Vacation

Logan and I returned home late Sunday night after spending almost 2 weeks in BC. Vacation time is a wonderful break from my regular routine and a great way to recharge the batteries. Our extended family is quite small but with out a doubt we are truly blessed to have the ones that we do. My cousin Brian and his wife, Louise always open up their house to us for as long as we want to stay and you could not find better hosts anywhere. Their home is right on Little Nuttal Bay and is surrounded by nature. Brian is a great role model for my son Logan and is a big kid at heart.When they.re not engaging in serious or silly conversation they go kayaking together, workout and just have fun and hang out together.  At the same time that Logan and I are visiting, Louise's brother and his 3 kids are also there from Kelowna for part of the time. Even with such a full house there is lots of time for fun, games, excursions and time to relax.

My cousin Brian is a pilot with his own plane that he regularly flies out of the Qualicum Beach Airport. He needed to go to the Victoria Airport to pick up a parcel and offered to take Logan and I with him. I'm getting better at doing things that I am not completely comfortable with and took him up on his offer. The scenery is beautiful on the way to Victoria. You get to see the many of the islands off the coast of Vancouver island. I never realised there were so many and I am glad that I went. I am still nervous in that size of air plane, but not enough to not enjoy the experience. On the way back, Brian handed me the controls and I flew the air plane for a few minutes. Lets just say that keeping the plane flying straight is not as easy as one would think. The key is to relax, have control and all that's needed are small adjustments when making corrections, all while being totally aware and in the moment. I only lasted a few minutes as I was very nervous and found it hard to relax so I gladly handed the controls back over to Brian.

Something that we do when staying with my cousin and his wife is say grace before every meal. Even though Logan and I don't practise any particular religion at home, I find that saying grace is beneficial in many ways. It really does get you to stop and be in the moment, it creates space for family, friends, nature, and the world around us, and reminds us to be appreciative of everything. It's a great way to slow down and ground yourself. Some thing that I love, is that as I type this I am seeing all these connections between everything that we constantly talk about and I think wow, that is so cool! I don't know if I'm explaining this clearly, so I hope you know what I mean and what I'm talking about.

After our visit was done we took the ferry over to the mainland and stayed with some more family. Again great hosts and fun times for all. Our last day was spent at the Capilano suspension bridge. Along with small planes, heights are also not high on my list of things to do. Either the pictures in the brochure look a lot scarier or I'm getting slightly better at the whole height issue because I didn't find it to be to bad and we all completed every area of the park and survived. 

All in all, our vacation was a good balance of everything (family, friends, nature, great food and fun). I definitely see the value in surrounding ourselves with people, places and things that support our spiritual, emotional and physical well being. I just need to figure out how to enhance what I have here at home to continue with those feelings of peace, contentment and connection to everyone and everything.

Number for the Week               Michele ward

Sit ups               770

Push ups            715

walking             30.56

Aok's                 35