Our Big Little Adventure

Waiting on the ferry and hubby took this picture of heron patiently waiting for a meal to swim by!

Heading to Vancouver and area and that's the island slipping away in the wake....  The ferry trip from Nanaimo to Tsawassen terminal is two hours. (We had reservations for both trips and it was a good thing as they were sold out)   The drive from Campbell River to Nanaimo is two hours also.... plus an hour once we reach the other side (if the traffic is good)  So five hours all told, one way.  

This was our view from our hotel window. Beneath all that cloud and smoke are the Golden Ear Mountains.   It didn't smell smokey from all the provincial interior forest fires (plus south in Washington, Montana and Oregon) but the visibility was very poor.  You are aware that's fine particles in the air you are breathing. 

On Friday we found the chalk faeries had been at work and we found this greeting out front!  Grandad took a picture in the dark and good thing he did too, because the next day it was all gone with the rain.

Madison is two and a half.... and all girl!

Ethan is five and a half and just started kindergarten, plus is in ju-jitsu three times a week.

Grandad got busy with the camera and got some great pictures of them separately and together.

That's her little vacuum but he knows she can't make a fuss while the pictures are being taken. She carried it around to keep it away from him and I think I saw it going upstairs to bed later as well. 

Then she had to show us her "Miss Ooh La La" outfit. 

We also like to have our hair do played with and have 'piggies' added.  Just sweep up a bunch of hair and secure it with a small rubber band.  Did I mention she's two and a half? 

Well she sure melted Grandad's heart!  She showed us all her dollies and coloured pictures with him: "Grandad, make a picture of a bird pooping on my brudder's head".... so he did!

I really enjoyed some one on one time with Ethan while she was napping and we talked cars, kindergarten and watched videos of him as a baby.  He sat still with me for almost an hour!  He's a high energy boy.

Then it was all over and time to come home.  Ferry ride home yesterday and then driving up island singing mostly on key and loudly to Freddie Mercury and Queen songs.

Today?  well that would be laundry, and after four days in a kennel, steering Calli into a bath to freshen up.

I was, and will be continuing, to wind some warps, carry on with the small project on the Spring loom  and mentally bracing myself for the crown prep work to come later this week at the dentist.

Fall is coming on fast here and we are starting to think of the end of season clean up in the yard and garden.    Oh, did I tell you that we plan to have the inside of the house painted?  Yeah, that's later this month and they will do the studio first.    Doesn't that sound like fun? 😳

Five Days Away

We just took five days off and crossed the pond and visited family and friends in the Vancouver area. We missed one ferry by four cars and so had to wait two hours for the next. That was okay and we sat reading. The crossing was beautiful and the water flat calm.The main object of the visit?  This little boy:

Sitting with Grandad ( or Crum-Dad as Ethan calls him)

Ethan is now two and a half and a real going concern! Favourite word? NO (not much of a surprise there). His usual speed?  FAST!  I didn't even try to keep up. I couldn't....
Hours of operation? 8 am to 10:30 pm. (with a brief lull in the hostilities between 1 and 2 pm for a nap that he generally fights). I have no idea how his mother does it and holds down a job too.

We had a great time and enjoyed their company .... and the BBQ with their friends was super. We contributed home made potato salad and strawberry shortcake. Bruce taught them the easy peasy microwave method of cooking corn in the husk that impressed everyone! A trick we learned on Facebook.

We shifted to a hotel over town to be close to where my Dad lives for our visit with him. It was his birthday and it was a lovely afternoon spent chatting, eating trifle my sister had made,  and watching his little chickadee family come and go from the peanut feeder on the patio.

This adorable little man is my Dad at age two or so.

We took time to visit another elderly family member of Bruce's and had a lovely afternoon reminiscing  about people, times and places as he helped me with dates and data for my genealogy program. The time flew by!

The farm area around Vancouver is enjoying a bumper crop of blueberries this year. We saw the bushes are so loaded with fruit they are bright blue and branches are bending with the weight. We bought a ten pound box. We plan to freeze them but so far we are enjoying them fresh like candies.

Its also corn season and so we got some of the famous Chilliwak corn. Tender and sweet. Nothing says summer like fresh fruit and veggies!   We had taken fresh plums from our orchard at home and gifted them liberally everywhere we went. The tree had given us a bumper crop too.

We soon found it was time to head home. I was starting to really feel the heat along with painful joints from all the activity.  We have been 'enjoying' a heat wave again and hot weather and I are not on friendly terms.  People with Lupus are advised to stay out of the sun and that suits me just fine.

With the coming weekend being a holiday weekend, I had had the foresight to book reservations to come home. Best money spent ever!  The line ups for the ferry at Horseshoe Bay was right up onto the main highway and judging by the sheer numbers, at least a two or three ferry wait. They stopped us and confirmed our reservation for the 12:50 pm sailing and we drove right by the entire parking lot of cars. Then they saw I needed to be near an elevator on the ship and we were first up in line to get on.

They like to pack everyone in tight! We made our way upstairs and went out onto the decks to take in the view. Here are some random shots of Horseshoe Bay, the marina and the traffic on the water.

Busy place... and you can see the next ferry coming around the point.

If you look closely at this one above, you can make out the cars lined up on the road, upper left.

This lady and I took pictures of each other and shared a laugh.

I got a nice one of Bruce who was also leaning out and taking pictures.

The prop wash from our ferry and the distant islands.

For emergencies....

Lucked out with this nice shot. That's the view towards Squamish and beyond to Whistler where the 2010 Winter Olympics were held.  The pictures below were taken by Bruce:

RCMP boat for patrols.

Yes, that's me snapping pictures. Notice my new wheels? Yup, the knee is that wobbly now.

The Bowen Island ferry or otherwise called a "puddle jumper"! 

....and then we were under way and heading for home. Its just under a two hour trip. The water was flat calm. No observable wild life such as whales or dolphins. Maybe they took a little break too?

So now we are trying to revive our gardens with watering, doing laundry and catching up. Calli might have enjoyed her stay at the doggy resort initially but she's letting us know that five days was too long for her. She's alternating between ignoring us completely or following closely on our heels!

Okay folks.... August is high summer... the dog days of summer.... the last four weeks before school again.  Get out there and enjoy!

A Mighty Good Time

I have a real difficulty announcing ahead of time that I will be leaving home and going on a trip.... as that means my house will be empty. In this day and age of internet and GPS, I shudder to think.   So, sorry to leave you waiting so long but we are now home and getting our life back to normal.  The laundry is almost complete, and I even managed to squeak in some weaving yesterday between loads.  Sort of like doing warm up's for the main event.

Our adventures started two weeks ago with Bruce's model train show in Victoria. I'm the one who handled all the sales receipts and money, so it left things to the guys to simply talk  and make the sales. They did this in fine style and Bruce had better results from the last spring's train show!  They had over 2200 people come through the doors and it was great to see many children with their parents and grandparents.  The little in-house cafe and coffee bar sold out of all food and drinks in record time!

Here's the gang just ahead of the doors opening: (from left to right) Bruce, Colin and Heath. Set up was still under way. Its a lot of work bring everything in and setting up.... standing mostly all day and then packing up and hitting the road for home. They love it though.  They are just as passionate about their modelling as we are our looms and yarn.

We had four days to sort stuff to where it goes between sales and rest up. Then start packing up again for our trip away. We were off to visit our grandson and his parents and later, head onto see Bruce's mother in the Okanagan Valley.  To help reducing the work load and stress factor, we opted to stay in a hotel. Its tough working full time and managing a home and active toddler and then throw in house guests to the mix! It also meant we had some quiet time to ourselves.

Soon our island was in the rear view and we checked into our hotel. Navigating the greater Vancouver area's traffic is always interesting as they have many road improvements under way. They have two new bridges, rapid transit trains (and I heard just yesterday another bridge has been announced for 2017). Just the sheer numbers of cars and people always has us flustered!

Once at the hotel on the 18th floor, I took some pictures from our room facing the mountains.

These are the new support cables for the one year old Port Mann bridge. The hazy north shore mountains in behind.

Then there's the Golden Ears Bridge way off in the Mission area. The mountains are in behind and they are called the Golden Ears. They can be stunning with fresh snow and sun light on them!

Then I looked down and then across the vista and noticed that the city has a lot of green space. Though I'm not crazy with what they did way over on the hillside near the mountains. I think that's called the Westwood Plateau.

Ethan is 17 months now and literally running everywhere!  He's so fast it makes your head spin. He loves technical toys and is looking for buttons to press to make them go. (He will be ready for all the high tech stuff in short order) We took him some old fashioned reading books, a sock monkey from Hilary and this toy transformer:  (sorry Hilary... I planned to take his picture with the monkey but he didn't hold it long enough to snap off a picture!) September 25th Edit: Ethan's maternal grandpa took this picture a few days after we left:

Ethan with his Prime Mate Monkey   Thanks Hilary!  He's perfect. 

He had no time for hugs and kisses, but I could hold the toy steady so he could better press the buttons and set off the lights and voice recording. That was my job for two days: hold the toy for him.    Geesh!

His favourite toy of all (right now) are these plastic rings. He has become a pro at spinning them with a flick of the wrist. He spins them on everything and can even do two at a time with both hands. Rather then spin them with a twist to the right (practice in your mind how you would do it) Ethan turns them to the left or inwards!

One last picture as it is my blog and my grandson :)  Then we were on our way.  It rained from Vancouver to Hope. (Hope is where was the first Rambo movie was filmed for the movie buffs out there)

This is somewhere out in the Fraser Valley.... no sign of hills and mountains due to low heavy cloud. But things sure changed when we came down off the Connector route to the Okanagan!

The sun came out and we had sunshine all the way in to Kelowna.  Traveling through Westbank I got a nice shot of Mission Hill winery: (click on any picture to enlarge)

Kelowna had the world's longest floating bridge but they rebuilt it after we left and I'm not sure of the stats of this one. (It was featured as an episode of  Mega Structures on the television)

Then, as part of your Kelowna tour, here's the classic lakeshore view of the city:

The Grand Hotel and Casino along with the yacht club

The downtown city park complete with sand beach.

We spent three very pleasant and relatively quiet days with Bruce's mother  and caught up on family news and simply spent time together.

Lorraine lives in a lovely town home and is doing very well on her own for having just turned 90! The time flew by and we were heading home again.

The clouds appeared to accompany us home. Here's a last look at the new bridge, with Black Mountain on the left,  as we left town.

We came down the hill off the Connector route at Merritt and turned for the Information and Tourist log house for a break and stretch our legs. A car suddenly pulled in beside us and out popped Lynnette and her husband Michael!  They were on their way to the Okanagan and somehow it all timed beautifully for us to have this chance meeting at Merritt!  A chat and a few hugs later and we were back on the road again. We had to push straight through and aim for the 5 pm ferry. Except we weren't sure of the exact time as we didn't have any internet to double check.  Going to 'wing it'.

This one is for Wendy.  This Mount Cheam between Hope and Chilliwak. Wendy recently did the high altitude Mt Cheam hike and from her pictures on Facebook, she went almost to the top, or to a high shoulder at least!

We made it to the ferry with forty five minutes to spare as it left at 5:45 pm. Its a two hour crossing and so after unloading the car we finally had our very tired feet up at 10 pm. We just got home on this past Thursday night and been settling in ever since.   Calli came back from the kennel and had a double bath and is glued to our sides when she isn't sleeping.

The ride home was fantastic!  The water was flat calm and there was a beautiful sunset....with a warm breeze.

going home!

Great end to the week!

So we are getting things caught up and we should have things back to normal soon.  I also found when we got home that we had forgot to lock the back door.  Oops...  its all okay, my looms are still here and the yarn is fine.

Happy Fall Equinox!