as much as i dislike crave...

as much as i've been balking at our "new" radio station, i'm still listening to it because there's just nothing good on the radio. driving home late from work the past two nights, i've been listening to the "6 o'clock Cravings" where people email in three songs that they're craving to hear and they give reasons as to why these songs "move" them. last night the three were pretty funny random songs but tonight they were super lame always-on-the-radio songs. so it got me thinking as to what songs i'd choose. i've narrowed them down to a theme: soundtracks.

#1. in your eyes - peter gabriel, from the scene with john cusak holding up the boombox in "say anything"

#2. canned heat - jamiroquai, from the fantastic vote for pedro skit dance scene in "napolean dynamite"

#3. twist and shout - the beatles, from ferris's superb kareoke scene on the float in "ferris bueller's day off"

just so you know.

the last camping trip of summer...

despite washing my hair with two types of shampoo, i cannot get the smoke smell out of my hair. but otherwise, camping this weekend was great. sure, it got a little rainy on saturday evening but that didn't stop us from roasting hotdogs and marshmellows over the fire. though we did eventually move under the strange hut that we'd made over the picnic table to play games. the mosquitos got the best of alyssa...she's not sure if she's allergic but every bite she got swelled up to at least 3 inches in diameter...i'd bet allergy. the charbonneaus showed us up with their giant tent but we still shared our extra cutlery with them. if you're looking for a great campsite - check out nairn falls provincial park in pemberton. next summer, we'll be booking the group site for a weekend and you're invited.

big tent, little tent

the crew

joffre lakes

lots of rocks

smores in the rain

all of the trip to be seen on facebook...

school? what?

so yesterday, all i did all day and all evening was work on school stuff. getting ideas down into unit overviews. going to the library to get potential books out for literature circles. i read 2 and a half books yesterday while sitting at the computer typing questions as i read them. and no, not lame "what did billy eat for breakfast in chapter 2" questions but questions like, "At the end of chapter 5, Mila writes, “I am looking in the face of Shay. Shay is not showing. Shay is not saying. But I am hearing Shay with no words.” What could this sentence mean? What does it mean to hear someone with no words?" deep. i know.

i'm looking for kids books that have the following themes:

> overcoming challenges
> helping others
> biographies
> taking care of God's earth

if you have any books that you read as a kid that you loved and could fit into these themes, let me know. overcoming challenges begins in november. so far i'm reading the music of dolphins, the great gilly hopkins, in the year of the boar and jackie robinson, yang the youngest and his terrible ear, because of winn-dixie, and no arm in left field.

i don't know what teachers did before the internet. i spent hours on it finding lit circle info and checking the library website to see if they have the books i want and checking amazon.com to look inside the books (i love that feature). but i couldn't find anything specific to what i wanted...which means that i have to develop it all myself. i really should it online when i'm all done but i don't know how. adam? i'll have to look into that. haha.

the mad day of school work was because this afternoon, tim and i leave for some camping and hiking with alyssa and james this weekend. it's been planned forever but...we didn't make reservations. so hopefully we find a spot. i'm off to do a little grocery shopping and pack the car with our gear. pics to follow.

je n'aime pas le premiere jour d'ecole...

i survived my french workshop in voctoria. i learned some gestures. in fact, the gestures for the title would be:

thumb point to self
shake head "no"
both hands over heart
make a big x with hands
make L with fingers on right hand and put one finger above lips like a mustache with other hand
hold one finger up on right hand and hold whole left hand below finger
place one arm on top of other arm in front of you then slowly raise top arm to 90 degree angle
make a d with your left hand
motion with both hands making a large box

yes. it sounds like a lot of work. it is. and now i have to teach this to children.

bonjour tout le monde! comment ca va?

4 days left until i go back to work. sigh.

saturday hike...

diaz vistas, overlooking indian arm

(photos courtesy of jay spiro)

no NASCAR...

well, for those of you who know the story of the "best wife ever", i am now the "most wasted money on a birthday present wife ever"...for those of you who don't know the story - here's a recap.

tim turned 30 this year in may. i bought him tickets to a NASCAR race in California. now...the date was a bit sketchy because it takes place on september 2 which is two days before i have to go back to school AND it's a big orientation weekend at TWU...but i booked the tickets anyways and planned on a quick roadtrip.

now that we're here at the end of august...the race is just looking too far away to roadtrip it and flights are too expensive for such a short trip. so after many tears on my part and many apologies on tim's part, we've decided not to go.

tickets are posted on ebay and if you or someone you know was wishing they could go to NASCAR, let me know and i'm sure we could give you a deal. row 9! :)

dinner for breakfast...?

after a very filling breakfast of waffles, fruit, and whipped cream at the kovacs' place on monday morning, i noticed that i wasn't hungry for the rest of the day. when dinner came, we ate very little because i was still full from breakfast. the same day, i read an article about different diets and there was one about having dinner for breakfast and then breakfast for dinner: the concept that if you eat your big meal in the morning, you don't need very much at night. this works because all day you're filled up and working it off instead of getting so full at night and sitting around to watch tv. SO...(can you see where this is going?) i thought i'd try it out.

so tuesday, wednesday, thursday, and today, i've eaten large breakfasts. for example, oatmeal, two pieces of toast, two eggs, and fruit. yes - as one meal. then a medium lunch, like an open-faced sandwich and some veggies. then dinner has been small, like a shake or a salad and small piece of chicken.

i'm loving it. i'm never hungry. i don't even snack. i allow myself one 100 calorie treat like 1/2 cup of ice cream or frozen yogurt or something. the problem is, how do i keep this up when school starts? i can take 20 minutes to make and eat breakfast when i get up at 9am but my usual morning routine on a school day is roll out of bed at 6:40am, shower, get dressed and out the door at 7am. i'm serious. i eat breakfast when i get to school but it's usually just a piece of toast or a bowl of oatmeal.

i bought one of those egg poachers that you put in the microwave - i thought maybe i could zap a few eggs and throw them on toast and make a sandwich type deal to eat in the car. we'll see. any tips on fast breakfasts?

from highschool even to the beginning of my first year teaching, i never ate breakfast. i didn't like bread in the morning. and now this. my, how things have changed.

SYTYCD - finale part 1

5 hours of so you think you can dance this week??? my life is revolving around it!

well, here we are at the end of the season. it seems as though it has gone by much too quickly. man, this is a great show. great great great.

for some reason, tonight was a bit of a disappointment though. when i think about each dance individually, i think they were great but i guess last week's show was just HUGE. this week was...good.

too bad dan was judging. he's not great.

i thought that wade robson's fox routine for lacey and sabre was fantastic. i couldn't believe the judges' reactions! even when they replayed clips of it at the re-cap, i thought there was good dancing in it. it was creative and different. boo on the judges.

wasn't it silly for nigel to say that "for the show - it should be a girl who wins this year"? why would you say that?

as for predictions? umm...i really really want sabre to win. i don't want lacey to win but i'm glad she made it this far. i guess it would be okay for danny but not for neil. if neil wins it, it's because the 12 year old girls have gone crazy.

go sabre!

lynn and adam are married.

beautiful lynn.

adam and i.

some of the girls.

hey! these are my bridesmaids! (too bad kara wasn't there)

tim and i.

congratulations lynn and adam!

(many more photos to see on facebook)

bonjour, tout le monde. (wave, circle with hand)

ahh, french.

i have a two day workshop coming up next week in victoria and liz and i have been working out the details of her coming with me and me staying with her parents for the 2 days. i was saying to tim tonight about how i'm a little nervous going to a workshop without knowing anyone because you do a lot of partnering and lunch-eating and when you're alone...this is lame. especially for someone as co-dependent as myself.

well tonight when looking for more detailed info to tell liz about times and such, i was on the AIM website where i saw some photos that make me WAAAAY more nervous about this workshop. the photos include costumes and acting and performing. and that means it'll be in french. but i still don't know much french! oh man.

i guess i'll be spending some hours with the dvds tomorrow.

the day to day

so the posts haven't been too typical lately - lots of pictures, not much writing. and there are only more photos to come as i get them uploaded from adam and lynn's wedding yesterday. i wore the shoes and averted the lipstick crisis with some help from some woman at shopper's drugmart. the wedding was a good time. high-class lynn. some highlights? when guy serving hor'deurves came by and tried to describe what he was serving as some kind of fancy lamb on a stick with fancy dip and tim referred to it as a meatsicle ( i LOVED the meatsicles). a girl at our table in disbelief that it was a cold buffet - "even the chicken is cold? even the potatoes are cold?". the fact that i could get diet coke as often as desired. lynn's dress. ang's dress. the line dance that tim, darian, and dallas interrupted with their crazy interpretive dancing. the pecans (? - the ones in the salad). the fact that lynn and adam are MARRIED. wow. it's about time, hey. so great. anyways... in other news, soccer season started yesterday. we found out by the 8am from the parents on sidelines of the field behind our house screaming so loudly that we can hear it in our bedroom. with our windows closed. yesterday, i put a pillow over my head and it was okay. this morning, it was a more excitable group because nothing could block out the yelling. i moved from my bedroom to the living room and could still hear them. what? how could that be? okay - so weekends in the summer is not a big deal for me because i can sleep in on weekdays but man, once school begins i come to hate soccer. this week has been a difficult one, trying to be productive. i've wasted a lot of time this last week and when i say that to people, they say, "it's summer vacation!" but that never makes me feel better. exactly, it's summer vacation - why am i wasting it? so next week, i have big plans to get things done. tune in here tomorrow to find out if anything happens on monday. haha.

vote for heels and tips for lips

as some of you know, my friends lynn and adam are getting married this weekend and i have still been hunting for heels. whenever i try on shoes, i get very indecisive. ashlee, i took back the shirt with no photo vote needed but what do you think of these shoes? and what about you other non-commenters? keep em or keep looking? you may be thinking, "but rebecca...it's friday tomorrow." that's not an issue. i'll already be out shopping for a shirt for tim! haha.

now today, i was looking for lipstick. i cannot figure out how one knows which lipstick to buy. first of all, there are just way too many options. and i wanted to go bold lips in my red dress but the more lipsticks you test, the weirder colour your lips become and it's just so not me that every lipstick looks ridiculous. any tips on lipstick buying? please. i'm helpless. and no, i'm not taking my camera into the store with me and taking pics of myself to post for votes. haha.

painting our kitchen!

when we got home from our trip, tim still had a few more days off so we finally got started on painting our kitchen -- something we'd wanted to do since we moved in 2 years ago! we went green. if you want to look it up online, go to the behr paint website and find corn husk green and olivine.

BEFORE!

we forgot to take "before" photos before everything was in disarray in preparation to paint.

Painting!

Tim's mom, Joy, came over and helped paint. she and tim did all the trim.

i mostly rolled and taped.

AFTER!

we're planning to put two wall-length shelves on this wall for books and such.

this couch is going.

corn husk green.

an afternoon of family geocaching

location: willband creek park, abbotsford

the boys.

matt's reflective sunglasses.

we thought it might be over there...

but we couldn't find the cache here...

location 2: stony creek park, abbotsford

judy: "it's in a gnarled tree. maybe it's up there."

jamie: "i'm on it."

but instead he found lots and lots of stinging nettle...

meanwhile...judy found it in a gnarled tree that had a path to it. why didn't we see that path before jamie tried the stinging nettle bushwacking?

trying to wash away the nettles in stony creek.

sibling fighting...but matt's too strong.

aww.

hiking YOHO

our first night arriving in Yoho National Park, BC, we had planned to "car camp" and i'd picked a campsite that sounded good on the website and the girl on the phone when i'd called to make reservations said it was great. well we drive to where this site at Takkakaw Falls is and to our surprise, we discover...it's NOT car camping. you have to lug your stuff about 5 minutes to your campsite. well...it totally threw us. we weren't ready to go hauling our things into camp...i wanted my cooler nearby in our car! so we drove around to other campsites nearby and none of them were too great - very RVish. so we came back to Takkakaw Falls, packed up our packs and hoofed it into camp. it turned out to be a beautiful campsite with all the luxeries of car camping with bathrooms (well...a double stall outhouse but clean) and running water (that you had to pump from a well) but no ridiculous drunk campers or RV generators whirring...just nature with quiet families nearby. i'm officially addicted to walk-in camping and will be looking for such a thing nearby to the lower mainland because it's the only way to go!

anyways, no pics of that night because i forgot the camera in the car and didn't want to walk the few minutes to get it. the next morning we were up, packing our bags and heading off for the "Iceline Trail".

tim's pack held our food, pots, cooking fuel, sleeping bag and pad, tent, his clothes and a couple of paperback books to read. i physically could not lift up his pack. we'd meant to get trekking poles before we started our hike to help him balance but didn't so when he found this stick, he held onto it for the entire 3 days that we were out.

the views as we climb up through the forest. it was a steep start to our hike.

stopping for a rest.

after awhile, the forest started to thin out, the higher we climbed.

and then we figured out why this trail was called "Iceline"...we came upon a glacier.

we hiked across this glacier bed and while it's hard to tell with this photo, we're pretty high up. see in the bottom left-hand corner? that little black speck? that's a person. there are a few other people in this photo too but too small on this screen. it was a long ways across.

stopping for lunch.

there were glaciers every direction you looked.

there were quite a few "rivers" to cross up here by the glacier. some were easier than others but this one was tougher then it looks. jumping from rock to rock isn't that bad if you knew that those rocks were stable but often you would reach your foot out and tap a rock and it seemed stable but then when you put your weight onto it, it wasn't. by then it was too late and your foot was in the glacier-cold water. your pack also messes up your balance a little too. i slipped a couple times but my boots were amazing and i had not even a little bit of a wet sock.

(side story here: the first time i had to cross a creek when hiking way back when, i jumped and slipped and got my foot in the water and i cried. look at me now!)

finally leaving the rocky plains into the the green forests again.

we made it! setting up our first campsite.

now, if you've been wondering about bears...here's one way we had to help us keep them away. these things were at each backcountry campsite and you string your bag of food and anything that has touched food way up on one of these. this one was empty when i went to take a photo because people were packing up to head out in the morning but at least you get the idea.

we had MEC dried meals in packages that we brought with us which were great. this night's meal was turkey and gravy in one pot and mashed potatoes in the other. the turkey pieces were a little chewy but the potatoes were great. the good thing about this type of food is that you've been hiking all day so just about anything is going to taste great.

just after we took this picture, we had to run and get our rainjackets because it started to storm. it was an early night into the tent which can get a little claustophobic but it's no fun to sit around in the rain.

and then it got serious. it hailed the biggest hails i have ever seen. i thought for sure they were going to rip through the tent. this is the view from inside our tent looking out at the door. they eventually got smaller until they turned back to rain but it thundered all night. when you're outside and high up during a thunder and lightning storm? it's loud.

but morning eventually came and we'd survived. our tent had held up. our sleeping bags weren't too wet. and it wasn't raining in the morning so we were able to dry out our tent a little before packing it up.

but the storm had done some damage and the bridge across the Little Yoho River was out. and that was where we were headed. so off we went anyways...

we jumped some rocks across part of the river and then found this log down across the other part of the river. tim went first and then i followed. the river was splashing up against it so it was slippery...and like i said...the backpack can tip you...

but i made it.

at lunch, we stopped by this waterfall - Laughing Falls.

auto timer.

chili.

and our next campsite was closer then we'd expected. it was called "Twin Falls" and we could see the Twin Falls in the distance and thought we were hiking up to them. then all of a sudden, our campsite appeared and we were still quite a ways from the Falls.

we wanted to set up camp on this beach by this river but after we'd started setting up the tent, it was just too hot so we moved back into the forest where the designated camp spots were.

we took off our packs were so pumped to be hiking without them as we went on our way to Twin Falls.

we came across this cabin up near Twin Falls. What? we could have been staying HERE? it's a cabin that the CPR built in the early 1900's for people to stay in and they apparently still serve lunch and tea and you can stay here too. next time...we'll look into that!

and here are the Twin Falls. they don't look that great in this picture. it was a weird time of day so the sky was too bright and the valley where the falls were was dark so it made the sky here look white when it was actually blue. oh well. it was amazing and SO loud. definitely worth the extra hiking time to see them.

another view from our extra hike.

that night we played San Juan (card game) by the river and ate the best dried meal yet and then the next morning, we had a fairly leisurely hike out from Twin Falls campsite. it was mostly downhill and flat so that was a nice change. there was no cloud cover on this morning though and during the hottest part of the day, we were hiking in no shade and were desperate to get out of there. and finally we made it.

back at the car from where we'd started.

(yes, wearing the same clothes as when we'd left...you get a little smelly out there on the trail)

WE DID IT!