Oh, this? This is my falcon.

We took Hughston and Shelton and her new friends to the little park with the fountain that kids can play in. They also had these little cones there that would hover and fly like pixies. Who knew there was so much magic in Canada?



It's really amazing to see Shelton have so much fun.


Hughston had a great time too.


Sometimes he tires of the paparazzi hassling him in public.


I think Angelina Jolie handles the press the exact same way.

Later in the day, there was a guy in the park with his pet peregrine falcon.

Shelton, as usual, had a multitude of questions for the guy with the falcon, including, "What would happen if you hit the falcon?*" This seems like a strange question to ask, unless you stop to consider the fact that this man is walking his pet falcon in a Vancouver park.


*The answer is, of course, "We try not to hit the falcon."

Just some pictures.

Stanley Park, Lost Lagoon area.



This one is arty, right? I squatted to take this picture. Hacks just point and click, artists WORK to fulfill their vision.

This could be on a postcard or on the top of a cake or in a blog.

But we would eat Kraft dinners, we'd just eat more.

So, Shelton's two new friends were in our condo around dinnertime, so I decided to feed them. My question seemed simple enough, "Do you girls like macaroni and cheese?"

Their response, "What's macaroni and cheese?"

I stood there for a second, with no idea how to respond to this question. First of all, what sort of country is this that 6 and 8 year old girls don't know what macaroni and cheese is? Secondly, how do you answer a question that already includes the answer as part of the question? It's cheese and macaroni, but not necessarily in that order, except the macaroni and cheese that I'm referring to doesn't exactly have cheese in it.

Our kids eat macaroni and cheese at least twice a week. Food purists would tell you that macaroni and cheese is a SIDE and not a MAIN COURSE. These people are probably elitists and possibly even tenured university professors and can therefore be dismissed as fey and as having more education than sense.

When I was younger, my mom would go out of town occasionally, leaving me to the mercy of my father's gastronomic atrocities. He put ham cubes in the macaroni and cheese.

What's goin on?

Yesterday was a beautiful day. So, naturally, Jen and I took the kids to a Gay Pride festival.

That's not exactly how it happened. We went to a park, and the playground was sectioned off from the festive festival by a huge rainbow flag.


Apparently, this event is a pretty big deal. It had some very well-known sponsors, including one of the casinos in Vancouver. AND HSBC, which really shouldn't matter but has had the effect of making me much more nervous while I'm hanging out in the den with the blinds open. In my head, I know that the HSBC building knows I'm straight and wouldn't like, you know, LEER at me, but I've started wearing long pants during the day.

These were the hosts of the festival. It's important to go to this type of stuff to shatter the stereotypes that you build up in your head about groups of people. For example, I had always just assumed that gay guys had impeccable senses of style. But it turns out that they will show up at an important, well-sponsored festival that they are hosting in a floor length denim skirt.




The entertainment at the festival consisted almost entirely of people of one gender dressing up as the other gender and lip-synching to music. This was horribly offensive to me, not because I have a huge problem with people in drag, but because I have a huge problem being asked to applaud for people who have no discernible talent.

These are girls dressed up as guys. Notice the short hair and thin beards and mustaches. MANLY! They didn't even dance or lip-synch. They mostly just strutted around and pushed each other, which is actually pretty much spot-on for how guys act, except we like to have snacks.


Shelton and Hughston didn't notice what was going on on the other side of the colorful flag. Shelton likes the monkey bars.


I tried to write a little caption for this picture, but given the subject of the majority of this post, I couldn't bring myself to type one. I'm open to suggestions.

It's dark.

It gets dark in Vancouver at about 10:30pm. I'm not sure when it gets light, but I do know that it's light at 5:15 in the morning, because that's when Hughston climbs in bed with Jen and me and decides to practice his stage whisper. "DADDY," he whispers deafeningly, "ARE YOU ASLEEP?"

This is the view from out balcony at night. You know when you go on vacation with your friends and you set up this picture of everyone and it's perfect and everyone is smiling and then you look at the picture later and some goof has snuck into the picture and it just ruins the entire thing and your memory of this perfect moment is forever spoiled because the image of that idiot in the picture is permanently seared into your brain?

Yeah. That's the HSBC building in the lower left hand corner of the picture.

I call the balcony the "porch" most of the time. This is because I can never escape the fact that I was born in Montgomery, Alabama.

Jen took the kids to Granville Island today. Shelton picked up two friends in the park yesterday. If it weren't for her, we would probably never meet anyone anymore. Shelton is named after one of my grandmothers. This turned out to be appropriate because both of them have no problem holding hour long conversations with complete strangers.


That's Shelton with her two new friends. All three of them are bitter now because they only got to spend 13 hours with each other today and weren't allowed to have a sleepover. Did I mention that they met yesterday?

Hughston got an ice cream cone, too. He shouted Jennifer down when she asked for a bite, but he had no problem at all feeding half of it to the pigeons. Kids are jerks.

Interesting Vancouver facts: The letter "Z" is pronounced "Zed." "Soccer" is pronounced "football." "Football" is pronounced "American football." "A bunch of grown men in ridiculous uniforms that would get destroyed by an average 4A high school in Georgia" is pronounced "Canadian football."

I would like to get credit for not stooping to making the obvious "Zed Zed Top" joke.

In Canada, milk comes in bags.

So, Monday comes around and the business of living in Vancouver, rather than vacationing in Vancouver, starts up. While I was working in my tiny office with the great view, Jen took the kids to the Stanley Park aquarium. Since I wasn't there and only have pictures and Jen is off shopping for long sleeved shirts and milk, I'm going to make up what happened.


This is a bird. No one knows the name of it, but it's an interesting bird. You know how flamingos get their pink color from eating shellfish? This mystery bird's diet consists entirely of Twizzlers. In Canada, Twizzlers are called "Nibs" and they are far tastier than their American counterpart. I know, I had trouble believing that, too, because Twizzlers are awesome.


This seal has been indicted by a grand jury for removing people's feet and dragging them to shore all over Vancouver. Neighboring seals have described him as "quiet" and "standoffish."



At the Vancouver Aquarium, they take you to the bottom of the ocean in one of those little clear plastic helmets that the squirrel on Spongebob wears. They were running low because of the upcoming Olympics, so Shelton and Hughston had to share.

Shelton, Jen and Hughston also played on the playground and ate a picnic lunch in Stanley Park, but since I wasn't there and there aren't any pictures, let's just say that they met David Duchovny and Shelton learned to do a backflip off the swings.

After dinner, we decided to go for a walk down to the water. The weather has been amazing - about 68 to 70 degree during the day. I'm not good at converting to Centigrade, but I believe that's about Q%^ degrees. It cools off in the late afternoon, but, well, just look.


Shelton got right into this fountain. I had to adjust the colors in this picture to change her lips from blue to pink. I may be a bad parent who allows his kid to play in freezing cold water in a chilly Canadian city, but I'm good at Photoshop.





Hughston never quite made it into the water, but he was more than happy to strip to the waist in public. Throughout the video, you can see various Canadians walking around in semi-heavy coats.

I'll put this together for you, because I'm a fine narrator. My children are from Atlanta, where it is 98 degrees (that's 3.14159 degrees Centigrade I think) in June, and they are playing in a fountain. Canadians, who, according to legend, live in igloos with polar bears, are bundled up and huddling together for warmth.

Also, 98 Degrees is a pop band. They're from Los Angeles.

Interesting fact about Vancouver: The City of Vancouver was one of the first cities to declare that it is a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone in 1983. So, unlike the kids in Atlanta romping about in the summer months, Shelton and Hughston will not be happening upon nuclear weapons, possibly hurting themselves and millions of others. Jealous?

Lord Stanley Park

Stanley Park in Vancouver is the largest Canadian park in the world, according to information I just made up and typed on the internet. It's really really really big and green and awesome. Jen and I took the kids there this afternoon and they loved it.


The entrance to Stanley Park has amazing views of the city. The sun is in our eyes, which is why Shelton looks like she needs a quick visit from an epi-pen.




Shelton learned a new trick and became friends with every kid in the park, including the two children you can see at the end of this video. This video was taken prior to Shelton, trying to help the little boy ride this zip line thing, almost sent him to the hospital. This all conforms to the old saying "Dutch children should not ride zip lines." It's more of a prophecy, really.


Jen found a flower as big as Shelton's head.



These pictures were taken in such a manner that you can't tell that we're up on top of this huge tree that had fallen in the park. I used the passive voice here instead of saying "Jen took this picture in such a manner that you can't tell etc." I used the passive voice because I'm a good husband.

Instead of hauling the tree off, they trimmed it and left it there for people to climb and take pictures on. More Canadian ingenuity. Yay Stanley Park!

Welcome to Vancouver, watch where you step.

Feet have been washing up on the shores in and around Vancouver. Yes, feet. I'm posting this because my grandmother always worries about me when something happens in the city I'm in, so I want to assure everyone that there are eight feet of differing sizes fully accounted for here.

But still, feet. Click here to read more weirdness than you thought you'd probably read today.

Jen's Birthday!

Hughston awoke at 5:30am on June 21, 2008. He was about as welcome as Japanese bombers in Pearl Harbor. Is it too soon to make jokes about Pearl Harbor? If so, pretend I wrote "He was about as welcome as something that is totally unwelcome." Everyone still cool? Good.

It being Jennifer's birthday, I was duty-bound to wake up with the kids and let Jen sleep in. Disadvantage - I was tired. Advantage - I got to see what was left of the sunrise. Here is a picture.



The kids ate breakfast in the breakfast nook. It was our traditional vacation breakfast of the variety pack of cereals. Fruit Loops was very popular.


After Jen (finally) woke up, we managed to walk down to the seawall. Shelton and Hughston ran around like they had spent 13 hours cooped up in planes, cars and airports the previous day. Some people don't appreciate the glamor of international travel.


Down on the water, they have these seaplanes that do little tours of the city from the sky. We didn't do that, but we decided to get a coolness rub from the plane by taking this picture. Also, you'll notice I'm not in any pictures. Way to notice, noticer. Also, sometimes I talk about pictures before the picture and sometimes after the picture. I like to keep the readers on their toes. Are there any readers? I know Jennifer is a big fan.

We had a nanny come over starting at 2:00pm so that Jen and I could celebrate her birthday without the two tiny distractions. I call her a nanny because she was WAY too expensive to be a babysitter, and calling her a nanny brings this Mary Poppins thing to mind and who could possibly complain about Mary Poppins' price per hour? Anyway, she was from Australia and seemed not to mind that Shelton can talk for nine hours without pausing. The kids really liked her.

Jen and I decided to go to a concert in Stanley Park. The headliner was Stars, a Montreal Band. They have quality posters, as seen below.

The opening act was NAME REDACTED (the act's name isn't NAME REDACTED, but Jen made me take his name out for reasons I still don't understand, but I think Jen believes that he reads this blog). While he certainly made a fine effort to entertain by dancing around and talking about how happy he was to be there, well, his music is simply horrible. He rhymes "TKO" with "Broken Nose" and "Tokyo." Also, he has a song that's about being a HOMO SAPIEN, with flesh and feelings and not a robot with steel and transistors. Then he says that he has a golden heart, which completely kills the whole analogy. Anyway, if you were there, you'd know how terrible he was. He also kept calling the headliners "The Stars," leading pedantic music snobs to grumble that DUDE IT'S JUST "STARS."

I didn't grumble loud.

Stars were incredible. Just simply amazing. Their songs really lend themselves to live performance. So, here's a brief video of them performing a part of "Set Yourself on Fire."



You can see some flowers in the background. During the show, the band would grab flowers and throw them into the audience. Jen loved this, and loved it even more when I caught the last one the lead singer threw and gave it to her. You know, for her birthday.

The Porto-Potties at the concert were cleaner than our bathroom in Roswell and smelled like a sunny pine forest. Only in Canada could this even be conceivable.

Jen said it was her best birthday ever. Played with the kids in the morning, heard an awesome band at night. Who am I to argue?

The Longest Day, pt II - Time Change Boogaloo

So, I know I just invited a bunch of people, so I should just tell everyone that you should START FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE. Seriously, if you just start reading from this post, it will be all out of order. I'm not being bossy, but this will mess up the story for everyone except my mother, who reads the newspaper from the last page of a section forward, which has never made sense to me. Ever. It's the weirdest thing she does and is much, much weirder than my weirdest thing, which is not letting different foods touch each other on my plate. Which, honestly, is the ONLY way to do things. Dad says that it all gets mixed together in your stomach anyway but I don't have tastebuds there.

This is beside the point. We're in Vancouver. After leaving the house at 7am, a long wait at the Atlanta airport because we were absurdly early, a four hour flight to Salt Lake City, a short layover and a two hour flight to Vancouver, and a SUV ride to the condo, we arrived at the condo, a scant 13 hours later.

On the flight to Salt Lake City, I had my Miss Misery moment twice. Once with Hughston, who had a Buzz Lightyear action figure, two matchbox cars (Lightning McQueen and one he calls Dynaco) and a large plush Diego all in his little fat hands. He kept dropping them, which led to a wail of horror from him, which led to me going hunting for them in the space between our seats in economy on Delta, which is like the space between two of the huge 20 ton stones in the pyramids, which according to everything I've ever read, is a marvel because you can't get a playing card between them. Anyway, economy class doesn't have much legroom, seriously. All of this dropping led to me issuing the following edict to Hughston - "YOU CAN HAVE ONE TOY. ONE!" This edict was issued in the vocal equivalent to all caps, complete with me holding up one finger. ONE! Hughston also enjoyed kicking the chair of the person in front of him. I don't think the man in front of Hughston enjoyed his nap because of this. Sorry, man in front of Hughston.

My second moment was with Shelton, who, every 45 seconds, would slam closed her tray table to dig something else out of her backpack, which required my assistance, which required my shutting my book and putting up my tray table. After an hour of this, I issued my second edict, which was "ANGEL (I called her angel with my words, buy not with my tone), I WILL GET YOU ONE MORE THING, BUT YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO GET ANYTHING ELSE FOR 30 MINUTES."

Sometimes, being a parent means setting arbitrary time frames. Being logical sometimes goes out the window when you're 6"5" and crammed into the space of a phonebooth with two children, aged 7 and 3.

Did I mention that Jennifer sat across the aisle and was no help? To be honest, she offered to switch places with me, but I preferred the martyrdom. Besides, on the second flight I sat with Hughston who slept preciously, and Jen sat with Shelton 10 rows back. Shelton steadfastly refused to watch a movie, instead preferring to talk the entire time. Jen seemed to enjoy this.

I read a biography of Keith Moon. I seemed to enjoy this.

Anyway, we like our condo.


This is the master bedroom.



This is the den/family room/common area. The HSBC building is our constant companion, and, come Monday, the people at work will be able to see us hanging out on the balconies. Naked Tuesdays, a family tradition in Roswell, will have to be adjusted.



We have some really nice views. This is actually the view from Shelton's room. It stays light here until...well, I don't know exactly. We went to bed at about 10pm, and it was still light outside. It was also light when Hughston woke me up at 5:30am. Maybe it's always light here. I have no proof otherwise.

NEXT POST: Jen turns 36 and it's our first full day in Vancouver, so of course we turn our kids over to a complete stranger!

Summer Solstice - THE LONGEST DAY OF THE YEAR

Our flight to Salt Lake City (first leg) left the Atlanta airport at 10:55am, so we had a car service scheduled to come pick us up at 7:00am because I am OCD about being early to the airport.

Jen and I awoke at 5:30. That's AM. We had packed the previous night, ensuring that each of the five bags that we were checking weighed just under 50 pounds, lest the airlines take one of our precious offspring in return for overweight baggage. If you're keeping score at home, and I assume you are, we have 5 bags to be checked, two car seats, my computer bag, Jen's carry-on, Jen's purse, and Shelton's backpack. All in all, well over 250 pounds of stuff that we are schlepping almost 3000 miles. I don't know what that is in kilometers, but I guess I should found out because, you know, METRIC SYSTEM!

I wish I had taken a picture of all the stuff we had.

The alarm went off at 5:30am. Jen informed me that she had been up until 2:30am paying bills and watching TV and piddling around. June 20, 2008, the day I take two kids, nearly everything we own, and a sleep deprived zombie to a semi-foreign country.

June 21st is Jen's birthday. By traveling to Vancouver, she gets an extra 3 hours to be 35!

It was at the airport that I finally decided to start taking pictures. That way, my wordiness can be broken up every now and then with some images, which will also give me something else to talk about. Anyway, AIRPORT!


The Boo wanted to wear his new Buzz Lightyear and Woody shirt for the third straight day, but the Atlanta airpost is very clear when it comes to traveling with hazardous materials. So, we negotiated him down to his Superman pajama top. We got about 100 "Hi, Superman!" comments. Hughston has taken to responding with "I'm Superman. I come in peace."

This is sometimes true and sometimes not.



This picture is taken approximately 8 seconds later, when I was informed that there would be no more pictures. This picture is taken about 1 second before Superman's peaceful intentions are cast to the wind, his fury sparked by the flash of the camera, defying his ban on photography. That isn't common red-eye from the flash, it's Superboo charging his heat vision.


Shelton actually does come in peace. Her only demands are pizza and M&Ms.

Next post: We get there!

The day before the move

The day before we left for Vancouver, Hughston (the "Boo" part of SwedishandBoo) decided he wanted to ride his train in the great room at the Roswell house. Jennifer set it up for him, and he rode it for a long time. Shelton (the "Swedish" part) wanted a turn. Well, our boy did not think it was particularly necessary for him to share his riding train with anyone, but Jennifer managed to cajole him off by saying "We need to share, just like Clifford."

Obviously, it's important to garner life lessons from red dogs the size of a high-school football stadium.

Hughston finally relented and gave up his seat on the train. Seeing his sister enjoy his toy, however, was too much. So, he decided to sacrifice himself rather than allow this travesty.


This may not be readily apparent from the picture, but to the right is Hughston, wrapped up in his trusty Diego blanket, laying on the train tracks, Perils of Pauline style, ready to lay down his very life to prevent Shelton from having a two-minute ride on his train. The look on Shelton's face shows that he has succeeding in thwarting her ability to steal any of his fun.