We Are Home

Well we have made it to our resting place..............

Yesturday (Monday) morning we left Vancouver Island and caught the 8am ferry back to the mainland and headed for Fountainview.

It was a very overcast and rainy day - which was very good for the forest fires which are burning everywhere.

We spent last night in our 'new home'. We still don't have our container of belongings yet, so we blew up the air beds we used at camp meeting, rolled out the sleeping bags and we were good to go.

They told us we could eat in the cafateria till we got our things.

Last night though, instead of having cafateria food for tea, a group of the staff (deans etc) and the students that are staying on campus all headed to Lillooet (1/2 hour drive) for tea. So we climbed aboard the bus and went along too. We went to a hot dog stand that serves vegan american hot dogs and sweet potato fries (like golden kumera). They were very tasty.

After tea they decided to go for a short walk and have worship along the way. The kids saw a bear as it scurried off into the bushes. Very exciting.

Worship was taken by one of the students - it was excellent. All about how hard it is for us to leave our friends and family to follow God's leading, and how God will be with us every step of the way and will be our best friend - very fitting for us we thought. We felt very blessed to be part of the evenings activities.

Another highlight of the day was that we got visitors - kiwi visitors within an hour of arriving at Fountainview!!! We were very surprised when David & Carolyn Hunt (Ellis) and Owen Ellis arrived on our door step. It was lovely to see them. They have been over visiting family and friends for a couple of weeks. It was very nice of them to pay us a visit.

Today (Tues) has been a slower day - trying to get paperwork sorted etc.

Tomorrow we are heading back down to Vancouver to customs to clear our container of belongings. We will be down there for a couple of days and all going well, we will be able to bring our things back on Friday. We have hired a U Haul truck to bring it all back in. Just where we are going to put it all, we aren't quite sure yet!!

I have been busy making a list of all the things we need to buy - shower curtains, toilet brush, microwave, dishwasher!, food - the list goes on and on...........

It will be a very busy couple of days in Vancouver.

Market Day

Today Lynne took us to some markets in Coombs.

Can you see the goat on the roof???

They were great markets. They had shops with all sorts of interesting things in them.

The grocery store had lots of different foods from around the world. They had a fantastic bakery with yummy pies and breads. See the swirly colored bread and all the different pies. i couldn't get over all the different cheeses there was to buy.

They had an ice cream shop with heaps of different flavors. Tamzin got 'deep dish apple pie' flavor - it tasted just like apple pie.

After we were done wondering the markets we headed home to drop Alistair and the kids off, then Lynne and I hit the shops appliance shopping. Made our first appliance purchase. It is a panini maker, griller and waffle iron all in one. You change the plates in it depending on what you are cooking. It is really neat, and since space is a bit of an issue we felt that having one appliance which did all this, instead of 3 was a good thing.

Haven't been able to buy to much house stuff yet as we don't have alot of room right now to fit it in the car.

Returned the new camera I bought on Friday. The photo quality wasn't good enough. Just goes to show one shouldn't judge something by the outward appearance, it's whats inside that counts!

We are heading to Fountainview tomorrow to get settled in our new house. Our container is due to arrive this week and hopefully we can get it cleared customs etc and in to the house by friday. In the meantime we will camp in the house with the camping gear we got for camp. Just as well the air bed is a comfy one.............

Happy Birthday to You

Today was Alistair's birthday...... which he kept reminding us about.

We headed off to Harbourside SDA church and met all the nice folks there.

Thought we would stay for church lunch and see what happens at church lunches on this side of the world - much the same as at home really......

After having a wee spot of R&R we headed out to the park in search of some geocaches.

I think we found 6 or 7. Along the way we came accross this deer, which wasn't very scared of us.

We had a nice time in the great outdoors. It wasn't such a nice day weather wise today. Rained for the morning, but stopped in the afternoon, but was cooler than it has been - had to have a sweatshirt on.

We sang happy birthday to Alistair and presented him with not one, but 2 birthday cakes. One with chocolate and one without (for the Tamzin's amoungst us).

We have had a nice day meeting new people and spending time with old friends...............

Friday

Another week is drawing to a close. It is Friday evening and we are relaxing at Lynne and Lyndon's place on Vancouver Island.

We have spent the last 2 days shopping - trying to get clothes sorted for Kyle to wear to school, finding a jet ski trailer to buy and looking at washers/dryers.
Somewhere along the way I found a new camera to buy - it's red, so I couldn't resist it! Kyle is busy telling me all the features it has - I haven't got near it yet! It is just a point and shoot one, I wanted a small one that I could carry with me.

Today the 4 of us sat our boat exams to get our boat license. Over here you have to have a boat license to drive ANY thing on the water. It's a bit of a joke really - none of us had studied and we all passed! Glad we have gotten that out of the way.

The weather has been nice and warm. It has been very hazzy here though as there are 400 forest fires raging between lillooet and Williams Lake and the wind has carried the smoke down here. The sun has been orange/red from the smoke. The fireman are keeping very busy.

My back is feeling better than it was on the day I did it, but it still is giving me a hard time. Hopefully it will come right before we have to unload the container.......... any volunteers to come help us move into our house????

Painful Day

Here I find myself on my knees beside the bed. Yes I have been praying, but I must admitt that the reason I am in this position is because it is the most comfortable place to be, with the least amount of pain...... but I am getting ahead of myself - I will start at the beginning.

Tuesday: We headed down to Vancouver and spent the day with Connie, Mitchell and Aaron. Not sure if I have mentioned that Connie (my sister-in-law) had brain surgery 2 weeks ago. She is home from the hospital but isn't doing as well as hoped. She is getting very bad headaches and vomiting on and off.
The doctors aren't sure why this is happening.

I spent the afternoon chating with her and keeping her company while she slept. It was nice to be able to do that. Alistair took the 4 kids off swimming and looking at motor bikes. Sounds like they had a great time. They even managed to get Alistair to do a back flip off the high (no just joking the low) diving board - the kids said it was quite the sight (don't think he acheived it).

After we had enjoyed Indian food with them for tea (supper), we headed back the 2 hours drive to where we were camping. Upon our return we found that they had locked the gates and we couldn't get in - it wasn't even 9pm.
Alistair went in search of the care taker to open the gate and let us in - which he found.

When we reached our tent we discovered that it must have rained VERY heavy while we were gone. Well you remember that lovely mossie tent in the photos that we bought - well that is where we had all our food/chairs/ cooker etc - while it doesn't have solid sides now does it. So you guessed it - everything was soaking wet.

Luckily the inside of our sleeping tent was pretty much dry. There was some water on the floor and praise God the books we had bought from the ABC were on a bit of a 'lump' so didn't get wet. We fell into bed and decided we would deal with it in the morning............... hopeing that by then the wind would have dried everyting.

Wednesday: Well the wind didn't dry anything!

We spent 3 hours trying to sort through wet food/chairs/tents and cookers. Unfortunatly about half way through this process, while packing up the airbed, something went 'ping' in my lower back and that was the end of me! I was down and out, hardly able to move.

I was gutted - that was the last thing I needed. Specially as we had a 2 hour drive and a 2 hour ferry crossing ahead of us to get to Vancouver Island.
I did lots of praying and talking with the Lord and the pain did ease somewhat. It wasn't the most comfortable trip to the ferry but we got there.

Upon arriving at the ferry at 2pm to catch the 3pm ferry, you can imagine my dismay when we were told that we wouldn't get on the 3pm one and would have to wait till the 5pm. My heart sank at the thought of sitting in the car another 2 hours than first thought.

Again I had a wee talk with the Lord - and you guessed it - we got on the original sailing, the 3pm one. What a relief.

We are now at my friend Lynne & Lyndon's place. She has given me some wonderful drugs to help with the pain and beleive it or not this kneeling position has really helped - why should that surprise me!

Lyndon took Kyle and Alistair to see some hotrod cars - '66 corvette, older camaro's, GTO, 1948 Plymouth, 1937 Plymouth, mustangs - for those of you who care to know what some of them were. Then they went to see some remote control airoplanes. So you guessed it - Kyle thinks we now need a remote control plane - thanks for that Lyndon!

Well it is late and I have put off going to bed for long enough.......... goodnight all

Slow Day

Today has been a rather slow day - it has been great.

We headed into the town of Hope - the chainsaw carving capital of the world. The carvings were quite amazing.

The town had some lovely flower pots. The ones in the photo below were huge. I hope I can grow some like that next summer - yeh right.

We did a spot of geo caching - found 2 of the 3 we went to find.

We went to check out the local swimming spot - it is called Lake of the Woods. We were surprised to see all these people perched on rocks around the edge of the lake, enjoying a day at the beach. There was not sand or clear shore line in sight. But they were all having the time of their life. I was surprised how warm the water was, but I still didn't get in. It was very clear and very picturesque.

We drove about 30km to a resort town called Harrison Hot Springs. What an amazing wee place. It is at the bottom end of HUGE lake. I think every man and his dog decided to go there today - well today is the monday of a long weekend. Had we had out jet ski we could have launched it for a mere $18, we couldn't believe that they would charge so much to put your boat/jet ski in the water.

We decided that we couldn't afford to stay in any of the fancy hotel/motels they had, so we headed back to our cozy camp site. We had planned to go for a swim in the hot pools, thinking they would be something like Miranda, but they were in a building. Just like going to the swimming centre. we decided that that wouldn't be that exciting, so gave it a miss.

For those of you who appreciate old things, we took a picture of this old Harley motor bike. Check out the seat.

For tea tonight we enjoyed a big cook up of perogies and onions, and Tamzin made a fantastic salad. it was very yummy.

The mossies have decided to arrive and partake in some good kiwi flesh. Tamzin has been eaten the most. We had to dig out the bug spray. We were quite enjoying no bugs...........

Well camp meeting has come to an end.

It has been nice meeting new people and catching up with a few old friends.

We have been really impressed with how camp meeting has been run. Not once during the 5 days here did I strike no loo paper, no hand soap or no hand towels (I did encounter no hotwater though). They kept the toilets so clean and tidy. The campers were all very considerate of each other. You were allowed to have your cars at your site and drive them in and out whenever you wanted. No one abused this, there were no 'hoons' speeding round the place. It has been very pleasant.

On Sabbath we were invited to have lunch with a group of families from fountainview. It was really nice for Kyle and Tamzin to met a number of kids that will be at F/V. They made them feel very welcome. Even took them of a bit of a hike - which Tamzin hasn't stopped complaining about!

Today saw the camp ground empty out as everyone went home. We have decided to stay on camping here for a few days and use it as a base - you can't beat the price $11 per night - for all of us. We plan to go and visit Connie, Mitchell and Arron and do a spot of shopping. Might even go for the odd walk...

Here are a couple more pictures, since some of you asked for more......

Ruby & Mitchell, and Hannah and Scott (K&T's cousins)