Oh Canada - Day 2

On our second day in Canada, we started with tea and water in our room, with the amazing sun coming through our windows. We certainly picked the best weekend to come, especially because it was the low season so we got a great deal.

And we had a nice little breakfast companion.

Blair found a robe, and couldn't resist the photo op.Then we went downstairs for our awesome breakfast. The tables were beautifully set.

I really liked the rose in the center.

We sat there for a while, taking pictures and waiting for the owner to bring in the food. It was supposed to be served between 8:30-9:30. We showed up around 8:45, trying to get in early so we could start our day early. At 9am, the owner (Sylvia, who is extremely nice and quite chatty) came in to set up. She was very surprised to see people in the room already. Apparently, the clock in the kitchen hadn't been changed for daylight savings time, so she was thinking it was 8am and that she was early. It was so cute! She got all flustered and apologetic. But it was really cute! She was such a sweet lady.

And the meal was totally worth the wait. The first course was homemade granola, homemade plain yogurt, and fresh fruit. Plus homemade lemon scones with homemade raspberry jam. YUM. Oh, plus fresh orange juice/coffee/tea. So good.

Then, because apparently that isn't enough for a proper Canadian breakfast, they served a second course of Eggs Neptune: essentially Eggs Benedict, but replace the ham with fresh smoked salmon and add a tomato slice. I can say that it was marvelous.

So we left Sylvia a nice little thank you note in the guest book in our room.

And took some pictures of the room's beauty. This pic of Jess and me is off of our deck.

Also off of our deck, but without us blocking the view.

And this is of our deck.

The room. Don't worry parentals...the room was a suite, so there was a second bedroom. One for the girls, one for the boy. hehe

After our lovely breakfast and check out, we decided to explore the park that was literally next door to our B&B. We actually overlooked part of it from our windows.

I LOVED these trees. They were all over the place in Victoria. They were so cool. And I found out that they are called Garry Oaks. Yep, I'm a fan.

And we also found these cool purple checkered flowers. I'd never seen anything quite like them.

And then there were the ducks. I sat down and they swarmed. I'm sure I disappointed by not having anything to feed them. Hence why in this picture all you see is them walking away from me. haha

And here we were our own version of a totem pole.

We spent about 2.5-3 hours there! It was so pretty!

Then we decided to go geocaching downtown. And we found our first Canadian cache! And then a couple more after that... :)

After a decent amount of time walking around geocaching, we decided to stop for some lunch. We asked a local where we could go for some good, albeit cheap, food nearby. His response: McDonalds or the mall's food court. Yeah, thanks that's really helpful. HAHA So we just went walking around some more, and happened upon this Greek place. It was really tasty. I had the Moussaka and Greek salad. mmmmm

After lunch we decided to go to Beacon Hill Park. Again, we were told it had amazing views, and also offered cool things like 30 heron nests in the trees. We never found the heron nests, but we did see some other awesome things. Like this stunning peacock that was so vibrantly coloured!And then we saw more....so we followed them as they followed each other.And then we walked up to the top of Beacon Hill. This was the breathtaking view.And this cool gismo showed the direction and distance of different things, like Mt. Rainier, Mt. Baker, Seattle, etc. We also used the gismo as a camera tripod for this picture. :) After Beacon Hill, we had to had to our ferry back. This time we caught the one we were hoping for. But it was still super sad to leave. We had so much fun!!

Oh Canada, we love thee

Oh Canada - Day 1

Sometimes I forget to update my blog when I post to Facebook. Oops.

Blair decided to come back to Seattle for his Spring Break. And he had never been to Canada. So, we decided to take a quick little trip up to Victoria.
We started by doing a road trip to Vancouver, BC.

Went through the border. Thanks to the Olympics, it was a BREEZE! It took all of about 5 minutes. The border lady couldn't figure out why we would only be staying one night. She seemed very suspicious.

But who cares, because we got in. :)

We took a ferry from Vancouver to Victoria. We missed the 9am ferry by 4 minutes!! So we had to wait until the 11 o'clock. Luckily, we brought Triscuits and playing cards.
We had GORGEOUS views from the ferry. We mostly stayed in the car level because the windows were actually open. Upstairs in the passenger level, we couldn't get out to the front or back of the ferry like we can on the short ferries in Seattle. lame
When we made it to Victoria, we checked in to our AMAZING bed and breakfast. It was beautiful! If you go to Victoria, I totally recommend Fairholme Manor. (photo from their website)More on that in Day 2's blog. After we checked in, we decided to hit up a little bakery for lunch. We read about it in a "things you must do in Victoria" listing.It was pretty good. I had the Cackle Burger - which is a normal burger with an egg on it. It also had a sauce similar to thousand island. I thought it was tasty. Messy, but tasty.

And on the way in to our B & B we drove past a Castle. We never would have known about it had we not been staying at Fairholme. So we decided to do a tour.
It was really cool! Lots of history. Pretty stained glass windows. We even had a cute little lady take us around the first floor giving us an impromptu tour. Her name was Hetty, and she was a gem. I kind of wish she had taken us throughout the whole place.

This was on the back porch.
This was originally the side carriage entrance, but has since become the main public entrance.I love cherry blossom trees. :) And I really liked how the sun was shining through this one.We had spent quite a bit of time there, so by the time we were done, it was about time for the sun to set. We had read, also in the "things you must do in Victoria" list, that Mt. Tolmie (near the University of Victoria) had the best views of the city. So we decided to go up there to watch the sun go down. It really was beautiful.This is my panoramic version of the sunset. I don't know how well it will work on this blog...but alas.After the sunset, we went to a grocery store and bought baguettes, brie and mozzarella, and grapes for dinner...which we ate in our lovely room. Then we watched/partially-slept-through The Goonies. (another first for Blair.)Good first day in Victoria!

Highlight of last week

As you saw in my last post, last week was a long, arduous week of moving for work. It's been about a month or so of move related work, with this past week being the hard core, super physical work.

Mid-way through Friday, we had unloaded our last big truck load. It was mainly a bunch of our chairs. Nancy had the brilliant idea, she always does, of having chair races in our empty warehouse. OH.MY.GOSH.FUN!!And here's me winning. :)

Then we decided to all sit in a circle, hold hands, spin around really fast, and then let go. See how far we could roll.

Man oh man it was fun. Lots of laughter. Major stress relief. Totally turned around the attitude of the group for the rest of the day.Thanks, Nancy, for the fun idea! Thanks, Julie, for the pictures!!

The big move

We've been moving at work. Here's a photographic tour through some of the adventures. Photos care of Julie.

Nancy and I carry heavy boxes out of storage

A great crew! James, Marnie, Amy, Nicholas, and Phil

Lindsay and I clear out the copy/supply room
Robert setting up our IT room. (Matt came too, he's just not pictured here)
The Etheredge clan always pitch in when needed! Thanks you guys!
Our new copy/supply room...just waiting for organization. Lots and lots of organization.
Most of our staff with our very first guest, Joan!
Yay for this new journey for Medical Teams International! I can't wait to see where it goes!

Bad day therapy

Whenever I have a bad day, I watch this video of my amazingly awesome niece, Autumn. It always puts me in a better mood.

I Never Go To Work

Progression

I've been with Medical Teams International for about 2.5 years now, and I've had 3 offices so far. This week, I will have my fourth...except this time I'm getting a cubicle. Boo.

We have just purchased a new, LARGE building to expand our organization. It's going to be so amazingly cool. I can't even imagine what it will be like in another 2.5 years.

Anyways... I'm not really sure what my new space will become, but I thought it fitting to show a photographic progression of my offices thus far. I'll be sure to share my newest when it happens.

1) My first office with MTI. This was in our Bellevue office.2) My second office with MTI. This was really a closet in our Redmond office.3) My current office with MTI. This is a beautiful office. I heart it.So long, fair offices. I will miss you dearly.

Finally, right?!?!

I realize it's been a while. Life hates me. Okay, maybe it's not THAT dramatic. But it has been sheer chaos.

For those of you who didn't know (and really, if you didn't know, then that means we probably aren't friends. If we aren't friends, why the heck not? And more specifically, why are you even reading this?? - okay, I'm done speaking with my stalkers now), my house flooded THE DAY AFTER I posted my last Christmas picture post. Literally the very next day I came home from work, everything was dark because I don't keep my lights on while I'm gone (who does?), and stepped down into 3 inches of standing water. SPLASH! I look down and my things are floating by me. That's a weird view, trust me. So I immediately called my landlady and my parents. And I had a little melt down. Thus began the long process of removing ALL of my stuff, cleaning, repairing pipes, replacing wall boards and carpeting, etc. Ugh

*I have to insert a brief highlight of the flood. I had been sorting and wrapping Christmas presents on the floor in my second bedroom the night before the flood. (most weren't too badly damaged. just fyi) So, one of the things I got my niece for her stocking was a bath toy. I had been running around my apartment trying to save things like my computer, camera, etc. And, when I remembered that all of my Christmas presents were on the floor, I ran into my second bedroom to pick them up out of the freezing water. And I looked down and just busted out laughing. In the midst of destruction, a cute little rubber duck was floating around, happy as can be, flashing all sorts of colours at me. I loved it!*

A month later.... I finally was able to move back in to my apartment. Not a small task. It was rather daunting, in fact, because I had to get EVERYTHING out of my place very very quickly - aka Not Sorted and Not Labeled (and shove it all into my landlady's dining room. poor Liane!) And moving that much unorganized stuff back into an apartment rapidly turns into chaotic living. I don't like chaotic living.

But I'm also lucky because my friend, Blair (whom I knew in Japan and hadn't seen in 5 years), decided to come visit me. So I had external motivation to get it looking somewhat livable again. And it took until the day he arrived to get it there. (we won't talk about the second bedroom, where the door stays closed because I haven't fully gotten to it yet.)

So, now that all of that has happened, and I am again living in my apartment mostly mess free, I am back on the blogging sphere.

*sigh of relief* - me
*shriek of horror* - readers