the distance and last minute-ness, a lot of people didn’t get to be there. So we decided to have one final party in Ottawa where we would renew our vows and all my family and friends could finally be included. It took us a long time to finally be able to make the trip but I think it was worth the wait because the party was amazing.

So many great people came together to help make the party a super success. The Monnon’s, Kate, Jane, the Dafoe’s, Rosemarie, dad, MEP and Paul, and more, all helped out so much I am incredibly grateful. Also it was super fun to see everyone again and I loved all the speeches and how much fun everyone seemed to be having. Overall, great success!!!

Oh quickly before I forget. Our Friday overnight flight to Ottawa the day before was ok. We had a lot of turbulence but both managed to get a few hours sleep. We arrive at 9:00 am on Saturday and immediately had to shop for the food we were to prepare. We cooked our dishes on adrenaline and then my grandparents came over to finally meet Scott. We had shishkabobs (sp?), including delicious squeaky haloumi cheese, and Kate’s homemade ice cream, then passed out. Sunday morning we quickly got ready to head over to the Monnon’s for the part-ay.

After the party everyone went home, except Scott and I slept over (in a motor home that is ACTUALLY bigger than our apartment (by ~100 sq feet!!)) and then went boating and jet skiing and stuff, which I will post about later.

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from tinybites.ca

Last night Scott and I went out with Carleigh for a nice dinner at The Eatery. The place had a lot of unusual sushi, including a lot of vegetarian choices, and lots of crazy giant paper mache decorations hanging from the ceiling. It was awesome.

Scott and I shared tempura veggies, which were gigantic and good, except for the yam that was still kind of raw.

Scott had two rolls:

  • buddha roll – tempura yams, red pepper, asparagus and lettuce, with dragon sauce
  • the moby – shitake mushrooms and kombu, soy sauce, avocado, sesame seeds

And I had:

  • jalapeno popper – smoked salmon, cream cheese, jalapeno – tempura style
  • godzilla – crab crunch topped with avocado and eel

And we shared:

  • mango paradise – avocado, cucumber, mango and agge

I also had a strawberry sake margarita, which was delicious! And much needed because my jalapeno sushi was incredibly spicy. SOOOOO SPICY. They left all the seeds in part of the jalapeno. I was sweating and my mouth was ON FIRE.

All in all, very tasty. Not the cheapest of dinners out, but it definitely was something special. No pictures because it was very dark inside.

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What a rough night last night. I’m sure you’ve all seen it already on the news.

I think I knew the game was over after the first goal.

Then this was the view from Brian’s balcony. For hours. We could see the riot police pushing people off Granville St. The tear gas wafted upwards and stung my eyes and nose way up on the 21st floor. They cancelled all the buses and closed the bridges downtown.

I was pretty worried about getting home. Luckily the Skytrain was still running outbound. It was strangely quiet. I found out today that was because they were having problems at all the other Skytrain stations downtown except the one we went to. Lucky!

On the streets (with zoom and cropping)

People are so stupid. People who brag about their vandalism on Facebook are even more stupid. I hope they actually fine people.

I find the train of thought of the general public/media kind of funny though.

  • Before the game: ‘People won’t riot’
  • Right after the game: ‘Vancouver fans sure are sore losers’
  • This morning: ‘They would have rioted win or lose’
  • This afternoon: ‘They were anarchists from out of town’

Yes I agree that many of the people who started things probably didn’t even care whatsoever about the hockey game, but I think it’s surely a bit of a stretch to say that they were all ‘anarchists disguised as hockey fans’ causing the trouble. Not sure Vancouverites should get off the hook that easily…