Thursday was Allie's 1st Birthday. We had a small party for her, with our neighbours and Jim and Di. Unfortunately Allie's friend Annabelle - who turned one earlier in the month - was sick and unable to come, so they joined us by phone (you will notice the phone appears in many of the pictures at http://al.lindsays.ca/Allies1stBDay/index.html )

At Christmas Cory, Terri and Family were down from Peterborough. We went to the Seattle aquarium, one of our favourite spots (we're members and we've been at least 5 times). Of course we are now also members at the Vancouver aquarium as well...... there something fishy about all this.

I'll post pictures of the Van Aquarium later. Pictures from Seattle are here http://al.lindsays.ca/Aquarium The Orange beast in this picture is the giant Pacific Octopus - indiginous to our region. We could actually come across one when boating or beach combing! There is also a female in this tank with a few thousand eggs. When we went back 3 weeks later the eggs had hatched and we saw tiny, translucent baby octopi in the tank. Apparently the tank is connected to the Puget Sound directly (the aquarium is on a pier) and the babys just swam off into the Pacific Ocean! We think this is pretty cool.

Al

House Pics

We found a home in a good neighbourhood only 3 miles from downtown. We are only renting, but the house is great, as are many of the neighbours. We found a family up the street with 3 girls age - twins Kaitlyn's age and the 3rd is Vicki's age.

Our next-door neighbours have a 2 year old daughter and they often drop in when out for a walk. Oddly enough our friends Jim and Diana from Ottawa live less than a mile away.

Some pre-move-in shots of the house can be seen here. http://al.lindsays.ca/House/index.html

Al

Aloha! First week of January Mel and Allie went to Kona, Big Island, Hawaii. Pictures are available at http://al.lindsays.ca/Hawaii/index.html Paul also has a few hundred shots from this week on http://www.lindsays.ca/website/hawaii/index.htm

In early March I took the girls skiing at Crystal Mountain. As you can see there is hardly any snow - this is the worst year on record. The hills closed for good the next weekend. Even Whistler is only partially open this year.

Vicki and Kaitlyn were awesome for first timers. Crystal has an amazing full day ski school for kids where they feed them lunch and keep them on the hill for most of the time. More pictures and a few short videos can been seen at http://al.lindsays.ca/Crystal/index.html

Al

Pictures from the Pacific Science Center

In November 2004 we went to the Pacific Science Center, located at the Seattle Center (by the Space Needle). The Seattle Center has a Children's Museum, Arena (NBA and WHL), Experience Music Project, Midway, Science Center, Monorail and probably more stuff we haven't discovered (2 IMAX theatres as well).

Pictures of our trip can be found at http://al.lindsays.ca/ScienceCenter/index.html

Watch for more postings to pictures on the al.lindsays.ca website as I get caught up on 5 months of travels on the west and east coasts.....

I heard a rumour that it doesn't snow in Seattle. Well.... it's just NOT TRUE!!!! This is a shot of the girls sledding at the end of the street (the roads here resemble San francisco). Of course this was the only snow we saw this winter and it melted by noon....

Seattle!

In the beginning there was darkness.....

OK, I've finally broken through the inertia and created a blog. The next challenge is teaching Mel and Vicki how to post here.