Sailing, Sunny, Sunscreen

One thing I'm thankful for by being in Quebec is that I have wonderful relatives just one province away! I am excited that they will hopefully drop in for a visit and that I will be able to go visit them at some point as well!

The weekend I was there, it was absolutely beautiful weather (probably some of the first nice days of my entire roadtrip.. bad weather seems to follow me around). We went to Lake Erie for the day and relaxed on the sailboat!! After a few hours of sailing, we anchored, made lunch on the bbqs that were on the ship and enjoyed swimming off the side of the boat.

I love sailing. I really know nothing about boats and nothing about how to sail, but I'm thankful there are people that do know and that are willing to have me join them on their sailboats. So if you have a sailboat, let me know and I will join you for a day of sailing!

And there's something magical about water. And just having a day of relaxing on it. But there's also something about sunny days on water and lack of sunscreen. All in all a bad idea. I got quite the burn. And quite the peeling ordeal after.

On rainy days I like to look at these photos and fondly remember just relaxing in the sun on a sailboat in the middle of a lake that is so huge you think you're on the ocean.

Friends, Family, Fun

I have a lot of friends scattered around the world, and as I've mentioned before, I was so blessed on my drive across Canada to visit some of them.

I love friendships that pick up exactly where they left off. You may not talk to the person in between, but you are able to connect as before. And I love seeing my friends in different stages of life.

My friend Tammy moved to Ontario a couple years ago and I was so excited for the chance to visit with her, because since the last time I saw her, her and her husband have two little girls! How wonderful to connect with a long-time friend, connect with and love her kids and get a sneak-peak into her life.

I love seeing the faithfulness of God displayed in the lives of those I love. It is a testimony to me, and I'm sure to many around. And I love seeing how God has been faithful to Tammy and how He has now blessed her with two amazing and precious little ones to care for.

It was a good mix of relaxing, connecting and just enjoying being together.

And now I apologize for the randomness of my posts. I don't really feel like posting my trip in any coherent, orderly fashion, so I will just post random days and hopefully you will enjoy the photos and thoughts. :)

Aqua, Average, Anne

I enjoyed every single day of my road trip thoroughly. I loved driving through all the different provinces and some states and seeing everything around me. I loved visiting friends and connecting with them. I loved seeing my friends' new children that I had not yet met.

My final day of visiting was one of my favorite though. I knew that saving Anne for last would be a great idea, because we always seem to have a great time.

It began with the simple desire to go for sushi. And for sushi we went. And we ate far too much. But it was delicious.

And then the day turned into a water tour. What's a water tour you might ask? Well, it's where you think of anything that has water, cram it all into one day and make a tour out of it. And thus the Aqua Tour of 2011 began at a sushi restaurant in Hamilton while drinking water.

The water tour involved waterfalls, rivers, lakes, pools, drinking water, drinking beverage that originally must have had some water used to make them, rain and umbrellas.

I laughed the entire day. I took in some of the beautiful places we went to visit. Do you ever have those days that reach the epic list in life as some of your favorite days? This would be one of them.

Good friends, good food, a lot of laughs. If time permitted, I would share more photos, but these will give you an idea of the fun that was had.

And the day even ended with a bee getting stuck in my bathing suit and stinging my bum three times. Lovely.

Guelph, Grown-up, Growing

Greetings from me, being back home! My apologies for the delay in posting lately. Has been a crazy first week back home and I didn't have my pre-scheduled posts to count on!

Being home has been really good, especially for more than three days. This week has been busy with out of town family that was here for a memorial they hosted at my mom's. So it was mixed with sadness and joy at seeing family and celebrating life together yet grieving loss together as well.

Many pictures to post and stories to tell but I figured I would start with some from months ago. In January to be exact. Found them on my camera which had been dead.


During my cross-Canada trip back in January, I was blessed to be able to visit one of my dear friend's, Becky, her husband and their son. Becky and I met when I was in grade nine. We went on a missions trip to Mexico together. It was quite the adventure and we're both slightly crazy, so we clicked right away. It was a wonderful few days with them and fun to see how much their son has grown since the last time I saw them!

Becky's hubby was in an engineering competition at the university of Guelph, so Becky and I went beforehand to try making some stuff. Jordan's team ended up winning. Probably because of our help.


Anyway, it was a lot of fun to have good conversations, hang out, play in the snow and just be. It's so neat to see friends get older and become grown-ups. I say this knowing that I too am "growing" up at the same time. But it's neat to see friends you knew as single people be married with kids and to see that progression.


Because we look like grown-ups all the time, especially when we take photos of ourselves.


One day while Becky was at work and Jordan at school, I went for a walk and locked myself out of their house. Luckily they have a garage with a code. Then again, when I opened their garage, I realized that getting to the inside of the house would be no easy task. So I laughed and then proceeded to climb over their garage belongings. :)


And playing in the snow is always fun. Something I definitely miss, living in BC.




And thus concludes my coverage of a trip taken back in January. :)

Hope you are all enjoying this Monday. Enjoy the rest of the week and stay tuned for some more updates!

Waterloo, Walk, Worthwhile

After being in Quebec, I flew to Toronto where my friend Andrea picked me up from the airport. Andrea is a friend of a friend of a friend all of which I am now friends with. LOVE how connections and community happen!


I met Andrea when she and another friend stayed at my house. We like to have sushi everywhere we go, so we decided it was only fitting to have sushi together! Traffic was even slightly enjoyable because it was nice to be in the car with good driving tunes and good conversation.


We went to an all you can eat sushi place and decided to be adventuresome and order the 'golden bag'. Scary when you have absolutely no idea what this could entail. Yet it pays to be adventurous because we got a tasty golden bag placed in front of us that we quite enjoyed! Mystery solved. Maybe next time we shall be even more daring!


Then I was off to visit my favorite Ontario relatives! Another reason why it's exciting to be moving to Quebec, because I'm stoked that I will be closer to them! They are a lot of fun and always a great time with lots of laughs together.


On the Saturday we drove down to Toronto to visit my cousin and his wife in their apartment. Walked to the market, bought some veggies and fresh fish and came back to make a tasty dinner of tilapia with parmesan, mayo and caramelized onions on top. Tasty!


I'm thankful to have such wonderful immediate and extended family. They are a blessing and I love that we all get along and genuinely enjoy spending time together. Plus these cousins are related to me in three ways. We are first cousins, third cousins and fourth cousins. Haha. And not to worry, it is all through marriage and not some odd incest or something. Hehe..









While we were eating it was getting pretty snowy outside, which was fantastic. And I was just happy I didn't have to drive in it. But there is something wonderful about sitting around a table with people you love and care about and just enjoying food together that you've had a good time making together. It draws people together in a really neat way I think. I just need to learn to follow a recipe.


Their rooftop had the most fantastic view of downtown Toronto from all around. Even though I had to walk through mounds of snow to look, it was worth it.


I had a wonderful weekend in Waterloo and had fun hanging out with my cousin Adrielle as well. We discovered credit card monopoly- so fun!! The Sunday night, my flight got cancelled, so the next morning I had to wake up in the wee hours to drive to Hamilton for a new flight! But thankfully I made it home, even though I only stayed for 24 hours before heading off to Florida! More on that to come!

Guelph, Great, Green

Right now I'm in the town of Guelph. A lovely, unique town in Ontario that is very green and friendly. I love its uniqueness and I love my friends who live here.

My friend Becky and I met when I was 13 years old. I had signed up for my first missions trip ever to go to Mexico, with what was then called YMI (Youth Mission International), under the umbrella of MBMSI. I joined as an individual, as did Becky and we ended up on the same team.

Somehow we clicked instantly. Maybe it was our crazy personalities and our zest for life and adventures. But since that trip, we have been friends ever since. Even though she lives in Ontario, we've been able to connect in BC, Ontario and Quebec and every time I am with her, I leave refreshed and encouraged.

We have a lot of great memories and some incredibly random ones too. And she always mentions how I'm the one who taught her you should always go double the suggested speed around corners. I don't quite remember that, but apparently in my younger days, this was some sort of horrible knowledge I imparted to others.

She got married a few years ago and it's been wonderful to see her little family growing. They have a son that is 20 months and another one on the way and I am thankful I can come visit and be a part of their lives and connect with them.

Presently I am waiting for my sheets to dry so I can go to bed. But once again, I am reminded of the many blessings in my life and am grateful for the people I have met along the way who continue to remain in my life.

Perhaps if I pull out my camera while here, I will snap some photos to share, but for now I'm just enjoying catching up, hanging out and playing with the little guy!

Enjoy your weekend!

Anne, Andrea, Adventures

I like random. And I like people who are likewise random.

Anne is my random friend. We met when she stayed at my house with a friend of mine. Then I slept on her couch when I was driving through Edmonton. Then we roadtripped to the East Coast. Then we had coffee in BC on Thanksgiving weekend. And last week, her and her friend Andrea came to stay for some fun, random and crazy adventures. I feel like we've been friends for years and always enjoy our time together.


Christmas came early!! I love gift giving. And sometimes I have such a hard time waiting until Christmas or birthdays to give people their gifts, because I get so excited about how much they will love it (hopefully). Anyway, I was glad to be able to legitimately give a gift early. :)


On one of our trips to the grocery store, we talked about how we were sad that the icing with rainbow bits wasn't sold anymore. So we had a moment of silence. And then we figured we should take a sad picture with the icing. So we did. Random. Love it.


Sushi! With perhaps the worst service ever and the most unwelcoming atmosphere ever. I love their sushi, but I think that was my last visit!


At least we still had fun!


And it looked pretty.


And tasted good.


And at Strabucks we discovered some really nice signs to take pictures with!


Lovely.




One day we headed to Granville Island for some more random fun.


And lovely hats.


I love monkeys.


Beautiful herd.


And then we found some nice hammocks to lie in.




And I found a door made just for me!


And a mirror that does wonders for the image. :)


And we went for the best sushi in Vancouver.


And the best gelato too. 218 flavours.. like garlic, curry, balsamic vinegar.. mmmm


This lady was having a bad day. So we listened while she kept giving us different samples.

Then we came home and had a highschool musical marathon. I had a great photo but just pushed the backspace by accident and deleted it. So you can picture us holding all the dvd's with excited looks on our faces. Because we're cool like that.

And so concludes crazy adventures with Alberta, Ontario and BC all mixed together!

I'm already excited for the next visit!

PEI, Pierre, Peggy's

Contrary to the Title's suggestion, I did not go to PEI. But I did travel 5000 kms in 5 days, which is quite a feat in itself and quite tiring too if I might add!

I fly into Ontario on Friday and picked up my friend Anne. We started our journey with Pierre (our car) and Russel (our Australian GPS man).

First stop: Toronto for dinner with my cousin Caleb and his wife (who were actually just visiting last week but was fun to see them again-plus i had to deliver Caleb's watch!)

Conversation following dinner
"So where do you think we should drive to tonight?"
"Not sure, i'm game to just drive because I'm stoked for this roadtrip."
"Okay, well let's just drive through the night then and stop when we get to PEI."
"Okay"

I may have found someone to rival my craziness.

So we drove through the night. We didn't go through the States (which would have been faster) because the rental car couldn't and we didn't have passports along. At sunrise time we drove through Quebec City and the sunrise was amazing. This became motivation to wake up at sunrise every day following.

New Brunswick had a lot of trees. And fun random stops, such as the world's largest axe and so forth. We also stopped at Ontario's large apple and then ate pie while driving.

We were in Moncton and saw some sign for the bridge to PEI. Great. We didn't have a map {very very dumb idea} so we trusted that Russel would get us there. A couple hours later, Russel pipes up "6 kilometres until ferry". Ferry? What?!? This is when we realized that he had taken us 2.5 hours east of the bridge into Nova Scotia and we recognized we wouldn't make it over in time for our lobster dinner, so we decided we'd head to Peggy's Cove for night instead.


We reached Peggy's Cove just at sunset on Saturday and it was beautiful! Not too many people around either.


Anne is a photographer so it was nice that we could both just meander around and take photos without having to worry about the other person, because we were both having a great time snapping shots.


There was a rock in the water that made it look like there we whales but alas there were not...


After our sunset pics, we went to different hotels, motels and B & B's trying to find a place to stay.


All the places were full but we met and chatted with some very friendly people along the way.


We ended up finding a B & B nearby that we stayed at that night which we were quite thankful for!


After 24 hours of driving (and 36 hours of travel for me), we were both ready to have showers and a nice bed!


Keeping with tradition, we set our alarms for sunrise the following day.


We both hopped out of bed {okay more like dragged ourselves...} and went to Peggy's Cove and the surrounding village to take sunrise photos. Such great light!




I love all the little houses, crab traps, paint colours, boats, etc. etc. etc. that there are to take pictures of.


Anne and I decided we should buy the B & B for sale, move there and then build the world's largest axe to rival the one we found in New Brunswick (just so they'd have to change all their signs).


Here's some more photos to enjoy:




























In the morning, Anne accidentally dropped her small camera in the toilet. We were very sad because it didn't work properly but after a few days the screen came back and it worked again! YAY! We laughed because between the two of us, we had 6 cameras along...

This is Frida, the B & B owner. Her and her husband were really friendly and it was fun to chat with them!

Cedric also came along on this trip. He thoroughly enjoyed himself and made some new friends along the way, whom you will meet in later posts...

From Peggy's Cove, we headed on our merry way... and you will have to wait until the next post to see where our adventures took us! Stay tuned!