Stanley Park by Tandem!

I had been waiting soooo long for my first visit to Stanley Park! You hear such great things about it and I wanted to make sure we got there to enjoy it before the rainy season came...so our public holiday on Thanksgiving seemed like the perfect occasion. I had read that you could hire bikes nearby, and when I saw you could hire tandems I was sold on that idea. A few years back when we cycled to Holland from Belgium on a Tandem we absolutely loved it! 

 So after posing for a quick pic we were off. There is a path that surrounds Stanley Park known as the Seawall. It has a double path, one for walkers and runners and one for cyclists and rollerbladers. On one side of the path is the ocean and on the other side is Stanley Park itself. It's really something. 

 We cycled around for a good few hours just taking everything in, The beautiful trees...that were just starting to turn for fall. 

 The skyscrapers of the city in the distance... 

 and then you turn a corner and find strips of sandy beach... 

 and turn another corner to find the infamous Totem Poles. 

 When my mom was 17 and 3/4 (she likes to emphasize the 3/4 bit!) she left South Africa to travel around Canada for a few years. She spent a lot of time in Vancouver funnily enough and told me just before I left how well she remembered the totem poles in Stanley Park, so it was fun for me to stand beside them thinking that 45 years earlier my mom probably stood in the exact same spot (although apparently she doesn't remember the crazy rain so maybe she was here in summer time!) 

 One of my favorite parts of our tour was seeing the Lions Gate Bridge. 

 I think I have a bit of a thing for awesome bridges and I could have taken photos of it all day long (much to Byron's delight!) 

I wanted to make sure I had it covered from every angle! It reminds me of a smaller, greener Golden Gate! 

 We cycled through the middle of Stanley Park too and came across the Rose Gardens which were just so pretty...

and I'll leave you with the craziest thing we saw that day...

That guy must have the best balance ever! 

It makes me a little bit sad looking back on those crazy blue skies! We haven't seen any of that since Thanksgiving.  The rain is certainly here to stay! and I'm beginning to realise it rains here even more than it did in North Wales - crazy I know! 

At least stumbling into the supermarket and discovering these can brighten any rainy day!

Candy Cane Oreos! The holidays are coming...

Dairy Milk crammed with Oreos and White Choc Chips, just what everyone needs to brighten up a rainy Tuesday night!

and my all time favourite Ghiradelli Peppermint Bark! This used to be so expensive when we lived in Turks and Caicos that we had to ration how much we could buy, of course it's still pretty pricey here in Canada but I'm thinking we'll be able to sneak a few extra bags than usual into the trolley this time around! 

Garibaldi Lake, Whistler & Thanksgiving Fun!

We've gone on a few hikes since we've been here but over thanksgiving weekend we wanted something more hardcore so we settled on Garibaldi Lake.  It was a 6 hour hike in total and one of the last really sunny days we had so it was certainly hardcore and I'm not sure I had been accurately informed abut how it was uphill the whole way! But it was worth it once we reached the lake and saw how beautiful it was!

It's about an hour and a half drive from Vancouver so we had our first car 2 go adventure as the buses don't go there.  We got to ride on the Sea to Sky Highway which I was pretty excited about, with the ocean on one side of you and the mountains on the other it makes for a pretty scenic drive!

It was such a gorgeous day to be out and about exploring! And we had so much fun zipping around in our smart car!

The night before we had road tripped to an even bigger Wal Mart Superstore in a town called Surrey and I had managed to by this patriotic water bottle, I was pretty happy about getting to test it out (yeah I know, I'm such a tourist!)

I love how still the water was, it made for some awesome reflections!

There was a dusting of snow on the mountains which made the view even more amazing!

and you can just see the fall colours starting to peek out! 

We walked around the lake for a while until we found the perfect spot for a picnic...

and managed to work some self timer magic!

By was brave enough to dip his toes in the water! It was super cold!

I'm not sure if you can see in this picture but By is wearing his UBC Forestry t-shirt!

Even as we left the lake and started our hike back down I kept turning to look over my shoulder and take in that view one last time! 

Since we were only 30 minutes away from Whistler, we thought it would be rude not to pay it a little visit!

There was actually some dirt biking going on and it was pretty busy, it was funny to see the runs with no snow! and funny to think in about a months time when we're next there we will be skiing down those runs - it's SO exciting!

We browsed around the shops, they were having a 'turkey' sale where loads of the clothing was reduced, it was still pretty pricey though so we enjoyed some s'mores ice cream instead from one of the cafe's, it was delish! 

and mostly I just LOVED soaking up all the colours of the trees!

and whipping the camera out every corner we turned!

By snapped this pic on our drive home as the sun was setting.  It was a great ending to the day!

The next day we started our Thanksgiving celebrations a little early at Cassie and Peter's, some friends from church.  Last year we celebrated American Thanksgiving in England, the year before we did it in the Caribbean so it was fun this year to be celebrating our first ever Canadian Thanksgiving!

Here we are with the whole group: Jen and Sterling and Mercedes and James too.

Cassie and Peter cooked up an absolute feast with all the trimmings! and we had some yummy bread rolls from Jen too.

Mercedes and James wowed us with the drinks and made these tasty virgin mojito style drinks!

and of course no Thanksgiving is complete without pie! Cassie, outdid herself by making a trio of pies: Coconut Cream, Apple and of course Pumpkin! We rounded off the night by playing some competitive scattergories!  

and we enjoyed it all so much that we decided to do a part 2 the next day on actual Thanksgiving! By cooked us up our own Turkey dinner complete with Kabacha squash which may just be my new favourite kind of squash! 

and of course we talked about the things we were thankful for...number one being that we get to live in this awesome place! and for all the super cool people we have met!

So now we've celebrated our first holiday here I'm crazy excited for the next one...people have already started decorating their porches and the front of their houses and there's halloween things popping up in every store - I can't wait! 

A Thanksgiving Celebration!

In 2 days time it will be Thanksgiving.  My family and I celebrated this past weekend since we all live in different places and couldn't be together on Thursday and we had decided on a little family get together to celebrate my brother in laws birthday.  We had a great time, with tons of delish food! and what was even better was the way that everyone chipped in to help - I wish I had taken a picture of everyone in the kitchen all hands on deck!

Of course no mormon celebration is complete without a bit of Shloer! It wasn't quite as cool as the Root Beer I was drinking last Thanksgiving, but it wasn't all bad! 

England let us down on the Turkey front.  Apparently supermarkets only bring them in fresh in December in preparation for Christmas so we had to make do with two chickens! It wasn't quite the same but they certainly were tasty thanks to Arne and my mom make the platter look pretty! 

This is the table in all it's glory, laden with food! 

There were tooo many side dishes to even take pics of, but here was the creamy corn that I whipped up...

and yes, that is purple mashed potato! By rustled up all the potato dishes...roasted, sweet and the famous purple mash! It is not artificially coloured, the potatoes used were really purple! 

Mara made a green bean and roasted onion casserole and we had mini sausages and stuffing too! 

Here's the birthday boy himself...

and some of the sisters...

and me and By...totally excited about the feast that was ahead of us! 

We rounded off the day in the only way we Jones' know how...with a dessert bar! only this was a pie bar! especially for Thanksgiving! We had Key Lime, Banana & Chocolate Cream, Apple pie pops, Mini Pumpkin pies and mini S'mores pies...quite a feast! If you want to check out some of the pies in detail you can see them here.