J&M got Maui'd!

Maggie and I visited the Kwongs in Ottawa this past weekend. She had Friday off so I took the day off so that we would be able to visit to the nation's capital for a few days. We were initially thinking of doing some governmental work for one of Gina's friends, but in the end we did not have to so we had the whole weekend to relax. The timing was good too since Nen and JF had already moved out to the Rockies and this weekend happened to be the last weekend that they would be back to finish cleaning up the house before moving for good. (We only found out about that when we e-mailed the week before leaving.) Part of the reason for visiting was a Seto tradition of showing off any new cars that we had purchased to the other family. Since Maggie had just gotten a Mazda 6 for her birthday, I figured that it would be a good time to go and visit, since as the last time we went was a couple of years ago. We drove up in the morning and arrived at the Inn a bit after lunch. After droppi...

On the twins' birthday, Alan and I took them out to Canoe for dinner. I had inquired at the beginning of the meal about a tour and our waiter told us that it was unlikely that they would like to have people walking through during the dinner service. Our meal did last a long time (our desserts taking some time to arrive) which coincidentally (or perhaps deliberately) matched with the end of the dinner service. So we ended up getting a tour of the kitchen and the rest of the restaurant after our meal while the staff were cleaning up. Oh, I also wanted to mention that our waiter looked very much like Russell Peters, with his own jokes and all. The meal was very good although the food was not as impressive as Auburge du Pommier, but the service was definitely top notch. On Valentine's day I took the afternoon off to take part in the Ontario Health Study before grabbing half a dozen roses and surprising Maggie at her new workplace. Her coworkers were complaining that I was sett...

I had a bit of a conundrum: What to do for Maggie's 30th birthday? Initially, I had planned on a huge surprise party with all of her friends and family. Now this gets a little difficult because Barb has the same birthdate, and she also probably would want something special for her 30th. So I checked with Alan. He didn't have too many ideas either. Initially, we had thought of going on some sort of romantic trip to Quebec City, where we would stay for a few days and enjoy some winter festivals. I thought of staying in one of the ice hotels. But because Barb's schedule is so limiting, we could not go for long, and flights were not cheap, and trains were not cheap, and driving would take a long time. We did continue to work on this plan for months. We actually tried planning out our trip to include lunch/dinner at a nice restaurant in the eastern Ontario as well. I did like the idea of surprising them with friends and family, but Quebec City was far. I set my sights to...

I have been pretty terrible at posting the blog entries from our honeymoon. I just have not had enough time to go through all of the pictures to write up stories about them. I did start and posted one day, but something about blogger corrupted my entry and wiped out everything. Since then I have been very suspicious of the software, and it has since happened twice more.   In any case, I found out the software that our photographer used to create our wedding slideshow, so I tried it out with some of our honeymoon photos. I've decided to put it up here so that people will at least get an idea of what we did in Hawai'i..

On the first (and for me) only full day in Calgary, we all headed out to Drumheller to visit the Royal Tyrrell Museum and check out the hoodoos in the area. The first stop was the Royal Tyrrell Museum, which I had visited thirteen years prior. I do not recall all too much from that last trip, but I do remember many of the exhibits being the same.  I am standing in front of a dinosaur that was here the last time I visited thirteen years ago. One of Maggie's favourite dinosaurs is the Stegosaurus .  Maggie standing in front of a Stegosauru s. The weather was a little warm and sunny that day, so we did not do too much hiking. We did however head down to the hoodoos .  Me at the lookout over the Royal Tyrrell Museum. Now I do not recall checking out the hoodoos when we visited last time. I am pretty sure we did not. It would explain how underwhelmed I was when I finally got to see the ones that were on display. They were a lot smaller than I had expected th...

Bob and Caroline came to join us on our last day out in the Rockies. We met up at the condo before heading out to the Spiral Tunnels . The Spiral Tunnels were so named because of the way the railroad spiraled in and out of the mountain so that the grade of the track was not too steep. Normally it was pretty boring to look at, but when a train was moving through, one could watch as the train entered in one tunnel and exited out from the other. We had passed a train on the way to the tunnels, and heard it enter and exit the far tunnel (which was not viewable from the lookout point), but waited for the better part of an hour before deciding that it was not worth waiting for. I have no idea where the train went, perhaps it had to really slow down to go through this section of track? As such, we had no good pictures of the tunnels. Afterward, we headed to Emerald Lake where we hiked a bit around the lake and had a nice lunch. Emerald Lake. Our next stop was at Takakkaw...

We earmarked the day to spend at Lake Louise and Banff. After we got to the lake, Maggie and I decided to try out the Teahouse Hike, which was about a 3.5 kilometer hike (one way). Me and Maggie at Lake Louise. The hike itself was long, but not too intense. After the Grouse Grind, I think Maggie was confident she could tackle any hiking trail we might come across, and I was more than willing to take a hike! Maggie at Mirror Lake. As we worked our way up the trail, we came across a small lake partway up the mountian. We also noticed that part of the trail crossed with a horse trail and spent a lot of time avoiding horse droppings and holding our noses on other parts which were a little smelly. Maggie next to Lake Agnes. We made it to the Tea House that was next to Lake Agnes, but we were both feeling extremely hot even though the temperatures at the Tea House were close to single digits. We spent some time at the Tea House before heading back down the Lake Louise. I ...