Summer Fun!

Hi Everyone,

Here's a little update on things lately.  First of all, we successfully finished teaching summer school- YAHOO!!  We were both teaching 2 courses (Andrew was doing Math 10 & 11 and I was doing Socials 10 & 11).  It was good but also SO much work, time, effort, lack of sleep, etc.  Also in there we had to clean up our place and look for renters, so that took time too.  Needless to say, we were quite pleased when it was all over.  My kids were good in both classes, but the morning group was def more fun b/c they had way more personality.  The afternoon group was just kinda stale and didn't have much to say or much interest in making class a little less dry.  Anyways, it's all in the past and we're done now!

My SS10 class in Burnaby- lots of kids dropped out before it ended- thus the small class size.  They were all great except for one bad boy (the one next to me in the red hat).  I shall not go into detail...

After finishing up with summer school we took off with my family for 5 days to Camp Barnabas, which is a family camp on Keats Island, right across from Gibsons on the Sunshine Coast.  We'd been looking forward to this for months, and it paid off as we had the best time ever!!  Everything was wonderful: the food, the speaker, waterskiing and wakeboarding, the weather, the view, the people we met, and most of all the loads of family time that we got out of it.  It feels like every time we go to Abby to visit my family for the afternoon there's never enough time to feel like it was a thorough visit- there are always a few people we don't get around to talking to as much as we'd like... so camp was great for that.  Plus we played LOADS of Dutch Blitz together.  If you've never played it before, it's the best game in the world... Google it, then buy it... Gauranteed to be endless hours of family fun for everyone!!  

We woke up at 5:30am on the first morning (I had to pee) and this was the view from our tent at camp... we decided to "display" it!)

While we waited for the camp ferry in Gibsons, my mom, sisters, and I went perusing in this little lingerie shop... Andrew opted to wait outside (see the little sign behind him?)

The "Barnabob"... thingy where you go in this basket and make the post go from side to side until you're touching the water- this is my dad and Nicy doing it.

Emily with a garder snake... the little boys who found it insisted it was a "boa"- so cute!

View from the camp... tre beautiful!

Ferry ride back to Horseshoe Bay... the front of the boat was a touch windy as you can tell by everyone's hair!

Also, the last long weekend we had we went up to Osoyoos with Andrew's family and my family too.  Lots of good times there as well.  It's always nice to be able to have both families together.  The weather was amazing, as was the food and company!

Gill (Andrew's mum), Andrew, and my mom before another amazing dinner in Osoyoos.  

In terms of China plans, things are coming along well.  It's looking like we'll be leaving on the 29th of August now.  The reason it's taken so long to figure out exact dates is b/c of the visa process.  Usually it's not too severe, but with the Olympics this year security is WAY tighter and our application has had to pass thru 3 offices instead of just the usual 1 office.  Tomorrow Andrew and I have to complete the final step of getting the visas and then we're good to go.  

We're in a funny place right now of kind of feeling like we're on holidays (compared to teaching summer school), but also kind of feeling a bit of pressure b/c of packing, taking care of tons of little moving details, and organizing dates for when we'll see everyone "for the last time" and having a good-bye party.

Sooooo, that's where we're at right now... things are good- we're loving the weather and having free time to hang out with each other... 

Hope you're all doing well!