An Afternoon in NYC

[Sep 29 2014]

After a weekend on the fringes of Pennsylvania Dutch country, we drove back to NYC in the old pickup, so Tay could survey the apartment damage and I could catch a plane out of JFK Airport. One the way out to PA it had been dark, so it was nice to see all the fall colours in the daylight. Dalton is at 1,000 ft elevation, and the descent towards sea level was evident in the foliage, which still hadn't really changed at all in New York.

Things got greener as we rolled toward the Atlantic, and things got more crowded as well. In Dalton the only neighbour in view was the empty fairground. In Harlem, we had to make two passes down Malcolm X Blvd before we found a place to park, and we could only stay there for 20 minutes. We passed a minivan full of Red Cross workers at the curb before passing the Mandatory Vacate sign on the door heading in.



There was a Disaster Recovery Guy in the apartment taking notes on the water damage when we got there. In every room it was evident where the water had come streaming down the walls and rippled the drywall and warping all the doors. The worst spot was in the kitchen, where the water had burst through the ceiling and rained debris down on everything. Fortunately, they have renters insurance that will cover cleaning and replacement of their items, and they had a place to stay until their vacation trip to San Diego in 2 weeks.



From Harlem I jumped the R train down to Madison Square Park to meet my cousin Kristy and her adorable little Pickle for delicious burgers and shakes at the original Shake Shack. The Shack was was seriously delicious and Pickle was seriously adorable, filling my hands with load after load of dusty little park rocks. And then suddenly the rocks showed up wet... with a hair in the middle. Sort of gross. Buy Kristy had some hand sanitizer, so I think we were good.





I tagged along with Kristy & Pickle for the afternoon while they waited to pick up Middle-Daughter Lolly from school. Apparently, Kristy and I have identical ideas about tourism -- when someone visits your town you need to feed them all your favourite snacks. She lined them all up and I knocked them all down. From a strong start at Shake Shake, we hit a sandwich shop for fresh oatmeal chocolate cookies. A whole bag of them. I took the top half off the bag while we Pickle climbed the silver orb at the playground.



After that I ate this super-amazing and famous banana pudding from the Magnolia Bakery, also famous for cupcakes and Lazy Sundays. Of course, Kristy didn't want to take a bite of the pudding. And Kristy wasn't going to have even a bite, because she had just been snack-binging on a girls' weekend in Rhode Island. I even ate some of her Rhode Island salt water taffy. I eat everything. She even tried to buy an Ostrich egg at the farmers market, but they were out of season. I was sort of relieved, because 1 ostrich egg = 5 chicken eggs.



Once we picked up Lolly, it was time for me to go. I had designs to do a bike lap through Central Park, and I was running out of time. I jogged down to the corner of the park and $15 later I was walking a Trek hybrid down the walkway for a 1-hour rental. Had I given the bike a cursory pre-rental inspection, I would have noticed that the chain was dangling down near the ground and both tires were nearly flat. I fixed the chain easily enough, but I didn't realize the PSI problem until half-way around a tight corner when the tires started bending over. Not to be deterred, I cranked through the 6 miles as fast as I could go, stopping for pedestrians at the frequent red lights. Good thing I did, because the guy in spandex who buzzed past me at one red light was parked on the side of the road talking to the park police when I caught up to him again.



It was cutting it all pretty close, but I hopped the train to JFK and got there about 1 hour before boarding, so the WestJet agent stamped my boarding pass 'Priority' so I could go right to the front of the security line. Pretty awesome. Oh, and I ate a huge hoagie on the plane.

Because I am a hungry tourist.

Dusk Run for Cinnamon Buns

Sometimes we go to the store for a snack if Mom is gone or busy for the evening. It is always an adventure.

Co-op is the closest store to us, but there is a big hill. Last time we were all on our bikes and it was hard to help Katie up the hills because I was a bit tied up with my bike. At one point, I took my feet off my pedals to slow down and help push her up the hill. I was still straddling my bike as I crouch-jogged beside her and I the edge of the pedal caught me on the ankles bone and took a massive gouge out of me. Katie was crying a bit, but when I pointed out that I was the one bleeding into my shoe and I wasn't crying, she stopped crying to think about that.

That was last time. This time, Scott suggested that Katie ride her bike while he and I run. He has taken to running quite a bit lately. After the success of the ward 2km run, he did the Terry Fox run at school, where they bring a $2 donation and run laps of the field for 30 minutes to see how far they can get. Scott did 13 laps (I think), which was about 1 lap short of 5km. That's a pretty good pace (6:30 min/km), and one mom who was there volunteering that day told R that Scott was noticeably fast, keeping up with the grade 4 kids.

Scott's suggestion turned out to be a good one for our trip to the store. Katie set the pace on her bike and Scott and I jogged along behind. Her pace was slower than is Terry Fox pace, so he kept racing out ahead and then waiting for us to catch up. Then he got a cramp and settled in behind the bike. After about 1.1km, we got to the top of the big hill and we ditched Katie's bike behind a fence -- just like last time -- and we all ran another 0.5km down the hill. Once again Katie was setting the pace (a little over 7 minutes / km), because Scott said his knee was bothering him from running so fast earlier. He has been complaining a lot about being sore lately. R wonders if it's growing pains. I told him to just slow down a bit and it would be okay.

After searching around and finally inquiring, we learned our bakery item of choice has been discontinued, so we had to find something other than a 6-pack of glazed donuts. We settled on a box of cinnamon buns -- plus a pumpkin pie that was so cheap I couldn't pass it up. Then we set out running back up the hill to retrieve the bike with darkness setting in fast.

The grade ranges from 5% up to almost 8% in places, but the kids managed a pretty steady pace of 8-9 min/km all the way up the hill. Katie started flagging with 1/4 still to go, but I pointed out how far she had come up such a big hill and that she was almost to the top and she tore off again faster than ever. By the top she was really running out of gas, but she never stopped running. We retrieved the cached bike and helmet and set off for the home stretch. Despite a minor uphill grade, Katie was even faster on the bike going home than she'd been going out, and she left Scott and me trailing far behind in the dark.

When we finally made the turn down the pathway to our house we couldn't see a thing. Scott started to get worried about Katie. I think he was more worried than I was, although I was a bit surprised that she was so willing to plunge through the darkness alone on her bike. Scott called out to her and she sang back a giddy reply that she was already waiting for us at the gate. I turned on my phone's flashlight feature and handed it to Scott while I navigated Katie's bike through gate to the back yard. Katie was ahead of Scott and was absolutely delighted at the size of her shadow, which started with tiny little legs on the grass and grew to an enormous body and head on the side of the house.

"I am so huge! Hahaha! Look Scott! I'm so huge!"

Total Distance: 3.4 km
Total Time: 28 minutes

Weekend in PA

My brother lives in Manhattan (pop. 1,626,159). He and his wife have an apartment in Harlem, just a block north of Central Park.
My brother also lives in Dalton, Pennsylvania (pop. 1,234). He and his wife have a cute blue house just up the hill from the Dalton General Store.

Tay moved to NY in about 2005, got married in 2008 and they have slowly been moving upward on the Upper East Side as their family has grown and they have needed more space. In January, when my sister-in-law was pregnant with Sam (their 2nd child), they bought a 100-year-old house 2 hours west of New York, not far from Scranton, PA. I haven't been out to New York to visit him since we moved back to Calgary in 2007, so this new development was a perfect excuse to make the trip. I kept trying to figure out the best way to get plane tickets for the four of us, but in the end R told me that it would be a win-win if I just went out myself. I love to travel and she stresses out about traveling with the kids, so she was happy to take one for the team and let me go solo. I heard that my parents were going out in late September, so I lined up my dates to be there with them.



My parents flew to Philly and drove up to Dalton. I flew to Newark, which was along the way for Tay and Jamie to pick me up on the way to the Blue Goose Farm (that's what their place is called). I got to meet baby Sam for the first time.



I also got to hang out with my niece Ava, who is super-adorable. She is a year younger than Katie, and it is funny how alike they are. Ava and I played hide-and-seek and we played in the sandbox and we played catch and we played with a fuzzy caterpillar and all sorts of awesome stuff.



Tay and I managed to get in a round of early-morning golf. It was the thickest fog I've ever golfed in, plus it was the first time I've seen the hazards on a hole include a cemetery. The fall colours were beautiful out there in the Pennsylvania hills. Gorgeous scenery. Our play was less inspiring, but we met a great guy named John from Philly who was up visiting his in-laws for the weekend. He thought Tay's dead-pan humour was hilarious. John told his wife that he was going to be a bit late coming back because of the fog but he met some funny Canadians so he was in good hands.







Despite the golfing diversion, we focused most of our attention on the front deck. Apparently, there was a long history of water pooling in the corner of the deck and rotting the timbers underneath, causing the deck to sag on one end, along with the roof above it. As we pried back the layers, we could see how others before us had tried to patch the problems, but the rot marched on. We braced the joists with strong new beams and then jacked the deck up nearly a foot to make it all (mostly) level again. I was impressed how Tay attacked this project. I don't have any experience jacking up large structures. I have jacked up a car before. He didn't have any experience either, but he's got pretty good sense for this sort of thing and he just went for it. It worked out really well too. By the time we left he had the roof disconnected from the deck and propped up on posts and lots of the deck torn apart. He was debating whether he would patch it up or just rebuild it completely. There were 3 schools of thought represented in our team:
1) Tay likes to tear it down and built it up better than before.
2) Dad likes to cut away the bad stuff and come up with a new design that keeps the good.
3) I like replace the worst parts and keep the structure the same.

My approach is based on minimizing the chance of "surprises". Whenever I do a project, there's always an "uh-oh" moment when something I didn't think of at the beginning of the project suddenly rears its head and causes me all kinds of grief. I liked that I was not in charge of this project and I could just take orders from Tay and do whatever his idea was. It was fun to work all together.



Once we got to the stage where we were mostly climbing around under the deck to position cinder blocks and beams, Dad shifted his attention to Tay's truck, which he had acquired to help him with all his renovation projects. Dad is always excited about his boys getting trucks. It's an older-model pickup, but it's got a big 8-foot bed in the back and he can haul all kinds of stuff, which was Tay's main requirement. You have to crank the truck for a full minute to get it to start if it has been sitting, but Tay dealt with that by buying a strong battery that could handle all that cranking. That is pretty much how I would have handled it too. You see, with vehicles, Tay is no longer from School of Thought #1. He just does what is necessary to make it work, while Dad is the one that wants the thorough fix. Dad set to work changing the oil and tinkering with the truck in a few other ways. He was going to replace the fuel pump too but the parts store was closed.



Mom helped Jamie recover some chairs the first day, and then she helped incinerate most of the evidence the remaining days. There was a huge mound of shingles that we tore off the side of the deck as we worked, and those had to go somewhere. On our first day we had taken a load of debris to the dump but we weren't anxious to go back a second time for shingles. It was an interesting experience to visit the landfill, which also doubled as a rock quarry and a methane farm, but it was a long ways to go to pay $50 and there was a guy there with a thick coral choker and a neon green tank top who reamed us out pretty good the first time for driving to the wrong spot. Long-story-short is that we burned the shingles. And then we tossed the ashes in the compost pile by the shed and nearly burned the thing down because there were still a few hot embers hiding in the ash.



This is sort of ironic, because at that same moment Jamie was back in Manhattan with the kids, working with insurance adjusters and the landlord for their apartment, where a fire two floors above them had resulted in massive water damage down below. In most rooms, the water had coursed down the walls and soaked the floor, but the ceiling in the kitchen had collapsed completely, raining sooty bilge and debris down on everything. Their blender was filled to the brim with the nasty stuff.





My brother and I nearly burned down his house in Dalton, Pennsylvania.
Meanwhile, my brother's wife was taking care of the insurance claim for fire damage on his apartment in Manhattan.

Doing Chores

The kids recently made their debut in the duty roster. Each child gets one night a week to help cook dinner. They each get one evening to help do the dishes, which is easy to remember--
D: What day do you cook, Katie?
K: Tuesday.
D: What about you, Scott?
S: Thursday.
D: So, on days that start with 'T' we have kids that cook.
S: Tuesday... and... Tomorrow.

They have always enjoyed helping to cook in the kitchen (especially Katie) so they were more than happy to shoulder some of the workload. Currently, they require quite a bit of assistance to get the job done, but R is sticking with it, reminding herself that it will pay dividends in the future... for us and for them. Here are my notes from one recent evening:

Cooking: Scott got to use a sharp knife to cut tomatoes and lettuce. He thought that was pretty awesome.
Dishes: Katie liked using the scrub brush and generally playing in the water. In the end, she dumped a plate of water on herself.

Scott likes to use minimal water and maximal dish soap when cleaning. He uses 100% cold water to minimize the chance of getting scalded. He announced that he was finished washing a sauce pan, which had an inch of soapy water in the bottom and food caked everywhere else. I suggested that maybe there was still more for him to do, like rinsing and stuff. He said, "Mom told me that the most important thing is that I try my best." Then he left the pan in the sink and departed, pleased with his "best" efforts.

At least he didn't put it off until Tomorrow... or Tuesday.

Cool Snacks

Just before bed it was time for a snack.

The kids rustled around in the pantry and Scott came out with an applesauce packet. It looks a lot like a Capri-Sun container, but with built-in plastic straw with a big yellow plastic cap that screws off the stem of the straw. Scott said that somebody at school made fun of someone else for eating one of the applesauce snacks. The person said it was baby food.

Scott decided he would eat it at home as a snack, but he didn't want to take one to school ever again.

Labour Day with Dinosaurs

[Sep 1 2014]

I am willing to admit that I have never been to Vancouver. It is only 12 hours away and I've never been (even though I've been next door in Seattle). That seems crazy, until you realize that R had never once been to Drumheller... and that's only 90 minutes away. Apparently, R's mom had never been either, and neither had R's grandma, so it was almost a family tradition. Well, we broke R's streak on Labour Day, and R's parents took grandma M a few days later, so all that's really left is Vancouver.

We spent several hours in the museum, taking in all the sights, but reading few of the info panels. When you are with young kids, it's less about the science and more about the experience. They weren't interested in trying to read any of the writing, but there were two spots where you could pick up this little speaker and hold it to your ear and they absolutely loved that. The other thing that they really loved was the pollen room, where you gather up little spongy balls and "pollenate" this huge flowers by shooting the balls out of vacuum tubes. We went did that room twice. The other thing we did twice was the grip strength tester. You squeeze this little metal thing and it compares the strength of your grip to the strength of certain animals. Scott loved that thing for some reason.

S & T-Rex


K & T-Rex


Apatosaurus


Mammoth


Pollen Room


On the bluffs


After the museum we climbed up inside the world's largest dinosaur. It was pretty awesome and definitely worth the $3 admission to go up at least once in your lifetime. From there we checked out the suspension bridge, which crosses the Red Deer River in the middle of nowhere because it was originally used for coal mining and the mine is now closed. However, they maintain the bridge and it is wobbly and sort of freaky and a great tourist value (free). The kids thought is was a bit freaky, but then they got used to it. There were a lot of adults who seemed even more scared than the kids. I don't quite understand that.

Scott: "What if the bridge fell?"
Dad: "We would all get wet."
Scott: "I would be fine if it fell from here."

Hoodoos
One of our last stops was to go to the Hoodoos, and it turned out to be the highlight of the day for the kids.
Katie climbing with help at first and then climbing alone
Scott climbing alone all the way up to "the black part up high"

Katie: I want to live beside this place.



Scott


Katie


Following


Driving over the 11 bridges to the mining ghost town of Wayne. We asked Scott to pause his show and help us count the bridges to the town.
Scott: "I can watch my show and still count bridges"

Family Fun Run

Last year, the young women in our ward raised money for girls camp by organizing a fun run. I registered our whole family to participate, but it poured rain on the day, so I was the only one from our family who went.

This summer the kids surprised us with how much they enjoyed the triathlon, so I thought we'd give the fun run another try. I signed myself up for the 10 km run and signed up R and the kids for the 2 km kids race, thinking they would mostly walk, rather than run.



I had a good race and got a new personal best for 10 km (42 in 30 sec). I sprinted hard to the finish, and I think that is why I felt so sore later. R tried to get a picture of it but apparently I raced right out of the frame.



Karla ran the 5 km race and came first in the 18+ women category. Then we all lined up at the start line for the 2 km race. I planned to run with Scott and Katie had R and Karla backing her up. When the horn sounded, 58 people pounded down the pathway. Scott and Katie were carried along with the crowd at a pace that was more than I thought they could handle. Scott got out ahead of me and I had to strain my tightening muscles to catch him again.



After about 500 metres Scott complained of a cramp starting up. We slowed our pace but didn't stop running. We settled into a good pace that he could sustain and found ourselves slowly moving up through the pack as people fizzled a bit and had to walk. When we rounded the curve for the final stretch he broke into a sprint. I cheered him on from behind as he pulled away from me to cross in just under 12 minutes and collect an Oreo cookie medal. I found that I was sweatier than Scott was. His fauxhawk was hardly mussed. Scott was #5 in the race, bested only by kids several years older than him.



R was shocked with Katie's performance. She kept asking Katie if she was getting tired or needed to walk and she just ran faster each time. At the 1 km turnaround point Katie didn't even want a drink -- she just wanted to run. She finished in 14 min 30 sec, which was #9 overall for kids under 12 (out of nearly 40). R was expecting to walk most of the distance found herself running the whole time, not to be outpaced by her 4-year-old.

The next day Scott found his legs were hurting--
S: "Ow. I touched my leg just lightly like this and it hurt so bad."
D: "That's because you made your muscles work so hard that they got stretched and now they will be sore as they get even stronger."
S: "It would get even more sore in the 5k race. Why didn't you sign me up for the 5k?"
D: "I didn't know you could do it."
S: "I could sprint the whole way."
D: "No you couldn't."
S: [Grin]

He took an aspirin to help dull the ache so he could get to sleep. You would think that all this pain would dissuade him from future efforts. On the contrary, all he could talk about when he was going to bed was how he wants to run 5 km. I think it's because his friend Noah ran in the 5 km race and got a chocolate bar just for completing it. I promised him a chocolate bar if he would go run 5 km with me. With that, he went to sleep.

Battleship

[Aug 10 2014]

Eamon's Bungalow Camp Reborn

Eamon's Camp looks like it should have been in a Pixar movie, but instead it barely made it into an 80s music video. Now it has a second lease on life.



If you are into 1980s Canadian pop, then maybe you know about Corey Hart. If you were a big fan, maybe you know about Corey's video for the 1986 song "I Am By Your Side", which featured some really poor lip-syncing, as well as several famous landmarks in Southern Alberta, including the hoodoos, the Rocky Mountains, and Eamon's Bungalow Camp. At about the 3-minute mark of the video he gets a motorcycle to go visit his girlfriend. The motorcycle is parked in front of Eamon's, which had been a popular rest stop between Calgary and Banff from the early 1950s until the mid-1960s (until the TransCanada Highway was built). I won't blame you if you can't bear to watch to the 3-minute mark, because I could barely do it myself. However, my efforts were rewarded by a rousing scene near the end of him high on an oil derrick with a guitar, while all the roughnecks cheered him on. In my mind, the video tries to show us what it would look like if Cool Hand Luke turned into Maverick from Top Gun and moved to Drumheller.



Honestly, I had never seen the Corey Hart video until now (although it hit #18 on US Billboard), but I had heard about it because it is always mentioned in connection with the history of Eamon's Camp, which we pass all the time now that we live just up the hill from the place. Bypassed by the fancy big highway, it was getting pretty sad and rundown -- just like Radiator Springs in the Pixar movie "Cars". Originally, named "Eamon's Bungalow Camp", the "Bungalow" part was too faded to read anymore, and the land where the bungalows had stood had been sold off to build a church and to park school buses. The service station building was still standing, but it was fenced in and as an overflow lot for the Honda dealership a few kms away.



Eventually, the city began work to build a new stop for the C-Train, which would use the Eamon's site. They restored the sign to its original glory (including the neon tubes and the milkshake thing on top) and used it as a bus shelter, which was a stroke of genius. At the last minute before the building was to be torn down, the city elected to remove it and keep it for possible restoration and leasing in the corner of the parking lot. So far, there have been no businesses interested in taking up the lease, so all we have is the sign for now. I think I should open a Menchie's down there, but I imagine it's a terrible idea. I just like eating frozen yogurt.



There was an open house the weekend before the station opened, and we got to go take a ride on the train for free, plus we could go sit in the engineer's cabin of a stationary train on the platform. Scott was off at a series of birthday parties, so Katie had to be brave enough to do it alone. There were lots of games and activities for kids to do, but without her wingman, she wasn't interested in trying anything. She'll do anything if she sees Scott do it first.

It's kind of like the Corey Hart video. That girl wasn't ready to quit her job in the sweatshop until she saw Corey/Luke/Maverick do it first. But eventually, she needs to let Goose go and take these broken wings and learn to fly again, etc.

Thanks Corey. You will always be #18 in our hearts.

Daddy-Daughter Day

It was the last Saturday of August. The last weekend of summer vacation. And it was perfect.

I started out the day with a sunrise round of golf at Silverwing, which is so close to the airport's new runway that you have to factor in the jetwash from incoming planes when playing your wedges. It reminded me of our house in Castleridge, where conversations at the dinner table would pause in mid sentence to let the planes rumble past, and my brother J would keep notes of the numbers painted on the underside of aircraft from the window in the upstairs bedroom that we shared. This was only my second round of golf for the season, and the familiar roar of turbines really improved my game compared to the session back in June.

The plan for the afternoon was to see "How To Train Your Dragon 2". However, Katie was not at all interested in a show that might feature a villain or some tense music, so we decided that R would take Scott on their own. That left Katie and me to do whatever we wanted. I suggested that we go for a bike ride. She thought that sounded nice. I expanded on the plan and suggested we put the bikes in the truck and drive to a place where we could also get some ice cream. She thought that sounded really nice. I told her to go get ready and she put on purple flip-flops.

I asked her, "Are those good shoes to ride your bike?"
She said, "I thought we were just going to ride in the truck and get ice cream."
"You don't want to ride your bike anymore?"
"No. I just want to ride in the truck."
"Okay. That works for me. Let's go"

The kids love the truck because they can ride up front (no airbags, and the seatbelts are better in front) and see out all the windows. Katie and I drove all the over the place, just doing whatever we felt like doing -- after we got the ice cream, of course. For that we hit Menchie's, which was Katie's choice. Self-serve frozen yogurt and a ridiculous amount of sugary topping options. She mixed chocolate and green apple flavours, with smarties, marshmallows and chocolate sauce on top. I get as much chocolate and peanut butter into my cup as I can.

After that we hit up my favourite oil change spot near SAIT, where they always give the kids a sucker. She quite liked that, and she remembered that we weren't in the same service bay as we had been the previous time. Good memory for detail.



We were heading back towards the NW and we passed the Canmore Park splash pad, which I have never been to. There was no one there so we pulled in to check it out. Katie protested that she didn't have her swimming suit on. She didn't even have shorts. I just folded her pantlegs up and we started to explore. At first she was tentative about getting wet, but by the end she was drenched. Her particular favourite was this little pole that sprayed out in every direction to create a smooth umbrella of water. When you poked your finger into it, the umbrella would split apart. When you poked your whole leg into it, you got really wet.

I happened to have a towel in the back seat from when we were hot-tubbing/watersliding/ALS-IceBucketing at Grandma's earlier in the week, so I wrapped her up in that to head home. The only other thing on our list of things to do had been a car wash, since the truck was filthy from Fathers and Kids camp 2 weeks before. Katie squealed with delight when the automatic arms started blasting water at her window. She is so cute.

Perhaps when she grows up the roar of car washes will remind her of our day in the truck. Or maybe green apple mixed with chocolate will make her nostalgic for her childhood. We all have something.

Kids Day at the Stampede

[July 9 2014]

When you go to the Stampede grounds on Kids Day, you are guaranteed three things: 1) Free admission until 9:00am; 2) A free pancake breakfast until 10:00am; and 3) Lots of kids until at least 5:00pm.



We met up with the cousins at the grounds early for the breakfast. We have been doing this for years and I can't say that I've EVER seen such a long line up for the breakfast. Still, it is part of the experience and we couldn't skip it. The Arizona cousins had to witness for themselves the cool pancake-batter dispensers that they have devised to keep those flapjacks flapping at a steady pace. Another interesting sight is when the guys get out the industrial drills and the big construction buckets to mix up several gallons of pancake batter in a jiffy.



I don't know if the kids ever eat much of the breakfast, and R can't really eat any of it, so I usually get a double or triple dose of sausages and pancakes. The kids usually hang onto their juice boxes, but this year they had actually run out of juice by the time we got through the line. Fortunately, there were some storm troopers that we could take pictures with that made it all seem worth it. I noticed that the storm troopers were wearing white cowboy boots, which seemed appropriate.



We did all the standard Kids Day things, including SuperDogs and the Aggie Tent, plus we saw this awesome acrobatics routine from China. In the Aggie Tent, we weighed the children on a cattle scale (Katie is 34 lbs) and experienced what it would be like for a cow being immobilized for injections.







Scott became great friends with his second cousin Dallas, and they went everywhere together.



As usual, one of the favourite things was to see the buskers perform on the steps of the Saddledome. This year it was a percussion group that played on various household items like pots, pans, garbage cans and the kitchen sink.



Scott loves to play big brother to his little cousin Elijah.



Yes, Terry Stokes is STILL playing the Coca-Cola stage at the Stampede. There are no variations to this hypnosis routine, but it is still an audience favourite, despite references to the Roadrunner and the Wizard of Oz that feel very, very dated. At least he threw in a reference to Justin Bieber to help connect with a younger demographic.