Here is a selection for Michael of pictures of spring flowers blooming in our neighbourhood recently. It has been a lovely spring this year, cool enough for the flowers to last much longer than usual but not cold.

We enjoyed setting up blocks for our grandson to knock down!

It was early spring in Vancouver and the very earliest rhododendron was blooming there along with daffodils and forsythia and the very first cherry blossoms. Spring was more advanced in Victoria where the cherry blossoms were quite spectacular.

This statue was at the front entry of our hotel. It was of a fisherman taking as break with his faithful dog. Dave joined them for a break.

We went to Victoria for an overnight to visit a girl and her mother who lived with us for 3 weeks two years ago. We had a really good visit and they are doing very well. They put us up in a downtown hotel -- this is the view from the 18th floor restaurant where we had breakfast. You can see the Empress, a world-famous hotel, at left and the harbour behind it. There was a lot of construction going on in Victoria -- we counted 7 cranes from the window of our room alone!

We went for a lot of walks when we weren't sick.

We are proud grandparents! We decided we would be grandpa and oma, by the way. Oma has the inside track, not just because she's an oma but because oma is easier to say!

Sam has a great laugh!

We had a lot of fun playing with Sam with his toys. Here, he is working hard on his hand/eye coordination as he starts little cars down a runway. When the cars run off the track, he says "oh oh!" and when they succeed he claps his hands. He is saying a lot of words in addition to oh oh -- book, mama, yeah yeah, no!, puzzle, button, baby, dad and even before we left "moma" (oma). Of course, the words often require deciphering. Button and puzzle sound awfully similar! It's an exciting time!

Spring break was 2 weeks this year, so we took advantage of the time to travel to Vancouver to see our grandson Sam (as well as our son Chris and daughter-in-law Julee too, of course!). We had a wonderful time, even though everyone came down sick! We think Sam is a real cutie! He eats a wide range of foods though he treats it somewhat like a restaurant -- he samples something and then "orders" something else and continues in that vein until he decides he's done!

We completely re-arranged our photo wall to include a new 8-picture frame reserved especially for grandson Sam. Here it is!