Waiting in Calgary...nope, in my living room...enjoying the sun

Well, maybe i can make it home today...wouldn't that be fantastic?  I am home, but i mean, home from B.C.  Maybe i'll have to do the edited, point form version since i seem to have a propensity for making my posts waaaay too long and i'm sure too wordy...but it's hard since there are so many fun details that make the trip oh so much more exciting...but since it's my experiences and not someone else's, i should probably do the abridged version. 
So where was i?  I think we were finished with Tuesday...
Wednesday
- Dad and Uncle Brent headed off for a game of golf in Chilliwack - i think neither of them did a spectacular game but it was nice for them to be out together.
- Aunt Yettie and I went to visit my cousin Sally and her son Nicholas who live in White Rock... I met Harvey, who was sleeping most of the time (on baby duty recovery phase) and we went for a great walk to 0 Avenue (i love the street names here in the area - very logical, if slightly uninventive) and that happened to be the border with the U.S.  I had no idea it was like that - i guess i was picturing barbed wire fences and searchlights, but maybe that's more for Korea and the USSR and not so much for supposedly friendly neighbours!  I defiantly tossed a pebble over to the US side and when no guard came charging out of the woods with a machine gun, i felt slightly reassured that this might be safe. 
We walked a bit farther and even crossed our toes across the border line indicated on a stone cairn.. nothing happened... so we walked even farther - and came across the Peace Arch border crossing - there was a beautiful park and we wandered all around there - still no alarms or sirens so we figured we must be in no-man's land.  This was all confirmed when we spoke with a US border patrol guard hanging out in the park - we had found a US passport on the Canadian side just lying on the road and we needed to return it to someone (my aunt kept being all conspiracy theory on me and asking if i had touched it and wasn't i worried that they'd think i killed the guy... i'm pretty non-threatening looking i figured and we returned it to the guard with baby in arms - thanks Nicholas - so we didn't look quite like gangsters was my thought!)
- Oh dear, getting way too long winded again... dinner at home again was a delicious roast - which Uncle Brent couldn't get enough of... i think i'm going to try to attempt a roast again - Aunt Yettie makes delicious roasts! 
Thursday

- our last full day in B.C. started out kinda rainy and overcast - we were in search of a battery charger for my camera and for a printer cartridge for Yettie's printer... successful for the last item, not the first, but then we decided to abandon the pursuit of electronic success and move on to enjoying nature. 

- we headed out to the Golden Ears Provincial Park - it was a rainforest, but not the south american monkey boa kind but rather the west coast mystical, mossy, brooding kind that you'd imagine Tolkein being a fan of; i kept looking for elves and wizards but the closest we got was a movie shoot about a wizard (Seventh Son?? never heard of it).  It was also super hard to take pictures there - but i kept trying anyway!  We hiked up to a waterfall there and enjoyed our lunch beside the freezing cold, rushing mountain stream, memories of Lilypa floating through my brain.  I was also kinda paranoid about bears (though from what i hear in the paper this morning, i can be scared about bears in Burlington area too - the police shot and killed one there yesterday!) but thankfully we didn't meet any up close - doesn't mean they weren't stalking us however!

- we took a long windy drive home past Stave Lake and other interesting little features in the Maple Ridge area - then home for dinner and then a last visit to Langley to Grandma.  It was like a little mini-family reunion since Uncle Brent was there, Aunt Yettie came along and we met Grandma's sister, Tante Ge Gelderman and two of her daughters - we had some good times reminiscing (for Dad) about living in Dryden for the summers and such.  It was a neat evening and good cap to our trip!
Friday
- our last day.  After packing everything up and being all organized, we had one last day trip.  Living in Abbotsford, Aunt Yettie is so close to so many natural beauty sites and this was no exception.  In Chilliwack, there is a Blue Heron Sanctuary right along the Vedder River.  It was totally free to get in, the ladies at the interpretive centre even lent us all binoculars and told us where to go for maximum wildlife spotting possibilities!  We walked along the drainage canal and saw many types of ducks, lots of herons on their nests up in the trees, squawking away and making a huge racket, ospreys (or i maintain that i saw them) and even an otter - that was super cool!  It was the perfect temperature of day, and the perfect way to say goodbye to B.C.  I dearly wish we had something like this at home - we seem to have to pay for a lot of things and we don't have any mountains - i will miss getting up in the morning and not seeing the peaks!   
But it was a good trip and a good flight home, despite my legs getting quite restless and antsy for the last few hours, never fun when you're stuck in a plane seat and can't sleep... And super nice to see Timothy who picked us up at the airport - five minutes later, we're home and that's super nice too! 

So goodbye to all our family out west.  It was good to see you all again....