Notes from the Promised Land, Days 1-3

Day 1: Vancouver
Spent the first day settling in and meeting Emma, Trinh and Dennis. Emma's initial reaction: "I don't quite believe you're my sister." You and me both, kid ;)

She and the boys got along incredibly well. Before long they were laughing in the car, playing together outside, and having what certainly sounded like a heck of a good time outside. Meanwhile, we got settled in, met Trinh and Dennis and said hi to Mark, my 20-year old brother from my dad's second marriage. Trinh is great - friendly, interesting, great sense of humour. Dennis is fairly severely autistic and has some developmental delay, but he did make some eye contact, and he has a wonderful smile. Mark... well, the last time I'd seen him was about four years ago. Sixteen year olds don't generally have much by way of stubble or muscles, did you know? He kinda laughed at me and Chris (a lot) for being totally stunned at how much he'd changed :D :D

Had lunch. Trinh's also a great cook. Passed around old photographs, including a few of my dad's family. Saw a picture of my grandfather that I hadn't seen in years.

Day 2: Squamish
Saw batita! And her kids! We ended up at a beach at one point, and she said something like, "I feel like I'm giving you the lame tour of Squamish."

"Um, no," we said. "You weren't in our car as we were driving up here. There was a lot of open-mouth Holy **** being said in there."

Chris has always called BC the Promised Land, and claims it's the most gorgeous province in Canada. Um, yeah. Pretty much. It's a land in superlatives.

( Sand castles & kids )

As for the grownups, we had a great time catching up on... well, about twenty years or so. That's a lot of history.

Day 3: Vancouver
Took Emma to the Aquarium. More running around and having fun with the Big Nephews. And were struck over and over again with how much Daniel and Emma look alike. She's tanned and he's freckled, but otherwise there's quite a kinship evident there. Although "I still don't quite believe you're my sister" was still said a number of times ;)

( ibises, dolphins, electric blue froggies and kids! )

Notes from the Promised Land, Days 4 & 5

Day 4
Puttered about Vancouver. Saw a Japanese fishing village. No pictures. Boo.

Day 5
The next day, my dad, Trinh, Emma and Mark started driving to Alberta. Dennis stayed behind, with a caregiver who was going to stay with him while the trail ride was going on, since he would have been pretty miserable if he'd come along. We also stayed in Vancouver, as we were going to be flying in to Lethbridge. Went to the Capilano Bridge, a 136-metre long suspension bridge that hangs 70 above the Capilano river.

Yeah, province of superlatives. It's a little scary, ( walking over this thing. )