I've often thought: "What if I could clone myself?" and make SEVERAL copies. Then at the end of the day meld all these copies together so that all the memories, experiences, knowledge and sentiments will be kept together in my mind only. And then the next day start all over again. I'm thinking that if I could do this, say once a month, I could keep on top of it all and, as a bonus, keep what little sanity I have left. But I digress...
We had a very busy June: vacation, my birthday, mom's birthday...her 60th! Father's day. Compounded by Bennett being out of work since before our vacation because he lost the transmission in his truck and me starting a new job (!). I can't believe it's the 29th when it seems like the month just started yesterday. Technically I guess we lost the first 9 days since I don't keep track of the date, time or even day of the week when I'm on vacation. It's a wonder we didn't miss our flight home. What a great vacation we had.
Saturday – Left home at 10, flight at noon, 3 hour layover in Toronto and arrived Vancouver 7pm, supper with Marcella, Scott and their 2 daughters at around 9…body still on NL time (1:30 am)
Sunday – woke super early b/c still on NL time, church in New Westminster (Emmanual) at 10. Brunch in Surrey. Shopping in Fort Langley. Back to New West for church at 6pm.
Monday – took ferry to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, did the touristy thing there, drove to Victoria, found internet café, booked cheap room then hopped on a bus and checked out the bunny rabbits at U of V (they really do multiply like rabbits!), got back to our car then hotel and then CRASHED.
Tuesday – up and at em by 10, brekkie at McDs, more touristy stuff (horse and carriage tour, wax museum, miniature world, shopping, under sea garden, Craigdarroch Castle), took ferry to Port Angeles, WA where we lucked into another cheap (but thankfully clean and included breakfast) hotel
Wednesday – up early again to get (free) breakfast and on the road to Seattle. Beautiful city. Walked waterfront, went through Pike Market (again, awesome!). went to mall to get Monorail to Space Needle. Did tour of that, Malachi played on rides outside. I shopped at gift store…really nice gift store. Back to mall. Spent oodles of money on kids at Children’s Place. Taxi back to waterfront and car. Three hour drive back to Surrey.
Thursday – day trip back to states for more shopping (me shopping, can you believe it?) with Marcella and pastor’s wife from Grand Prairie (she came for the ladies’ retreat) then to Hope for the retreat. Ten of us stayed in a huge old house decorated with old furniture and appliances but with modern stuff too (coffee maker, thank God!) and the beds weren’t archaic either which was good. Sister Donna Linville was the speaker. She is awesome! Really really funny. She kind of reminded me of Sis Stone (she’s a large jolly type of lady) but her stories are genuinely funny (as in not just to her, haha). Night service only on Thursday and we all stayed up late in the big living room of our house chatting in our jammies! We were the only ones in the house and the people who run it don’t even stay in it; their house is next door and they just bring in breakfast and leave it in the kitchen.
Friday – Service at 10:30. Drove into Hope for lunch at a really quaint little coffee shop called The Blue Moose; coffee sizes are Small, Tall and Moose. Too cute. Yummy sandwiches and desserts. We had the afternoon to ourselves. Turkey supper and then night service.
Saturday – morning service then we were given a bag lunch to hit the road with. I drove back as far as Chilliwack with Marcella where Bennett and Malachi met us (they had a ball while I was gone and barely missed me at all!) and we went to the zoo then drove to White Rock beach (BEAUTIFUL!) and dipped my feet in the Pacific ocean!
Sunday – church in the am then lunch at Jamie’s house, back to Marcella’s for a nap and church again then back to Jamie's house for a bit and a SURPRISE little impromptu birthday party for moi! I thought that was really sweet.
Monday – we planned to drive up to Whistler but we were so tired from doing so much going we slept really late and just hung out at a mall in Surrey for the afternoon and then took a ride on the sky train and went to North Vancouver and had supper at the little market right where you get off the seabus and walked around the shops there. We took the ride back and spent half the night packing and the other half chatting.
Tuesday – we got up at 3:30 am to leave for the airport at 4 for our flight at 6 to come home. We had a 3 hour layover in Toronto again and got home at 9 – totally exhausted!
And that's just a brief description of everything we did. To do it right we needed a month to do justice to all the places we saw and things we did. I would have loved to have a day or two to explore each of Nanaimo, Victoria, Seattle and Vancouver. The most I saw of the actual city of Vancouver was from the skytrain and driving from and to the airport. We got to know the city of Surrey pretty well as well as New Westminster. I could totally see myself living there. The mountains are absolutely spactacular. Gros Morne pales in comparison.
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