Kicking our summer off in, Jesse and I traveled to Minneapolis, Minnesota, to witness the blessed union of two of our best friends from college, Austin and Brittney Zeller. We'd been waiting to celebrate this day with them for quite a long time, and it was a day of much rejoicing in the Lord with them and their family and friends. God bless you richly, Austin and Brittney!
After traveling to Minnesota, we came back home to Vancouver and here we stayed for the majority of the rest of the summer. In mid-July, another college friend, Jennifer Nelson (for those of you who remember, she was the maid-of-honour at our wedding) flew into Vancouver to spend a week with us up here. We had a pretty eventful week! We drove down to Bellingham where we had dinner with the wonderful Nicole Van Regenmorter (also a college friend!) and caught up on each other's lives and had many a good laugh talking about different crazy things we had done in college that we had previously forgotten about.
We drove back up to Vancouver and planned out our week.I decided to take Jen to Granville Island for a day. We saw lots of great shops, neat boats, ate ice cream and chocolate eclairs, saw a seagull attack a poor unsuspecting woman for food, and tried on goofy hats in the children's market. Now we couldn't have Jen come up for a visit and not take her to the very beautiful Vancouver Islalnd, so that weekend we hopped on the ferry, and set up camp at Rathtrevor Beach in Parksville for a wonderful time of camping!!! The first afternoon there we ventured to the ever-popular Coombs, where we ate ice cream, saw neat wood carved statues, took pictures by the crazy castle thing, and of course went to the market with the Goats on the Roof. Sadly there were no actual visible goats on the roof when we were there. I'm beginning to wonder about whether they actually exist or not.
That Saturday, we met up with Vancouver Island friends for sand castle building and a hot dog roast. During this time, I discovered that I am not very good at applying sunscreen to my back. My oh my was that sunburn nasty! Thankfully I've recovered, and am now much more careful about being thorough and asking for help with the hard to reach places. Anyway, it was a wonderful reunion with good friends, and we had wonderful fellowship, so it was worth it.
Upon returning to the mainland, Jen and I decided that there was one more place she probably needed to go before leaving Vancouver: Stanley Park; and because I had never been there before either, I tagged along;) Unfortunately, Jesse had to work, so he went on another day. We walked and walked and walked and walked, and in our walking saw many beautiful things, but decided that next time we would try and rent bikes, because it was an awful lot of walking.
The next day, w e dropped Jen off at the airport, and she flew back to the ever-sunny California, where she is from.
Just a couple of weeks ago, Jesse and I flew out to Colorado for no reason at all. Just Kidding!!! My brother got married to the wonderful Alli Berkompas! It was a beautiful, comfortable wedding. It was a beautiful day and every one was relaxed and happy, and apart from a few cute mishaps by the flower girls, and a bit of confusion with boutonnieres and corsages and groomsmen, everything went splendidly.
That night, Jesse and I climbed into a car with two best friends: Samuel and Megan Fopma, and drove to Steamboat Springs, CO, where we spent the next week. As a result of this vacation, I am pretty confident that Colorado is one of the most beautiful states in the USA. I've never had my breath taken away like that by God's glorious creation! The mountains and rivers and lakes were astounding. It was incredible!
Megan and Sam had a lot of fun activities planned for us while we were there, so we stayed busy the whole time, and the weather was amazing for us all week. We went hiking, canoeing, kayaking, stand up paddle boarding (during which I was able to dump Jesse in the water... hee hee), white water rafting (there wasn't much white water, thankfully) cliff jumping (I didn't, but Jesse went 3 times, Sam twice, and Megan once) swimming, fishing, mini-golfing, soaking in the hot springs, and spending a day in Rocky Mountain National Park. On our trip we saw elk, deer, foxes, porcupines, marmots, ground squirrels, chipmunks, fish, crayfish, bluejays, and moose. And the most amazing animal siting came right to our back door, literally. There was a tree about 15 feet from the condo we were staying in (we were on the third floor), and early one morning Sam woke us up asking if we wanted to see a black bear. We went out onto the back porch, and sure enough, there at the base of the tree was a full grown black bear staring up at us curiously. It then proceeded to run up the tree (YES, RUN! Don't ever try to climb a tree to get away from a black bear) until it was even with us, and then it stared at us some more. At this point, I decided that I didn't want to find out if a black bear could jump 15 feet from a tree to a balcony, so I went back inside. After we left, the bear climbed up higher in the tree and spent the whole day up there. When we checked for it later that evening, it had climbed down. Needless to say, it was very exciting.
After a very full week, Megan and Sam dropped us off in Denver, and we flew back to Seattle and drove home.
Upon getting back to Vancouver, we settled in again, and life is beginning to get back to normal. Jesse is working again, were back to doing praise team on Sundays, and I'm staying out of trouble. Mostly. :)
We've been blackberry picking a few times in the last week, so I see much blackberry jam in our future (some has already been made). My brother-in-law Sean is staying with us for a few days while he's doing band-stuff here in Vancouver, and Jesse and I are fish-sitting for our Pastor's daughter while their family is away in Alaska for a much deserved vacation.
Apart from that, life is pretty much normal; and today is just another day in the Lord, in the Groenewold's Great Adventure.
God bless!
