family day

yeah for days spent together as a family...something that is of so much importance to me, something that i think we have started to loose in this western culture. there is really nothing more important to me than having a family that loves well and works well. and i believe that we will be held accountable for this before our God. our time is His, our families are His, it is our responsibility to care for and cherish them well. time today is wasted and we say we don't have enough of it...that is not okay for me, we have more than enough time, we have to choose what we do with it.

being back in bc means many out trips and adventures amongst the trees...even though some claim that there are trees in alberta, we just smiled and nodded our heads! so we headed off across the river to golden ears for a little family time on a hike up to the lower falls

...a stroll really, as i was hit hard by a cold and sophie was a little less than excited...i felt bad for scott, all he wanted was to do was take his family on a little adventure, all i wanted to do was sit and watch the river with no responsibilities, all sophie wanted to do...i am not too sure actually.


she was pretty funny once we got over the headache of listening to her, she would cry and cry and then as soon as she saw someone coming down the path she would stop and act as though nothing was wrong. as soon as they were out of sight, back to the crying...i am a little worried about what is to come with that girl...and people say we can't have just one baby...i don't think "they" truly get what kind of a child we already have!

there were some good points to this hike. sophie ended up not crying when she was out of her stroller...so we played a bit on the beach by the river, she ate gravel, and showed me all her rocks. scott and i reveled in joy with the peace and quietness around us. she was pretty funny, she has started to give kisses...with an open mouth. and as a mother i try to accept them, but they are kinda gross!


anyway...long story short. we ended up with a great memory, time in the trees and time together...i am not saying it was the best time we ever had, i am just saying that we had that time together, and that is what counts.

we are here

so...
here we are, back on the coast, living in langley. seems hard to believe that in under a year we have moved a province away and had a little girl added to our family. change has never been a strength of mine, in fact i dig my heels in when i hear the word and almost cry on command when it comes in on the breeze...but i guess "they"say that those things that make us hurt inside builds character.

my friend jen said that her son described a fence as looking "tortured", i guess he is right...it has been weathered by storms and dried by the sun...i suppose that our lives are much the same. we encounter heartache and pain, we have moments of peace and stillness, we are grown and repaired, we are mended and "put back together". we have purpose, we have meaning...we are strong with our maker, we are in need of his handy work...we at times feel tortured, but we are well built to withhold that which comes our way, we have to be, we have a job to do.

i have purpose, i am being grown by my maker as we make these changes and build more character under His supervision...so here we are...another change, another great story to tell, another adventure to have.

our drive out was not without its own stories...

i wonder if you can see how many cars are in front of scott (truck) and how long into the night we drove, and i wonder if you know that all those cars drove right alongside us the whole way! coming out of calgary we were in bumper to bumper traffic for as long as the eye could see...and it can see a long way out there. apparently the long weekend is a bigger deal than we thought...but scott said that "not every place is a destination place cor"...so off we set...are you serious...first we hit golden...full...next revelstoke...full (with over 200 baseball teams)...next sicamoose...full...finally salmon arm at three o'clock in the morning...full. our solution, to pull over some place, cause scotts wife is not very happy, and make some sort of sleeping arrangements. first we find a church parking lot...but the citizens police is on us in no time and telling us to get out...next a road way with soft and sinking ground...

finally a piece of grass and we don't care. we put the seats down in the car and sophie and i slept in there. and scott...bless his little heart...slept in the cab of his truck with the console in the middle of his back and his legs bent up to his chest all night long...can you imagine a man who is 6'4 sleeping in the front of a pickup truck? needless to say we were up and at it the next morning with smiles on our faces and off to trinity with bells on.

oh ho...did i mention the wonderful washroom that scott found for me at some crazy time of night? perhaps i don't need to say anything...a picture says a thousands words right...

and yes i did use it! the long and the short of it...scott had to eat his words and admit that he may have been wrong about people going out on the august long...but really what the big deal about that weekend...are we celebrating anything?

anyway, here we are...

sophie is crawling now...started the day before we left lethbridge, i suppose she just decided that this was the way to go cause she is one busy little girl. but like anything, it is not enough for her so she is now in the process of walking...pulling herself up on anything she can get her hands on and trying to move along it.

so this is us for another day...
settling in and getting used to a new pace of life...
hopefully not looking too tortured, but instead used and useful.

a final look at alberta

this past week has been an adventure in and of itself, never mind all the little trips taken in between job interviews and packing. however, we have managed to make our way up to southern alberta bible camp, where a lot of the youth from the church are serving for the summer and then out to calgary to meet up with our friends shauna and scott for a day at the zoo.

lets start with sabc.
camp for myself has always happened on the island...which means trees, water (ocean or lake) and, well at least trees! our visit out to sabc had me with my mouth wide open and saying "what do these kids do here" by the time we arrived. about an hour out of lethbridge this camp offers week get aways for youngsters of all ages...and they love it. regardless of the different landscape, it was neat to watch another camp in action and remember how much i have been taught in my own camp years. the youth who knew scott were really excited to see him and it was a great opportunity to say goodbye to them and encourage them in their ministry.

the waterfront is the water hole for the neighboring farms.

so that was our day trip to the camp...

next was the day at the zoo zoo zoo (if you can imagine i sang this little song all night before we went...going to the zoo zoo zoo, oh the zoo zoo zoo! i am sure that scott loved it)

anyway, the zoo.
a place that i was a little surprised to see myself so excited about attending, but i really was. be it for the fact that i was looking forward to showing sophie the animals, or for the fact that we were able to hang out with some really great friends...or just an escape from the stresses of our little life, whatever it was, i was truly glad to have the chance to go to the zoo. a place that i have discovered offers refuge for many animals that are threatened in their real habitat, such as the tiger. as of right now, there are more tigers in captivity than there are in the wild and it is estimated that within the next decade that there will be none left in the wild. how crazy is that, that we as a people are willing to lose one of the greatest wild cats in history...are you serious...perhaps we are just uneducated...but i don't think that is the case...and i know that we care...what are we doing?
my lesson from the zoo...that camels hold water in their humps...i had no idea, scott thought that was pretty funny considering he knew and i didn't...in regards to the water packs that many hikers carry, he said "thats why they are called camel packs cor... hee hee hee" who knew...
scotts joy came from watching the gorilla sit and eat rice with his fingers. it was truly amazing to watch this huge gorilla scoop the rice chunks to the edge of the dish and then pick them up and place them into his hand to eat...crazy how like our hands they are, how they move and look.
and sophie, well, she was awake for the whole day and i would say that her least favorite...or perhaps mine...was at the cougar cage. when she started to cry and the cougars who were asleep until now, perked their ears up and then opened their eyes and came as close to my little girl as possible with eyes fixed on her...and they would not move...they held their stare on sophie for as long as we were there...a little uneasy...time to move on...!
we really enjoyed our day with scott and shauna, we have been blessed to have friends from our past close enough to play with. they truly have been a great couple for scott and i as we enjoy them as individuals and as a couple.
so, these have been our days...
tomorrow the movers come and by friday we will be packed and in our car heading for the coast. i am afraid that means no blogging for the next few days. so until then my fellow readers and writers.