A New Chapter...

Well, we've done it.  We've moved back to Canada.  Sherrie's got a good job as an It director for a school board in northern Alberta and after a long summer holiday we're moving to Peace River.  We're flying in nine days!  So much to do, so much to do... we still haven't finalized movers, let alone packed.  

It's been a great summer at the cottage.  The girls had many adventures.  A high point for me was finally getting to the Shelter Valley Folk Festival, the baby from birth to maturity of a good friend of mine, Aengus.  

So now that our Ghana adventure has come to a close we're off on another.  I thought Ghana was the polar opposite of Hong Kong, and now it seems like we've found another polar opposite to Ghana!

This is teh kids with Dan and Kim's kids, Sully and Sierra, and Bradley's daughter Kori.  

28 May 2007

This Sunday Amy and I made a picture on the driveway with our sidewalk chalk. It was as much Amy as it was me making it, as at first I didnt want to colour the shapes in, but she insisted that it wouldn't take too long. She was right, and the result was this masterpiece. Bummer is that it rained that afternoon and so our beautiful art was washed away. Oh well...

Hi again

May 18 2007

Wow I'm not good at updating this thing often enough. By the time I get here, there's too much that has happened and I don't remember half of it to report it to you! I'll just put in a bunch of photos again:


Erin with our new bunny, Scruffy. He's a good rabbit. He likes apples and lettuce and spagetti
Sadie in a makeshift car - she loves getting pulled around in it. She's walking well now and has 5 (I think) teeth
The girls in Togo, outside of a supermarket. We were picking up some things after swimming at the club pool. Hence the wet hair.



Some village boys at the beach where I (ahem) surf. That's my board, no, not the plank - the white one. The plank is what many of them use for bodyboarding with. I let one of the older ones try my board.


Usif helping Sadie on the tricycle. He's so good with her - She just loves him too.
That's Amy waving at the camera, I'm sure much to the chagrin of her teacher, who is trying to read them a story. Sorry.

Hello again

Hi there! lots and lots has happened (of course) since my last installment.
Rather than type too much, I'll try and show you with that miracle of photography:
These are various photos from the Christmas Holidays. We stayed in Ghana and my mom and Sherrie's brother Paul came over to spend the holidays with us. We rented an SUV and took it north to Mole (Mow-Lay) National park to see the elephants, and then we went to our favourite beach, Anomabo, for a few days. All in all it was a lovely holiday. Sadly, our little puppy, Zi Zi, died on the first day of the holidays. She had been ill for months. We think she may have eaten some poison.
Oh yeah... did I mention that our own car broke down like four times on that trip to Anomabo? Good thing we rented when we went up north.
As you can see, Sadie's getting bigger. She's such a happy little thing - always smiling. It's nice.
Want some more? Have a look:


The pictures below and left are from Champs, a pub we go to from time to time. Thursday quiz night is a riot.






















Sherrie' s brother Paul.










Here's Erin's Christmas concert performance

The Kos Blog

The Kos Blog
Hi again
We're back from the summer and hopefully I'll devote more effort to making this blog thing work. The weather's unseasonably cool and dry; so much so, in fact, that they've called for a series of blackouts to happen regularly to make up for the low water levels at the hydro electric dams in Volta. sigh.
Oh yeah - the baby
Sadie was born on April 17th 2006. she was almost six pounds, and scored a 10/10 on that test they do at birth. Sherrie gave birth with no complications (she laughs when I tell her how easy it was) and our family of five is now doing quite well. Sadie seems to be enjoying her stay in Africa.
Family of six! We got a new puppy - her name's ZiZi (the name came from a book of Amy's and the fact that the dog's mom is named ZaZa) she's half lab half sheppard, but looks like a lab. very cool.

Our Friends

This segment is dedicated to some of the wonderful people we know here.

They're in no particular order, and the list is far from complete. We have done so much with so many wonderful people, but I'm struggling with very few photos at this point. (my camera was stolen a few months ago)

Angela and Mike Murray and their son, Mason:

Fellow Canadians, from Saskatchewan, lived in Switzerland and Pakistan too. We spent much time with them in our first months in Ghana, as we all had so much in common (except Euchre!) The girls absolutely adore Mason. I regret that I dont have a single shot of their family - sorry.
Gillian and Kwadwo and Amy:

That's Gillian on the right and Amy on the left. Gillian teaches drama in the middle school, Amy in the primary school, and Kwadwo (pronounced Kwayjo) is a full time painter and Gillian's man. They're our close neighbours too. Amy's handsome husband is Kujo, seen below, and the little baby's name is Selly, he's their son. So cute!



























Amber and Johnny:
These two met during the first week at school and haven't looked back. They're moving in together and are often found talking about the future. Amy and Erin love it when Amber pops in.

Chrissy and Ebby:
moved to Australia now, but what fun folks! We'll never forget you guys!

Matt and Micheline and Malisse:
Great friends, super helpful while we were getting settled. They were our mentors! Malisse is Amy's contemporary, and they do swimming lessons together. Thanks for lending us your car over the Christmas holidays! (that's Amber standing with Micheline) Once again, I don't have many photos in my computer right now (camera got snatched) so I'm doing the best I can here.

The Paulsons:
Rieber, Annie Hall-Paulson and their cute boy, Casey

Rob:
junior, opie, you know... Yet another Canadian teacher.

Bird flu is in Nigeria, probably here too. Sherrie and the girls will be leaving on March 12 for Canada. I have very mixed feelings about that. I'm glad that they're going somewhere safer (we have chickens walking around on the street here, and our girls get really dirty on the ground when they're playing in the yard) but I'm going to miss them tremendously. It's tricky. The same thing happened when Sherrie was leaving HK to have Erin, but with SARS. Funny how things repeat like that.
We're going to be buying a car soon, but I'm waiting to hear from some staff who are leaving - that's the best deal in my opinion.
What we do for fun:
On weekends, we often go to a pool at one of the hotels. Many Obronis (whiteys) do that here. Some of our favourites are the Golden Tulip and La Palm Royale. Here's a photo:


We've been to a very nice beach resort called Anomabo as well.
The beach is pretty good, and the food is very good.
The rooms are nice, air conditioned, and simple. When you're there you can just chill on the beach or sit in the restaurant,
or go up the coast to the castles or jungle walk, etc. Here are some more photos:



Isn't the one of Erin a blast? she actually fell asleep while sitting at the table eating dinner!

February 24 2006
Hi there.

First of all, this is a clean simple blog. No porn, no politics, no religion, no extreme views. Just a way for me to communicate about us to the folks at home. If you're looking for any of the above things, you can go away now.
If you're a friend of our family, please feel free to read on!

So here we are in Ghana, living in Accra. Quite a change from Hong Kong. The weather's lovely, the job is pretty good and the people are very nice. We still don't have a car, but I've finally been looking.
That's me with a soldier. soldiers are used at big soccer games to keep it peaceful. A while ago (I think it was in October) I went with a few others to the World Cup qualifier for Ghana in Kumasi. What an experience! I'm glad our team won. An absolutely huge crowd (easily over twenty thousand, maybe forty) started partying hard all over the place after the game. it was a huge mob of dancers, like a huge happy riot! I still think of how horrible it would have been had Ghana lost....