More visitors for Brooks

After Carly and Mark left, Mary and I still had a week in Penticton, but also to our stay came an end. On the day of departure we had a nice breakfast along the lake on our way to the airport in Kelowna. But now Grannie Mary is every day on Facetime with Hilary & Brooks....

Yesterday Uncle Parker visited Brooks. He worked a few years with CN Rail in BC on the freight trains and was based in Kamloops, about three hours north of Penticton. The past eight months Parker has been travelling through Australia and South East Asia. He now picked up his car in Kamloops, swung by Hilary & Shayd to see his little cousin before going to Calgary where he plans to stay a while, train to become a barber and see what the future can bring him there. He met Canadians while travelling and some of them live in Calgary. On goes his exploration. Oh to be young (23-24). Joe and Marcy had all three boys home in Sarnia for a few weeks, because Spencer also returned from his world travels, and Wil is doing a landscaping job this summer in between his ongoing college training years.

Kettle Creek Railway

During the visit of a week of Carly and Mark we made a fun day in the old steam train of the Kettle Creek Railway. The ride started in an old station turned museum and ended on a bridge; both ways about 30 minutes. Halfway the locomotive changed sides; a moment for photos....

The KVR trail on the other side of the lake is where we went cycling. The trail is made on the route of the old steam train of the Kettle Creek Railways (KVR). 

So many photos of little Brooks

Sleep, drink mother's milk, poop. Rinse and repeat. The first weeks of a new little human being are needed to get all the amazing bodily systems working. This fellow is of course the cutest baby in the world (no bias there!). Little by little the eye-brain connections are formed and Brooks becomes more aware of faces, sounds, etc. In the next photo he looks thoughtful, but he did not really recognize things yet. Now - six weeks after birth - he starts to recognize more and gives his parents big smiles....

Poncho is getting used to being a bit of "number two" but he continues to be a funny little dog. He loves to cuddle and wants to be close to Hilary and Brooks...

Cycling along Lake Okanagan

The views along the KVR trail (more about that trail in a next post) are spectacular. Mary and I had both a nice electric assist bike which made the hills to take a bit easier for us. I made a few trips on my own during days that Mary was kept busy with Brooks, and I made a longer trip to Chute Lake Lodge with Carly and Mark during their visit to Penticton (about 70 kilometers in total). On that longer trip we went through a reasonably long tunnel which was pretty cool...

With Mary we went once about halfway that trip to Chute Lake where there is a short tunnel with beautiful views both ways along Lake Okanagan. We had almost all the days sunshine and nice temperatures, ideal for trips on the bike.

Opa Jos with little Brooksy

Holding the little "mannetje" was very special. A new generation Nolle, because Hilary and Shayd decided to give him the Nolle last name. No more new Nolle folk in Holland, because the kids from my two sisters took their father's names. But now a new one here in Canada, and if Mark and Carly call their baby girl also a Nolle, we will be on our way to outnumber the Vandenbooms in Canada 😀

Few weeks in Penticton

On May 5 a smooth four and half hour flight with Porter Airlines to Kelowna. Dropped off at the Toronto airport by Mark, and picked up in Kelowna by Hilary, Mary and baby Brooks. Sue and Ralph had moved on already by then to Vancouver Island and then took the Via Rail train back from Vancouver to Toronto (a trip I also made a few years ago)...

They also had a stop in Jasper and then enjoyed some of the beautiful sights of the Rocky Mountains from the train. They had more unscheduled stops - waiting for freight trains on the rails - and made it to Toronto about ten hours behind schedule; "slow travel" is was.....

In the meantime cousin Berry in Holland (the youngest of my sister Ger) celebrated his 50th birthday. The photo deserves some explanation. In Dutch there is a saying that a person of that age is becoming "een ouwe sok", literally translated "an old sock". Of course that translation does not work, but it is something like "an old fart", but a bit more polite (even though an old sock can reek as well...). So his wife, kids and sisters decorated their house with fifty old socks as a surprise.....

Mark and Carly celebrated their one year wedding anniversary in style with a dinner in the city of Niagara Falls overlooking from their table the famous waterfalls. Time flies. A year already....

Visitors for Brooks

Sue and Ralph made it to Penticton with a flight to Calgary (where they visited Ralph's younger sister) and used a rental car for a drive through the Rockies (they will visit Victoria afterwards and then take the Via Rail train back to Toronto - the very nice "slow travel" way to cross this huge country). Sue was there within 24 hours when Hilary was born in 1992, and now she had to cover a lot more distance so 5 days after Brooks' birth was not bad. Of course Brooks has no idea about all the commotion yet, but the Vandenboom clan is very excited to welcome a next generation in the family.

Together with Mary they went cycling along the lake and celebrated the family extension with a drink at a local micro brewery. It was too bad to miss that bike ride together with Sue and Ralph, but together with Mary I expect to make that ride several times during the coming weeks. 

It always amazes me how close these two sisters are. Their growing up together on the hobby farm near St Thomas certainly contributed to that. They share experiences every day together and we live right around the corner from each other in Fonthill. When we looked for a place to buy in 1995 after I had started working at Niagara College, Mary dropped off flyers of our interest to buy a house in mailboxes of houses in the streets around the corner of the place of Sue & Ralph. More than 30 years later we all still live in the same houses. Last week the sisters took Brooks for a few walks and shared their joy.

Hilary and her little peanut. I will be there in a couple of days for a few weeks....