We got back from our vacation last Sunday night. Rob's parents met us at the airport with Abby and she was so excited to see us. When we got home we found that my aunt, who'd been watching the house and my plants, had provided us with some fresh bread, fruit, veggies, juice and milk to get us through our first few days home. It really made getting back into the swing of things so much easier than usual.

I don't know why it has taken me so long to sum up our vacation. I've new things to blog about from this week but had to keep putting them off because I like to post everything in order. We got a notice that my website is currently running short on space so I'm only posting a few pictures here - there are loads more over on my flickr stream.

What can I say about our vacation:

It was very relaxing. We had good weather ... for the most part. I visited some of my favourite shops. We saw things both green and blooming. We ate good food. We drank lots of tea. Rob took me to the Empress for High Tea, something that has always been on my list of "things I want to do in my lifetime". It was colder than we'd expected for mid-April. It was still warmer than at home. We missed our puppy and looked forward to updates from Rob's mum. I took many, many pictures. Everything smelled fantastic. We travelled by car, boat and plane. I knit one pair of socks and started a second. We did lots of walking. We went geocaching with my aunt. I was surprised with birthday cake at my grandmothers house. I squeezed yarn before buying it. I found some fabric I was looking for in exactly the colours I wanted. I ate macarons for the first time. We meandered around downtown. I saw Darth playing the violin. We sat and did nothing. We went for a carriage ride. We saw fish, eels and crabs. I got seeds for my garden. We saw rain for the first time in months.

It was a great vacation and it feels good to be home.

I've been trying to sum up my trip a couple of weekends ago and failing miserably: we did so much stuff in just in four days. I don't want to procrastinate on posting any longer though; I've got other things that I want to share and my brain desperately needs to keep everything in order. So I'm just going to give you a quick rundown of what our trip was and a few of my favourite thoughts along the way.



Two Thursdays ago I flew down to Vancouver with my dad and my sisters to help celebrate my grandparents' sixtieth wedding anniversary. As Grandma and Poppa live about half way up the province in the Interior, we spent most of Friday following the Fraser River through the mountains. Along the way we stopped at my aunt's house for lunch and I wandered around her lovely, rambling garden with my camera. We also saw trains, fishers and boaters on the river, some big horned sheep, and drove through five tunnels. This was while there were lots of forest fires going on in the Caribou Region of the Interior and when we past Cache Creek the air got very smoky.


My grandparents' have a little house right on a lake and, though we couldn't see much when we first arrived, when the smoke lifted Saturday afternoon we were treated to a beautiful view of the lake and the opposite shore.


There were so many people around Grandma and Poppa's place on Saturday. I think there were at least 30 just for breakfast! The barbeques were in use at every meal and deck and lawn chairs were seldom to spare. My dad, the magician, was very popular with the younger crowd as soon as he started making balloon hats. There were dogs galore of different sizes and personalities which I thought was just great. Grandma and Poppa's little mix Brandy was especially sweet. I met so many cousins I hadn't known before (but can't remember most of their names).


Grandma and Poppa had requested no gifts but as people tend to ignore suggestions like that (I don't know about you but I love to give people things) they were showered with presents ranging from bottles of wine to shrubs for their garden to elephant themed sundries (My grandmother loves elephants but their trunks must be up - it's good luck). The loveliest presentations, from a viewer's point of view, were made by their children: My other aunt had worked tirelessly to pull together as much information and as many old pictures as she could and made a photo book  about Grandma and Poppa full of family trees and histories. My dad had arranged to get all the "official" congratulations available for a sixtieth wedding anniversary and presented letters from the Premier of the province, the Governor General and the Queen. The letter from the Governor General was particularly nice.


On Sunday we said good-bye and drove back down the province. We stopped at a really nice fruit stand along the highway and got some local honey (Jane was on the look out for it) and some fruit to eat while we were driving. We stayed at my uncles house overnight but had to say all our good-byes before we went to bed since we were going to be up at 4:00 am in order to get to the airport on time for our flight home Monday. We touched down just after lunch time and it was great to see Rob and the critters again.


A few random thoughts:

1. I can knit in a moving car. I'm prone to motion sickness so I wasn't sure I'd be able to do it but I can do knit stitches without looking and that made the difference.

2. Tinking while driving makes me feel sick.

3. Canadians travelling will naturally gravitate to Tim Hortons when they are hungry. I think it is a law of nature.

4. Sisters are lovely.

5. My Dad has lots of interesting stories.

6. Grandma is always laughing and smiling. I cannot picture her with any other expression.

7. Prune plums are my favourite. I tried four different varieties while we were driving  just to find out which ones I liked the best.


Wow, that seems long for a "quick rundown" but really I left out tonnes of stuff. I'll try to have a few more pictures over on flickr later today.

I actually got home yesterday but was too tired to do more than download the pictures from my camera (I took almost 400!) and grab a shower (4 am is too early to shower). My trip was great. I met a lot of my Dad's side of the family that I hadn't really known before and saw lots of cousins I only remembered as toddlers. I'll be going through all those pictures and pulling out some for a post soon (probably on the weekend) but for now you can see my new socks hanging out in the Vancouver Airport: Socks that Rock Lightweight in Firecracker knit up as My Heart Beets 4U by Anne Hanson (Rockin' Sock Club, July/August 2010). They'll get a proper post of their own once I've got some good pictures (all the others I took in the airport are very blurry); they were my first try at knitting in a moving car.