Ian the Instagramer ~Part 8

“Wild Frog at the Zoo”

“Tiny Man's first Tim Bit”

“The Jiffy Abaya”

“Tasty little peaches from the north of KSA”

“Leaving Van Last Week”

Ian the Instagramer ~Part 7

“Off the plane and on the move.”

“Welcome home!”

“Jeriah and Grandpa”

“12 pounds and almost ready to harvest.”

“Caged”

Summer 2011 ~Our time in the lower mainland

Ahh-haa!

Here I am to shock you all by blogging about our summer 2011 before it is over!

I will first just quickly write about the incident that happened at the very very end of our trip for those of you who have head little bits about it and are wondering what happened.

Our flight from London to Jeddah left at 9:50pm, our gate # had just been announced and we had made our way there. There was not much time before boarding and so Ian and the kids sat down to watch a Backyardigans. I figured it would be a good time to use the bathroom that was very near by to give Jeriah a quick diaper change. He was not to happy about that he didn't like that he was missing the show. As soon as he was done I opened the door for him so he could go back to Ian and then use the bathroom myself. I called to Ian to let him know that Jeriah was coming. The distance from the bathroom door to the chairs they were sitting on was about 12 feet away with one row of chairs between the door and Ian. Jeriah went running and he had about reached Ian when he tripped and smashed his face on the floor (or it could have been the leg of the chair that Ian was sitting on that is how close he was). He immediately started crying. Very soon after his nose starting bleeding a bit as well as a bit of blood coming from the inside of his upper lip. Then soon after that his poor little nose started getting bigger and puffier. He kept on crying and was very upset. Ian went to get the airport first aid. They arrived as well as representatives of British Airways (we were flying with them) and we were all in agreement that we should not fly that night.

It was too hard to know if his nose was broken as well as the risk of concussion. The ambulance was called, and our bags were removed from the plane. I then went with Jeriah in ambulance (mine and his first ambulance ride) to the nearest hospital which was about 15 min away from the airport. Ian, Marin and Corban where taken through immigration, which is very easy and quick if it is for emergency purposes. At no charge we were booked on the same flight to Jeddah the next day, and our 5 large suitcases were held at the airport for us, thank you BA. 

Once in the ambulance Jeriah was given a bit of medicine for pain, he had been trying to fall asleep, but that was more due to the fact that he was tired after our already 18 hour long journey. At the hospital the paramedics took care of checking us in, they were very kind and took good care of us. Jeriah kept sleeping, and I poked him every few min to make sure he was still okay. We had arrived there at approx 10:30pm.

It didn't take long for Ian and the kids to arrive. Ian had called a couple hotels on the drive over but hadn't yet found a place to stay for the night. It was the weekend and things were booked up. Ian continued finding a place for us to sleep that night, the kids played, and watch shows on the "devices" (ipad, iphone, laptop, thank goodness for them!). Jeriah and I were then called in to be seen by a nurse, he did not like that and got very upset again. She told me that it would likely be a long wait as they were very busy, she figured it would be about 1am by the time we saw a doctor. Yikes! We were given a room to wait in that had a bed and a window that was open with a nice cool breeze, all five us piled into it, Ian read his book and the kids and I watched movies on the laptop. Jeriah's nose was still looking very puffy and bruised. 

The nurses prediction was right and a doctor arrived about 12:50am. Jeriah did not like it, that little boy can put up quite the fuss for a 21 lbs little peanut. It took three adults to pin him so the doctor could have a good look up his nose and at inside of his mouth above his front teeth. She found that his nasil passage were clear and normal looking, she determined that his nose was not broken, and that mouth was also not affected. She said that if he showed no signs of nausea, and had no vomiting, then he would be okay to fly the next day. He was given IBUprofen to take with us for pain, and we were sent on our way. We went to reception to call for a taxi and find out the billing procedure and were surprised to find that it was all free! We of course have medical insurance, but Wow!

Our little Jeriahkins was okay and we were/are very thankful! His nose has followed the normal sequence of bruising going from purple to blue, to greeny/gray. He is doing very well and is his normal self. 

Anyway this is were I will stop, I will go back to the rest of our little London adventure at the end of our summer tale. Back to the beginning. 

We left our KAUST house early in the morning on June 25th and arrived in Vancouver that same day after a 24ish hour long trip. Once again the kids did an awesome job of traveling. On the plane they played and watched movies. During our layover in London we had breakfast at the Giraffe restaurant, which has become a favorite of the kids. On the flight from London to Vancouver the kids slept for most of the time, for them it was night time. We were met at the Vancouver airport (and I will say again, it is the best airport in the world!) by Granny & Grandpa (Barry & Donna) with big hugs, and help in getting all our luggage and whatnot into their car and the rental van. Then it was off to Dorothy's house where she met us with more big hugs, hospitality and waffles. :)

We stayed at Dorothy's until June 30th at which point Ian flew back to Jeddah to spend the next three weeks working and the kids and I went to Salmon Arm.

Ian had to do some work at SFU while we were at the coast, but we still had lots of fun in the four days we had in the lower mainland.

How about we start with our trip to the Vancouver zoo and a self family picture of us about to go on a train ride!

We had all been looking forward to a family trip to the zoo, we had a wonderful time there, the train ride is always a hit with the kids. We caught a "Radical Raptures demonstration" that was lots of fun as the birds fly up into the stands and come within inches of touching you with their wing tips. The kids thought that was totally neat! We went on the bus tour to see the black bears, had a picnic lunch and spent most of the day walking around checking out all the animals. We also by chance ran into my friend Mandy, and it was great to get a big surprise hug from her.
We did a little bit of shopping, got new passport pictures for the kids taken, and played at the park.
We had visits with Ash and Mike (and family) up at SFU. We had dinner with the Davis family, Marin and Corban always have so much fun playing with the "big kids" and we of course had a visit with (Great) Granny Foulds. (Great) Uncle Mark was also there and the kids had fun with him when he took them down to the creek to check out that baby salmon and feed them worms, the fish not the kids, ha ha. As usual (Great) Granny fed us tasty treats and we had a nice little visit. We took some pictures with her and although there wasn't one picture with all four of them looking at the camera, it produced a funny, cute bunch of pictures.
Here are some of them are along with others from our time in the the lower mainland.

As always is was nice to be back in Coquitlam, and the surrounding areas, it is one of our many homes. :)

A Blast From Our Summer 2010 Past Part 3

This post if brought to you by the letter Z.

Z is for Zoo and Zelinko.
While we were back home BC we spent most of our time in Salmon Arm, we did take a couple road trips though and one was to the lower mainland where we got to visit with friends there, go to a couple of our favorite places and do a bit of shopping.
At the top of our list of things to do while we were home was to take a trip to the zoo. We had a wonderful time seeing the animals that we had known from when we lived there and went regularly and saw some new ones. Marin and Corban were on the go the whole time checking everything out. The view we saw most of Corban was his back as he was always ahead of us running to check out the next exhibit. Jeriah enjoyed his fist zoo trip too and was happy to look all around as we checked things out.
You'll notice a set of picture of Corban doing a dance towards the end of this slide show, totally cute!

On the note of meeting with friends, I basically sucked at remembering my camera to some of the visits we had and then when I did, I ended up with some pretty poopie (I have been hanging around Corban a lot) pictures. We did get together with Elizabeth, Anna, and Sarah and Elizabeth posted some pictures. 

We met for a couple visit with our friends Natalie, Brianna & Kyle and Sarah, Dylan & Ryder. It was so nice to see them and neat to see Marin with her 2 little buddies again. :) Natalie took pictures and she even gave us some she printed before we left! 

Thanks to all our friends for taking the time to visit with us while we were home! :)

Our Last Trip to the Zoo, Boohoo.

On Saturday we loaded up the van and went to the zoo one last time before we move. The weather was great, we put on some sun screen and hats and spent the day enjoying the animals.
A little preview of an animal that will soon become a common sight for us.

We also went to check out the wild boars, there were some young ones, but what we found the most entertaining was this guy. The big papa piggy.

Corban was a little in awe of the look of this creature.

He seems like he has quite the personality, he came right over to the fence to check us out and have little visit.

Marin asked to have a "ride" on one of the giraffe statues. She announced that this was her giraffe named "Thunder". I find that quite humorous. Ha ha!

And of course, as I am sure will come of no surprise, we had a picnic lunch. :)
Corban enjoyed strawberries, crackers, welsh cakes, and dill pickle chips, can you tell?

Marin of course enjoyed eating all the different food we had. She also thought it would be fun to wear Ian's socks as knee socks and then make silly faces when I tried to take a picture of her.

Here we all are in our lovely little picnic spot by the lake in the shade of a willow tree.
(I will point out that the willow tree is not in the picture, but when we got to the spot we picked Marin looked up at the tree and told us that "this is a willow tree" she is a smarty.)
We have decided that we are shipping our picnic blanket to KSA, it wouldn't seem right to picnic on a different blanket. :)

While at the zoo we also went on the North American wild bus tour, we saw the black bears and wolves as well as the bison, there were 3 babies, very cute. We took in the raptor show too, Corban loved it! He got so excited every time one of the birds flew in front of the crowd, and when the crowd clapped he wiggled with excitement and clapped too. It was so cute!
After spending almost 5 hours at the zoo we headed for home. Before leaving the zoo Ian used the internet on his phone to locate the nearest 7-11 and we headed there for a Slurpee. Corban was asleep within 100m of the zoo exit. Marin, to our surprise didn't fall asleep until 10 min from home. Ian carried her into the house and she slept for another half hour on the the chair in the living room at which point we woke her up, we did want her to go to sleep at bed time!

So that was our last trip to the zoo before we move, we have had many fun family times there. :)

Zoo-ness.

We had a "normal" weekend this past Saturday/Sunday, it was wonderful!
Saturday the weather was predicted to be so-so but we decided to head to the zoo anyway and hope for the better end of so-so and it turned out to be really nice.
The peacocks were out that morning strutting their stuff. The zoo has an albino peacock (and a peahen too) very cool.

When he let his tail feather down it looked like a wedding dress.

We also saw the colorful peacock too, very pretty.

Corban loved seeing all the animals, his little pointer finger was working over time as he kept pointing to all the animals.

Marin enjoyed the animals too, but she was really excited about the train ride, can you tell?

We also enjoyed our first outdoor picnic of the year. By lunch time the sun was fully out so we picked a spot on the grass and settled in. One of the zoo keepers volunteered to take a picture of all of us, she kind of missed Corban but he is there.

And he enjoyed his lunch. :)

Marin did too, and after lunch she just enjoyed lounging in the warm sun.

There were lots of new babies at the zoo, it's that time of year I guess.
A baby mountain goat.

Even baby spiders.

And a baby Addax.

Once we were finished at the zoo we popped over to (Great) Granny & Grandpa Foulds for a little visit. Charlotte was also there and the kids all had fun playing together. Marin and Charlotte also enjoyed eating some cake together too.
When it was time of us to leave all 3 kids gave each other a group hug, it was so cute to see them all huddled together.
So that was our Saturday, it was so nice to spend a relaxing day together as a family. :)

Corban's Birthday Celebrations.

Our little boy had a wonderful birthday weekend!
We have decided that on years where there is no February 29th that we will celebrate Corban's birthday as a family on February 28th because to us he is a "February baby", he was born in February after all. We will have his party with friends on what ever day closest to 28th works out best. On leap years though we will have a big birthday bash on February 29th.
That being said this is how all the birthday fun went down this year...
On February 26th Granny came over for dinner and to give Corban's his gifts. Both she and Grandpa had come down the day before, but when they woke up in the morning Grandpa had come down with a really bad cold. Not wanting to pass that on to all of us he decided that he would not come over, which was too bad that he missed out on the fun, but we are thankful to have not caught his cold.
We took pictures though so he could at least see Corban opening his gifts.

On the 28th we spent a lovely family day together, we had a yummy waffle breakfast and then put together a picnic lunch (which we ate in the back of the van it was a little to chilly outside for an outdoor picnic) and went to the zoo. We had a house showing that afternoon so we thought it would be a fun thing to do and it would get us out of the house for the showing.
Corban loved the zoo and was really into seeing all the animals. Once we arrived home Ian and the kids played while I put dinner together. After dinner we gave Corban his gifts from the 3 of us.

On March 1st we had a party with family and friends for him. We were joined by (Uncle) Michael & Blair, Dorothy, Heather, Maddie & Chelsea, Sarah, Dylan & Ryder, and Ian's cousins Paul and Joel. Corban had a great time and totally soaked up all the attention, he is such a little goof and he put on a good show. :) It was fun to see him enjoying himself.
Michael & Blair stayed for dinner, lasagna, which Michael had made and brought with, thank you it was tasty and very nice to not have to cook. Then after an early bath we all visited with Oma & Opa and (Uncle) Mark via a video Skype call and Corban opened his gifts that he got from them.

So that was our sweet boy's 1st birthday celebrations, thank you everyone for joining us and for all the wonderful gifts you gave him. :)

Fabulous Family Fall Day.

Yesterday we had a wonderful day, we packed up and headed to the zoo, and after the zoo we went to (Great) Granny & Grandpas place for the rest of the afternoon and dinner.
We dressed in layers for the zoo and stayed nice and cozy. Many of the animals were also enjoying the sun light and were out laying in it.
We had fun checking out the animals, although Corban did get a little upset when the giraffe came close and another kid started crying. He got the hugest pouty lip and let out a big "Whaaa." It was cute.

We went for a train ride which Marin loves, she wanted to go again.
We had our picnic lunch in the van, which worked well and was fun. The ground was a little wet for sitting on.
The lions were very "chatty" while we were by them, Ian took a video so you can hear it too. It would be really neat to hear them really roar once!

We checked out more animals and went on the bus ride into the Black bear enclosure, that was neat because 3 of them decided to come and hang out right beside the bus.

At the end of the bus ride Corban succumbed to the nice warm moving vehicle and fell asleep, we put him in his stroller and he slept the rest of the time at the zoo.
He looks comfy, I think he looks like he is bundled up on a dog sled.

He was a pretty tired boy and slept through the Arctic wolves howling, and Marin howling back to them. Marin's howling was really cute, see.

Here is a slide show of some of the animals.
Going to the zoo is always so fun because the animals are always up to some thing different, like this time the hippos showed us their bum cuddles.

When we were finished at the zoo we hopped into the van for a short ride to (Great) Granny & Grandpa's. Corban got in some snuggles with Great Grandpa.

(Great) Granny also fed us really yummy soup for dinner, and she got some time to spoil Corban. She fed him (a very) tiny bit of chocolate cake and little sips of juice from the canned peaches we had for dessert. He loved it!

So that was our day. :) It was great!