A diary of our two years in Seattle/Bellevue/Kirkland
Harry also took a selection of pictures to accompany the holiday journal that his teacher had asked him to write. The journal may make it onto the site one day but for now, we will all have to make do with this wonderful selection of photo’s (with the full set here):
As Harry takes such a good photo he’s been given one of our other cameras to use now so expect bigger and better photographic treats from him in the future!
While we were in Australia, on the occasions that Toby remembered to take his camera he took a number of photo’s. The following are a selection but you can see all of his pictures here:
You may notice once you’ve seen them all that Toby does still like to take a sneaky picture of bottoms when he gets the chance!
Earlier this month Harry and Toby had a make up ski lesson. When they were ski-ing with the school one lesson had been cancelled due to bad weather up at the Pass and this was the make up lesson. Harry disappeared off with his instructor and we didn’t see him again for two hours as he sped down all the different slopes. Toby was in and around the Holiday slope though so we got a few pictures of him.
These are the different slopes – Harry goes off to the left on the bigger slopes but I’m sure Toby will be there next season and maybe even Tracy!
The Gunners league season finished yesterday with a 2-1 win over Seattle Celtic. They faired much better this season, compared to the fall season, as they finished 3rd in the league (joint second really!). They were playing against under 11’s again so they did pretty well to only lose 2 games. Harry also managed to bag himself a couple of goals this season and started putting a lot more effort in over the last few weeks which was good to see!
You’ll need to click on the image below to see the larger version but there are the Gunners in all their glory – just 3 points off the winners – and the only team to beat the league champions!
Next up we have 3 summer tournaments and some try-outs for the under 11’s. Will Harry go to try-outs or will he go play baseball and American Football? Who knows – but with Toby keen to try out for the Gunners under 8’s I’m sure it’s not the last we have heard of the Gunners!
We’d had my car almost two years and it had served us well but this is America, land of the gas guzzler, and so today we traded the Batman car in and got a Chevy Trailblazer. It had taken a week or so of negotiation with the garage but eventually they agreed to our price and we got about 25% knocked off so it was worth the haggling. So now we have a nice large 4WD car but it was emotional saying goodbye to the Chrysler:
Lovely Batman car!
Tracy went for her second ski lesson today and at the end of it, she officially became a “skier”. Not sure if that is actually “official” but that’s what I’ve been told. The first lesson went well but we had no evidence of it other than Tracy telling me she was a natural! The second lesson also went well, after recovering from the tricky situation of someone walking off with her ski’s, but this time we have evidence.
So without further ado here is Tracy, the natural skier, bombing down the Holiday slopes:
httpv://youtu.be/I1grgYYVMC0
Notice how she weaves between all the people flopped on the ground mocking them as she goes! Not everyone is a natural!
Now it is only me who can’t ski! So sad!
Just a few days after playing cricket on the beaches of Australia I was freezing cold by Niagara Falls. Although strictly it was a work trip I had thought it would make sense to organize a team building activity while in Toronto and as I wanted to see the Falls that seemed to be the perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone!
Despite the fact that it was freezing I think it was a good time of year to visit. The ice and snow gave some already impressive waterfalls an even more spectacular feel. You can visit the Falls from the US and Canada and after visiting once my professional opinion is that you would only want to see them from the Canadian side – the view from the US side must be pretty rubbish and I would imagine you could barely see the Canadian part. The only downside to the Canadian side is that you have to look at some pretty cheap and nasty looking hotels but I think that is a small price to pay!
Anyway, these are the falls, first two pictures are the Canadian, horse shoe shaped falls – taken from up the tower:
These are the American, frozen falls:
And this is Niagara town, which is a bit like I imagine Blackpool was in the 1970’s:
More pictures can be found here.