Andrew won his first medal!

He raced in the ‘Rock the House’ 1k kids run and won a finishers medal! Awesome.

We picked up Poppop and Gramma at 8:30 to head over to Ronald McDonald house for the big race. Andrew had to be there by 9:30 to get ready for his 9:45 start time. The course was terrific. An out and back track that wound through the greenspace area behind the RMH and featured entertainers, balloons, and of course the man himself, Ronald McDonald.

 

Poppop, Gramma and Andrew were very anxious to get out on the course as the energy toward the start of the race ramped up.

At precisely sometime before 10am, the 3 of them went over to the start and they were off! they hugged the curves and sped down the straights, hardly stopping to see the entertainers on course and stayed really focused… until…. Andrew saw the ducks.

STOP! they pressed pause on the timers clock and had a very nice visit and a snack at the halfway point, which happened to be right by the duck pond. Andrew had a cookie and it seemed a big duck really wanted it. The duck DID NOT get the cookie. find your own!

Andrew started to look nervously at the clock, and the peloton group of racers who he had left in the dust after the first corner, who were fast approaching, and decided to head on back up the hill to the finish. Well they kicked up a cloud of dust before the rest of the racers knew what hit them! Team PopGramAndy were in high gear zipping their way toward the finish with a focused determination that only breaking the tape at the finish line would satisfy.

 

They crossed the line with a new personal best for all of them at this event and Andrew humbly accepted his medal and thanked all in his support staff before he requested someone go get him a celebratory ice cream from the Marble Slab booth. YAY Andrew! Congratulations on finishing your first big race! you deserve all the accolades, prizes and speaking engagements that will undoubtedly be waiting for you once the word gets out. you rock little man! WoooooHooooo!

ps, Mommy and Daddy had fun running in their race as well.

A day in the life…

We have had rain the last 4 days straight and finally the weather cleared up. It’s still cooler than normal but with the sun shining it was very pleasant, and for some reason the birds took a liking to the suet we put out about 2 months ago, weird, oh well, it’s pretty fun to watch them fight for a foothold to get their tasty snack. See the one in the tree anxiously waiting his turn!

I had coffee this morning with our favourite client from last year, we sat in his backyard that we built a year and half ago for him. It is really nice to see these projects later on, when they start to mature.

From there, I had a noon meeting cancel on me, so I took my Dad and Hedi (staff) out for lunch. The 2 summer students were off doing errands, so it was a good time to reward hardworking Hedi with a nice lunch out. Here is Hedi with a GIANT stump we pulled out a couple days ago. This poor cherry tree had died and we are replacing it with a 4m tall Colorado Spruce. 

I made my way down town to see a future client. He wants to secure all the costing for the landscaping of his entire yard before the deal to built the house is signed. He mentioned that he wants to put the landscaping in the mortgage. I guess that is one way to make sure you get the investment back once you sell. Our meeting took place at his office on the 28th Floor of the Shell Oil head office - what a view! I didn’t bring the camera up though, too bad. It was a nice drive downtown today, not too busy, summers in Calgary are pretty easy to get around, except during Stampede of course, and I enjoyed the trip.

Calgary is still very much under construction, even in turbulent economic times. I can see a construction slowdown once the economy turns around, because there will be such a glut of office space on the market, there will be more space than there is demand for a while!

I think this guy missed his bus. hope he’s ok.

This tower is call the ‘Bow’. It is going to be 58 stories tall and eclipse the reigning tall tower in Calgary by 8 stories. It is pretty cool to see, as most of the buildings downtown are concrete structures, where this once is ol’school steel. It is a VERY big connect-it kit.

I came home, pretty much just in time to head back downtown with Traci and Andrew, where we picked up our race kits for Sundays “Rock the House run” in support of Ronald McDonald house at the Childrens Hospital. I am doing the 10k, Traci is doing the 5k and Andrew, Gramma and PopPop are doing the 1k fun run/walk. I’m looking forward to the day, as the race is modelled after the large Rock ‘n Roll marathons down in the states, where they have entertainment all along the race course and at the finish.

Other than that, it’s a pretty ordinary day!

Just a quick video…

… of Andrew being the cool dude he is…

Snorkelling…

Andrew received his birthday gift from his Granny and Pappy in Pittsburgh. It is a Home Depot workbench and these safety goggles came with the tools. He looks like he’s….. well…. ready for snorkelling at Hanauma Bay… (ed note: we have a lurker that reads from Honolulu, so that reference is for them…)

On a even happier note, Andrew is walking again! and he seems REALLY happy about it!

We were startled awake…

… by the wind, and then kept up by the incessant thunder and lighting. It was 2am. However; for the first time since we moved Andrew to his big boy bed, he spent the whole night there. Even when the storm came, I went to his room to check on him and he looked at me, changed position and fell back asleep. Yay. We all slept really good!

So today we were feeling pretty cooped up after our marathon salsa cookoff, so we decided to go for a truck ride. When we go for a ride, we never really know where we’ll end up, but it always ends up with some sort of adventure. Today we went North. we stopped at Tims for some coffee and a breakfast sandwich (naturally) and set off up the QE2 highway. Wow, being the holiday Monday, the freeway was busy. As soon as we could we got off the #2 freeway and onto the parallel #2a highway and slowed down and enjoyed the sights. The first town we come to is Crossfield. We had driven past this place many times as you have to purposely turn in off the highway, and were quite pleased with the look of the place. It’s just a nice small town. We did notice a lot of leaves and debris around the town as we were driving around, and then started to notice bigger things down on the ground like whole trees. Wow what a mess it turned into. That storm hit pretty hard here last night.

It was pretty bad but we continued up the secondary highway to Carstairs. Traci needed a pit stop and I needed another coffee, so we stopped at the Co-op service station. Just before we got there, we started to notice some piles of white in the ditches. Yeah, there were drifts of (we soon found out) HAIL. This from a storm that happened almost 12 hours ago and the hail hadn’t melted yet.

You can see in the top photo how much of a torrent of water and ice there must have been to create the piles! wow, impressive. We really didn’t know how bad the damage was until we looked across the street from where the above photos were taken, and saw that people had plastic over where their windows used to be. Turns out this storm had a girth of about 10km wide (6miles) and came from the Northwest at about 1am and ran straight over this unfortunate little town. That is about right for the time it hit Calgary at 2am. Calgary never gets these kind of devastating Hailstorms as the city insurance companies went together 20 some years ago and invested in a technology that has an Airplane go up into the thunderheads and shoot cannons of silver iodide into the upflows , that effectively keeps the hailstones to a non damaging size. The company that provides this service is called Weather Modification Inc. It is fascinating stuff! Calgary and Red Deer get priority, so sometimes the small towns are left in the line of fire, so to say.

We proceeded  along the street we were on, looking at the hail damaged houses and cars, and at the end of the street there was a new section of the town that was just devastated! Gawd did it look awful!

Traci noticed their little plant pot on the step above got wrecked… this storm had no conscience.

 

   See the piles of Hail still on the steps!

This little town was totally devastated, the more we looked around, the more damage we saw, on EVERYTHING. Every veggie garden was flattened, every car was dented, there were a lot of cars that had windows smashed out, every piece of metal (gutters, sheds) was dented, green houses decimated, anything painted was almost sandblasted, and anything wood was splintered. Wow. We spoke to a few townsfolk that were out cleaning up their yards, and they just seemed in awe of the storm. One guy we spoke to at length said he and his son were sleeping when it hit and he said it was like there was a freight train coming in the back door. As we spoke to him, a buddy of his came up with a plastic bag with some beer, and said, “well, nothing left to do but Drink beer!” LOL too funny, everyone's spirits were pretty high. Even a couple who rode out the storm in their 5th wheel at the local campground said it was quite the experience, they just stood in the center of their camper waiting to see what was going to happen next. We could see that all their clearance lights and vent covers were smashed and the unit was dimpled like a golf ball. The initial feeling we got from the people of the town was, “well, lets get to work and clean up!” everyone seemed to be helping each other. It was pretty nice to see.

We carried on out North out of town, and the enormous impact that this storm had, hit us. The farmers fields were destroyed. This canola field is supposed to be bright yellow standing 4 feet tall. This is all that's left for miles. Complete and total destruction.

It is haunting to say the least. The work now is huge. Some of you that read this blog have dealt with, or are dealing with this type of thing due to hurricanes (Ike, in Texas) and tornadoes all over the states, but it is pretty rare up here to see this kind of thing. I feel for everyone going through these incredible events, no matter where you are. These things sure make you think don’t they?

Well, we finished our ride over to Sundre and back through Cremona, we had a pretty relaxing but awe inspiring trip, and we are counting our blessings today and everyday. How could we not with a son as gorgeous as this. We are truly BLESSED!

Salsa Day 2…

.. Whew!… is the word I think best sums up the day. We are exhausted. We finished the entire pile of salsa today. We now have 95ish litres of Salsa.

It feels good to be done today, so we don’t have to do anything tomorrow. We started at 11am with the first 2 batches of mild, and by the time Grampa came over at noon they were ready for jarring. We proceeded straight into 3 more batches of mild and 2 of medium. Grampa brought over his outdoor cooker so we could have a double batch in the big soup pot and a regular batch going out on the deck and 2 pots going inside on the stove.

It is quite a process. The Hot peppers get chopped up whole (minus the stems) in the food processor then dumped into the tomatoes as soon as they start cooking.

Then we wait until the pot starts simmering, once it does we basically do everything else on the clock. At 30 minutes past the start of simmer, we add the green peppers and Onions, as well as the tomato paste.

Here is Grampa frantically trying to keep up with the batches (there were 12 batches cooked in all today).

Chopping the green peppers and  onions take the most time I think.

Traci and Grampa did a great job at that. I was busy stirring all afternoon as you can’t leave the pots for very long or the salsa will burn. This proved challenging as I was alternating from the kitchen to the deck outside…

at 45 minutes past the start of simmer, we scoop a bit out and stick it into a waiting bowl in the freezer, and at 55 past the start of simmer we taste test the sample. If it’s too mild we add peppers, if it’s too hot… too bad sucker! a glass o’ milk asap!

Sanitizing the jars is a big project on it’s own, there was a point were we had no more room anywhere in the kitchen and dining room. Once we got started cooking though, room starts to free up.  

We finished all the cooking at 6pm, just in time for the Chinese food to arrive. You’d have to be crazy if you thought any of us would be cooking after the last 2 days slaving over the stove…hehe. Once we finished supper and had Andrew and the donks settled down we were able to get started with the canning and sealing. 

The canning and sealing is not hard, just monotonous. Mind numbing to be more specific. It is a lot of little scoops into the jars, boy oh boy. That is a 30 liter pail, that we are filling into mostly 500ml jars. that take 3 scoops each to fill. so, math wizards, haw many scoops is it? per pail? X 4 pails? wowee, me thinks.

At least when we are cooking we are moving around a bit where the scooping is standing in once place for a long time. But, like all the other tasks, it got done, and done well.

While Traci looked after Andrew, Dad and I finished up the Salsa day. Dad went home once the last jars wire in the canner, at about 9:30.      

We really like our Salsa. The recipe is one we found in a bag of peppers 7 or 8 years ago, and we just love it, also, we have learned a few tricks over the years to make it even better. We tried store bought salsa a while and it was horrible. Too salty, yuck. Anyway, we should be good till at least next spring now. In January, when we are feasting on some very tasty Nachos featuring our salsa I won’t remember how much my feet hurt back on Aug 2, 2009…

Salsa, Day 1…

We purchased all the produce required for the salsa, it is quite a bit of stuff. It pretty much filled the whole box of the truck. This picture shows all the peppers and onions but only half the tomatoes. Our six seat dining table is right full.

Gramma and Poppop blanched half the tomatoes over at their house and we did the other half. Thank goodness as it took us 3 hours of steady cutting, blanching and peeling. (and thank goodness for air conditioning).

We started with 225lbs of tomatoes and we peeled off an amazing 40lbs of skin. The next thing we do is chop each tomato into 1-2 cubic inch pieces and soak them overnight in a bit of coarse salt. This pulls all the excess water out of the tomatoes and allows us to pour it off in the morning. If we didn’t do this the salsa would be very runny. We ended up with 6 single batches of tomatoes and 3 double batches. So this should be about 185lbs as it sits, but tomorrow we hope to pour off 20 or 30 more pounds of water. Sure seems like a lot of work to end up with less stuff.

I then took all the peppers, Onion and peppers (lots of peppers) and divided them into piles. We cook 3 different heats of salsa, Mild, Medium and really hot. The mild gets it’s light kick from a few Jalapeños, which on the Scoville scale, are very mild.

The medium gets the same amount of Jalapeños in the mild, but with the addition of a couple dozen of other hot peppers, which brings the heat up a tolerable notch (this is the one I like).

The Hot gets the same amount of peppers as the medium, but then we add another BIG pile of the hot peppers. Last year we tried habeneros but it made the salsa taste like pepper spray, so this year, it’s a BIG pile of very flavorful hot peppers… yum.  

We are looking forward to tomorrow to start the 2 day cooking and canning process…