Pineapple Express

For the past five days it has been raining non-stop in Vancouver.  We've been experiencing what's called a Pineapple Express, a storm with high winds, buckets of rain and mild temperatures from a system that has moved up from Hawaii.  We have literally had 40mm of rain in one day, it's been incredible!

Yesterday Paul and I had our much anticipated night out together.  Paul and I love to walk, especially along the water and beaches and I was determined that, rain or shine, we were going to go for a long walk together to get some fresh air and exercise.  Midday it was looking really dismal, it literally looked like a monsoon outside with blowing sheets of rain.  I wasn't sure that we were going to want to be outside at all!  But then, about 4:00 in the afternoon, as if by magic, the clouds parted and the sun came out to shine!  It was amazing!

So we enjoyed a lovely long walk, grabbed a quick dinner and went for coffee before picking Sydney up from my friend Christina's where she was playing with her buddy Jack.  It was so nice to have some time together, am so looking forward to more evenings like this over the next few months.

Here's a bit of what our weekend looked like:

Swap Meet

Early Saturday morning, before we headed to Sydney's piano lesson, we hit up our first swap meet of the season at West Point Grey Community Centre.  Swap meets are hit and miss and this one was definitely a miss, not a lot of great stuff this time.  We came away with a couple of new books for Sydney, which are always a hit with her, and a new dress and shoes.

Whole Name

Sydney has been so into writing letters out these days.  She will literally spend ten minutes at a time practicing writing letters on her dry erase board, it's fantastic!  She had been writing her name in it's shortened version "Syd" for the longest time.  This past Friday, she asked me to write her name on the board and then proceeded to write her entire name underneath all by herself!  It was fantastic!  She went off to school that morning and did it again on her own on the easel there, she is so proud of herself!

Ducks

While we were out at the swap meet on Saturday morning, we walked past a little pond with a few ducks swimming in it.  Sydney insisted on returning to the car to fetch a bag of bird seed that we had inside and feeding the ducks.  It was quite cute!

Happy Birthday Alexa

This afternoon Sydney and I went to her friend Alexa's house to celebrate her 4th birthday!  She had a fantastic party with eighteen of her friends!  The highlight of the party was a visit from Cinema Zoo, a company that brings exotic animals to the party to show to the children.  The kids got to see everything from tarantulas and scorpions to snakes and skunks, ferrets and turtles.  It was amazing!

This brave Dad donned three tarantulas!

The birthday girl even got to hold the boa constrictor!

We enjoyed a lovely lunch and cake and some time outdoors before ending the party off with a pinata filled with chocolate Easter eggs.  Sydney had a blast hitting the pinata and scrambling all over the ground to collect the chocolate!

Time at the Park

Today was a beautiful, sunny day.  We enjoyed a walk to Dunbar this morning with Daddy and squeezed in a little visit to the park this afternoon as well.  Syd was so thrilled to finally return to the park after a long and rainy winter's break!

Break from the Kitchen

I am feeling especially spoiled after three nights in a row of having dinners out.  On Friday night Paul, Syd and I decided to go to Thai House for dinner, Saturday night Paul and I had Greek food while we were out together and tonight we ordered sushi in.  Three of my favourite cuisines and a lovely break from cooking and cleaning up in the kitchen this weekend!  Gotta love it!

Go Canucks Go!

Sydney is really into watching hockey games these days and always insists upon wearing her Canucks jersey while she watches.  Today she was standing in front of the TV chanting "Go Canucks Go" and jumping up and down in her little jersey.  It was awesome!  Their littlest fan!

It has been a wonderful weekend, I am so enjoying my days with Sydney lately!