Blair's Blog

Another Christmas season has arrived – each year it seems to sneak up a little more quickly than the last! We would like to wish each of you the best this Christmas season and hope that 2012 is a great year for you and your families. This year we returned to a more traditional Christmas – no trip to Mexico or other tropical destination for us. However, the +9 °C temperature on Christmas Day and the extremely mild weather during the last few weeks has been very nice.

2011 was another full-on adventure of a year with more job changes, visitors from overseas, family gatherings and the “regular” routines of school and home. The kids are growing as always and Steven is now taller than Brenda and will soon best me as well. He is 14 now and talking of getting his learner’s license after the winter.  Steven’s interests run strongly towards computers and, apart from the games, he is beginning to understand how to troubleshoot problems like when his PC video card failed a month or so ago. Steven worked his first paying job over the summer as the gift shop and admissions clerk at the Aero Space Museum for one day each week during his summer vacation. He now has some real savings and a bank account and debit card of his own. It was a good experience for him and taught him a few things about dealing with the public.
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Busy weekend at our house catching up on chores and getting the yard cleanup all done while the weather was nice. We just had a late dinner, nachos – a Sunday night favourite.
While the kids are getting ready for bed, Brenda and I are enjoying a coffee – I just brewed cup number 1000 from the fancy pants machine.

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Alyssa finally ditched the training wheels on her little yellow bike. I said I’d buy her a slushie if she could ride to the end of the cul-de-sac without putting a foot down. She did it with no problems. So we’re off to the corner store for slushies to celebrate.

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That’s Lethbridge, Alberta.

… but you knew that, didn’t you?

It’s been airshow week in southern Alberta, the Airdrie Airshow was on the 16/17 July weekend and the Lethbridge Airshow was on the 23/24 July weekend.  We managed to get to both and, in between the two, had a chance for a private viewing of the Hawk One Sabre with one of the demo pilots.  We didn’t really attend the Airdrie show, but the AeroSpace Museum had a booth selling merchandise and they ran out of ball caps on the Saturday.  Brenda and I were heading out for a motorbike ride about the same time,  so we grabbed a couple of back packs, picked up 50 caps at the museum and delivered them to the Airdrie airport.  We timed things so that we got there in time to see the Snowbirds.  Since it was late in the day, we were on motorbikes and we were making a delivery to a vendor we got to park right at the entrance and of course we didn’t pay to enter.

On Thursday, Brenda had arranged with the Hawk One Sabre pilot, who is a friend of the Museum, for a viewing of the Sabre for any museum volunteers.  I took the kids and we all had a chance to sit in the Sabre and chat with the pilot, Dan Dempsey.  It was pretty neat to be able to see it up close, one of about 10 remaining flying Sabres in the world (out of nearly 10,000 that were built!)

So, what about LA?  Brenda managed to get us VIP passes to the Lethbridge Airshow for Sunday from one of her contacts at the Air Force Museum of Alberta . So we loaded up the van and headed out on a cloudless, calm morning and got to the Lethbridge airfield about noon, just at the show got underway. I gotta say, being a VIP is the way to go!  Preferred parking (steps away from the flightline), preferred seating (with real chairs, tables and umbrellas) at show center, lunch included and reasonably priced drinks ($1 pop, free water) and  it was hosted by the Snowbirds so we got to chat to the guys in the red pyjamas :-).  The day was flawless – sunny, clear and just the lightest of breezes.  The flying demo’s were great – some teams I’d never seen before.  One of the highlights was the A-10, it is amazingly maneuverable.

After the airshow we headed out on a little drive south of Lethbridge.  Brenda has been doing research for the museum on the story of an Alberta-born Lancaster mid-upper gunner who was killed just weeks before the end of WWII as part of an exhibit on “a day in the life” of a Lancaster crew.  For some background, Brenda wanted to see the farm where this fellow was raised near the town of Raymond.  It ended up being a bit of an adventure finding the place and traipsing overland to the old, tumble-down farm buildings.  But it was a beautiful evening for it and well worth experiencing the quiet isolation of a prairie farm on a fine summer evening.

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