The Taelemans´ Blog

Yesterday I had to do my road test. I have been stressing about that for more than a month.
But I passed the test. I was very lucky since my instructor was feeling sick during the ride. No, not because of my driving skills, but apparently she was taking some vitamins, and after a 25 minute drive, she was starting to feel pretty sick, so she said she could see that I knew how to drive and she told me to go back to the drivers center. I didn’t have to do any maneuvers so it was pretty simple to pass. I felt sorry for her, but it was good for me, no complaining here:).

Today, it was Kris his turn. He had a pretty difficult test compared to mine, but he also passed. So tonight we are going out for dinner to celebrate our victory. We now are, the proud owners of a BC drivers license, YEAAAH!

I mentioned before that we were heading towards the snow this weekend, and well it’s almost time to pack our bags and leave!

We are invited to go up to Whistler with a few people this weekend, and since it’s the opening of Whistler, it means that we are going snowboarding! Finally, something I really look forward to.

I leave tomorrow evening with the girls and we will have our first day of skiing and snowboarding on Friday. Friday evening after work Kris will join us, together with the boys for another snowboarding day on Saturday.

I’m really looking forward to it especially since it has been a while since we used our boards.

Of course we will take a lot of pictures which we will post on the blog next week. Special thanks to Jill and Bob for making everything possible this weekend:)

On Sunday we are going to the premiere of Saving Luna, a movie documentary about a killer whale who lived near Vancouver Island for a while.

Everybody, have a nice weekend! There probably won’t be any posts in the next couple of days, we’ll be back on Monday!

We’ve went to Sammy Peppers for dinner, and it was our first time exploring the restaurant. I have to say it was a pleasant surprise. Well, actually first it wasn’t then it was:).

I ordered shrimp en lobster penne and Kris ordered a pizza. Nothing special about that. But after a while our waitress came over to tell us that my pasta was ready but the pizza was a bit to crispy, so they would bring my pasta, but Kris would have to wait a little while longer for his dish. She offered him a salad and apologized a dozen times. We didn’t really mind, the food was good, and I was the most hungry person among the two of us, so no problem, I had my food (little selfish me:)).

Five to ten minutes later she brought us the pizza and she refilled our drinks. All of a sudden the waitress was there again and she told us we didn’t have to pay the bill, it was taken care of by the manager. We were totally stunned, and told her we didn’t mind the fact that the pizza was a little bit late and that we would pay the bill. But she insisted, the pizza was late, and if you come to dinner together you should be able to eat your food at the same time.

So, not only was the food great, the service was awesome and they definitely receive a thumbs up!

The picture below, has nothing to do with the story, but it’s a nice picture, taken by Kris from the terrace of our apartment a bit earlier this week.

Port Moody Panorama

Hope you guys all enjoyed your snowy weekend, ours is coming up next week. More about that later.

There are two things that I really love:
1. Getting mail (besides bills, and mortgage advertisements) (no I’m not writing this to give hints, just want to thank somebody).
2. Advent Calendars

I try to buy myself an Advent calendar every year. Until now, I pretty much succeed in my mission. I don’t buy it for the calendar, but I love the chocolate inside:).
Of course now, it’s a special year, so I wasn’t sure if I would succeed this year, and actually until today, I haven’t thought about getting myself one.

Like I said, until now. I went to the mailbox this afternoon and I found myself pretty pleased to see a big envelop down there. There was no sender on it, but I saw it came from Belgium. Oohh who was the nice person who thought of us?

Well Helena, thanks for sending us the calendar, as you can see it has been welcomed not only by Kris and me…:)

Thanks a lot, now I can proceed my ritual.
Have a nice weekend!

Well as promised, a picture of the EAC All Star Awards. Sorry no pictures of the high heels:) I’ve decided I’m probably going to wear them again, so maybe if you’re lucky, some time in the future,…

Thanks to the photographer at the EA event:).

Nothing really important to mention, but didn’t want to disappoint you guys, so here’s a small post.

We didn’t do any interesting things this week, because, Kris of course needs to work and I’m still busy with the Christmas event we are planning.

Ooh and this weekend a new BC liquor store opened just around the corner, so I thought: lets see what they’ve got, and I’ve found Duvel, Chimay Red, Chimay Blue, Wittekerke and Mort Subite. Really strange they are selling Wittekerke, but nice they have the other beers, now Kris can enjoy his beer once in while.

I don’t like the colored lights in the tree, but well, it will have to do. I’m getting some nice ornaments from my parents when they come over, so I’ll have to wait a little while longer to finish my tree.
And yes, we know the glass isn’t cooled, and we don’t have Duvel glasses over here, but if someone would have the urge to provide us with one, don’t hold back.

Ooh and for our moms: Today is a memorable day, I’ve bought a flatiron So you’ll actually be able to iron your clothes (and ours) when you come to visit. Isn’t that sweet?

It has been a while since my last post, but I have been very busy lately. Believe it or not, that is possible:). I’ve been working together with the Klahanie comity to organize a Christmas/Holiday event in our community. So we have been searching for some financial funds and of course we’ve been brainstorming to find a nice idea for the event.

But what’s more important, we’ve been to the EAC All Star Awards yesterday evening. That was the red carpet event we had to attend. It was an event organized by EA Canada and the basic idea was to celebrate the release of numerous products and to thank the employees for their hard work and dedication. The event started with a reception and some appetizers (which were really really nice, small served thingies like: Lobster bisque, vol-au-vent, goat cheese, prawns, sashimi tuna,…). After the reception there was of course the award ceremony. Really nicely done. There were several guest performers and one of them was actually pretty awesome. He had to announce the finalist for game of the year and he did that, by making a painting in less than 5 minutes. You probably (well actually, you definitely) should have been there to know why I’m saying that he was great, but to make a painting of a hockey player in less than 5 minutes, that was really awesome. So you’d probably guessed: NHL 09 was game of the year.

After the award ceremony we got an amazing dessert buffet: A fountain of hot chocolate and you could dip all kinds of fruit, marshmallows and other stuff in it.
It was really cool to attend, and I’ve met some of Kris’ colleagues which was also cool.

For those wondering: the cocktail dress was a success. And Tanja, I survived the high heels:). Actually the shoes where the best ones I’ve ever bought (well at least the best ones from my collection of fancy shoes, which is of course pretty limited).

We have some pictures, but we’ll have to wait until next week to post them.

Tonight we went to the Banana Leaf for dinner. It’s a Malaysian cuisine and I have to say, it was one of the best restaurants I’ve been to since we are in Vancouver. I can advise it to everyone!
When we were having our dinner we also saw the Toronto Maple leafs (Canadian hockey team) coming out their limousine. So we saw some Canadian celebrities.They had to play against the Canucks tonight, and of course the Canucks won:)

Oh and I’ve bought some hot chocolate mix with marshmallow topping for our cosy evenings at our fireplace:).

That was it for today, tomorrow we are probably going to do a hiking trail, not sure yet when or where, we’ll see. Have a nice day.

Some Las Vegas pictures from our US/Canada trip in June 2008. I have a new pc and somehow the colors of the pictures seem totally different once I upload them to flickr, I have no idea how they look on another system. I really need a spider to calibrate my monitor… If the picture of The Mirage (the one with the palm tree) looks washed out/Too colorful, please let me know

Early this morning we were heading for the US border. We decided to go to Mount Baker. We were told it was pretty nice up there and the weather forecast was good so the decision was made pretty fast.

The road trip went very smooth until we came to the us border.

Because we entered the US from Canada (not being Canadian Citizens), we had to fill in a few papers. They needed to get our fingerprints and portrait picture. We received our visa for 3 months and we can go to the US as much as we want in the next three months. So no more going inside to customs when we go to Seattle for example. That is pretty convenient.

From the US border to Read the rest of this entry »

Our Saturday mission: Find clothes for the red carpet event. We succeeded and as a reward we went to the Vancouver Aquarium. But first things first.

So we went to Metrotown on Saturday and we both didn’t know what to get (but you already knew that). Surprise, Surprise, Kris talked me in to buying a cocktail dress. So I’ve bought a black cocktail dress. Perfect match with my new shoes.

Kris decided to wear a black suit, and he bought himself a nice looking shirt, tie and belt.

Pictures will follow on Friday (because then we have to go to the event).

So after too many hours of shopping we decided we’d reward ourselves with a visit to the Vancouver Aquarium.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today was the final day that Canadian residents could request tickets for the Olympics.

If you request tickets you are still not sure whether you’ll have them or not. If there are enough tickets for one discipline then everybody who requested some will get them. If not, there will be a lottery.

I have no idea how it works to order tickets if you were not able to get your request, so I’m actually hoping that we receive all our requested tickets…
The ones we requested are:
Opening ceremony in BC place
Men’s snowboard, half pipe qualification and Final

Today, Kris decided that we will probably have some regrets if we didn’t order some more disciplines so we requested 2 more:
Ladies’ snowboard half pipe qualification and Final
Men’s Ski jumping final, High Hill

We will try to go to the world cup bob sleighing in Whistler, but we are not going to watch it at the Olympics. Unless if some of our requests were denied, we probably try for the bob sleigh.

Let’s cross our fingers that all our requests are accepted…

Have a nice weekend everybody. I’m going to buy a Christmas tree (Yes in Canada everybody is already searching for the perfect tree). So that’s actually good for me, now I have a reason to buy one much earlier than I normally do in Belgium:)