Fin

We're home. With our babies. In case you missed it, we went on a trip. So this is finally a travel blog again. Sort of. More to come.


Cathedral of Our Lady - Antwerp, Belgium.

Planes, Trains and (Belgian) Beer

Paris. Antwerp. Amsterdam. Bruges. In that order.

That's our schedule for the next two weeks. We're leaving the girls in capable hands and flying to France tomorrow evening. This is something we've been planning and scheming for a long time, and it'll be the first vacation Carmen and I have taken alone since our honeymoon in Montreal more than six years ago.

We'll spend six days in Paris with basically no schedule other than to get a morning coffee and an evening bottle of wine. What happens in between is of little concern, but I'm sure it'll include walking, biking, sitting and watching. On Tuesday we'll take a train to Antwerp and we'll have two days and two nights in Northern Belgium. We're staying with Carmen's family friends in a small town called Wuustwezel. They're gracious enough to host us and tour us around the city and country, and I don't think there's a better way to explore a foreign country than with locals. We may also take a day trip to Ghent during our stay there, but who knows. From there it's a train to Amsterdam for another two nights. We're considering getting a hotel for only one of those nights, and roaming around the city for the other. After that we're taking a train to Bruges, and again we'll be there for two nights, before we rail it back to Paris for one more sleep and then fly home.

We want to keep our girls up to date on everything we're doing so I'm planning on Tweeting the whole thing using an iPod. So wherever we can get WiFi, you can hear from us. My Twitter page is here. Follow me as I getmytweeton.

So that's that. We have to somehow leave our gorgeous little girls for two weeks. That thought kind of makes me feel physically ill, but spending two weeks alone in Europe with this girl is a fair enough trade off, I guess:


See you on the flip side.

Happy birthday, Maggie Jane

One amazing year.

I only wish I could be as happy and content as this gorgeous girl. Every moment the four of us are together, she's having the time of her life. I can't wait to see what sort of trouble she gets into in her second year as she explores this big world.

What an absolute beauty.

The Trampoline Show

Teacher Cate giving us lessons about bouncing. Everybody listen!

Key West kid

My beautiful nephew, Milo.

More pictures of people

Good friends. Taken in Lethbridge, last weekend.

One foggy morning ...

We've been talking a lot about traveling lately, which got me thinking back to when we actually did that kind of thing, and how cool it is to be in a completely different spot on the globe.

On our last day in Beijing, I woke up early, looked at Carmen and said, "I'm gonna walk to Tiananmen Square." Definitely the coolest thing I've ever done before 8:00 in the morning. Anyway, I got dressed, left Carmen and Cate in bed and headed outside. It was cold, foggy and quiet (by our standards at that time). Our hotel was two blocks from the square. It was a strange experience being alone on this massively historical site, knowing I'd be home in Lethbridge less than 24 hours later, for the first time in over a year.

The crowds of tourists weren't around yet, and the military was just rolling out for their usual over-patrolling of the area. This is what I saw:







I almost never post photos of my own mug, but I had to prove to myself I was there.

Girls

As I’ve said before, I live in a house with the three most gorgeous females in the world. And fortunately for me, one of them calls me her husband and two of them call me their Daddy. But this post is just for Maggie Jane.

Delightful. That’s the best word to describe our sweet baby girl. Since she was born, she’s been the most pleasant, happy little baby with an almost constant genuine smile on her face. She does have a habit of not sleeping when she’s supposed to, but she still greets us every morning with a grin, a giggle and usually a high-pitched little squeal.

She thinks Cate is the funniest person who’s ever lived and their hugging and kissing sessions are strangely intense. She clearly loves her mommy and somehow manages to express genuine gratefulness every time Carmen feeds her. But, I’m happily humbled to say, so far in her life her cool dad seems to be her favourite. She tells me this by clapping for me every time I enter the room. How could it get any better? We love her like crazy.

She's a beauty.

Friday

Good times ahead ...


One of the (only) great things about constant storms is skies like these:


This was just off the Trans-Canada between Medicine Hat and Calgary.

Family shoot

I drove to the fine city of Okotoks and did some photos for the Bekkering family last weekend. A good looking bunch which made my job pretty easy. I'm still getting used to taking photos of anyone other than my girls, but we had a fun time ... with the help of popsicle incentives.