First leg -- visiting with Family

For those of you interested enough in our trip to endure my uninspired prose, here goes:

Our first evening was a great visit with Lindi and Dan in London. Jack and Rebecca were so enthralled to guinea-sit for us that they made a maze-run for them out of wooden blocks. We were happy to visit with other guinea pigs while away! Eric found the individual t.v.'s on the back of the airplane seats quite appealing!

On arrival to Victoria Robin kindly picked us up at the airport in a Honda Accord that we briefly owned, inherited from Bob's grandfather until Robin and Sharon had need of it. There it was in the parking lot, the body in the same condition that we left it in, 4 years ago, in true West-coast fashion. The plates blew us away – 898 GPA, Gpa being our family nickname for Grandpa. Robin said that the license office just handed it to him that way!!!! Gpa lives on.

Symphony Splash is where the Victoria symphony boards a barge and provides a free concert, to 40 000 folks assembled on blankets and lawn chairs around the harbour. We sat on the lawn of the legislature and watched it slowly illuminate as the darkness fell – slightly resembling the Taj Mahal! Our kids loved playing card games with Ross and Mimi, their 2nd cousins. We stayed up 21 hours that day, considering we had an early flight, 3 hour time warp, and a late fireworks-filled evening. Here is a pic of Eric and Mimi getting silly in the blankets waiting for the pyrotechnics to begin!

Also in Victoria , we enjoyed a wonderful afternoon at the 'Shaw ocean discovery centre', where the kids got to identify, touch and squirm in the face of octopi, crabs, jelly fish etc.

We loved having a beach day on the ocean – watching Mimi and Ross challenge each other to go deeper and deeper into the frigid ocean water. It was so fun to hang out with these guys – wonderful kids, soon to grow up completely and be fabulous adults. Our kids enjoyed a little Ross-worship, too (he's 12) or more particularly his skills on his DS... Sharon also treated us to a large dinner with the whole Victoria crew of cousins and Aunt Lynn. It was great to connect with everybody. Here is the family gathered around Ross and Mimi's guinea pigs.

We finished our Victoria leg with a rare night out – watching a 5 story tall Captain Kirk on the local IMAX screen. And now we were ready to begin our next leg -- the slow way to Jasper.