Faraway, So Close

As some of you know, we've been doing a bit of house hunting since finding out about the new member of family due to arrive in June. We had to put our acerage dream on hold for right now due to some zoning issues friends of ours were having, so we being to look around at houses. Housing in Saskatoon has taken off like crazy, jumping approx. $30k in the last 5 months alone, so we weren't sure what we'd be able to find that we could afford.

Luckily, thanks to my sister being on the lookout for us we came across a house in the Mayfair area of Saskatoon that we feel in love with. The couple who were selling did a ton of reno work and a lot (if not all) of the choices they had made with paint, tile, etc were what we liked. Plus the folks who were selling it (private sale) are really nice and work at the University too.

Anyway, long story short(er) - we've all but purchased the house. We're waiting on lawyers to do their lawyery things and come April 5th, we'll be moving in. Housewarming party to follow shortly. You can see pictures of the house on my flickr page by clicking here. The photos are (obviously) of the house as it is right now with the current owners furniture/decorations/etc. so it probably won't look quite as nice with our stuff in there.

We'll see you at the housewarming party on April 7th sometime later in April. :)

Posted by iChris at 3:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Congrats to Lorinda and Chris down under in Australia who had a baby boy, Samuel on March 3rd. 2.8kg

I noticed something in the picture that I don't think a lot of people did. If you take a closer look at this "digitally enhanced" version of the photo:

Good news for Chris - Samuel was born with a surfboard in hand!

Posted by iChris at 9:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sue Making Bagels, Originally uploaded by iChris.

Last week Sue made some awesome homemade bagels. I've got a serious weakness for carb-related items, especially bread based food. Mmmm... bagels.

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Pina Colada, Originally uploaded by iChris.

We're back from Mazatlan and not really enjoying the cold weather we're getting here now. If you're a sucker for punishment you can check out a whole wack of photos here.

Waking up Monday morning it felt like it was all a dream. It's good to pull out of regular life for awhile, but it's amazing how quickly you settle back in to old routines.

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Feliz Navidad from Mazatlan, Originally uploaded by iChris.

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Dad O Opening the BLACKSHARK Helicopter, Originally uploaded by iChris.

Christmas comes a little early for Sue's family this year as we're headed down south to Mazatlan with my family. More photos here. Video here.

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Birthday Girl Gets a Crown, Originally uploaded by iChris.

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say her age to the public, but we celebrated Sue's birthday on Saturday with friends. We ended up at Saba's (google map link) which served up an awesome African style supper for us. I'd highly recommend it if you're up for trying something different than the usual Boston Pizza/Fuddrucker's/pasta Saskatoon seems to have an abudance of.

Thanks to everyone for helping make it a great birthday party - (no thanks to certain family members who can't keep their mouth's shut!)

The countdown to Mexico can now begin! :)

Posted by iChris at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is all I need to see right now. We fly out Dec 20th for two weeks of blissfull nothingness in Mazatlan.

For another view on winter, check out Carlos' poetic rant on the beauty of winter and all it's trappings.

Posted by iChris at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Theresa Sokyrka Concert, Originally uploaded by iChris.

As part of Sue's birthday present (big 30 next week!) I took her to the Theresa Sokyrka concert on Saturday night at the Broadway Theatre. Sue really enjoyed it, as did her parents who came along. I'm not a huge fan of her music but she does have a great voice that sounds a lot better in person than on her CDs, as is often the case with singer/songerwriter types. Her and her drummer and bass player seemed to be having a good timing playing together which is the main thing, I suppose. Claiming Radiohead as her favorite band seemed a bit odd, given the easy listening type of music she puts out - but her cover of 'Lucky' was decent enough.

Posted by iChris at 11:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

nose pickin, Originally uploaded by Jamita.

That's my nephew, showing his younger brother how to clear up those plugged sinuses. (sniff) They grow up so fast.

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Matteo Photoboothed - 2, Originally uploaded by iChris.

We babysat my nephew today and so naturally he got the Photobooth treatment on Sue's MacBook. More Photobooth stuff here.

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Ives Carves the Ham, Originally uploaded by iChris.

Hope everyone is having (or had) a great Canadian thanksgiving weekend. We had a good time having a dinner with some friends and family over at my parent's house while they were gone. Sue and Jamie put on a pretty good spread for us all!

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It hasn't arrived yet, and I'm kind of glad in a way because it extends my birthday out for awhile as I wait in anticipation of my new guitar. I was shocked, surprised and amazed when Sue told me of her present for me and completely oblivious to all the hints she dropped throughout the week (including a crossword puzzle that had the words 'Simon', 'Patrick', 'Mahogany', 'accoustic', 'strings' in it!). I think in the week leading up to my birthday my brain shuts down in order to 'protect' me from finding out about surprises before they happen.

That's my excuse anyway for being an idiot. Haha.

Posted by iChris at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Go and welcome my sister and brother-in-law to the world of blogging - www.mennoboy.com/beersincanada (their last name is Beer.. get it?)

They are moving to B.C. to live on the island in Campbell River to go to school and serve expensive Starbucks coffee to the rich islanders. We'll miss having them near by, but at least now we have a place to go stay and visit for free! :)

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2 great iPhotos, Originally uploaded by Jamita.

My sister had her baby on Tuesday, a 8lbs baby boy. I'm not sure if they've officially settled on a name yet but there's a whole swhack of pictures on her flickr site.

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Trying out a little service called www.youtube.com to do some video sharing.

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Ocean Palms, Mazatlan. This is where my brother-in-law is working to help try and sell. Starting price is now $330k US - only $10kUS downpayment required! :)

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Andrea and James had their wedding on August 28th (photos on flickr here) and this weekend my other sister, Jamie, and her husband and baby headed back to Mazatlan where they live. It's wierd to realize that both my sisters are married and our family is complete - at least until more grandkids start to arrive, right now Matteo has all the attention from grandpa and grandma. With Jamie in Mazatlan and Andrea in Moose Jaw (now officially, she's actually been living there for awhile) we're the only ones left here in Saskatoon with my parents. Just like in Susan's family. Either we're the stable ones or the ones who are too scared to venture far from home. I'd like to think it's somewhere in the middle.

Posted by iChris at 12:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Chris Has a Tough Lie
Originally uploaded by iChris.

We tried out the new minigolf out at Wilson's. It uses 'real grass' instead of the fake stuff that most minigolf places cheap out with. They also take 'real money', to the tune of $7/person per round instead of the lower quality $3-4 most mini golf places charge.

I had a tough game and finished in the bottom half. Strong winds on the back nine took me off my game and I couldn't keep up with my dad who took home the 'W'.

More minigolf pics here.

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Eating Supper on the deck at Bruce and Lisa's
Originally uploaded by iChris.

Finally, summer is actually here and it looks like it's sticking around for the whole week.

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Mowing the lawn at Bruce's
Originally uploaded by iChris.

I got in touch with my farmer roots last night and broke out the ride-on mower to cut the lawn. I used to cut my grandparents lawn on their farm all the time when I was a kid so it was fun in a nostalgic kind of way.

The mosquitos are straight from the pit though. Nasty.

Posted by iChris at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My sister Jamie has (finally) had her baby - so welcome the newest member of the Enns/Guardado family - Matteo.

(pictures coming soon)

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My cousin Danny and his wife Kimberly are in Japan teaching English and have photos up here.

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Hey, my sister, Jamie, and her husband are blogging.

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My sister Jamie is getting married to Ives today (tonight actually). It's hard to believe that the day is actually here. It's a smaller wedding and so there isn't _as_ much to worry about - but there's still lots of little details to iron out (including my shirt). It's an interesting run up to the day of the wedding to see how well the family copes with all the stress and when the wedding finally happens and goes fine, how relaxed and calm everyone is after.

Enough contemplation. More work to do. Watch for pictures as they get added here. I changed the picture set to a group that anyone can join. Leave me a comment if you'd like to be included and can't get in right now.

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Hope you had a good father's day. We got to spend time with my family, eating cake and playing pool and ping pong. (Pics here for those who dig those digital image type things) My sister Jamie couldn't find a boy she liked here in Canada, so she decided to go to Mexico and get one instead. Some of those pics are for him to send home to show friends/family where he's staying while he's visiting. I lost 50 pesos to him at pool, but I'm confident I'll get that back the next time we play.

I also got to see the other side of father's day. A guy I met for the first time at church yesterday told me of how his father who is an alcoholic hasn't called him in over two years, and how the rest of his family doesn't call him either anymore. He said when he thinks about it, he 'gets some depression' (his wording - he suffers from a mental disability) and thinks about ending his life. When he prays, those thoughts go away.

I found out later that he's seeing Mark's dad, who will be able to offer him infinitely better help than I could. I appreciated his honesty and openess and I wish more of us could be transparent like that in our low times as well as when we're "ok".

Posted by iChris at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (3)

My sister Jamie came home from Mazatlan yesterday after being gone since January. We only got to spend a bit of time with her over supper but it was good to have our fam all together again. In a couple of weeks her Mexican b/f comes and we get to run him through the gauntlet to see if he checks out okay.

Since my mum and sister picked Jamie up in Calgary, they decided to bring along a little extra suprise for supper in the form of 2 dozen Krispy Kreme donuts. There wasn't exactly 2 dozen by the time they got home, but it was close enough that Sue and I got to experience the phenomenom that is Krispy Kreme. My verdict: very low-fat and very Atkins friendly.

Posted by iChris at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

I got an email from my dad today who's suffering down in Mazatlan right now. Suffering from golf addiction. He shot a 1 under par for the first time on the course by their condo last week, and the other day had another once-in-a-lifetime golf event happen.

His story begins below:

Accompanying Picture

This is strictly a golf e-mail because I did something a little rare today. This occurred after I took Lynn to the airport in Luis' truck and then returned back to the clubhouse to play a little more golf.

Today was one of those days when I accomplished something I will probably never do again down here in my lifetime -- and for that matter I'm not sure too many people ever will in their lifetime. I did something which is very, very rare. Hole #9 is a very, very,difficult hole - a dog leg right and only 380 yards BUT the wind blows across right to left both off the tee and on your approaches, the right side of the fairway is totally lined with huge bunkers from 150 in, the green is totally surrounded by cavernous bunkers(on average at least 3 of 4 golfers in every group end up in the bunkers at the front of the green which are about 10-12 feet below the height of the green) and the green is very, very fast. Well I nailed my approach to within 18 inches and the clubhouse staff were there cheering me on when I got up there because they could go a month on this course without the 9th hole ever getting birdied. I birdied it for only my 3rd or 4th time in about 150 rounds down here. But it didn't end there.

If you're not on the edge of your seat with anticipation, you better re-read this and then get ready to go on by cliking below:

Continue reading "Happy Day For My Dad" »

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Sue and I went for a walk down by the river on Good Friday. It was nice to get out of the house after being cooped up working on videos, web pages and BF:Vietnam all week. Well, not really "working" on BF, but that's beside the point.

One more perfomance on Sunday to go, but I'm only involved with my guitar for a couple of songs. It should be interesting to see how the rockin choir is recieved. The band is having fun regardless.

The Tenebrae services went well - not without their own little glitches but nothing that noticeable to the audience I think. It's always fun to play with Brent and his djembe. We talked about hooking up to try and make some tv commercials for some of his audio clients - we'll see what happens. Watch for a casting call soon! :)

Posted by iChris at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (4)

Not much to talk about here, so I decided to start making my website more my own instead of just one of the templates that comes with MovableType. You'll notice the spiffy new banner at the top... and that's about it. I have to get more gutsy and start fooling around with the stylesheet for the site - but I have yet to find said guts.

It looks like my parents have bought a shack up at Waskesiu and so we plan to spend some time there on our holidays next week. It's got everything we need, except running water. But there's a tap nearby as well as a washroom/shower. Should be fun. I'll bring back pictures.

Today's picture is in honor of my parent's purchase - in honor of them becoming land barons:

Posted by iChris at 5:52 PM | Permalink

So the lake didn't happen - well the lake I'm sure was there, it just didn't happen for us. Sue came down with a cold friday night that meant we spent the weekend getting better. Actually she spent the weekend getting better, I spent the weekend feeding my Sims addicition. (Mark got married to Carlo's girlfriend, appropriately named 'girlfriend' because I couldn't remember her name - sorry c-lo!)

After i manged to kick the Sims habit for awhile, Travis came over and we did some recording of a tune he's had floating around his head for awhile. Click here for a sample of it.

Have a great Monday!

Posted by iChris at 5:40 PM | Permalink

So for all of you keeping score at home (and I know that there's actually none of you.. because nobody visits this site!), here's how our basement is coming along:

Now we just have to paint the walls and put something on the floors. Oh, and put in the kicking surround sound theatre system so we can keep up with cam. what's that cam, you don't like that idea?

Posted by iChris at 5:19 PM | Permalink