2010-12-22 - Navy Lights

William and the kids hadn't seen the Navy light up tour so we went down there on December 22.

I put the best of the singing at the beginning of the movie for you Grandma and Grandpa :-)

Sorry the video is a bit dark. Next time I go, I'll sit on the RIGHT hand side of the bus...funny they don't tell you that when you get on the bus :-)

Mari - first promotion

Mari got her first promotion the other night and of course, I had to record it :-)

She went from New Entry Chambers to ExtraOrdinary Cadet :-)

To get this rank, she needed to know all the cadet and officer ranks, the responsibility of cadet, the expectations of a cadet and basic drill movements.

Congratulations OC Chambers !!

Nov30, 2010 - HMCS Algonquin and report cards

Good evening, earlier today I heard that the navy was out in the harbour playing around. The only problem was, I didn't know where they were playing, so I drove around a bit a finally found HMCS Algonquin as she was leaving the Esquimalt area.

We also have the first term reports cards online....Mari and Alisha

Incidently, Mari had an opportunity to tour HMCS Algonquin on Sunday with her cadet corp. Here are the photos of that field trip

Alisha extremely awesome wish list

Welcome to the most awesome list EVER !!

1. Zhu Zhu pet accessories
2. LPSO (Littlest pet shop online) stuffies
3. LPS (littlest pet shop) toys
4. Playmobil toys
5. Wii games (check with my Mom/Dad)
6. SILLY BANDZ !!
   (trendy little plastic shaped bracelets, Mari likes these also)
   
7. Club Penguin Membership for one year
8. A bow or mini-decoration
9. A chocolate Orange !!

If you get at least one of the item ,
YOU ROCK !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mari wish list

Sorry this is coming a bit late (Dad wanted me to send this a few weeks ago), but here is my wish list for my birthday and/or Christmas.

1. Club Penguin membership card or items.
2. Littlest Pet Shop Online membership card, or LPSO pet or LPSO Felina starter pack (pictured here)
3. Webkinz items (clothes or stuffies)
4. Books or giftcards to bookstores like Chapters or Bolen Books
5. Giftcard for EBGames
6. $$$$$
7. Clothes (no T-shirts, I have too many)

New Entry Chambers - Messenger

We are not sure how it is selected, but New Entry Chambers was the Ship's Messenger on Wednesday.

Hope you enjoy it.

Ogden point and Oak Bay Marina - Oct 16, 2010

Such a beautiful day today, we decided to meet up with Krisna and Boualay at Ogden Point (aka the breakwater).

After that, we went to feed the "starving" seals at Oak Bay Marina.

Thetis lake hike - Oct 12, 2010

Got together with Boualay and his friend Adam and went for a walk around lower Thetis Lake.
Not sure how far the hike was, but it took us a good 2 hours.

Hope you enjoy some of the photos I took

Thanksgiving in Parksville - Oct 10, 2010

[2010-09-28] Night photography

Borrowed a tripod (thanks Gerry) and decided to take some nightime photography.

What do you think?

Royal Wax Museum closes its doors on Sep 19, 2010

The building that the Wax museum is currently residing in, is going through siesmic upgrades soon and the museum has to move out for a few years.
Ideally, they would like to move back there, but who knows. Perhaps there is a better (bigger?) location for them
We got lured into attending the Wax museum because a couple news sources indicated that it was going to be free.....but when we got there, they were still charging admission. We decided to go through again 'for the last time'. Hope you enjoy the photos.

World Soccer Day - Sep 17, 2010

World Cup Soccer is an fun event for the Grade 4's and 5's at St. Patrick's school.
It was raining for the Grade 4's in the morning, but Grade 5's had beautiful weather !!
Mari likes the idea of playing soccer, but she won't attack the ball because 'they are too rough'....poor Mari

ebru sanatı 1

Finally a video not of the girls....this think rocks !!

I think this is called "Turkish water painting" or Ebru

Pacific Northwestern Raptors - Aug 26, 2010

Had our last cousin meetup for the summer in Duncan at the Pacific Northwestern Raptor place. This is a re-hab center for injured birds of prey.

Part of their funding is from puttin on flying demostrations, as you can see from the photos in the album linked above.

Ceremon of the Flags 2010 - Drummers Call

Ceremony of the Flags 2010

Ceremony of the Flags marchpast

[2010-07-31] Ceremony of the Flags

Went and saw HMCS Quadra Ceremony of the Flags on Saturday....trying to relive my youth...haha

Click for more photos !!

July 17, 2010 - Fuller Lake

Had a great day, meeting up with the North Island Chamberses
for lunch and a park.
Then we met with our Nanaimo friends (the Herera's)
at Fuller Lake, which is just a bit north of Duncan.
(click on Mari for more photos)

Whale Watching !!

Leona is in town and we decided we wanted to go Whale Watching !!

We couldn't have picked a better day, not only was it a beautiful day, we saw lots of whales (30-40 sightings?).
I filtered through most of the photos (how exciting is a fin anyways) and posted the best ones.

Funny enough, Alisha slept on the way back....nothing like go 50 km/h in an open Zodiac to put you to sleep :-)

Enjoy the photos by click on the thumbnail of us.

Vancouver Zoo - Alisha and Dad mini-vacation day 2

I thought we'd only be here for an hour or two, but we just kept going from one information session to the next and 5.5 hours later...

I really like a few of the parrot photos and pretty much all the owl photos.

Sorry these last two albums have not been filtered too much, I might pare them down when I get home..

Enroute to Vancouver

We didn't do too much the first day as we go to the hotel around 4pm, but Alisha enjoyed swimming at the hotel (click the thumbnail for more photos)

Alisha and Daddy - Day 2

Not much to report today. Alisha got to sleep in a bit because she gets ready than Mari :-)

I bought some new outlet and light switch plates. I originally thought brass, but it was $35 for the living room in the suite.
I went with the $3.33 chocolate brown set that look pretty good. (and $32 cheaper).

After buying those I headed to Esquimalt Lagoon Bird Sanctuary and took some photos. Click on the photo to see more.

Tomorrow's plan is to pickup Alisha from school at noon and head to the ferry...do not pass go, do not collect any speeding tickets.
Hopefully we can catch the 1pm ferry, if not, there is a 2pm one so it is not too bad.

Alisha and Daddy - Day 1

Today Restita and Mari flew to Ottawa. They wanted us at the airport by 5:15 AAAA MMMMM !!
We would have probably been early, if I had set my alarm correctly.
I had it set for 4:15 PM....arghh. As it turns out, we got together with everyone at 5:17am, so not so bad.

After hanging out for a bit, I went home and slept a bit until it was time to pick up Alisha and drop off Lola at church.

I asked Aliaha what she wanted to do....SWIMMING !! Since I had an extra car seat, I asked if she wanted to bring a friend.
Sarah was available so we picked her up.

The weather was holding up, so I thought we'd head down to Beacon Hill Park first. That is where all the photos were taken, I hope you enjoy them.

AFAIK, Restita and Mari arrived safely. The group had some issues at the hotel, but it all got straightened away.
They are staying at the Travelodge in Ottawa and spent their evening in the water park !!

H2O: Dangerous Chemical!

A student at Eagle Rock Junior High won first prize at the Greater Idaho Falls Science Fair, April 26. He was attempting to show how conditioned we have become to alarmists practicing junk science and spreading fear of everything in our environment. In his project he urged people to sign a petition demanding strict control or total elimination of the chemical "dihydrogen monoxide."

And for plenty of good reasons, since:

1. it can cause excessive sweating and vomiting
2. it is a major component in acid rain
3. it can cause severe burns in its gaseous state
4. accidental inhalation can kill you
5. it contributes to erosion
6. it decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes
7. it has been found in tumors of terminal cancer patients

He asked 50 people if they supported a ban of the chemical.

* Forty-three (43) said yes,
* six (6) were undecided,
* and only one (1) knew that the chemical was water.

The title of his prize winning project was, "How Gullible Are We?"

He feels the conclusion is obvious.

Grade 4 Celebration of Learning

Mari's class had a year end "celebration of learning" today. Essentially it is the an annual event where the kids get to show us a few things they recently worked on, possibly put on a skit. This year, Mari's grade 4 class did a bit of reading for us, then we went to the computer lab so she could show us her powerpoint presentation. When we got back to the class, the principal (Mrs. Paulson) handed them their Grade 4 graduation certificates.

As you might know, this is Mari's last week of school as she heads to Ottawa on Sunday and by this time next week, they will have probably done a performance or two. Restita and Mari are going to try and keep us updated on their day to day stuff through Restita's facebook account an iPhone app called Gowalla.

Alisha has this week and 1.5 days next week, then her and I are going to take a short trip to Vancouver.

[2010-06-05] Oak Bay Tea Party parade

Fun fun at the Oak Bay Tea Party parade and then some rides.

Alisha Confirmation

Some photos of Alisha's confirmation on May 2/10

[2010-06-01] St. Patricks Track and Field

St. Patrick's School participates at a Track and Field meet and the University of Victoria
(reposted with a better album cover)

Victoria Day parade

Lots of fun in the sun today with a Victoria Day Parade !!


Checkout the photos on Facebook

The photos to the left are 3 years apart...one was today and one was in 2007

Posted some pics

Just wanted to let everyone know that we posted some photos on our Picasa site.

Metchosin Parks (Witty's Lagoon / Devonian)

and

Butterfly Gardens

I think Picasa is where I am going to start storing most of my photos. If you are interested of knowing when I upload stuff there, you can subscribe to the feed by
1. Logging into Picasaweb (with a free Gmail account).
2. visiting my albums
3. Clicking on "add to favourites" under my name on the right-hand side
4. Then click on Settings | Email Notification | Daily digest.

This will send you 1 email a day with links to albums that have been updated.

If you don't check your free Gmail account, you can setup Gmail to forward its emails, to your regular email address. You do this by
1. login to Gmail.com
2. click on "settings" in the top right corner
3. click on the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab
4. click on "Forward a copy of incoming mail to " and put your real email address in there

This will forward any email sent to mom_likes_butterflies@gmail.com to the email address that your regularly check.

Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic photos

As most of you know, Gerry had bought some Olympic tickets for last weekend. Lola had some tickets for Ice Dancing on Friday night. Leah and Restita were supposed to go with her, but Restita stayed home because Alisha had been sick all week :-(

Gerry also had hockey tickets for two games and gave me a ticket for each!! On Saturday afternoon, we saw Team Slovakia cream Team Latvia 6-0 !! Sunday was a much better game, Team Russia beat Team Czech Republic 4-2.

I`ve posted a few photos for all to enjoy.

Haiti, are you ready for him?

Local nurse pleased to be heading to Haiti

Local nurse pleased to be heading to Haiti

Brad Bird, Oceanside Star

Published: Thursday, February 04, 2010

A local Registered Nurse is heading to Haiti to help those hurt in the recent earthquake.

Will Chambers will be leaving Feb. 19 for a two-week effort with eight others from a group called Samaritan's Purse.

He expects to be doing what he normally does at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, working as a surgical nurse. But the conditions at Baptist Mission Haiti Hospital in Ferte will be a little different.

Chambers, 36, who attends Parksville Fellowship Baptist Church, said Friday he's preparing himself for what will come.

"I'm praying," he said. "This is something that I've never seen before; I've never seen disaster. This will be my first crack at it."

But don't expect it to be his last.

"I'm willing to go anywhere in the world to serve, to help where I can."

His wife, Heather, is 100% behind his quest to help. "I am so proud of him," she said. "You will never meet a guy with more passion for this mission."

They have two children, daughters Rachel, 5, and Samara, 7.

"That's why I chose to do short-term missions," he said. "My family's first."

He knows there are risks from looters and others, but says the Canadian military will provide security.

"There is some nervousness," he said.

With him will be three surgeons and five other nurses, all through Samaritan's Purse, a non-denominational Christian international relief agency with an office in Calgary.

His employer, Vancouver Island Health Authority, has been very supportive of this, he said, for which he's thankful.

"It's going to be awesome," Chambers said, "a great opportunity to serve others who are in great need right now."

© Oceanside Star 2010

Tag, your face is it

haha..

I just wanted to write a quick post that Picasa now supports name tagging.
which makes it easier to find photos of your favorite people :-)

School choir at the Open house

Here is a video of Mari andthe St. Patrick's Intermediate choir singing at the open house yesterday

She was also involved in a play she learned in French class