Photo update

Here are some pictures from my dad and brenda and co's visit.

me and my sweetheart at red robins

tyler hamming it up for grandma and grandpa

jj with some sweet hair on the sky train

capilano bridge
the family on the tree top bridge

my dad on the way home from whistler (without us!)
the boys at go banana's
the boys at the zoo.

do it!

uncle shawn sleeping.

Good-bye

Reality has set in yet again. We just got back from the airport after dropping off my dad, Brenda, and brother Skylar off for their red-eye flight back to London. Friday night we also said good-bye to my brother Shawn (but that wasn't so sad, because he seems to fancy Amy, so he'll be back). We had an amazing visit (I'll blog about that later), which makes seeing them leave so much harder. It is really hard to watch my dad say good-bye to my kids. A little bit of guilt actually seeps in. And without fail every time we are saying good-bye to our family there is a small piece of me that really wants to move back to Ontario. We are content to be where God wants to use us. We trusting that God has called us here, and we want our lives to be used for the maximum Kingdom impact that they can. Sometimes following Jesus sucks. Tonight is one of those times.

us at Red Robins for dinner before hitting the airport (oh yeah I wear glasses now!)

Is this Parksville or Hell?

Okay the title may be a bit over the top, but in all honesty the trip got off to a rocky start. We left off with our family getting pictures taken by a friend, and we booked the photo time around a ferry, giving us lots of time to make it from pictures to ferry. When we got back from the beach the night before we had an automated message from BC Ferries letting us know that the ferry that we had a reservation on was cancelled due to a ferry breakdown. So we scrambled to make another reservation, and we booked a 12:00pm ferry.

We get the pictures done, hit the road and fly to the terminal. In order for your reservation to be valid you have to be there at least 30 minutes before your sail time. We were 1 minute late. They would not let us on the boat. After I yelled at a bunch of people the best they could do was get us on the 2:00pm ferry to Shwartz Bay, meaning we still had a 2 hour drive once we got to the Island. so we did all of that and pulled up to our 'Resort' at about 6:30pm, tired, hungry, and whiny, and that was just me.

Our room was super expensive and a complete dive (never rent a room without seeing pictures first...mental note, there is a reason they don't put pictures on the website). So we told the boys not to touch anything and started phoning around for alternative sleeping arrangements ( I would have been happy in the van), but the best we could was find something for the next night. So we ate, slept, all woke up with ear aches and runny noses, and got outta dodge ASAP.

We went to the town park (very nice), had lunch, and attempted to check into our SWEET (and I mean sweet, probably the nicest place I have ever stayed) Resort (Tigh-Na-Mara) as early as possible. Our room was available, we unloaded our stuff and hit the beach!

before we hit the park we played a round of mini golf

my daredevil Tyler on the climbing equipment (I was quite nervous for this one) JJ trying to be like his big brother, I was so proud of him!We beached from about 1 - 5, hit the playground which included a bouncy castle, then went back to our room, put both the boys in our 2 person soaker tub, added some sunlight and turned on the jets...they loved it. Then we ordered pizza to the room, had a great family night, and rented an inroom movie (Meet the Robinsons, very good, I highly recommend it!). The boys passed out in the murphy and Kellee and I went and enjoyed the soaker tub. The rest of this story is very X rated, and I mean very!

my two princesses on the beach

Tyler and dad 'way out' deep in the water

the boys on the bouncy castle

the boys passed out in the murphy bed

The next morning we went back to the beach and the tide was out. It was ridiculously far, it took about 30 minutes to get to where the water was. We saw tonnes of cool stuff, shells, sand dollars, crabs, eagles, geese, jelly fish. When we got back to our room we packed up, hit some retarded little shopping village and then drove to Victoria to enjoy some ice cream, government buildings and the 9pm ferry.

us with the tide out. the houses you can see is how far we have to walk

the jelly fish we found

Kellee and JJ on a horse in Coombs Village

Tyler and Kellee on the same horse

It was the best holiday I have ever had.

Emilee being a princess

Does anyone read this?

I am just curious if anyone actually reads our blog and if it is worth continuing...i realize that the posts have been infrequent as of late, and frankly we just dont have many friends, but if you read this could you throw down a post and let me know. thanks.

Holidays!

Okay, so it has been a ridiculous amount of time since the last post. That is because facebook is actually the devil. My wife has gotten hooked on it and she reminds me to a 1 year old watching baby Einstein when she is on it. Blank stare for hours, drooling uncontrollably, it is really weird. We are getting help. Nonetheless, I have taken it upon myself to post on our behalf, so this may be different then you have experienced in the past. What have we been up too...

We got back from Rough Acres and had a week to kill at the church. Then was the holiday Monday. Kellee's dad arrived from Ontario (they are moving here and Russ is here ahead the family to work, while Lisa ties up loose ends in Ontario), and he brought his Seadoo with him. So we went to Cultus and had fun at the beach.

JJ and his mommy

My brave boy Tyler (check out his face)

The next day we woke up and got our family pictures taken by Traci Hewitson, Alicia's mom (a girl in our youth group, you can check her out at http://traceyhewitsonphotography.ca/). She wanted to give us something to say thank you for all that we have done for her daughter. It was a privilege to allow her to give us a wonderful gift. We had alot of fun. Check out our proofs.

From there we went on to Parksville. But I am a guy and this has been way to long and stressful so I am going to stop now. I will blog about Parksville later. Peace.