It's been a few months

It's been a few months since I last posted so I have a lot to catch up on.

Well in June I turned 50 that qualifies us as Senior citizens at the local Casino. There we can get $9.95 buffet, that's a better price than seniors get in Florida.

Modified coupon

As you can see we fit right in with the seniors crowd.

We enjoyed some cool nights in June, I know for the people in the northern hemisphere that may seem a little weird but June is our winter. On some nights it got down to a "minimum" (their speak) of 16c. Some nights we even had to put a blanket on the bed and close the window. I say that all with a little bit of sarcasm because that weather in June is still pretty nice. The only bad thing about winter here is that the trees start to drop their leaves and we have to clean up the back garden every weekend. But our pile is nothing you would want to jump into.

In July we took a 5 week trip back to Canada, via Sydney and the USA.

I don't know what it is about me and travelling but every time I go travelling I always get selected to be bomb sniffed. I bet I look like someone that would laugh it off which I always do. So I have left Darwin airport 3 times and been sniffed twice.

Our time in Sydney was short as there was an 8 hour stop over. We took the subway to visit the Opera house and the famous bridge. The subway cost was reasonable until you paid for the exit tax/trip from the airport. That was $15 each.

Waiting a the startion

Hold on tight with sleepy commuters

When we got out of the subway all I can say was brrrrr. This weather is not what you would think Australia is about. But the south gets really cold in the winter. Sydney can hit 0c or below. We had long sleeve t-shirts on and hoodies and at 8am in the morning we were cold.

They did not turn up the heat.

Being there didn't seem as grand as it does on TV or you see in pictures. The Opera house did seem to look as if it needed a good scrub down with a soapy bucket of water and a broom.

Sydney Opera house

It could have been the overcast day, bad lighting, bad camera angle or just bad photographer.
But Sydney did have this amazing network of boats that ferried citizens to the down-town to go to work I would think taking a boat to and from work every day might be a little relaxing. It's a nice city built on a river and unlike Toronto has seemed to have kept a lot of it's old buildings.

The next stop San Francisco California, but to get there we had to endure a 15 hour plane ride. Now usually long distance flying is not bad because every seat has it's own TV with multiple movies to watch. But not the Sydney to San Francisco via United Airlines. Nope it just had 1 big screen that was so bright you couldn't catch any sleep because of the light. Well it was cheap so the saying goes "you get what you pay for".

Upon arrival at San Francisco we drove to San Jose California which is better referred to as Silicon Valley. This is where the who's who of internet companies are. It is also the home of Google, but a little more on Google later.

L has 2 brothers and a sister in Cali, with many assorted nephews, nieces and friends from Vietnam. But the first thing that we always do when we get to San Jose is have Vietnamese food. It's a debate on whether Toronto, San Jose or LA has the best Vietnamese but it doesn't matter because it's great.

Good Vietnamese at last.

We stayed with L's brother and her 2 nephews. They had just bought a house and it had a nice backyard with lots of fruit trees which we pillaged.

L and her brother with her nephews

 In San Jose we did some outlet shopping, and totally laid waste to the Hollister store. Although most of the stuff we bought we took back to Canada as gifts.

There was a big birthday party for one of the boys which worked our really well for the timing of the trip and some of us passed out some gifts from Darwin and modelled them as well.

Croc hat

On thing that's always on the menu when we visit the boys is Laser Quest and this time we didn't get to play as soon as we normally do so for 3 days we heard "are we going to Laser Quest now?"

Pew pew

 Needless to say we made it and the scores from the boys were a lot higher this year. I'm gonna be in big trouble next time I visit. I'm gonna have to watch my back and front and gun and .... where ever else I can be shot.

Our next stop was Toronto which involved the Red Eye flight which arrives at 5:45am. Dad and Pauline were there to pick us up and we drove home noticing that not much had really changed since we had left.

Our first stop that night was Mandarin buffet, which I had been raving about since I knew we were coming, but actually it was our only visit to the Mandarin.

That weekend we had a 50th birthday party for me and we had L's family, mine and Paulines grandson Jaxon and Brooke along as well. We all had a great time and Jaxon demonstrated how he can use a screw driving gun to put screws in a block of wood. For a guy just short of 2 he's pretty handy.

Jaxon the hand toddler soon to be man.

Since Ontario is our old stomping grounds we knew were home, we had some past Canada life to settle and lots of shopping and family visiting to do. Even though we had 2+ weeks there we just never seemed to have enough time.

Dad with Phillip in the background practising his driving.

We both visited our old work places but I never got to see everyone. I had 4 floors to cover and only managed 2.

We also brought back a crock from Darwin for mums pool which Grandpa Brian named Boris. As you can tell he has adjust to the Canadian lifestyle quite well.

Boris

We had a nephew's day which involved McD's, Laser Quest and a movie. The boys are growing up and we certainly won't looking at them as boys any more they are really young men now.

Men still play Laser Quest

Since Phillip had never been on a big airplane, he's been on lots of little ones we took a 1 week trip to Florida. So to summarise the trip we,

Ready to take off

Did a surfing simulation the first day, Uncle Paul hit his head within the first 2 minutes felt like he had a concussion for the rest of the trip.

Phillip on the boogie board

 Went shopping and went to the M&M's store.

M & M Race car

Went to the Walt Disney Magic Kingdom ... "there was blood on the saddle"

Main Street USA

Drove to Daytona beach were we saw the Daytona 500 track

Daytona 500 store

And the beach the water was freezing cold.

Daytona beach

Discovered that TD is taking over America.

No I did not make a withdrawal

Went to Universal Studios, not Uncle Paul's favourite.

Universal studios Florida

Surfer Dude

Met Scooby Doo

Scooby and Shaggy

Rode a Seqway, well Phillip and L did.

Segway

Played monster mini putt.

This is what I call mini putt

And survived the driving, the heat, the line ups, the roller-coasters (well Paul didn't), 3 trips to Golden Corral buffet and still managed to catch the plane home to Toronto.

All aboard

 From this point on the vacation was finishing up really quickly.

We came back to San Jose for 4 days to celebrate L's sisters birthday.

Happy Birthday Ma Hoang

Went to Laser Quest with a side trip to the Google campus to pose with a bunch of fibre glass food.

It's gonna take a big cup of tea to eat this guy.

This is an ice cream sandwich.

The scores were much better this time but Uncle Hien came 2nd of all players

4 days was over before you know before we had to get on the plane for the 15 hours of torture back to Sydney (cough upgrade your plans United).

Back on the United flight to Australia

In Sydney the weather was still cold and we had to wait outside to transfer between International and Domestic.

Sydney Transfer

Another 4 hours back to Darwin only to arrive to beautiful hot Top End weather.

No hoodies required in Darwin

Yep that's 3 duffel bags of luggage. Not suit cases but bags. The reason is that a suit case weighs 10lbs and that's 10lbs of clothes we couldn't bring back.

The haul