Cam I Am

So.. This year has been an exciting and tumultuous year so far.

The year started off with promise. I got to go on a trip back home to Ontario — something that hasn’t happened for 9 nine years. I visited my family and a few friends on my quick trip back.. It started off well!

Then the 2010 Winter Games were here! An exciting event that I brought the kids to see the sights downtown. We even took the kids to see a Sledge Hockey game for the Paralympics..

Sadly, this was also a turning point. The same day as the hockey game was the same day that my wife and I let our children know that we were separating. It wasn’t an easy decision, but after being together for over 12 years, it wasn’t working for us..

Shortly after I moved out. And since then, things have been a very different. I left nearly everything in the house, so I had to quickly furnish a place as inexpensively as possible. (Well.. the inexpensively part didn’t work out so well). I’ve also had to learn how to operate a household on my own. This is the first time in my life that I’ve had to be on my own. And yes.. I do suck at housekeeping! My ex and I are also still working on how to schedule the kids around our needs, and parent as a cohesive unit that live separate lives now. A challenge indeed..

I’ve met someone as well. This happened much quicker than I thought and she’s had to put up with me. I’ve been all over the map in terms of how I feel about where I am in life, dating and family. It’s been over four months since I’ve moved out and this new lady in my life has been supportive (she’s clearly a sucker for punishment!). I’ve made mistakes and I still keep trying to improve myself.

I’ve had a lot more time for myself. When I don’t have the kids and when I’m not working, I spend time with this new woman in my life (Meghan). I go geocaching, have gone camping a couple times (with another trip planned in a couple weeks), and still am full of good intentions..

So, here it is on a beautiful, sunny holiday Monday. I’m planning to take the kids to the beach today, play in the water and find seashells and some crabs.. I have no idea where life is taking me at the moment, but I’m still moving forward. Who knows where this journey will take me.

Hopefully, I’ll be blogging a lot more regularly now..

In a few days, I’ll be going back to Ontario to visit my family and friends. It’s been over nine years since I’ve been back to Oshawa, and I’ve heard that it’s changed a lot… Some for the better, some for the worse.

I’m looking forward to seeing my brothers and parents. I last saw my youngest brother, Andrew, about 18 months ago. But I haven’t seen my other brother and mother for over 5 years, and my father since 2001.

There are a couple of friends I’m looking forward to catching up with too. Also, it’ll be nice to do a little geocaching on my trip.

I’m ready for a short break from work, the kids, and life… Even for only a few days. Hopefully, I’ll feel a little refreshed and able to focus on my goals for 2010…

Happy New Year, everyone…

Okay… So it’s all still green outside. But it is getting close to Christmas! We’ve got our decorations up, plans made, and I believe that we are done shopping.. (although I’m sure that we will have forgotten something at this point).

I would just like to take this opportunity to wish you all a merry Christmas!

Our day started out with even better weather than the day before. We had breakfast and then headed into Brakendale to go to the area where you can view bald eagles.

It was only when we arrived that we discovered that eagles can be found there during the winter, and usually leave the area in February. We walked along the trail on the dike until we saw a bear about 300 feet ahead of us. Fortunately, there was a fence between it and us, and we started to walk the other way, but it seems that the bear knew the way around the fence, crossed the street (in front of a pedestrian), and went into the wooded area by the Easter Seals Camp. Now, the Squamish area has plenty of signs and information warning you that you are in bear country and to be aware, but we expected to see them in the campground or provincial park that we were staying in— not a busy street!

So, after bearly containing our excitement/nervousness about running into a bear (yes, I couldn’t resist the pun), we decided to go looking for an estuary that we read about. Well, either we took a wrong turn, or didn’t go far enough, we never found it. At this point, it was getting close to lunch time, so it was back to camp.

After lunch, my youngest daughter, Ainsley, and my wife wanted to have a nap, so me and two other daughters went for a walk along the Four Lakes Trail to find the other two geocaches in the park. Three hours, we completed our 7.5 kilometre walk, including going up and down a hill of about 300 feet in height. My 7-year old and 4-year old were real troopers, not complaining at all. I was truly amazed at how well they did!

The rest of the evening went well. A family had arrived at the campsite across from ours who had a couple young kids, so Megan was happy to have “friends” to play with. It was unfortunate that they arrived the night before we left, especially since they seemed nice and the kids all played well together. After we got our kids to bed, my wife and I sat by the campfire talking well into the evening.

That pretty much sums up our trip. Today was spent packing everything up this morning, heading home, and then the fantastic job of unpacking, putting things away, and 78 loads of laundry!

Today started off much better!

For once, our kids let us sleep in until 7:30! After getting up and making coffee, we made something that my daughter learned in Brownies… Barf-in-a-Bag! As gross as it sounds, it’s just eggs and mushrooms, peppers and onions in a ziploc bag. You seal the bag up (with no sir), smoosh it up, and cook it in boiling water. Very good! Afterwards, Megan and Elisabeth did the dishes. It’s nice that they are old enough to help!

After breakfast, we decided to go for a walk and search for one of the three geocaches in the park. After a short walk, we found it and I finally was able to leave a Las Vegas geocoin that I had picked up in Manning Park a couple weeks ago. We then went to have a quick look at the beach at Alice Lake (which barely qualifies as a lake — more like a big pond), and then it was time to head back to our campsite for lunch.

Within a minute of arriving at the site, one of the park operators notified us that the campfire ban that head been in place since we had arrived was now lifted. As we cheered, we prepared to make our lunch: hot dogs cooked over a fire.

After lunch, we drove into town to Walmart to pick up a couple supplies, and then drove down to Shannon Falls. We spent about an hour there taking everything in, including some ice cream, then took a drive to Brackendale.

Brackendale is the location where the annual bald eagle count is done, so we found where a viewing area is, and plan to check it out tomorrow.

Following our drive, we came back to make a spaghetti dinner, then had a campfire and made delicious, hot smores.

It was the perfect way to end the day..

It’s around 10pm of the first night of our camping trip to Alice Lake Provincial Park. It’s been two years since my family has been able to go camping, so this trip feels extra special for all of us. It’s a little bit different this time.. It’s raining today..

We haven’t done much today. We got here around 2pm, and by the time we were set up, it was 4pm.. After a quick trip into Squamish to pick up a few things we needed, we came back, cooked dinner, and then the kids (and my wife) were pretty much ready for bed. Of course, shortly after going to bed, Megan decided that she wanted up, and then Lizzy wanted to go to bed.

Hopefully, the weather improves a little for tomorrow and we’ll get a chance to do a little more exploring!

Today was the best Father’s Day I’ve had yet…

The day started off with me getting to sleep in; an amazing way to start off the day. After getting up, my wife immediately poured me a coffee with Bailey’s. Score!!!!

Once I had fully woken up, the kids and my wife gave me their cards and gifts. Afterwards, we went out for breakfast at IHOP and then on to the highly anticipated activity of the day. We were all going fishing.

Now, it’s important to understand one fact: I have never gone fishing before in my life. Yes, I know it’s hard to believe that at the age of 34, that I have never been. The only time I have done something remotely like fishing was for about 5 minutes, back when I was in Boy Scouts at a camp in the Haliburton area, and that was with a fishing rod that had no bait, and I’m fairly certain the lake had nothing but minnows.

So, we drove out to Mission to Sun Valley Trout Park where they have a small pond stocked with… well, trout of course! My wife had heard of this place on the TV show “The 100 Mile Diet“, and she thought that this would be something that would be fun to do for Father’s Day. With our brand new fishing rods in hand (that we had purchased earlier this week), we started setting the kids up. Fortunately, my wife used to go fishing a fair bit when she was a kid, so she showed me and the kids what to do. We set up our middle daughters’ rod first and let her get started. She cast out once, and within about 3 minutes, she had caught one! We still hadn’t finished setting up the other two kids rods and she had caught one! We helped her out, and then got our youngest daughter set up. Five minutes later, she caught one! Once we had helped her, we got my oldest daughter ready and then me.

After about a half hour, I caught my very first fish!

I have to admit, I was very happy! My oldest daughter was determined to catch one. Sadly, after another two hours, she still hadn’t caught one and was ready to call it quits.

After we left the park, we came home. Thanks to the power of the Internet and YouTube, I learned how to clean and cook trout. I’m happy to say that dinner turned out very well, considering it was swimming around less than 6 hours prior.

That was how I spent my Father’s Day! It’s always nice to spend time with my family and this day always makes me think on how I can be an even better dad.

About three weeks ago, we logged our 13th find. It was a new cache (we were the second people to sign the log) and we decided that we would deploy one of the two Canada geocoins that we had recently purchased and registered. We placed it and then logged that we had dropped it in that location.

Three other people have logged finds for that cache since we’ve been there. The first one left a generic TFTC, the second TNLN, and the third was logged a week ago and says that there is no sign of the geocoin in the cache.

So, my question is this… Do I try and find out what happened to the coin? Do I just write it off as lost?

I know that this is bound to happen eventually. People either don’t know what to to with them and keep them, or just don’t care and take them. Since this is our first coin deployment and it seems to have disappeared from the very cache that we placed it in, it’s kind of soured me on placing anymore. We had set a goal of it making it to Oshawa, Ontario. That seems unlikely now…

It’s been two weeks since it’s been identified as missing. Since we are still new at geocaching, what do I do?

This past weekend, we adopted a new family member!

We adopted him from the Maple Ridge BC SPCA on Saturday.  He was a stray, so the name that the shelter gave him was Charlie.  We’d like to change his name, but the kids seem attached to his current name!

And that was my weekend!!

I haven’t written much recently, partially because of time, but mostly because I haven’t thought of anything to write about..

In the last month, my wife, kids and I and really gotten into geocaching.  With 13 finds now, we are enjoying the time out.  To me, it’s great to spend time out with the family exploring the area, and I get to play with an electronic toy..  It’s win-win!

We’ve booked our campsite for a camping trip this summer.  This year, we’ll be going up to Alice Lake near Squamish.  We have never really ventured up into Sea to Sky country, so it’ll be nice to get away!  Now, I just have to wait for July now..

That’s about it..