Christmas Eve in Puerto Vallarta

6 months -and EATING!

Sean is 6 months old now - we can hardly believe it! The craziest thing for us is that he appears to love food. As soon as he starts to anticipate it (when you get near a high chair) he starts to get frantic until you start feeding him - and if you wait too long between bites he lets you know. This may be perfectly normal for most, but it is a little bizarre for us. Don't get us wrong - this is not a complaint, we are thrilled! Keira has already started watching this - she sometimes seems to think he is nuts, and sometimes she becomes more interested herself. We are also going to have to start baby proofing the house again as he is going to crawl any day now and is sitting up fairly well on his own. He is still the happiest little guy I have ever met!

Keira is also doing well. Her walking and balancing is getting better and better each day. She is determined to walk everywhere, unless she is exhausted and then she will let you carry her. A new quirk - when we get her out of the car and let her walk into the house on her own she insists on using the front door - we find this odd as we ALWAYS go in through the garage. So, we let her go, and someone has to go through and let her in. She is always giggling when you open the door - seems to find this quite amusing. We have also been working on potty training - not seriously, but we put her on whenever possible. She always does a little something and diapers have less and less in them. I find this happening so soon with so little communication very encouraging!

Can't wait to see what happens next month!!

3 Months...

Here are a couple of newer photos of the kids that we took around Sean's 3 month mark.

2 months

Here are a couple photos of Sean and Keira. Todat Sean is 2 months old - and about the size of the 7 month old child in Keira's swim class. I guess Keira is starting to accept him - he was fussing this morning lying on the couch and she came over and put her hand on his tummy...I think she was concerned. It was very cute!

No marshmallows?

So we had a long evening around here last night. It started off with us trying to get the family in the car to go have dinner out with some friends. Lennie, the owner of the stable where Jen keeps her horse Justice, was celebrating a birthday so several of the folks who board horses with her were taking her out for dinner. Just as we were packing up to go, Sean decided he was hungry right now so Jen did her thing and started to get him settled. We were running late of course, so while Jen was busy with Sean, I was busy loading the rest of the car and getting Keira ready to go. Since it was a birthday dinner we were all dressed a little more upscale than usual.

Warning graphic scene follows

Sean's first month

Sean was 1 month old last weekend. We took some photos of him with the bear (which I will try and do monthly again like we did with Keira), and we attempted the first sibling photo...

Sibling Rivalry

Not to be outdone by his older sister, Sean decided to give his parents a little postnatal stress. About an hour after he was born, we noticed that he was having a little bit of trouble breathing. We ended up having to take him to the NICU and after a couple of Xrays it was decided that he had a minor pneumothorax. Turns out that this is relatively common (they see one or two cases a month) and it didn't require any treatment other than a couple of days of oxygen, but it certainly increased his parent's stress levels significantly.

So if you are wondering why we've been incommunicado recently, it isn't because we've been ignoring you. We've been a little busy and there's a no cell-phone rule in the NICU. Good news is that mother and baby are now home and everything is going smoothly.

BTW Sean's email address, if for some reason you want to send him mail, is exactly what you would expect it to be. Just trying to avoid spam by not spelling it out for you, and every 'bot on the net… :-)

Sponsor Jen and Keira on the March of Dimes Walk

Jen and Keira are going to do the March of Dimes Walk in May. March Of Dimes is an organization doing research into preventing birth defects, premature birth, and infant mortality. This organization means quite a bit to us specifically and any sponsorship would be greatly appreciated.

Sponsor J & K by clicking here

Mañana Time

Keira seems to be enjoying the Mexican life...

Keira stuff

I've been lame, but I finally did some updates on Keira's playpen. Added five more sections to it. I'm still only about a year out from being up to date...sigh :)

More Sea 2 Summit Pics

I added a couple of more pictures from Mom to the set of Sea to Summit Pictures.

Click Here!

Sea 2 Summit 2006 - Race Report

The Sea 2 Summit is one of Canada's premier adventure races. I did it back in 2002, and this year, Bren and I decided to do it as Team Cardiac Arrest.

(You can click on any of the pictures for a bigger version. See the bottom of this posting for some links to the photo albums. Warning, this is pretty long)

Rough Google Earth Map of the Race
Thursday Sept 7, 06

Mary, Don, Jen, Keira and I drove from Shuswap out to Whistler via the Pemberton highway. We got to Whistler in the early afternoon and checked into our hotel room at the Tantalus lodge. I rebuilt my bike and we went out for Thai food before calling it in for an early evening.

Friday Sept 8, 06

Since Ecomarine wouldn't allow Brennan to strap the kayak to his car with no roof racks, I ended up having to drive down to Vancouver to pick up the kayak and drop off a whole pile of stuff at Bren's new pad. I picked up a hitchhiker along the way who turned out to be a really cool guy so at least I had some company on the way down. After dropping Cody off at the Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal, I met Bren and Julie down at Ecomarine and we strapped our rented two person kayak on to the roof of Mary and Don's mini van. We then drove to Brennan's new digs, and dropped off all of his stuff. While we were there we realized that Brennan was supposed to be picking up his rental bike in Whistler in about 45 minutes. After a panicked phone call to Mary and Don, Don got sent off to the rental place to pick up the bike and Julie, Bren and I headed off to Whistler.

Once we got to Whistler, Bren, Julie and I raced over to the conference center for the pre-race briefing. Keira had been sick in the afternoon, so Jen stayed with her to give Mary and Don a break. At the briefing we found our what we were going to do.

The first day was pretty much in three stages. Starting at 0800, we were going to kayak 23 km down the Pemberton river, at which point we were going to transition to our bikes and peddle from approximately 45 km from Pemberton to Whistler. Once we reached Whistler our time officially "stopped" but we had to go to three places in Whistler and do some activities before checking in at the final check point at the bottom of Whistler Gondola. The bike ride was described as "epic" on some brand new trail. Dean, the race director, expected the fastest riders to finish the ride in about 4 hours, and told us to expect about 6 to 8 km of "hike-a-bike".

On the second day we were going to start from the base of the Gondola, and ride up the mountain, and then down into Whistler Creekside. From there we were going to ride up to Emerald Lake where we would transition to our kayaks for a quick paddle up the lake and back. Once we finished kayaking we were going to go out on a short run with some navigational components before racing back to the base of the Gondola once more. Sounded pretty cut and dried. Once we got back from the briefing we packed up our stuff and got ready for the next morning.

Saturday Sept 8, 06

Keira spent the night throwing up, so Dave and Jen got virtually no sleep. At 0600 Don was enlisted to take Jen's place as a support person, and Don, Julie, Bren and Dave hopped in the van and headed up about 23 km north of Pemberton where the race was to begin. We got there about 20 minutes before the start, so Dave checked in while Don, Julie and Bren got the kayak down to the river's edge. It was at this point that Dave realized that Ecomarine had been kind enough to supply him with two female paddle ends, which weren't going to do him much good.

Luckily the Ecomarine representative was there at the starting line, and had a couple extra paddles lying around. Dave and Bren frantically got ready to go, doing final kayak adjustments, and trying to think of any last minute things to take care of. At about 0800 Dean called us all in for the final pre-race briefing, and then off we went. We were a little slow getting going in the kayak, but it didn't take us long to get the hang of it.



We were paddling down river which was really nice, but there was an incredible strong up stream wind blowing which was a royal pain. In some places it was blowing so hard that the surface water was blowing up stream, while the lower water was flowing downstream causing weird little disruptions in the water. It was also at this point in the race that Bren and I realized that we had rented a really slow kayak...or else we really suck as paddlers. Since I refuse to believe the latter, and it's way easier to blame my problems on someone else, we're going to blame the stupid kayak. Bren also discovered how the lumbar support in the kayak worked which made paddling far easier on his back.



After two solid hours of paddling we got to the first transition point where Don and Julie took over with the kayak while Bren and I stretched out sore arms. We grabbed some food and hopped on our bikes for the upcoming epic ride.



After a small mixup where Dave thought they'd gone the wrong way we got into some serious peddling. The trail we were following was called the Soo Valley Trail. It had fallen into serious disrepair and had been "resurrected" by the Sea2Summit crew. It was supposedly all well marked by pink flags and tape, so it should have been easy to follow. The first bit followed some really well established trails which aside from being very sandy were pretty easy riding. Slowly though the trail became worse and worse. We started having to carry our bikes up lots of hills and had to be extremely careful on the downhills to avoid losing the trail. At one point Bren was chasing after one of the other racers when I noticed that he had gone flying past a turn off and luckily he managed to hear me yelling at him before he went to far down the hill. The views of the valley were absolutely incredible, but we had to fight our way up for everyone of them. At several points we nearly got lost because of almost non-existant trail markes. At one point we ended up near a construction site, and the trail builders got extremely creative going around it by running us straight through a swamp with several fallen trees on it. At another location it was so steep that it required throwing your bike on your back and scrambling up an embankment hand over hand. Once we got to the top we had a crazy downhill ride through some young alders which were all exactly face high. As long as you were happy not being able to see anything, and having your face clawed at by trees it was a great ride. We saw at least one pair of mangled sunglasses hanging off the branches.



At the bottom of the hill there was an incredibly beautiful but spooky swamp that looked like it was straight out of the Lord of the Rings. Sadly once we got to the bottom, they immediately sent us back up the next mountain, and what a mountain it was. I think we spent 2-3 hours slowly climbing/hiking our bikes up very steep logging roads. About two thirds of the way up Brennan ran out of water, and luckily we managed to find a stream to refill our water bags. At about four fifths of the way up (after about six hours of peddling) we found out that they were starting to cut teams off at the bottom of the mountain for being too slow. We finally made it to the top and had a ripper of a ride down about 7 km of fast single track to the final timed check point. Since we had to ride through the village to get to the Gondola, the race directors wanted us to head through the village at a safe speed. To make it interesting we had to do a little scavenger hunt along the way which is where we met "Killer Kailey" and some of the other racers.




We finally crawled over the finish line about 10 hours after we started where I found out that Jen and Keira has spent the day at the hospital trying to get Keira straightened out. Luckily everyone was reasonably ok, so we headed back to the hotel room where Bren and I cleaned up ourselves and our gear and we chowed down on some well deserved pizza before crashing for the night.


Sunday Sept 9, 06


0600 rolled around and so Bren and I rolled out of bed. Our support team was bushed so we let them sleep while we made our way over to the base of the Gondola with the other racers. This morning was going to start with a 30km bike. We started with a mass start at 0700 and started riding straight up the mountain. We then sped down to Creekside and had a great ride through some awesome Whistler single track. Aside from a small incident with my seat colliding extremely solidly with some sensitive bits of my anatomy we had a really good ride, both of us cranking up some really solid hills. We got down to the transition point and hopped in our kayaks. We later found out that our lovely support crew had been woken up by Mom at 8:15, and had made it to the transition point minutes before we got there.



The paddle took us down the River of Golden Dreams onto Emerald Lake. The river itself was a cool paddle in that it was narrow and twisty, but we ran into some problems with it being very shallow, and actually ended up grounding ourselves at a couple of points requiring us to jump out and drag the kayak. After about an hour or so on the water, we got back to the transition point, and grabbed our running shoes to go for a bit of a jog.



The final stage required us to do some basic navigation on the running trails up above Whistler, finding 5 check points that were hidden in the woods. We ended up joining teams with Mike, a solo racer who was moving about the same speed we were. Bren was in charge of navigation, so I was running out in front calling out trail names while he was keeping us located on the map. All of a sudden Bren yelled out "Dave! Bear!" and I froze on the trail. Right beside me was a big black labrador retriever taking a dump behind a log. To give Bren full credit, it was black, it had four legs, and it was furry, but I wasn't in any danger short of being licked to death. We ended up finding the five check points pretty quickly, and headed back to the finish line. On the way back we followed a team of four and ended up finding ourselves on the wrong side of the river. We decided to ford the river and ended up getting soaked yet again as we mushed through the river. We finally made it across the finish line just before noon.

We had a nice afternoon/evening in Whistler, and our friend Scott Ferris drove up to see us for the evening. We headed to the awards ceremony that was amazingly unorganized as per usual, but got to see a nice slide show of all the pictures taken on the race.



I ended up catching Keira's tummy bug, and spent Monday night being violently ill. The original plan was that we were going to leave for Vancouver bright and early Monday morning to see folks, but since I could hardly move, we didn't end up getting out of Whistler until about noon. Sorry to everybody in Vancouver that we accidentally ended up ignoring/snubbing due to my disease. You really didn't want to see me. As it turns out Judy and Al came up on Saturday to visit with Mary and Don while we were our racing, and both Judy and Don ended up sick as well. Jen got a touch of it too, so it was pretty contagious.

After spending the evening at Petey's place we headed back to San Fran first thing Tuesday morning, and I ended up being back in the office before my office mate made it in.

Total time taken for the race was 13 hours and 57 minutes; 9:17:41 the first day and 4:40:15 the second day. We came in 11th overall in our category. We actually did significantly better the second day compared to some other teams by coming in 9th, but we didn't make up enough time to make it into 10th place.

The ride the first day was a killer. To give you an idea, our average speed on it was only 6-7 km/hour. I probably could've run a good chunk of the trail faster than we biked it. Even the fastest teams who were expected to take about 4 hrs, took over 5 hrs to do it. As you can see from the pictures, there was more than a little hike-a-bike going on.

According to the official results:

Day 1	Day 2
Kayak 2:04:00 (23 km)	Bike 1:14:00 (6 km) <- This must be wrong...there's no way it was only a 6 km bike.
Bike 7:13:41 (45 km)	Paddle: 1:59 :00(19 km)
	Run: 1:27:00 (12 km)

Massive amounts of thanks go to our support crew (Julie, Jen, Mary & Don) for getting us there, fed, accommodated and taken care of. We can't thank you guys enough for all the work you did. We know that being support crew is a boring job, but we hope you know how much we appreciate it. Bren and I had a great time, even if we looked like we were in a lot of pain. Hopefully you guys enjoyed yourselves as well. Double round of thanks to Mary and Don for the amazing babysitting they did, and arranging dinners at odd hours due to mix ups.

Thanks also to Scotty for putting us up for the evening in Vancouver, and Bren's roommate Justin dealing with us crashing at their place for a while due to a mix up with keys.

Team Cardiac Arrest Photo Album. Mostly taken by Julie Rieter
Official Sea2Summit Photo Album. Gives you a better idea of some of the terrain.
Killer Kailey's Photo Album

Jumping the snake

So tonight Taita, Keira and I headed up to Anderson lake park to go for a quick after dinner hike. It's one of our favorite "quickie" hikes, as it's got a nice 15 minute walk down to the reservoir where Taita can get some swimming in. As I was unloading Keira from the car and getting her tucked into the backpack, a convertible pulled up with a woman with two very excited dogs. The dogs immediately jumped out of the car, and ran past us headed for the park. I was busy futzing with the backpack trying to put the sun shade on it, and Taita was locked up in the car, so I didn't give them a second thought. The lady chased after them yelling at them to get back here this instant, when all of a sudden I heard her scream. I quickly stood up and looked around the car just in time to see one of the dogs get struck by a snake that was lying in the middle of the trail. I don't even think the dog had noticed the snake, and if the lady hadn't screamed it probably would have ran right by, but unfortunately "Jackson" had frozen at the sound of the scream, and ended up standing right on top of the snake.

Jackson came back to his owner immediately and hadn't yelped or anything, so I don't really think he got bitten. I think the snake made a mock attack to try and scare him away. The lady appeared to be a little confused and not sure what to do, so I told her to get Jackson down to the vet immediately to get him checked out, and to tell the vet that she thought Jackson may have been bitten by a medium sized Western Rattlesnake. She asked how I knew it was a rattler, so I stepped towards it and settled any doubts she may have had. (click here).

While she was loading her other dog in the car, I quickly examined Jackson and didn't see any bite marks. He also didn't seem too upset to have me rubbing up and down his legs, and since I understand that rattlesnake bites usually have a burning sensation, he should have gotten at least slightly upset about me checking him out. The lady was understandably upset, but I think I calmed her down a bit when I told her I couldn't see anything, and that even if he did get bitten, that snakes only use venom about 50% of the time. It's actually between 50-75% of the time for rattlesnakes, but I was trying to make her feel better while at the same time still keeping her scared enough to go to the vet immediately for Jackson's sake.


She finished loading the dogs and sped off down the road, I went back to the trail and watched the snake for a minute or two. He was about 60-70 cm long, and was quite happy to shake his rattle at me while I watched him. I found a stick just off the trail, and used it to convince him to disappear into the grass. After making sure he was going to keep going I went back and grabbed Keira and Taita and we headed off on our hike which was pretty uneventful after that, although I must admit I was a bit more careful about where I stepped, and kept Taita's leash a little tighter than usual :)

Click here to download a Google Earth link to where it happened.

Keira Working Hard

Quick shot of Keira at her day job...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KEIRA!

WOW! A whole year already! Have a bottle on me tonight. You're getting cuter every day! Can't wait to see you soon.

My name is Keira and I am....

Hey, I'm not a lumberjack, or a fur trader....
I don't live in an igloo or eat blubber, or own a dogsled....
and I don't know Jimmy, Sally or Suzy from Canada or America
although I'm certain they're really really nice.

I have a Prime Minister, and a President.
I speak English and French and American.
And I pronounce it 'mmmm', not 'a boot' or 'about' for that matter.

I can proudly sew one of my countries flags on my backpack.
I believe in peace keeping, and policing,
diversity, and assimilation,
and that the beaver and eagle are both truly proud and noble animals
A toque is a hat, a chesterfield is a couch,
and it is pronounced 'zed' and 'zee'!!!!

Canada is the second largest landmass!
The first nation of hockey! (except when Sweden takes gold)
and a large part of North America

My name is Keira!!
And I am a dual citizen!!!
Keira's citizenship papers finally arrived, so she's now officially a dual citizen. We're surprised they gave her her papers considering that photo. How can a 2 wk old look so hungover? It must have been a really rough night.

Christmas is coming...Keira's getting Fat!

Time for more sappy pictures of me. Grandma bought me a Santa suit, and got out her digital camera. Click on the picture of me for more cheesy Santa shots.

Happy Hallowe'en!

Happy Hallowe'en Everyone!

Keira at 5 months

Keira showing off some of her new tricks.

Keira shots (finally...)

Some new Keira photo goodness:

Me at four months

Me teaching mom how to eat properly