Girls Weekend in Harrison!!

A few months ago, some friends and I decided we should plan a "girls weekend" to celebrate our birthdays: mine (jan) pam (feb) kim (march) elisa (april). We booked a hotel up at Harrison Hot Springs, a quiet, scenic, tourist town about 40 mins from Abbotsford, and finally our weekend-of-fun arrived!!!
Here we go!!!! Pam, Kim and I headed out and Elisa met us up there.
Beautiful!! We're on a lake, surrounded by mountains wherever you look. We lucked out with the weather and scored 2 sunny days, a wonderful break from the winter rainy season we've been experiencing.

We had a mellow day Saturday, hanging out, shopping in the tourist shops, drinking coffee, and sitting around our hotel room chatting. We had a great dinner out at a pub (where i could keep an eye on the Canucks game!!) and then relaxed in the hotel hot tub and ate some junk food!!!

Sunday morning we went for a little walk before Elisa had to head out and the other 3 of us played tourist a while longer.

group shot!!!

Where did all the table tops go??? I thought this was a funny scene - do they take the tops and benches in for the winter????!!!!!

On the way home, since it was such a beautiful day, we stopped in at Westminster Abbey, the monestary up in Mission. It's been a long time since i've been up there, but it's a pretty cool place.

You walk a short path and you get a great view of the valley

Some great stained glass in the chapel, windows of all sorts of colors but i accidentally just included a pic of the blue windows here...there were some other windows that were yellow, orange and red that were super cool
all in all, a fabulous weekend, relaxing and hanging out with great friends!!!!!

one great big weekend packed full of FUN!!!!

To prewarn you, this is a long post -- This was one jam-packed weekend!!!

Friday night kicked off with a party at Pam's to celebrate her 30th birthday (her official bday is on the 20th). A bunch of good friends, some wonderful appy's and an ice cream cake made for a delightful evening!!

It was late to bed Friday and early to rise Saturday as Pammer and I met up with her sister and brother-in-law (chad and theresa) and nieces (kassandra and maya) to head down to the Seattle area. We stopped on the way to do some shopping, fit in a great dinner at Olive Garden and then headed to the main event... the TOBY MAC concert!!!!! Now for all you out there who remember the good old DC Talk days, Toby Mac was one of the DC Talk members who is now a solo artist. I must admit, I have not really listened to much Toby Mac, but a few months back when we found out he was coming to the Northwest, and Chad and Theresa decided to get their family tickets for Xmas, Pam and I decided it would be a lot of fun to tag along too. I attempted to quickly learn some of his music before hand, but i wasn't really successful (doh...note to self, next time allow more than a few days to learn music and lyrics!). Oh well, it was still a lot of fun anyway and we surely did get our groove on!!! Actually one of the best parts was that the last number of the encore was "Jesus Freak", a classic DC Talk song!!! Now THAT one i could sing along to!!!!

Jeremy Camp was the opener, which was pretty good because he has some really good music and i realized i know a lot more of his songs than i thought i did!!!

You will notice that these pictures are taken from a rather far distance from the stage. The concert was at Overlake Church, a ginormous church that hosts a lot of concerts. It seats 5000 people and there must have been more than that at this concert, as not nearly everyone got seats, and many of us were sitting on the stairs in the aisles. And we were in the very very back, right up against the wall, and a little off to the side. Not great seats, but this was even after moving once, because in our other seats we could barely see the stage.

Ah...the moshpit, way down there...you can almost smell the teenager b.o. from here...!!
We drove home from Seattle that night got home around 1:30am, all headed to bed and all were up ready to go again on Sunday morning for the next big event: Mama Marty's 60th birthday open house!! Now, I shall explain, don't worry.

Most of you know that my parents live about 3 provinces over, in Manitoba. So I have done a very good job of finding a new set of adoptive parents out here in BC, - Pammer's parents. The beauty of it all is that it turns out that I not only have a best friend, but second parents, siblings and some nieces and nephews too. This past Friday (the 15th) was Theresa and Mama Marty's birthday (pam's sister and mom). And when one turns 60, one should have a big bash. Pam and her sisters put together a fabulous open house, hosted in the church gym. At least 50 people showed up. We had great food, a slide show and a good time!!

" Happy birthday to you..." Butter tarts with candles, how great!!

And after this crazy busy weekend, I was exhausted and ready for a weekend!! But instead i dragged myself out of bed this morning and off to work. Pam, on the other hand, decided to call me this morning and inform me that she now has the Norwalk virus. I think i'd rather be tired and go to work....

winter wonderland

Well it's about time for a new post on my "new look" blog - sorry it's taken me about a week to get to this. Not much has been photo-worthy this past week, so i decided to post some pics i took last week from our loverly winter snowfall. I'm sure i'm not alone when i say it's nice to have some of this snow melted, because it makes driving around the lower mainland a NIGHTMARE but i'm a prairie girl at heart, and i love the look of a fresh snowfall!! There's a great park complete with walking trails out behind where i work, and it's a great place to take a stroll over the lunchhour.

There are a ton of ducks that chill out at this little lake in the park....man they are hardcore, look at them just hanging out in the snow and ice...but come on, don't they have a look of "man it's freaking cold" on their little duck faces?

a plethora of ducks...who are surprisingly non chalant when someone comes strolling by...they don't really move!

Even a discarded shopping cart in the river looks pretty when covered with some snow!

Well I'm off to vacuum my apartment....enjoy your weekend and I will try and post again soon - there are a bunch of exciting parties and such coming up in the next little while, which means i will have things to take pictures of, and blog about!!

Again, never mind...

Ok so i should probably really try a little harder to figure things out on my own before i plead to the masses for help...because as you can see, i have figured out how to add my links. so maybe i am smarter than i think i am...lol

ok never mind!

Ok so it didn't take me long to get my new template to work so disregard that last post. However, does anyone know how i now can add back the "link" list to other blogs? I'm not the most savvy blogger when it comes to the technical stuff so any help would be appreciated!!!!

new look

I've decided it's time to change up the look of my blog again....so be patient over the next while as i try a few new things....the background i really liked didn't seem to load properly, so i'm going to keep working at it...in the meantime....we'll just have to be satisfied with new colours!!!