Valentines day walk and a warm days adventure

This post will be a quick one just to share some photos and show we are still alive.

I would like to start by saying that I have got a job now so my house wifing days are over. I now work at the local dive shop, as the store manager.
So that's something a bit more exciting than house wifing!

This blog is over two weekends so we will start with the Valentines day weekend. 

We decided that seeing it was such a nice day that we would go for a walk and take some photos of the snow melting and some of the local waterways. 

The first thing that I came across on our walk was this wood pecker. It was a highly photogenic wood pecker thus we took many photos of it. 
I was actually really excited to see this bird because in the whole time that I have been in Canada I have not seen anything other than some crows alive (I'm speaking in terms of fauna) So please do enjoy this wood pecker that signifies the first signs of life after the cold winter here in Canada.  
 

OK well that is enough of the wood pecker...

The following are some photos of the flora and other landscape features. As the snow is melting, streams and rivers are flooding and apparently the lakes that they flow into (Shuswap) are lakes where the water level rises and falls like a tide - however this is due to the snow melt and the flow of water into the lake.

Why did the earth worm cross the road? we don't know but it was certainly trying!

That is the end of the photos from the Valentines day weekend, the following photos are from the weekend just passed. You should be able to see how the snow melt is progressing. 

We had planned to go diving on this weekend how ever we were advised against it by a fellow commercial diver who had been out previously that week and said that the water was still really cold (even in a dry suit). The group that we were going with did end up going out anyway and they reported that the water was about 4 degrees Celsius. 

This is a photo of a giant dead fish that has thawed out on the side of the lake (Kyran is there for scale).

You might remember that in a previous blog that we did a walk out on to this pier before and you might also remember that it was completely snowed on and the water completely frozen. 
Well this is four weeks (at most) later:

As you can see there is a little ice left on the top of the lake but it is disappearing quite quickly.

Oh and here's one of yours truly :P

It's Kyran's turn now! 

This is a nice picture of us on our stroll, taking pictures of that wood pecker and other various scenery. Building up a great collection of photos for Mercedes to put on Shutterstock.com!

Merc got me a desk-plant, which is a Crocus flower. These are grown from bulbs and from the heat in my office and the lights being on, they have been tricked into growing up and sprouting all their fancy flowers for me!

On the right is Merc and our neighbour/landlady's cat Toby having a cuddle on the couch!

On the way back from the pier, Merc and I were JUST too late before the huge cargo train got to the crossing, and we had to wait for it. It turns out there was 140 cars, and a total of 3 engines. It took almost 5 minutes of non-stop train before it finally passed! Below is some information about the train-related history of Salmon Arm. I think you can click on the image to make it larger?

 

Back to Merc:
Well that is all for another two weeks. I am sorry that the last two blogs have been two weeks at a time and two weeks apart. I would really like to keep up the weekly blogs as I know that some of you have made it a weekly habit of tuning into our blog.

For now that is all from us, all our love and well wishes go out to all our friends and families out there where ever in the world you might be.  

"The coming and going of the seasons give us more than the springtimes, summers, autumns, and winters of our lives. It reflects the coming and going of the circumstances of our lives like the glassy surface of a pond that shows our faces radiant with joy or contorted with pain."

Gary Zukav

Moving house,moving lives

First of all I'd like so start by apologizing, our blogs recently have been quite tardy, there is no good excuse so I'd like to summarize the last couple of weeks in this one Blog.

It has been a hectic two weeks, we have moved from living on Silver Star Mountain near Vernon to living in Salmon Arm where Kyran is working in Engineering and I am being a top notch house wife!

To start with here are some of the things that I have created recently. On the bottom left is a matching mother and baby set of head warmers I initially mad the baby one then decided that I wanted one so I made one in adult size. The middle one is my first attempt at a mutant Minion - lets just say the eyes and the teeth were challenging and I'll probably still change it a bit. The head warmer on the right is a Hello Kitty one that was requested by a friend so that one will be posted out to her shortly.

The items below are all baby sized for friends and family that are expecting.
 

Ok now that is out of the way we can move on with what we have actually been up to more specifically!

 

We had to hire a car over two weekends, firstly in order to inspect a place that we were looking at staying, and then the following weekend in order to move everything from the Mountain home to the new home in the sleepy valley town known as Salmon Arm. 

This photo is a quick outside photo of the place that we are staying in. 
It is a granny flat type of studio on the bottom side of a much larger house. The landlady is really nice and she has done some great DIY renovations to her house and this little studio!






This is a photo of Kyran getting to know the neighbours.
This is one grumpy cat!
you can only pat its ears and sometimes it will just bite you for fun, but it seems to have made an ally in Kyran, so it gets to come in side and sleep on the bed some mornings.

This photo was taken from the bed area, with my man-slave in the kitchen cooking me an awesome stir fry.

 
The above photos and the photo to the right are of some of the dishes and things and I have been making during my time as a house wife. 
So to all the family out there who are reading this, I am looking after my husband and he's not going to fade away to nothing any time soon!








 

This next bit of the blogs will be brought to you by Kyran as he walks you through his new job and everything it entails. 

 I have an exciting 20 minute walk to work each day, and huge hill to walk back up after work in the evening. I work from 8am till 5:30pm, with an undefined and often violated break period somewhere in the middle!

I work with 3 others (software engineers and a mechatronics internship student) and the boss. 

I have been working for 2 weeks now, as of 13th Feb. My role is "do everything and fix everything" engineer, but I think i'm officially supposed to be a product development engineer. I work with lasers and cameras mostly at the moment, for laser-triangulation range-finding applications. We have lots of cool projects so i'm sure i'll be busy!

The weather has been getting above freezing for the last week, so my walks to walk have been getting easier with less snow and ice now, it's basically a mud track through the little forest now.

My workplace is really nice, the people are great and the boss looks after us kids. There is a coffee espresso machine for that early morning pick-me-up, and he provides fig bars and various healthy fruit/vegetable based canned drinks.

I am itching to get into more circuit design and PCB design work, some of which is currently being contracted out but may be brought back in-house (due to my skills now being available!) so that would be good! That's it for work!

Above and left: Some extra-frosty ice crystals on the crap quality roads, taken up on Silver Star mountain on our last weekend there.  

Above and right: Merc and I going for a stroll to the middle of town to do some shopping, on our weekend after moving in.

 Merc found a cool treehouse while she was walking to town the other day, and took a picture. Would be fun to be that kid!


Living in an alpine environment is not all fun and games, sometimes you have to shovel snow!

And finally, i'll leave you with a picture of a strange bird that I found, while chasing a moose.

Yep, a moose. A juvenile moose ran past our front door the other day and I scrambled to go take a picture of it, but it had gone too far up into the bushes/trees up behind/beside our studio (and it was cold, I was in my PJs). So I turned around and I see this crazy bird! It honked at me and ran away lol.

Thanks for reading! This has been another Bloggerization of reality by the Findlaters!