The Kerplunks Rock!

A shout out to the Kerplunks and congratulations for winning a Western Canada Music Award and (as of this weekend) a Canadian Folk Music Award! Fellow Gabriolans, friends (and one is a former roommate), Tina and Dinah are fantastic and well deserve all of the recognition they are getting.

For any of you who have kids, know kids, or have any other reason to be looking for great kids music, check them out. You can listen to snippets of all of their songs on the website, and they are awesome. I like them all, and I don't know what is my favourite. "Beebs" is pretty great because the dog Beebs is real and is the best dog in the world.

A Weekend in Gibsons

A few weekends ago, I took a much needed break from Vancouver and a busy schedule to visit Sheena and Matt on the Sunshine Coast. It's a good thing I got some fun times in then, because I've been insanely busy since (AND came down with the flu, which I am still battling).

Sheena and her mom picked me up from the ferry Saturday evening and we went straight to a potluck to celebrate a citizen group's victory over "the [evil] developers". Go citizens! This is what gets me excited about planning; grassroots struggles over top-down planning. Yeah! Someone had actually cooked an entire turkey for the potluck, and it was then we realized this was "grown ups" potluck, which is quite different from the university potlucks we're used to.

Sunday morning was rainy, but we decided to go exploring around town anyway. The chickens didn't seem to be too happy about the rain and sought shelter under a bench.

At the marina we spotted this great blue heron in bright breeding plumage.

At the beach where Sheena learned to drive stick (not on the beach itself, but the steep road down TO the beach), we communed with the sea and basked in the sunshine that decided to arrive.

They're cute!

Returning to town, we walked passed the site of the [evil] development that was stopped by valiant citizen action (below).

The development was to look something like this, and be built on a wetland.

Not too far away is the museum where Matt works, humbly answering emails, vacuuming the floor and aspiring to greater things, if only the museum had more money to actually improve its exhibits. Sigh. Maybe they could get the developer make a donation to the museum...

Believe it or not, we did all of this after a delicious pancake breakfast and before a scrumptuous lunch of oysters at Gibsons' newest, and perhaps poshest, restaurant right on the water.

Back at home Matt baked bread while Sheena and I knit.

And we bottled beer...

...making sure to get every last drop.

What a super day! Thanks for the fun times.