The neighbour's roof is done!

Yaaaaaaaaay, let's all celebrate! No more roofers, waking us up with loud swearing and squeaky ladders at seven o'clock in the morning. No more intimate details yelled over rooftops like, "Dude, I got laid lastnight!" No more discussions we wish we hadn't heard, like the differences between a $100 and a $300 blowjob. And no more piles of Spitz on our front sidewalk:-)

I'll have to post a photo of the actual roof, it is rather incredible - all cedar shingles, shiny and new. It looks great, but I don't see us following suit in the near future - not for $30,000!!!!!! I think I'd rather do a trip around the world! And then the minor fact that I don't really want to be around the roofers for any longer than I have to!!!!!!

Community

Jamie and I have been going through a bit of a mini-revolution here in our household, realizing once again that there is so much more to life than this day-in day-out that is predicted for the next 30-odd years! We want more - more community, more time, more energy. So we've been researching and soul-searching and discussing, both our future and our present. It's been a really interesting time, and I think for now we've come to the conclusion that there will be no major changes for the next couple of years, but in the meantime we'll make little changes here and there to improve the quality of our lives. I'm excited and stimulated and happy and in love with my partner! Spring must really be in the air!!!!!!

One thing that I came across today was this list of ideas of how to build community, so I thought I would share it here:

How to Build Community

Turn off the TV
Know your neighbor
Look up when you are walking
Greet people
Sit on the stoop
Plant flowers
Use your library
Play together
Buy from local merchants
Share what you have
Help a lost dog
Take children to the park
Garden together
Support neighborhood schools
Fix it even if you didn't break it
Have block parties
Honor your elders
Pick up litter
Read stories aloud
Dance in the street
Talk to the mail carrier
Listen to the birds
Put up a swing
Help carry something heavy
Barter for goods
Start a tradition
Ask a question
Hire young people for odd jobs
Have a pot-luck
Bake extra and share
Ask for help when you need it
Open your shades
Sing together
Share your skills
Take back the night
Turn up the music
Turn down the music
Listen before you react to anger
Seek to understand
Listen from new and uncomfortable angles
Know that no one is silent, but many are not heard

Love to you all on this beautiful spring day!

Happy Spring!

natural dyes
Originally uploaded by the four mckays.

So spring has sprung, and today we woke up to sun streaming through our window! Well, to be more accurate, we awoke to the yelling of the roofers next door who showed up bright and early at 7 to start replacing the rotten roof of our neighbours, but then seeing the sun softened the blow somewhat!!!!

We've been spending the week celebrating the arrival of spring, including a fun day of dyeing eggs with natural dyes - we boiled up kale, beets, blueberries and onion skins, and soaked the eggs in those - the kale did not work at all, and the blueberries worked the best, but it was neat to see all the different colours! Onion skins worked best when we wrapped the eggs in them, then a layer of cloth held on with elastic bands, and hard boiled the eggs!

Next we're on to planting seeds - hopefully this project turns out better than last year, and we actually get a sprout or two!!!!!

Vancouver winter

Vancouver winter
Originally uploaded by the four mckays.

Hello all!

Okay, so I'm posting a few photos to share - though I notice that the bird sanctuary ones are in the wrong order on the blog but there you go!

We've had crazy weather, with snow, then rain, gorgeous sunshine and now back to our gray days!!! It was pouring with rain here yesterday, and Kera and I went up Cypress to go cross-country skiing where it was snowing like crazy and truly a winter wonderland! We enjoyed a couple of hours on our skis feeling a bit chilled in our toes, and then drove down to warm city with the sun making an entrance! Have I mentioned before that I LOVE living in this city?!!!

We're off to Princeton for the weekend to visit my grandparents - it's been a while since we've seen them so I'm really looking forward to the trip. I just have to clean out the car, finish packing our clothes and pick Kea up from her Spring Break ballet camp, and then we're off!!!!! Have a great weekend everyone!

painting in the new art room!

painting in the new art room!
Originally uploaded by the four mckays.

Here's a couple of recent photos we took of the kids, painting up some art work for their new artroom (which will be finished as soon as we get rid of all the junk piled in the corner!!!!!) If you click on the photo, you can access a few more photos from the set!

Feeding the ducks

Feeding the ducks
Originally uploaded by the four mckays.

Fashion Queen

Fashion Queen
Originally uploaded by the four mckays.

Believe it or not, this is how Kea got dressed to go on a tour of the Reifel Bird Sanctuary!!!!! I'm just imagining what she'll choose to wear camping this summer!
We had a great time walking through the sanctuary with a guide (through Kea's membership to YNC), and saw all sorts of birds that we normally would not have noticed - like a tiny owl hidden on a tree branch, falcons, herons, tonnes of different types of ducks (who knew?!!!) and even the offspring of two different types of ducks!

Sunday musings....

It is a beautiful sunny day here in Vancouver - after a couple of days of snow and cold, we're now able to enjoy a more typical Vancouver weekend, where the crocuses are no longer surrounded by snow!

My dad is visiting and he just took the girls up to the playground for a bit, so Jamie and I could get some work done on the basement. We made a trip up to Home Depot to buy all sorts of trim, and we're determined to finish off the playroom today - one room at a time, we're going to do all the finishing work that is needed! And by starting in the playroom, we can move all the toys down there and hopefully no longer feel overrun with them!!!

My muscles are ACHING after a day on the ski hills yesterday. I've signed up for a few cross-country ski lessons (perfect because they come with rentals and also a pass for evening skiing so I can go once Jamie gets home - theoretically!!!!!) so yesterday I spent an hour and a half climbing hills and practicing my technique going down. The instructor showed us a few ways to go down, then took us on this huge hike up by the powerlines. He stopped at the top of this huge long hill and said, "Okay, I'll see you at the bottom - you can show me what you've learned" and took off. What he did not realize was that it had warmed up and then cooled down quite a bit so it was pure ice - and the handy snowplow was doing us no good! We all slipped and slided our way down, falling here and there and I only did one face plant in a snowbank!!!!! And after that, I decided to say 'screw this', and curled up into a tuck position and went straight down!!!!!! I love it! And can't wait to get back out there......once my muscles heal up a bit and I can walk properly!

Kea passed bubbles 2 in swimming this week, and is now on to the next level. After our month in the tropics, spending tonnes of time in the swimming pool, she is so comfortable in the water - it's amazing to see the difference! She used to be scared to put her head in the water, and now she fully swims underwater from the pool edge to her instructor! He wrote in her report card that she was like a mermaid under the water, which I thought was a really sweet comment. It definitely made her day!

And speaking of sweet comments, the girls and I love to put the Putomaya "African Playground" CD on and dance our hearts out during the day. On Friday I got up with them and did a bunch of moves that I would only ever normally do in front of the mirror :-) and Kea stopped to watch, and said admiringly "Wow mom, you should do a show. I think everyone would LOVE to see you dance"! How sweet! Unrealistic, but sweet of her!!!!! Tiegan and I created a gecko dance, and Kea was dancing the market woman dance!

Okay, I think lunch break is over, back to work - wish us luck that it all gets done today!!!!!!!!

Keta Beach

keta beach2
Originally uploaded by the four mckays.

This is one of my favourite photos from the trip - after about 10 days of living in Hohoe we made our way down to Keta for a few days of R&R. The kids had pretty bad heat rashes (it was hot hot hot there and so hard for us to adjust to - we take a cold shower and it felt like the exertion of drying off would get us sweating again!) so we opted to stay in a nice air-conditioned hotel, and enjoyed drinking Ghanaian beer, watching the local African Cup football matches and hanging out on the beach in the mornings and late afternoons. There were lots of fishermen, and the occassional curious kids coming by to see what we were doing, but otherwise we pretty much had the beach to ourselves. Good times!

visiting schools in hohoe

schoolkids5
Originally uploaded by the four mckays.

I love this photo, as it basically sums up what it was like to try to take photos of the kids - when we first arrived, we would get mobbed in the excitement of a few white people coming. I heard somewhere that it is considered good luck to touch white people, and I'm not sure if that is true or not, but we (and especially the kids) were touched a lot and there was a lot of curiosity around us. Jamie usually had the digital camera, so he would take a photo and then show it to the kids, and then all of a sudden everyone wanted to jump in on the photo! We got very good at quickly snapping a couple of photos before the kids realized what we were up to, then taking a few like this! Or, when they were all distracted by Jamie taking photos, I'd try to slip off and take a few photos either without anyone in it or without people paying attention to me!

playing polly pocket!

playing polly pocket!
Originally uploaded by the four mckays.

Here is a photo of Kea playing with Freddie and Verra, two of the kids we lived with in Hohoe (pronounced ho-hoy, it's a small town four hours north east of Accra, in the Volta region close to the Togo border). When we were taking the bus here, Kea was telling Carrie (the friend we had come to Ghana to visit) how her cousin in England had so many of the same toys as her and she wondered what toys the Ghanaian kids would have. You can imagine her shock when she discovered that they did not have any toys at all. It's not that the family could not afford it, these kids had plenty of clothing, lots to eat, went to private school, had a private tutor on days off, and were basically well off by local standards. However, it is just not a part of the culture to buy kids a bunch of toys. Birthdays and Christmas are not celebrated with gifts, and there are no toy stores around. If one kid has a ball, they'll all definitely play football or if a tire is found they'll have a blast pushing it along the street, but other than that the playing was a lot more physical and imaginary. So Kea did introduce them to the world of Polly Pocket and they were very curious about them, but ultimately most of the time they would all play doctor or superhero or school or some other physical, interactive game with no props.

It's been a very low-key weekend this past weekend as the kids are still fighting this lingering cough and cold that is just brutal, and of course Jamie and I are starting to get it - kind of inevitable I suppose since we've been getting very little sleep with Tiegan lately so are feeling quite run down AND have two little kidlets coughing in our faces all night! Ah well, such is the life of parents in the winter months! Just makes me miss the healthfulness of all the sun, fresh fruit and sea water of the tropics!!!!!

So, I was going to come here and add a bunch of posts with earlier dates on them (as much as I know regular readers LOVE that!) because I've been feeling really bad about my lack of blogging lately. But I can't seem to do that now, or at least it's all changed so much that I can't figure it out if it is possible. And I hear Kea coughing away upstairs so I'm going to have to go up soon (not too bad since I have a good book to read and am feeling rather braindead as it is!!!!!) So instead I'll just write a bit now and try to get at the computer more regularly in order to catch you all up on our lives!!!

I don't think I've posted a link yet for our Flickr photos from Ghana. When we returned I quickly uploaded a few of our 700+ digital photos so that I could send them out to everyone, so here's a small sampling for you to look through. We've since put together more thorough slide shows for different presentations and I've found a few photos that I love, so I will highlight them in future posts along with the story behind them. Unfortunately I was less thrilled with the film photos, and I think my big mistake was going with prepaid developing as it looks like there was either something off with the film or with the developing chemicals in many of the photos :( We keep intending to do something about it, but the photo lab is so far away and really, I'm not sure there's much they can do about it now. Lesson learned. Blah.

Okay, more soon.......I promise!