Pray for New Orleans

I read about the mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, as the mother of all storms apparently is coming very soon. It must just be terrible for the people there, having just recovered from Katrina. Keep them in your prayers.

Here's a photo of me in New Orleans before Katrina hit. Great city. When we were there (in 2004), we ended up going to this amazing Jazz Club. It was fully packed (we sat right at the front two feet from the performers) and the band was fantastic.

Retreat photos

Here are some retreat photos from this past week of the guys playing BOCCE, make that Extreme Bocce.

Here's a coworker and I singing William Hung's version of Ricky Martin's smash hit. We didn't quite have the same accent and dance moves though.

Here are a few ladies trying out Guitar Hero Aerosmith for the first time.

We picked up our dog at my parents house...she was happy to see us:

youtube star Kev Jumba

I've been watching KevJumba's videos for awhile now. He's hilarious! Check out this interview he did with his dad. As of right now, the video's only been on for 3 hours and it has almost 15000 views!

Healthy Eating

Since we're on the topic of food (besides travel, our favourite theme!), I just read this website, stating the 5 healthiest fast food joints in the USA. I'm proud to say that I frequent 3 of them:
Noodles and Co. - a cool noodle restaurant from Colorado that has a few restaurants in Oregon that we've been to each time we go there.

Chipotle - not so authentic but decent Mexican food, recommended by cousin Ryan from Dallas.

Panera Bread - awesome soups and sandwiches, similar to Bread Garden here in Canada but oh so much better.

We've even seen Au Bon Pain in Thailand, though they have many locations in the States.
Here's the link to the Health.com article: http://eating.health.com/2008/04/23/the-healthiest-fast-food-restaurants/

I've decided to take a break on deep-fried foods. That means everything that goes in the deep fryer: Fish & Chips, fries, Chicken Fingers, etc. Even my favourite SWEET & SOUR PORK! I wonder how long this can last...

Trader Joe's

We recently discovered Trader Joe's, a health-food style grocery store in the USA. The prices are quite amazing. Most items are organic, and CHEAPER than the regular items here in Canada! My parents, who are health nuts, absolutely loved everything when we brought them there.

We had been there a few times, but normally just to purchase these amazing chocolates (recommended by Vania):

You MUST try these when you go

On this night going home on the subway in Japan, we found it interesting that a Japanese woman had this bag:

Christian shocker

At lunch today, a co-worker just told me about this story (sorry, fixed the link!). Quite the shocker, as I have been listening to the song HEALER, was quite moved with it. I was just listening to it THIS MORNING!
It was even a probably new song I was going to introduce at church...quite sad. I was told that all the christian bookstores in the world are pulling the hillsong album off the shelves to remove the hit song. It proves that christians are definitely not perfect, even those with as high a profile as popular Christian preacher Michael Guglielmucci.

In the end, the song fits. What do you all think?

You're my Healer

You hold my every moment
You calm my raging seas
You walk with me through fire
And heal all my disease

I trust in You
I trust in You

I believe You're my Healer
I believe You are all I need
I believe You're my Portion
I believe You're more than enough for me
Jesus You're all I need

My Healer, You're my Healer

Nothing is impossible for You
Nothing is impossible for You
Nothing is impossible for You
You hold my world in Your hands

We're back from our staff retreat at LOON LAKE...pooped as usual. We had a good time hanging out, singing karaoke on ps2 AND xbox, while playing wii guitar hero aerosmith with some unlikely guitarists. The guys played lots of BOCCI, my first time ever. I've always seen people playing it. It was so fun, cause we were playing in the woods, with hills, gravel, cars, wooden patios and lakes, all in the way!

Videos to come??

Well, this is the real end of our vacation. A few minutes ago, I looked at the clock, and said "Whoa, it's 10:30PM already?" We are in work mode I guess, considering I've been sleeping at 3 or 4 in the morning the past few days. We go on our annual staff retreat tomorrow, so that's probably what I'll blog about next...Where on earth have the past 60 days gone???


cool. I got my first reader from Beijing! And Yokohama!

My friend Carman was lucky enough to attend many events at the Olympics. He has amazing photos of events I would never have dreamed about attending. Hopefully I'll post those later this week...(with his permission, of course...yeah, Carman is a guy).

Dernier jour de vacances

uh...yes.

Townshoes is opening up at Pacific Centre, the mall downtown. Probably one of the best places to get shoes in Vancouver.

So the wife decided to "borrow" the photos I was originally going to post:
We celebrated the last full day of our vacation downtown sans le chien. After our dinner at our favourite restaurant in Vancouver, Guu, we went shopping (what else?) and then went for dessert at Sweet Obsession. They had a peanut-butter chocolate cake. I don't know what it is, but I find myself loving anything to do with peanut butter recently:

After dessert, we decided to go rent video games as one real final hurrah. I found Guitar Hero Aerosmith. We got home and I started playing...my first online playing experience. Though I rarely listen to Aerosmith, I did ok against someone named KICK:

The headphones are definitely necessary

Here are some photos from yesterdays visit to Spanish Banks:
Slow shutter speed to create blur while panning on moving objects. Poor dog was exhausted as I made her run pretty fast.

Seahawks have a new fan

So, apparently there are at least two NFL fans in our family. The wife decided to bug me by putting my new jersey into the dog's crate.
This machine, the cricut is what I bought the wife for her birthday. It can cut anything! Plus, we bought this special program online that allows you to cut letters in ANY FONT you like! This will come in handy when we begin decorating our classrooms next week. We, well, she scrap booked for 6 hours last night.
There are 25 more pages. I'll post the best ones soon.

David Cook: Always be my baby

This was one of my favourite songs (originally sung by Mariah Carey) during high school. When we were shopping (what else) in Bangkok AND Singapore, I heard this song over and over again, but remade by a guy! I googled it tonight and found out it was American Idol winner David Cook. I actually like this version, and already got the guitar chords. Instead of dropping the tuning to Eb, I capo`ed 2 on David Crowder`s EAEEBE tuning. After listening to it again more closely, I found the acoustic guitar a bit annoying. The strum is only on the quarter notes! Oh well...

Speaking of David Crowder, I just found out that he`ll be playing in Vancouver at Passion`s World Tour in October. I got tickets, but you`re supposed to be either between 18-25 or a ministry leader. I`m going to bring either some students or some of my younger worship team members haha. I`ve seen Chris Tomlin (Passion`s main guy) probably 6 times. I was sooo close to seeing him in Kuala Lumpur on August 3rd. It was the wife`s birthday, so it probably wouldn`t have been a good idea to travel to a city that she isn`t entirely fond of.

Laksa, 604 version

Here is our version of the Singaporean Laksa. Well, we bought the mix in Singapore. It's available here in Vancouver, but for more than twice the price. We added shredded chicken...turned out pretty good:
Ever wonder why dogs like to put their heads out of the window while the car is moving fast but don't like it when you blow on their face? Very sad news about NieNie, a very popular blogger, who was in an airplane crash with her husband and the flight instructor (who passed away). Keep up with the news here. The wife read her blog every day, even on our holidays.

Une journée à Houlgate en Normandie....

Nous avons fait une sortie à Houlgate avec tous les actifs (ou travailleurs) francophones de notre église. Même si le temps n'est pas toujours super en Normandie (plutôt frais et pluvieux), nous avons eu un temps superbe de la visite des villas jusqu'à la plage en passant par le déjeuner en terrasse dans un restaurant près de la plage. 

Malheureusement, même s'il a fait ensoleillé, nous ne nous sommes pas baignés, nous avons seulement trempé nos pieds dans l'eau qui était froide et un peu sale aussi! Mais bon, c'était sympa aussi.... on a pu ramasser quelques beaux coquillages en souvenir et on a fait un peu de cerf volant aussi.

Nous avons tenté de prendre en photo le fameux "Jumping" que nos amis Vancouverites font souvent. Ce n'était pas très réussi, mais ce n'est qu'un début, et avec un peu d'entrainement, nous le ferons aussi bien qu'eux, seul ou à plusieurs, main dans la main ou séparément. En voici quelques illustrations:

Ceci dit, celui-ci est pas mal réussi je trouve:

Il me semble que nos amis Vancouverites ne connaissent pas encore la Normandie, n'est ce pas? La prochaine fois qu'ils viendront, nous les emmèneront à Houlgate pour visiter la falaise des Vaches Noires et les magnifiques villas au bord de mer et pour goûter les Moules au pommeau!

Soirée "Casino" à Bussy Saint Georges

Comme le mari aime beaucoup le poker, et pour fêter son anniversaire, j'ai organisé avec l'aide de ma soeur une soirée Poker ou plutôt Casino (avec une table de roulettes et deux tables de poker.

Nous avons tenté de recréer une ambiance Casino dans la grande maison de notre tante et nous l'avons ainsi transformée en Casino, avec les tables de jeux et une musique d'ambiance, ainsi qu'un buffet et un bar dans le jardin. Les invités sont venus en tenue appropriée. Exceptionnellement, les bébés étaient acceptés (il y en avait trois: Rachel, Isaac et baby Léanne).

Et... comme le gâteau préféré du mari est la Forêt Noire, ce soir là, j'ai commandé une énorme Forêt Noire. Elle était magnifique! Regardez un peu:

Lors de cette soirée, un tournoi de poker avait été organisé et le gagnant était mon cousin, Benjamin (un vrai débutant au poker mais un futur psychologue!!) et il a remporté une bouteille de champagne! Bravo!

Firefox 3 shortcuts

I don`t know if you`ve read about this cool shortcut before, but if you have Firefox 3, try this out. Instead of typing www.gmail.com in the address bar, try just typing gmail. Same goes for facebook. Just type in facebook. It should go straight to the respective sites, and even straight to the logged-in page (if you never logged out!) After googling it, turns out this tip is old...but it might help some of you!

Another useful one: If you find yourself clicking links on sites such as this one, and you find that you`ve navigated away from the original page, try pointing to the link and pressing the middle mouse button. The link will open up in a new window! Try it here.

SEAHAWKS WIN!

Great game yesterday. The Seahawks beat the Chicago Bears 29-26 in a thrilling overtime game. Although it was mostly backups and rookies who were vying for spots on the roster, the game was actually very entertaining. The most impressive player was RB Justin Forsett, a 7th(!) round draft pick in 2008. Sigh, I`m now older than more than 95% of the players...tant pis. While da Bears played 3 different Quarterbacks (Grossman, Orton, and Haney), we only played Charlie Frye, who made both good and bad plays, the latter including a interception for a TD.

View of Safeco field, home of the Seattle Mariners

Qwest Field, fka SEAHAWKS STADIUM

Before the game

Pre-game full team huddle

This dad and his two kids came down to shout DEFENSE EVERY SINGLE defensive drive!

Collection of Seattle hats