Trip Highlights

Driving through the Rocky and Kootenay mountains. You all must do it at least once in your lifetime.

Staying in the Wagners' amazing house for 4 days by ourselves. Talk about luxury accomodations.

Hanging out with great friends: the Lynns, Allie and her mom Patricia, Aggie, Szabolcs, Melissa (too short of a visit), Rita and Jer, the Wagners, the Butchers, etc, etc.

Watching my son gradually warm up to my friends' children and play with them.

Having my belly expand so much one week that I could feel my child pushing against me, demanding more space for his or her rapidly growing frame. I literally had 3 days where I felt like someone had put a balloon inside of me and they were going to blow it up until I burst. Feeling this new, enthusiastic life rolling and kicking and punching through our many car rides and visits.

Starbucks. Oh, how I have missed my lattes and tazo frappuccinos.

Ikea. We really need to bring trailer next time we go to an Ikea . . . Sigh.

Eating great foreign food. Seeing people who weren't white. Hearing other languages swirling around me. Checking out the Indian fabric stores and touching the silks and cottons and polyesters and brocades. So much sight, sound and culture to experience everywhere.

The ocean. When we drove into Twassen to get on the ferry to Vancouver Island and I smelled the fishy, salty sea air I almost wept.

Travelling on the ferry with the Lynns, and staying in a hotel in the room next to them and eating the free continental breakfast together. We pushed two little tables together and loaded up on free food. It was so surreal and fun. Especially now that we have three and a half kids between us.

Cowichan Bay, this lovely little seaside port town on the east coast of Vancouver island with a harbour, a view of Saltspring across the channel and really cool and funky shops and resteraunts (fresh organic bread, anyone?).

The big pile of sand they brought in for the Salmon Arm Roots and Blues Festival that kept Andrew happy all day. Also this amazing workshop with Feist, Hocksley Workman and this up-and-coming new yorker named Jennie Starr. Fantastic -- the whole crowd was dancing by the end.

Also, just soaking in a day of great, interesting music, including Iranian Tabla, blues, Finnish fiddle, fantastic young singer / songwriters, raegae and calypso. And watching the fascinating feast of people who attend folk festivals -- all in their folkiest finery. My favorite was the big, bare chested man with a pirate like beard, shoulder length dreadlocks and a kacki kilt. Where else are you going to see that (or indeed, where else would you ever want to see it?). Then after a day of being baked in the sun and overstimulated until your rational faculties are beaten to a fine pulp, sitting in the cool evening listening to an amazing musician (Feist again in this case -- she is a great performer) who has the ability to burn her music into your now defenseless psyche. Then following this with a hot chocolate at Tim Hortons while discussing the intersection of Hippie idealism, Postmodernism and Christianity (that is another post all together).

Staying with this wonderful, warm and hospitable missionary couple from Japan in Canmore, Alberta. Despite their weak English and our inability to speak Japanese, we really enjoyed our time with them. It was a little oasis of warmth and humanity in the midst of a very long drive home. Such good people.

Watching my husband enjoy driving his new Suzuki VStrom home from Calgary, and seeing my son's eyes go big every time he said "Daddy driving a MOTORCYCLE".

Finally driving the familliar 2 hrs from Saskatoon to our home, soaking in the beautiful colours of the ripened wheat and canola, smiling at ever-shifting and beatiful big, big sky and feeling glad to be home at last.