Bellydance at Marketfest

Well, I did my first performance as a troupe member! It was really fun, and since we're a professional Bellydance troupe, we get paid for it too.
I love doing Tribal Bellydance, it's an empowering and strong form of dance for women, much different than the showy Egyptian Oriental style of bellydance that's more for performance.

It is great for pregnant women, and originated with women doing it for other women, particularly women in labor. There is another troupe member who is also pregnant, but not quite as far a long.

Waiting to enter...

Aloka is the one in the red shirt, watching the performance... there were people surrounding us!

Presenting our beautiful daughter!

Isn't she cute?? She got her face painted a couple weeks ago at the Saturday Market here in town.

Happy Canada Day everyone! July 1st is Canada Day (the birthday of the country) here, for you American family and friends. We had a GREAT time! Aloka and I walked over to where all the festivities are at Lakeside Park. It's a very family friendly event, and people had been there all day. We got there around 7pm, the fireworks are over the lake at 10pm and I was waffling about whether or not to keep Aloka up. We ended up staying, and Richard got off work at 8pm and walked over to the park to join in. We also invited Josh and Ellie, but they couldn't make it unfortunately. We weren't sure where we should sit to watch fireworks and wanted to be able to get out of the parking lot fast. We had parked in front of the soccer field at the park, so we decided at 9:40pm to go drive somewhere where we could see the fireworks from our car and then just zip home. When we got to our car, we realized we were in the perfect spot, so we just threw down a blanket and sat on the field in front of our car. Low and behold, the fireworks were literally being set of right in front of us on the other side of the field! So we got the best view in the entire town. Aloka snuggled on my lap, and we watched the beautiful show. Then we got into our car and easily got out and were home within 20 minutes! It was perfect!

On our way to Lakeside Park to hang out with friends while waiting for the fireworks to start. Aloka of course saw a heap of her friends there. Pretty much everyone in Nelson it seems like!

Just yesterday, we went for a walk and found a huge wild strawberry patch (High Alpine Strawberries) right next to our house. There are zillions of strawberries, but these were the first ones to ripen! They were soooo delicious, and Aloka ate pretty much all of them!

I have so much more to post, i'm incredibly behind. I go on maternity leave on July 13th, so after that I'll have more time to blog hopefully! I have lots of fun photos of Aloka and Josh collecting tadpoles from a pond we went to on Father's Day, plus Birthday parties galore she's been attending. Coming soon!