May Long Weekend

Time is just flying by as it's nearly the end of May and time for Canadian's to celebrate the May Long weekend and Victoria Day.  Some people like to discuss changing the name of the holiday.  Why not just confuse everyone more!

I was up for some crepe making since I had the time to do it.  Boy was it good.  Here are the results as I actually photographed before I ate the evidence.  ;-)

I replaced the normal flour with rice flour which to me has an even better taste!

Anyone have plans for their long weekend?  Happy Whit Monday to those in Europe!

Happy Victoria Day

Today is a holiday for Canadians, and the birthday of the monarch. Victoria Day normally signals the start of summer activities with the camping season for us here in BC on a rainy weekend. It's also the opening weekend for many spring and summer activities around Canada such as gardening, frost free nights, winterizing cabins and opening up those cottages.

This is how beautiful the weekend started off to be.

So I started off with a celebration of summer activities and took my first kayak and camping trip together. I don't even remember camping since I've moved to Vancouver...

Our two day kayak trip started out at Cates park in North Vancouver.

We started our journey at the boat launch at Cates Park. It's also the turning point to go up Indian arm or out towards Burrard inland and Vancouver area towards the Pacific.
This small map shows the places we stopped at. Initially we wanted to go further but found out I was a lot slower than anticipated. Our lunch stop was at Jug Island and then onto Twin Islands where we ate dinner and camped for the night. We wanted to get to Granite falls but that would take us 4 hrs longer landing at night fall.

I'm laughing at my lobster red head, but it's still beautiful behind me.

Our campsite with fajitas for dinner.

Views on the Island while relaxing on soft rocks.

The beauty of it raining so much is that we get to see green everywhere.

I had to throw in one site that is so North American.

It was very nice to enjoy the evening and see the beauty all around us. That night, the waterfalls from accross the way were so loud we decided we had to check them out on our way back home.

The Light house on the Twin Islands looking towards Indian Arm, where we rounded to head back home to Cates Park.

Kayaking was a lot of fun but I'm so darn slow compared to my friends. I guess I should get better with practice but coming from a swimmer, I just don't quite understand it all yet.

I'm so lucky to have such a great group of friends who were so patient with my beginner ways. Hopefully I'll be taking a few more of these trips this summer to get better! And then maybe I'll have some more water shots in the water as there is absolutely no way I'll take any camera out yet.

Celebrating a Benchmark

As many people in Canada celebrate the long 3 day weekend, I wanted to stop and share a bit of our own news as a benchmark will finally come to a close soon.

The letter from Canadian Immigration for Decision Made finally came in the mail on Friday. Yes it took a whopping 4 wks and 1 day to arrive after they had posted the decision had been made into ECAS. We were not worried of any other outcome since I had already been given my work permit and my Approval in Principle back on Dec. 1st, 2006 (1 year after applying).

What was very fishy is that they told me the decision had been made back on Nov 28th, 2006, which is pretty impossible. Now anyone doing the math knows that a first decision can't be made after a second decision but they sure think they can time warp back into the past!

The interview is set up for the beginning of June so it's about 3 more weeks to wait. It should be very uneventful and take a few minutes time, I hope. After that point, I have to wait another month or so to get my permanent resident card in the mail before I'm aloud to travel via plane.

If I'm not mistaken, I'm aloud to travel via border crossings into the States. We will be making a trip down to California to get all of my goods to follow list ready since we do things backwards here in Canada and I can't go down there to take inventory before landing in Vancouver. Well technically I could, but I couldn't get back into the country.. We haven't decided our mode of transport yet but we are actually leaning towards driving instead of flying.. All depends on vacation days we will take.

So as Queen Victoria celebrates her birthday this long 3 day weekend on Monday for Victoria Day, we celebrate our good news of things to follow. Please feel free to see what I wrote last year for this holiday from the 2006 Victoria Day post.