Not the witch town

So here we are in another Marroitt room, not such a fabulous view but still a comfortable spot. We drove down the Washington and Oregon Coasts as far as SH22 then cut across inland to Salem. This is our destination for the rest of the year, we have a vacation to the East coast planned for a couple of weeks from now, we'll find a house over the next two weeks (hopefully) then move in and be here till the end of december.

Richard and Liam are off unpacking the UHAUL into a storage locker since we'll be either in the hotel or away for about fice weeks.

Salem looks pretty so far, but I've only driven through it once. We'll get out for a play and look around later on when its cooled off a bit. It's warm here ~35 celcius when we drove in yesterday, and its no cooler today.

We stopped in a couple of really prety places to camp in Washington, the first was a long sandy beach with a forested campground and the second on a narrow peninsula of land, the campground was on top of the hill part and overlooked the beach where lots of people were letting of early 4th of July fireworks.

Just as well there's lots needs doing, everynow and then the kids come up with someone they want to see or something they want to do which is somewhere else.

Madeline is convinced we're either going back to Canada in a week or so or on our way to "Charles Island"

On the move

I'm sitting in a room on the eleventh floor over looking Victoria. We have a few last bits to pack into the uhaul and the cleaning is happening today. Tomorrow is Canada Day so we'll hangout with friends and watch the fireworks before we get onto the COHO ferry to Port Angeles on the Mainland, in the US. We have a couple of days to get to Oregon so we plan to look around the Wasington Coast, snail fashion with our trailer follwing along.

Everyone is sad to be leaving Victoria, thou Izabel doesn't realise it yet. Liam had a hard time on the last day of school, his teachers this year have been a great fit for him and the school as a whole is a warm friendly welcoming place for us all.

the hockey song

I mentioned this event a few posts ago, today I found this on good ol' you tube, Mr B on guitar is Liam's teacher, you won't recognise anyone else :)

Show business

"So Madeline and I are in show business aren't we mummy?"

Liam and Madeline appeared in Liam's end of year ballet with Boston Dance Collective's show, Madeline's not technically with this school but Liam's ballet teacher created a part for her which she was delighted about.  

Liam also managed to appear in three things for the scholl talent show, a comedy routine

 with a classmate, a tap dance by himself and a group dance item with the junior dancers.

Friday and last night Liam's school choir performed with the Arbutus Singers  Liam was very popular with the crowd.  Last night there were treats afterwards and lots of people talked to the kids who'd stayed up for them.

The preceeding week we had final classes for tap (Liam and Madeline) and Ballet 

(Madeline) as well.  

Pole

During our trip to Tofino with visiting family in July they erected this pole. It was a fun thing, they dug a deep hole and put up a really tall pole.
We visited Tofino again this weekend and called in on the same beach, we were impressed to see the same pole in the same location, if slightly tilted. I really hadn't expect to see it still there.

lastest achievement

Culture

Liam's working on getting all aspects of Canadian culture in his time here.  After school on fridays now you'll find us in the playground watching and playing street hockey.  One of the other mum's from school has done the organising and there's a dad whose been a hockey coach who does the on court control, with which ever other dads are around.  Last week there as a huge turn out.  Liam had a great time and wanted his own stick (and so Madeline wanted one too).  We purchased a hockey set which has two goals and two sticks and a ball.  So now thats set up in the basement and I can hear Richard and Liam down there now.

Spring break

Today is the last day of Spring Break, we didn't do anything specifically this break but both kids played at friends and had friends over here.  

We did go to Swan Lake Nature House where they had a CSI activity discovering who had killed the duck in the truck, Liam really enjoyed this it was a little old for Madeline but she enjoyed some of it.  They tested a sbstance on the body, which they had to collect, they interviewed the neighbour, reviewed possible suspects and took their case to the judge.  There were also bins with compost and various bones which you exposed and identified. 

So tomorrow its back to school.   We got report cards before Spring break, there were no surprises, Liam is popular not great at focussing, could improve his writting, but otherwise is at grade level.

Wellington

Richard wanted some pictures of Wellington since people ask so I finally put this together.