Celebration of Light

Every July there are four fireworks shows, each put on by different a country. Over 1.6 million people attend annually, so it's quite the event! We went this past Saturday with the College & Career group from church. It started to rain about 10 minutes after we arrived and continued for the next three hours while we waited for the show. We managed to still have a good time, though. The clouds in the sky helped create a beautiful sunset.

Here's most of the group, sporting our cool 3-D glasses!

Before the fireworks began, a thunderstorm started a few miles away from us. The lightning was huge and beautiful, and wow, was the crowd ever impressed. We were told there are hardly ever thunderstorms around here (something about being close to a lot of water). It was awesome seeing the two light shows, God's and man's.

Our Garden and More

Trinity Western has a very small community garden across the street from campus. The land used to be part of the large farm that would feed the people living in Fort Langley (the birthplace of British Columbia). This is actually the first year of the community garden, so we gardeners have had to work together a bit to put it all together, but it's been fun and our plants are growing!

Here's the garden. Our garden is to the left of the wood gate.


Here it is up close and personal! We have spaghetti squash, patty pan squash, zucchini, green beans, turnips, beets, swiss chard, carrots, peas, cabbage, and flowers growing.


I've learned a lot about gardening by having this little garden. Turnips should not be planted by beets. Don't give up on carrots, no matter how long they take to pop up out of the soil (ours took 40 days!). Make sure to set up twine or fence for the peas to grow on right away, otherwise you get a big mess.


I was excited to go this morning and find peas growing and a zinnia about to bloom!


Since we're on an old homestead, there's no electricity - meaning no hose. One of the gardeners connected the water reservoir to this hand pump, so now we can fill up the watering cans right next to our gardens. Before the hand pump was put in, we were scooping water out of the reservoir with buckets!


A perk to the garden is all land around it. We have sheep grazing in their own field 50 yards away, so we always hear their baa-ing. There are also lots of fruit trees in the general area, and we've been told any fruit that grows on the land is ours if we want to pick it.


The above is a plum tree. We have a big colander of plums sitting on our counter right now. Below are apple pears - supposed to be quite delicious.


After getting home from gardening this morning, I was picking up our bedroom. I picked up a blanket that was on the floor and what was underneath but the dead spider you see below. We've had a lot of large spiders in this apartment but our friends tell us that's normal. Spiders are big around here. But this one - I mean, check out those legs! Disgusting.

Health Care

It's one of the first things people in the States ask us about living in Canada.

"Why do you live in Canada? Where are you working? Do you get government health care?"

To answer the question, yes we do. If you live in Canada for more than 3 months, you are eligible for a Canadian health card and government health care (but you don't have to have it). And yes, it is much less expensive than what we had in the States. That's nice.

But there's more to health care than just cost. Fortunately, we have only used our health cards a few times and those times were not serious. We have, however, learned of various problems of the Canadian health care system through friends' stories.

A good friend of ours was experiencing great amounts of pain and numbness on one side of her face. She needed to get an appointment for an MRI. In order for the health care costs to stay low, there are very few MRI scanners in the area; so despite the fact that MRI appointments are scheduled for all 24 hours of a day, she had to wait 3 months in order to have the initial appointment. Three months of extreme discomfort. And this doesn't include the amount of time she had to wait to see a specialist.

The B.C. Health System recently asked the B.C. government for more money for health care. They were told that money is tight everywhere right now and so they're going to have to make due with what they have. How have they decided to cut the $360 million? To name one thing, all of the elective surgeries are being put on a slowdown. What are those elective surgeries? Hip replacements and cataracts, to name a few. Remember that the 3 month wait for an MRI was before this big cut!

Now I really do not mean this blog entry to be a political statement. I don't know what is best for the country and for the people. I'm still trying to figure it out. But I do know that the health care system we currently have is very different from what's up here in Canada, yet the U.S. government is discussing providing government health care like Canada does. Are people going to be willing to wait for months to have diagnostic tests? Are people going to accept huge sums of money being deleted from the health care budget - directly affecting what happens to them when they go to the hospital - when times are tough?

Just trying to provide an American-living-in-Canada perspective on American political issues. Please feel free to leave your perspective.

The Sunshine Coast

To celebrate our 3rd anniversary, we took a trip to the Sunshine Coast. This is the coast area which is north of Vancouver and only accessible via a ferry. The weather there is known for being sunnier than most other places in B.C. (hence the name), and it lived up to its reputation.


Our first B.C. ferry ride - except for the free one nearby that just goes across the Fraser River.


The very first thing that we noticed was this painted electrical box. Beautiful.


Then we saw another! The Sunshine Coast is known for the many artists living in the area, and one of the artists displays her work on these!


This one is our favorite.


This is where my mom would live if she lived on the Sunshine Coast. The houseboat (seen on the right side of the picture with gray spaces on top) is actually smaller than the floating garden attached to it!

The beaches were mostly rocky, yet still made a nice picnic spot. The water felt great for swimming in the heat!


One of the big attractions of the area is the Skookumchuck Narrows, an inlet so narrow that rapids are formed when the tide is high. This only occurs in two places in the world - the Sunshine Coast and the Bay of Fundy. Here's John hiking to the Narrows.


Anybody know what this is? We saw a few of these in patches on the hike and couldn't decide if they were more closely related to mushrooms or flowers.


Once we got to the Narrows, we actually found extreme kayakers playing on the rapids. They were a lot of fun to watch.

Check out this video if you want to see a kayaker's trick!


We spent the night in a B&B and had a great view of the Sechelt Inlet on our porch.


The restaurant for dinner also had an amazing view, as you can see. We also watched two bald eagles "fishing" and a great blue heron pruning.


Married for 3 years!


The next morning found us at Francis Point Provincial Park, which provided a beautiful hike along the coast. Check out the starfish we found!


If you took the time to look, you could find them all over the rock outcroppings we were hiking on.


A sea anemone!


Before we boarded the ferry to come back to regular life, we hiked through the woods and up Soames Hill to this gorgeous view.

Jericho Beach

Relaxing Saturday + 90 Degree Weather = A Day at the Beach!
(Sorry, the wind sounds stronger on the video than it did there.)

Neither of us have ever lived in a place where you can just hop in your car,drive for 45 minutes, and end up at the ocean!

Besides the beach being shallow for a long ways out, the tide was really low while we were there. Thus, a lifeguard was on the beach and a lifeguard was in the water with his rowboat. The beach was awesome - the view, the dry sand, the windsurfers, the water temperature, really everything except the wet sand. It was really soft and in some spots like muck. You get used to it, but this is what John's feet looked like after walking on the wet sand!

Camping at Mount Ranier

Flying back from MN was amazing because I could see the ground the entire way. It was fun to watch the lakes turn to flat farm land to mountains to dry farm land to mountains again. At the end of the flight Mount Ranier was clearly visible, which was great since John & I were going to go camping there with my sibs a few days later.


It was very fun to see Eric, Kari, Emma, and Katie (affectionately named EKEK!) A highlight of John's camping experience was teaching Emma how to make pine cone soup and pine cone salad.


We all went hiking out to Bench Lake and Snow Lake Saturday morning. The trail alternated between dry dusty ground and snow patches. The water of Snow Lake was a brilliant teal color.


Katie has recently moved back to the West Coast. (Sorry, a very white picture, but besides that it's a good one.) We're glad to have her nearby - okay, 8 hours away but that's closer than before!


The highest part of the national park that you can drive to is named "Paradise." It's this huge expanse of snowy land where you can play. It looks like the snow just recently started melting enough so that you could see patches of grass, but most of the ground was covered - and I mean COVERED!


It was good for us that it was covered, because as you can read in the above sign, we couldn't have hiked where we went if there hadn't been snow! Katie, John, and I hiked out quite a ways and saw beautiful views. Here we are with Mount Ranier in the background.


It's safe to say a good trip was had by all!

Week in MN, sans John

While John was busy keeping our home together, I was off in MN for my friend's wedding and some time with the fam. It was so good. Not really knowing Mandy's now-husband prior to the four days before the wedding, I loved getting to help with the last minute details and getting to know Adam better. Mandy and Adam are a great fit for each other. It was also Mandy's mom's birthday, so we took some time out to celebrate at Red Lobster.


One of Mandy's personal attendants, Heather, was a fellow cross-country skier in our high school days. It was great hanging out with her again. Here we are getting pedicures before the big event!


Doesn't Mandy look beautiful?


Other people I reconnected with at the wedding were Peggy Martinez, her daughter Amy, and Amy's husband Jon. Before they moved from Bemidji, my family spent TONS of time with them! Here's Peggy and my wonderful mom.


The second half of my MN time was spent up north. A few highlights: helping my mom and dad clear dead trees from their property ... (Living in a basement suite, I miss yard work!) ...


...and seeing Rob hit a home run at his softball game!