I am now three weeks with my new hip and finally up and mobile. I am still using the crutches because it is the only way to get a normal walking gait back, but am strong enough not to need them all the time. I now seem to be over my low hemoglobin issues too. It's great not to feel weak and run down, but unfortunately I no longer have the ultra hip "Twilight" look of pasty white skin. OK.........it's January and I can't tan anyways...so I do have pasty white skin......just not the death pallor that I seemed to have for the first few weeks.

One of on my first trips out was a meeting with Howard Kelsey and Terry Hughes from the Burn Fund to see if we could arrange for an affiliation between the fire fighter's charity and Kitsfest, a growing multi-sport tournament down at Kits beach. We had a good meeting and came up with lots of ideas how we could make things work for both parties. It will be really exciting if I get to be further involved in the fundraising and promoting the$ 25 million building the Burnfund is organzing at Main and 23rd in Vancouver.

Now that February is here we are finally starting to see some of the much anticipated build up for the Olympics. However, considering it starts in a week and we live only a few minutes away from the athletes village, the atmosphere around here is surprisingly low key. It almost seems like there is less traffic on the streets than normal and we haven't yet seen a huge influx of visitors arrive. No doubt it will all change next week but for now nothing has been as anticipated.

One thing visitors can't expect is snow. With the warmest January on record and February starting off the same, the Olympic committee is having to truck in snow from hundreds of kilometres away to put on Cypress Mountain. When Les and I picked up the kids after school yesterday we let them play outside for 45 minutes. As we were leaving I noticed Molly had been wearing nothing but a t-shirt the whole time and she wasn't cold at all. Only in Vancouver.