crazy

Have you ever had a week where you were only home to sleep at night? That's pretty much what I had last week. From Monday to Thursday, I spent the day at work and then I had something in the evening. Monday I was home for a quick dinner, but the rest of the days I was gone from 7:45am until about 10:00pm. It was good, but exhausting. By the time Friday evening rolled around, I was ready to crash so I decided to be anti-social and relax at home. Wait - did I say relax? Hmm...I don't think that really happened. I wound up doing breakfast dishes from the entire week and cleaning up my place because it looked like a hurricane had gone through! Then Saturday morning at 7:30 I was off to MissionsFest in Vancouver where A Rocha had a booth. I got home from that at about 2:30, spend a couple hours running errands and then it was off to Mark's parents' place because it was his sister's birthday on Friday. Sunday, thankfully, brought a much more relaxed pace. After going to church in the morning and having lunch with Mark's family, the two of us headed to Fishtrap Creek, a local park, where we sat on a bench and basked in the sunshine. There was still a thin layer of ice in some parts of the pond and we were entertained by watching ducks trying to land on it. I forgot my camera, so no pics sadly. We have had absolutely gorgeous weather here the last few days - pure blue sky and today it even reached 13 degrees in Abby! Almost shorts weather. :) Actually, it feels a bit like fall as the air is crisp and there's frost in the mornings.

I have decided to take this week off. No, I'm still going to work every day, but I'm staying home every evening, except for Thursday when I make my weekly trek out to Mark's place in Richmond for the evening. I'm greatly enjoying this slower pace already.

In other news, yesterday 4 of us from the faculty of sciences met with the president of TWU and a few other key members of the administration to present our perspective on a piece of undeveloped land TWU owns. TWU is currently in the process of re-visioning, and part of this includes determining what to do with this piece of land. We presented our perspective, laid out some of the areas which would be key habitats to protect, and made some suggestions in terms of how development could be done sustainably. We were met with a very positive reaction from the president, who asked that we continue to provide input throughout the planning process. In preparation for this meeting, I had been working hard to put together a 40-page document which described everything we presented in greater detail. It was exciting to have our hard work rewarded with such a supportive and open response.

Time to pull some fresh cookies out of the oven. I apologize for my lack of new posts - I'm hoping to make my updates more regular and provided I don't have too many more crazy weeks I should be able to! :)

snow

This photo was taken with the last dump of snow but I've haven't been out with the camera yet. Imagine this all over the trees yet again - I love how it sticks to all the branches. We're supposed to enter a "deep freeze" tonight with a high of -2 and lows around -8. Nothing compared to what the prairies are getting though...

Christmas - Pacific Rim style

Finally, almost a month after the actual event, I have some time to post about the best weekend I have had in a long time. This year, since my parents were going to be gone to Winnipeg over Christmas visiting my brother and sister-in-law, they decided to treat Mark and I to a weekend at Long Beach, in the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve on the west coast of Vancouver Island!! We went from Dec 15-17, and almost couldn't go because one of the wind storms hit the coast the day before and knocked out power everywhere. But thankfully we decided to brave the weather, and the resort had power back by the time we got there. We stayed at Pacific Sands Beach Resort, where we had stayed as a family about 10 years ago - I absolutely love this place and would recommend it to anyone. It's not as pricy as some of the other places in the area, plus its family-owned and operated and environmentally conscious. They treat you well, and every single unit has a view of the ocean - another reason I love coming here. But, enough advertising. Time for some pictures!

This is the building we stayed in. Our unit was along the left side.


And this was our view from inside - and yes, that is snow! We were treated to some fresh white stuff on Saturday morning.

There was a small point which we clambered out to every day, a few times a day, to view the waves, which were absolutely incredible! Actually, we didn't really clamber as they had built a boardwalk to protect the area and keep people on the trail, but we did slip-slide our way out on Saturday morning because everything was frozen. On the point, there were a couple benches, which looked very inviting for curling up on for hours of wave-watching if it had been slightly warmer. :)


Although I could sit here all night posting pictures, because it's so hard to choose, I think I will just leave you with a few of my favourites and invite you to visit my Photo Albums (link to the right) if you want to see more.