hometown tourists

This week has taken on a slightly different hue as we have house guests from Ontario. My nephew Matt and his wife of almost one year, Joan, have come for a spring break to visit Grandma (my mom). We’re putting them up in the Nesdoly motel!

And so though I had to get back to typing yesterday after having no work for a week, it still feels like holidays. Yesterday instead of our usual peanut butter and cheese sandwich lunch, for example Ernie hustled up a spread of egg salad on fresh brown bread, dill pickles and apple slices. Then the four of us went on a bracing, rain-spitting walk at Mud Bay Park. After that it was back to the cozy house to nap or watch curling or, in my case, bake monkey bread (imagine the smell of cinnamon throughout the house - mmm)

After dinner we had a houseful here for tea – a sister, my nephew, his wife and their kids. What a lovely buzz of conversation with everyone getting reacquainted, catching up and looking at photo books while the little kids played Lego, Duplo and magnet letters all over the floor. We finished off the evening with pie, ice-cream and of course that monkey bread!

This morning my work was light so I finished it early and got to join the guided tour. We took our Ontario guests into Vancouver for a drive along Marine Drive past UBC, Spanish Banks, Locarno and Jericho Beaches, then downtown and through Stanley Park (we stopped at Prospect Point, got out of the car for about five minutes but the ‘prospect’ was completely fogged with the rain never missing a beat), and back out into Richmond. After a chili lunch at Tim Horton’s, we ended our explore with a drive to Gary Point in Steveston. The only thing that would have made it nicer would have been the rain letting up long enough for us to get in even a short walk!

Tonight the kids are visiting Mom. And with the two of us being completely overfed in the last two days, we’ll probably extend the day-off feel of today by having cereal for supper. I still need my walk though. I might just have to go out and try to dodge the raindrops!

(We saw plenty of seagulls, like the one in the picture above, today. This one, however, posed for me on a sunnier day.)