Canada Day - July 1, 2008

Canada Day is much like Independence Day in the US. Canada was officially an independent country in 1867, or 1982, depending on who you talk to. Check out Wikipedia for all the details. More info later in this post.

Samuel (see above) was honored at his school on the last day of school along with some of his friends. Here is a young man from our Ward, Gaetz Salmon, with Samuel. We are pleased with his efforts in academia.
Since fire arms are not allowed, most folks here have paint ball guns to defend their things, or to shoot up the country side. While riding dirt bikes this week, one of our friends brought his PB guns so we could shoot at anything that didn't move. We tagged the power poles, signs, high tension power wires, etc. with about 1000 paint balls. Samuel was the first one to hit the wire. Joseph hit the pole 7 times in a row from about 50 or 60 feet. Alan was the first to knock over a bottle from 50 feet away.
Samuel, in a still of his rendition of "Put a Banana in Your Ear" from "Charlie the Unicorn 2" on YouTube. The whole video is available for the low low price of $(teach me how to embed a video on this blog) He says the song is annoying, but the home made video is kind of funny.
Joseph and Samuel planting sunflowers in a small bed they lined with a few little rocks from our yard. There are still about twice as many other rocks still in the yard. With the long days, the flowers are already poking their little heads up, after only a couple of days.
Seems like the new favorite activity is riding. We ride bicycles, motorcycles, ice skates, skate boards, etc. Even Michelle went mountain biking the other day. She says the boys tried to kill her, but after only two bruises smaller than Rhode Island, she completed the ride and got home safely.

Now, more on Canada Day:

We went to a concert in one of the big city parks here. We listened to 4 local bands, and one emerging Canadian Rock Band called Hawk Nelson. They were pretty good. Samuel wanted to go see them, so we arrived at 6 pm, only to have to suffer through the hoards of mosquitoes and drunks for 5 hours. After the concert, there were fireworks at midnight, because that is when the sky is finally dark enough to see them. It helped that there were many clouds in the sky also. After the fireworks, as we were leaving, we watched a woman get her foot run over by one of the afore mentioned drunks. She was not hurt bad, but the ensuing fight was entertaining.

On Canada Day proper there were more activities in the park. more concerts, a stand-up comedian, cultural shows by east Indians, Pakistanis, South Pacific Islanders, Filipinos, Chinese, and others. The Royal Canadian Air Force had a fly by of some of their newest planes, and there were fireworks again at midnight. We are thinking of having a 4th of July picnic/BBQ for a few of the American folks we know here. We will see.

All in all, the celebration is very similar to the Independence Day celebrations in the States. We had the Elders over for dinner tonight, and we had a cook out on the only charcoal bbq in town. It seems that everyone else in town uses gas grills, which in my opinion, simply do not impart the same taste to meat as good old fire and smoke.

Tomorrow it is back to the grind, but things are going well, and we are improving our home to get ready to receive more guests. The next "visitor" will be Jacob. He returns home from serving a mission on July 16. We are looking forward to having him here for a while before he returns to college. More on that later.

Hugs and Kisses,

Alan