Farm Girl Update

My friend Leah likes to call us "farm girls" even though we are mostly just wannabes.
Our chickens are full grown now and the six of them produce about four eggs a day.  I have named our Rhode Island Reds Dottie (red dot on her head) and Pepper.  The white Leghorns are Bianca and Bianca and the Sexlinks are Hilda and Hilda.

The ladies in their coop

Jonah, the pro chicken wrangler, holding one of the Hildas

Getting our daily eggs

The garden is currently producing green beans, two types of cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchinis, japanese eggplants, strawberries, mint, basil, and lavender.

Day 5 - Vancouver to Seattle 8/10

Vancouver is a very large city and according to my online research, something like 52% of its residents don't have English as their first language.  I know I heard people speaking at least three languages while I was there.

After a continental breakfast at our hotel, we checked out and heading to Vancouver's Granville "Island" to do some shopping.  What a fun place!

We loved this stone, crystal, and jewelry shop and I bought several gifts there.

Karen is a bit of a stone expert/junkie and we stopped in stone shops in at least four different cities:)

Awesome puppet store in the Kid's Market

Just outside the Public Market

Inside the Public Market

 



We ate all sorts of ethnic foods here for lunch and I picked up some unique dried meats here to take home to Brandon as well.

Yes, I am wearing the same jacket in nearly every picture from the entire trip.  It was supposed to be in the 70s everywhere we went the whole time we were there.  It was not.

We spent so much time on Granville Island that we had to drive straight from Vancouver to Seattle.

It was a lovely trip.

Day 4 Continued - Squamish to Vancouver

The 1,000 ft. high Shannon Falls

Porteau Cove provincial park

On the shores of glacial carved Howe Sound; the island, water and mountain views were stunning.

A manmade reef underwater here would make for some awesome scuba diving on a warmer day.

We saw a sea lion in the water here. 

When we finally reached Vancouver it was already getting dark.  We checked into our Best Western and headed out to find some dinner.  Yaletown was a really cute part of town with lots of great restaurants.

Day 4 - Whistler to Squamish

Swinging before leaving Brew Creek Lodge

Whistler

My camera's battery died as we left the lodge which meant that for much of the prettiest drive on the continent  I had only my iphone for photos.  It also didn't help that we kept getting so wrapped up in the scenery that we'd drive right past the lookout point turnoff before even noticing it was there.

Alice Lake

Stopped for lunch in the gorgeous town of Squamish, British Columbia provence, Canada.

Charged my camera battery:)

Here's Karen in front of Squamish's Stawamus Chief, the second-largest granite monolith in the world!  The tallest of the chief's three peaks is 2,300 vertical feet.

We had lunch just across from the yacht club in Squamish and crossed over to take pictures in front of the mountain and Howe Sound, North America's southernmost fjord.  The lovely woman we stopped to take our photo, let us come aboard her little ship and then we gave ourselves a tour, walking along the planks getting a look at all the other boats in the harbor and seeing spectacular views.

Day 4 to be continued...

Our Weekend

We interrupt our vacation coverage to bring you more recent news.

Brandon had Thursday off work so we took a picnic lunch to Deer Creek reservoir and played on the beach there a bit even though it was rather windy.

Saturday morning, Brandon showed me that his flight simulator training had indeed paid off and he can fly his remote control airplane without crashing it into a million pieces.

Brandon's sister Katie got into town from Nashville on Saturday afternoon.  We hadn't seen her in months so we went over to spend the evening with the J. family.  Brandon, Alan, and Linda took the kids swimming while Katie and I made momos (Tibetan dumplings) for dinner.  Vanessa, Matt, and M'Lindsay stopped by for a bit.  Katie's hubby, Jason got in on a later flight and came over after dinner with his folks.  Alan, B, Kate, Jason, and I decided to go to a late showing of Inception.  Great movie!

Sunday morning was relaxed.  We took the kids swimming again in the afternoon.  

Elora and aunt Katie

In the evening we had 27 adults and a handful of kids over for dinner.  Everyone wanted to spend time with Katie and Jason!  It was a great, fun party.

Even uncle Adam was there from Arizona

Bryson, Alex, and Jonah following deer

Fireworks

As the night wore on, people trickled home, kids went to bed, and the family stayed up playing a new card game discovered by the C's called Bang.  It's a good one;)