Where the heck is Andrew Jay...: April 2010

Poppop’s gift basket

Poppop did an amazing job of building our basement. He did ALL the hard labour and even with a bum knee, he did it all with a smile! We can’t ever thank him enough for what he did for us, but what we can do is make a really nice gift basket and have the little monkey deliver it!

Hey Poppop! POPPOP!!! Are you dere? open up!

There you are, here I got a basket for you poppop…Ugh… erm, huphup, grrrrr, yeesh, Help a kid out man, this thing is HEAVY!

Look Poppop I got you a bunch of cool stuff! We got you a Tim Hortons Gift card, AND a Sony E-book gift card too!

And Poppop, I don’t think you can ever have enough good Maple Syrup, Am I right?

Thanks for all the work in the Basement Poppop! It is even more amazing than we ever could have imagined!

First day in yard this spring

A couple weeks ago, I finally got out to clean up the Donkey poo in the yard. It was a pretty big job as the 2 furry kids make quite a mess in a short amount of time. The pug to poo ratio is quite high.

Anyway, I got it done, raked the yard really good and finally Andrew could quit pressing his face against the glass, wishing and dreaming of a day in the yard. He went pretty crazy for a while, which is all good! Run little man run! hooowheeee! He spend a LOT of time with the sand transference tasks. from the sandbox, to anywhere not in the sandbox… The catkins on the Marquette Pussy Willow were in full force! Beautiful!This one is a Lilac bud, so close to bursting out! My favorite time of the year, that’s for sure.

Easter 1 – Egg hunt

We went to our community Easter egg hunt… I blogged about it here.

Easter 2 – Our house.

What fun! Andrew came downstairs. Traci was holding his hand walking down the stairs, he comes around the corner on the landing of the stairs and says really softly ‘mommy, the easter bunny came’ Yep, he sure did. And apparently the big rabbit hangs out in the same workshop as Santa Clause! Wow what a haul! He was quite amazed by the whole thing!

"’Where do I start?” Dink-Dink is wondering where his loot is? I am SO HIGH on Chocolate right now! I got a mower! and a big pile of chocolate! Wow, I think you got the mower set too low, that lawn is cut WAY too short!

Now, up until now, we always had trouble getting the monkey to pose for portaits. Not this year. He was TOTALLY into the whole deal! Good for us! GQ here is your next cover model! His day is not over…

Easter 3 – Nan’s house

Yep, you guessed it. More Easter egg hunt! Andrew didn’t have to be ‘egged’ on anymore. As soon as you said ‘go find the eggs’ he was off like a shot. Here he is getting started. Notice he hasn’t taken his shoes off yet!

I Got one! Yay!

Looks like the cat wants in on the action…

Hey! Another one! *Woot*

Hey, Mack has a couple here! Good Gracious I’m having fun! Are there more? Maybe, you should go check in Nan’s room, maybe there is some in there!

WHAT the heck is this? Is this for me? What is it? A MOTORBIKE? how cool, what’s that you say? it’s just like the ones they used in ‘Long Way Round’? Yep, it’s an actual BMW bike, that Poppop sourced and had sent from Germany… LOL too funny! Andrew loves it!

Does this look like a happy kid or what? His feet don’t quite reach the pedals yet, but it won’t be long that's for sure! And look! Another basket of goodies… holy moly, I'm vibrating I'm so high on sugar!!!!!

Nan put’s on an amazing spread for Easter too.

Hot Cross Buns
Devilled Eggs
Roasted Ham
Corn
Spinach and Strawberry Salad
Baked Potato Casserole (Omg was it good)

After ALL that food, Nan and Andrew brought out this crazy good fruit pizza she made… wow, she spent 2 hours working on this masterpiece. It tasted terrific!

On top of it all, she made a couple Lemon Meringue Pies!!! Gawd were we a stuffed group! sooooo tasty though…

Geocaching – and Hitchin’ Post

As you know we love our weekend drives, as well as geocaching, so if we deicide to go out geocaching, and it ends up being a drive or vice versa, it just doesn’t matter. On this particular Saturday, we went out fully intending to geocache but it just wasn’t meant to be. So what got in our way? An great and greasy lunch at the Hitchin Post in High River and a Nap by the little man.

The joint ain’t much too look at, the burgers and fries are good, but zoweeee are the milkshakes to die for! Part of the allure of coming to High River is to have lunch at the Hitchin’ Post. this place has been here forever and hasn’t changed one bit. (don’t ever change). You walk up and think that there is a huge line-up, but it’s actually all the people waiting for their food. The girls inside open the tiny order window and yell “I can help the next person!” you look around, no else moves so you head on up and order.

Now the rules are, that you take a really good look at all the people who are there, that have ordered ahead of you, so you know when your order will be coming. It takes FOREVER to get your food here, but most people know that’s part of the deal. You can call ahead and have your food ready when you get there, but wheres the fun in that. I stood around yakking with the group for 40 minutes. Yep, 2 burgers, 1 chicken fingers, fries and 3 shakes, 40 miuntes. ALL worth it!

Here is the menu. My recommendations include the Mushroom burger or the HP burger (it’s a regular burger, but with a thick slice of ham added to it). The fries are crispy and really tasty, and Always, I mean ALWAYS order the gravy. It’s actually the mushroom sauce they put on the Mushroom burger. there are big slices of mushrooms in the gravy and the actually give you a fork with it…hehe. As for the Milkshakes, Traci can’t tear herself away from the Chocolate, and I love LOVE the rootbeer. Andrews seemed VERY happy with the chocolate too! The ‘Real’ fruit shakes come highly regarded, but I can never help myself from ordering the afore mentioned Root Beer shake… yuuuuuuum. Oh yeah… the mushrooms are pretty tasty too. Fresh, battered and fried!

Finally, I have watched all the people that were ahead of me get their food and ours is ready!

Andrew approves!

Such greasy goodness… The fries are done well enough, that if you don’t finish them, bring them with you and they are like potato chips when cold… hehe!

Once we were done lunch, we punched ‘nearest’ on the Geocaching app on my Palm Pre and scrolled down, down, down the list and found a cached WAY out in the middle of nowhere. We stopped to ask for directions at one point, but we only got a carload of STINK from these relaxing bovines…

We had a pretty good ride out in the middle of nowhere, but the little town we ended up in creeped us out so I pointed the cube for Vulcan. Yep, good ol’ Vulcan. Just yesterday, Len Nimoy was there to declare the town the ‘Star Trek Capital of Canada!’ They have a Space Station and a scale replica of the Enterprise. They have been fighting for years to get that designation, and now it’s all come true… Sleep well vulcanites… sleep well!

A couple days earlier, there was a MASSIVE blizzard and the town was still showing the effects. Calgary didn’t get a flake.

As Andrew was still sawing logs in the back seat and Traci nodded off as well, I pointed us back toward Calgary. I took this out the window, thought it was a pleasant shot.

About 45 minutes later, we ended up in a little town called Indus. Andrew had woken up and there was a Cache close by, so here is Andrew with his 2nd ever find! Nice job little man! We dug into our cache trading bag, and told Andrew to pick something out for himself from the cache. He hummed, hawed, and hummed some more. Nothing seems to tickle his fancy, but as soon as we opened OUR bag of stuff, he was in there and picked out a dice and that was it. No trades, just a selection from our own loot. ok then. We don’t even need to leave the house to play this game do we? HAHA.