Limo, Ladies, Laughs

Last weekend was spent in Whistler celebrating Desiree's upcoming wedding! Crazy that the wedding date is just around the corner!

Desiree got a nice outfit to wear. haha

Our first stop was Domaine de Chaberton, a winery in Langley. We got a tour of the winery and a tasting and it was great. It's always interesting to see how different wineries function. And to try their wine as well. I really enjoyed one of the whites we tried.
{Listening intently on the tour}
The wine vats.

Joelle told me if you drink out of the glass sideways, you can taste it better. I asked her to model it for me.

We drove up to Whistler in a limo which was pretty fun. I've never been in a limo before so it was fun to drive a few hours there and a few hours back in it!






Once we arrived in Whistler, we hung out at our hotel for a while. Then we went to Bearfoot Bistro for dinner.



The restaurant was really cool. Lots of cool features. We even went into the basement cellar where you can sabre off a champagne bottle with a sword.

They also had a cold vodka room where all the bottles are directly in solid chunks of ice. Apparently it's minus 24 degrees in there. All evening we would see people going in with their parkas.

The downstairs cellar



After dinner, everyone went out on the town. I didn't stay out too late as it's not really my scene, but it was fun hanging out with everyone. And the few of us that went back to the hotel earlier had a great evening and a good chat, followed by a wonderful breakfast in the morning before catching our limo back.
All in all a fun weekend, and great to celebrate with Desiree. And the drive there and back is always so incredibly beautiful! Only 2 more weeks until her wedding! I am now off to my dress fitting, so hopefully it fits! :)

Wildcat, Weekend, Weddings

I am incredibly thankful for my friends. And lately I have been so grateful for the new friendships I have been building in Langley. A few years ago, when I felt like I needed to stay around and put down roots, I never would have imagined it would be so great as it is so far. To build community and invest in it is a beautiful thing and I am blessed.

The weekend (as you can see by the previous posts) was full of dance parties, BBQ's, hanging out with friends and playing with puppy.

Sunday night, we had a braii, which is a South African version of our BBQ, where everyone brings their own meat and a sharing dish. As always, the meal was amazing, the company wonderful and we played some fun games aftewards too.

Cooking away in the kitchen

PUPPY!! (who is presently howling in the bathroom. oops)

I found some time for cleaning and organizing this weekend. Saturday morning I cleaned my deck which has been on the to do list for two years now! Scrubbing the mildew and gunk off all the railings took about three hours and I only sliced one of my fingers open on the scraped back metal. But now it's sparkly clean and it reminds me of how I should be concerned of how obsessed I am with cleaning. But somehow cleaning stuff on the outside makes me feel like life is more orderly and clean on the inside. Or something.

puppy!! because she's cute. :)

Heather and I decided to drive out to Chilliwack to visit our friend Kristen at work, at the Wildcat Grille. With a quick stop to visit Elle's godparents, we were on our way. Heather was the "cat" in Wildcat an I was the "wild". We had fun having a running commentary on Kristen's stellar waitressing. :) She's my favorite waitress for sure hands down.



Anne and I embracing ourselves. (there was a context to this.. I just don't remember it)

Enjoying some very very late night cards. And then slumber party!!

A few people stayed for night and then we enjoyed playing some cards this morn. In the evening, Dave, Adri and I headed to my mom's for a BBQ and some hot tub and swimming action. It was wonderful. We BBQ'd salmon and enjoyed wine and cheese by the hot tub.
Once again, another very full, but very blessed weekend! And a bit scattered in the explaining through a multitude of posts and missing large chunks where I didn't have a camera with me.

As I was sitting in the hot tub today, I thanked God for the fact that He is sovereign over all. I started going to a random church in Langley. And in that perfect timing, I have met a lot of wonderful people who bless me incredibly and make my life even more richer. They are becoming like family to me and I am so grateful! So this is me, expressing my overflowing heart of blessings.

Some things I'm looking forward to right now:
-Couple days in Seattle with Megan to see Fiddler on the Roof!
-Couple days on the island as a getaway with Jocelyn and going to Alex and Ryan's wedding!
-Road trip with Bethany to Calgary, seeing Calgarian friends and Jacquelyn and Ross' wedding!
-Church Camping Trip!
-Birthday Extravaganza Camping/Hiking Trip!
-Roadtrip to Portland with Laura (it's official now that it's on my blog... :) )
-Missions trip to Mexico
-Desiree and Joe's wedding
-Trip to Zambia (Victoria Falls) and South Africa
-Possible trip to New Zealand and Australia!
-many many more BBQ's, swimming parties and random fun adventures!

Jocelyn, Joy, Jigsaw

I want to dedicate this post to my friend Jocelyn. First off, because

a) she just graduated with her undergrad degree in Psychology! Wooh!!
b) she claims she checks my blogs a million times a day and therefore I don't post enough.

So here's a post especially for her, with a picture of her diligently studying:

It has been fun this last week to celebrate with my friends who are graduating! Last night a few of us went to The Keg to celebrate which was great and then hung out at my place. Was delightful.

In other news, I received my Antarctica photos books yesterday! I am not in love with them.. well they're nice, but I should have ordered them in glossy, not matte finish. So the pictures are nice, but they would look ten times better in glossy. I might order one more copy just for myself in glossy.

But, along with my box of books, I received another box! Upon opening it, I found Melissa and Philip's wedding book. So nice. Okay, random because I have no idea who these people are and apparently they live in Ontario. Their wedding book looked kind of trendy on the outside, but on the inside, it wasn't nice at all. The layout that is. They have all the picture names under them. I'm hoping it was ordered by the photographer, but if not, that's too bad. Haha.. anyway, very random that I have this book and now I have to drop it off to be mailed to the people who are eagerly awaiting the arrival of their book.

And here's a picture of my cool partylite elephants anticipating some tasty veggies. Mmmm.. I had a couple friends come over for a tea party the other day and it was delightful! So great to catch up and just hang out.

And just an update, puzzles are taking over my life.

I got my long awaited for GRE scores back in the mail yesterday! haha.. Upon looking at my scores, I realized I should have studied. Some people prepare an entire year for this exam.. I book it a week beforehand and just got write it! hahaha.. I didn't do horrible and was still above average, but I know I could have done way better had I known what was going on! But the analytical writing part is the section that you can't really prepare for, and I got in the highest score bracket for that one, with 92% of the people who wrote it at the same time scoring lower than me. So yay for writing abilities! :)

Yesterday I had a revelation of something incredibly profound that I was going to blog about. And now I've forgotten it. Hopefully it was indeed profound and will secretly change my life now without me knowing about it.

Oh! I have a new blogging friend. Her name's Laura and she's absolutely hilarious and I love her stories! In fact she's coming over in a couple hours to make french toast. Anyway, check out her blog, and welcome her to the blogging world! http://laurawarkentin.blogspot.com/ (and i figured I would link to her blog a few times in this paragraph. haha)

That's all for today! Leaving on a road trip tomorrow! Woooh! So stay tuned for those adventures! :)