First of all, it was a very stupid idea for me to go running the other day up and down those rocky hills. REALLY stupid. Especially since I didn’t even stretch or anything afterwards. The next morning I woke up and I could hardly move my legs. Seriously, I haven’t hurt this much in eons. My leg muscles STILL hurt today - 2 days after my run. Lovely. It felt like my muscles weren’t long enough for my legs, like it was almost impossible for me to stand up completely straight at times. ugh. Guess I learned my lesson for that.

So, got back home today, went to teach a class tonight, and then heading back to the island either tomorrow night or Friday morning. My sister and her family leave first thing Sunday morning. I so need to try to get out to visit them again soon, the kids are changing so fast I don’t want to miss anything. I feel like I’ve missed so much already, cause I have. The girls are so cute, so absolutely adorable, I ADORE them. I do. The youngest one is 2 and a half and she talks like she is older. She says the funniest things sometimes, and she really has a great sense of humor already. I was really lucky this week cause I got to spend time with each of my nieces on my own.  (something I always wanted to do with my own aunts and uncles when I was little but it never happened). I took my 5 year old niece out on Monday - we went to the Petting Zoo at Beacon Hill Park, and then for Ice Cream at the Beacon Drive In. And yesterday I took the little one to visit my Grandma and also to Starbucks for a treat. The girls LOVE starbucks, they call it “The Coffee Store”. When we got home, the older one burst into tears upon hearing where we were, crying “I wanted to go to the coffee store!!!”.

But really, they are great kids, I am so proud of both of them.

Happy Tuesday!

This past weekend was quite eventful – lots of fun, but of course a few things always have to go askew.

I took a few days off to come over to the island to visit with my family cause my sister, her husband and their 2 little girls were coming to visit (they live in Indianapolis). It’s been almost an entire year since I’ve seen them! Way too long. Anyway I came a day before they arrived so I could see some of my friends and go tubing with them up island at Cowichan River.

We wanted to head up there late morning so I planned to take the 9am ferry across and one of my friends was picking me up on the other side. I was out late the night before with some work friends for a girl’s night so I didn’t get to bed until 2:30am and then got up at 6am to make sure I had everything packed, the dogs walked and fed, the guinea pigs cleaned out, etc. Brent drove me to the ferry early too so I wouldn’t be in such a rush, as I had a suitcase, my laptop in my backback, both the dogs and another bag. Could I possible carry anymore stuff all by myself? Nope, I don’t think it would have been possible! So we pull up to the walk on passenger area and there were about 5 huge tour buses full of students there and crowds of people around. I’ve never seen it so busy and I’ve been a regular passenger on these ferries my entire life. Brent was like “Oh no Jess, you’re going to have to run to get ahead of these people!”. So I jump of the car, he helps me get the backpack on, I grab the suitcase and the leashes and run with the dogs to the lineup. I was just about at the front (there was one lady ahead of me) and they make an announcement. “attention ladies and gentlemen, we have now reached maximum capacity for the 9:00 sailing and we will not be selling anymore tickets until after it has sailed. The next sailing is scheduled for 10:00. I looked at my watch: 8:29. ERGH!!!! 1 person away from the front of the line and they stop it. Never once in my life have I seen it so busy in the walk on passenger area that they have stopped letting walk ons on the ferry. Unbelievable. So there I stood for half an hour trying to tame the dogs and keep them from jumping on everyone who looked at them. Finally at 9 they started selling tickets again and then I had to walk down to the dock with the dogs and sit in the sun for 45 minutes. I had also forgotten to bring a magazine with me, but luckily I had my new ipod. (Brent surprised me the day before with a brand new PINK ipod!!)

Once we finally got onto the ferry, it got even worse cause it is one of the OLD ferries, a smaller ferry and they don’t have a pet room on this one. The new ones have a little room on the upper car deck where you can sit with your dogs (when you are walking on) cause they aren’t allowed upstairs in the passenger areas. But the small ferry has no such room, so I had to sit on the ground on the bottom car deck right between all the big trucks and tour buses. Yeah that was fun. The ferry crew were great though, they came to check on me, and one brought water for the dogs. As we were walking off the ferry, there was a group of guys who were coming to the island for a stag and one took pity on me as he saw me struggling with all my stuff. He offered to pull my suitcase off the ferry and up to the parking lot for me.

Then I got to sit in the blazing sun in the parking lot for 35 minutes cause my friend was late picking me up.

So totally NOT a fun morning.

Where we sat on the ferry - not the most comfortable accommodations….

We dropped my stuff and the dogs off at my parents house then we headed up island to the river. We were meeting some other people up there and they were almost there so we debated on whether we should still go, since they would be done by the time we got there. We had about an hour and a half drive ahead of us. We went, and stopped at Subway on the way cause we were all starving (there were 3 of us). The service in Subway was painfully slow, I think we were standing in line for over 20 minutes. We ate quick and continued on our way, only to get stopped by road work. Another 20 minutes stuck bumper to bumper in the hot sun. At last we get to the small town of Cowichan and we find the roadside stand where you can rent the innertubes. We got our tubes and were horrified that we had to walk down the street in our bathing suits to get to the river. Lol. Luckily it was hot out so it was nice getting into the cold river although it was REALLY cold when we first got in.

We met up with the people who we were meeting there, they were just floating around in the calm part of the river – they hadn’t yet started the decend down to the rapids. So we all went together. No turning back then, and right as we hit the rapids, the clouds came over and blocked the sun and it was darn cold! I had goosebumps on every inch of my body. The river was deep in some parts and shallow in some and when we went over the rapids, I think my butt hit every rock it could find. It took us 2 and a half hours to make it down the river. It would have been fabulous if it had been really hot out, but for the most of it, it was chilly so that sucked.

Sunday my sister and her family arrived – it was awesome to see them all again! The kids have grown so much, especially the youngest who is 2 and a half now – she’s not a baby anymore and she is talking so much. My dad cooked the most delicious food so it seemed all we did was eat and eat all day.

I felt guilty yesterday morning for eating so much the day before so I forced myself to go for a run. My parents’ property backs onto long mountain bike/ horse back riding trails through the highlands, so taking Zoey with me, we set out for our run. I left Angus behind as he wouldn’t make it past the gate let alone for an hour down these trails. I found out these are not the greatest trails for running as they were very rocky and hilly in most areas and several times I just about bailed and/or rolled my ankles. I seriously envisioned myself doing so and then having to hobble all the way back alone as I only brought my ipod and no cell phone with me. Next time I will also bring water for both me and Zoey as it got VERY hot out there, it felt like we were in the desert. Zoey is an incredible dog – it’s like she is on super charged energizer batteries. She NEVER gets tired. This dog can go and go and I don’t think we’ve ever really been able to tire her out. So we ran part of the way and walked part. It was great cause we had the whole place to ourselves, although we did run into a couple mountain bikers at one point. I was trying to run *carefully though* most of the back but suddenly Zoey was lagging behind. My goodness, did I actually tire her out?? Amazing! We found some shade (which was really hard to find) and Zoey actually plunked herself down and lay in the middle of the path! This was a first. After a little rest, we kept going but I dropped her leash and let her run behind me. All of a sudden, she caught wind of some animal in the bushes and she took off like a little speed demon. I bolted after her sprinting up the hill trying to catch her, as all I needed was to lose her in the bushes out there somewhere and have to trek through them searching. I caught up and grabbed her leash. Whew. That dog can sure run fast, I didn’t even know I could run that fast!

Only 2 weeks left until the big announcement! And only two weeks until my sister and her family come visit - I am SO excited to see them!

I had a little bit of free time (what’s that??) this morning so I put together a new little book. I had this round chipboard album (Reminisce) sitting on my desk for months now and I couldn’t figure out what to do with it. I ended up making it into a Disney album - added some ears to the cover to give it the “Mickey” shape.

Did anyone see the sort of “5 senses” theme I slipped in there?

Saturday we took the dogs to Stanley Park, for our next “mystery date” although it wasn’t a mystery cause Brent told me where we were going. The weather was ok, it was warm but cloudy most of the day. Here are a couple pics: