On July
10th Cathy and the girls arrived in Victoria after a fabulous flight
that only took 15 hours from Barcelona to Victoria, you cannot do it
faster! Grandma and Grandpa were waiting
with open arms and bouquets of flowers for the girls. The first order of events was to celebrate
Grace’s 9th birthday on July 13th with a bowling party
with our close friends. It was lots of
fun and wonderful for Grace to be with her Canadian friends for the special
occasion. In July we went to our cabin
at Cowichan Lake every weekend and were able to have our dear friends Ale,
Steve, Sebastian, Daniel and Matias up for a day. A highlight for us was going to Chemanius
Theatre with mom and dad to have lunch and see “Joseph’s Amazing Technicolor
Dream Coat”. It was a wonderful
production and we are still singing the songs.
The rest of the month was filled with playdates, dinners with friends,
visits to the park.
On July
30th Anatolijus arrived and we had three great dinners that first
week with friends and then went to Cowichan for the long weekend and had
wonderful, hot weather. The next week
Anatolijus was able to play some golf, we met our good friend Duncan for coffee
who had just arrived from New York and enjoyed a lovely evening with our friends
Kathreen and Bill at our old favorite Canoe Club. We were then off to Vancouver for our
traditional sushi feast with the Jenkins and then we headed to Shuswap lake for
our 2 week family vacation. This year
the weather was absolutely perfect so lots of time was spent boating, swimming
and relaxing. Anatolijus and Dad did a
big job rebuilding the front steps
and Susan and Dad painted the deck and stairs – everything was looking
spiffy! In addition to the fish fry with
the Bassermans and Lyons we also had a visit from our friends Cathy and Paul
Unger who are missionaries in the Solomon Islands but are spending a furlough
year in Salmon Arm. What are the chances
that friends living is Spain and the Solomons could meet in Salmon Arm? Very high apparently, they came with their 5
children on the hottest day so it was great to all be in the water. Anatolijus and I also spent a night away down
in Naramata wine touring, we met our friends Rob and Tara and had a great time! On our way back to Victoria we stopped in at
our friends Sharon and Dan in Abbotsford for lunch and a lovely visit and made
it to the ferry in time to see a spectacular west coast sunset.
We then
had only three days left before returning to Spain and wondering where all the
time had gone. We feel so blessed to be
able to come home to BC to so many friends and family who we love and feel so
connected to. Now we will rely on emails
and skype to stay in touch as we continue our adventure in Spain!
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