Riding Camp!

Vanessa is a Horse Girl. She vaults in Victoria (gymnastics on horseback) and generally loves horses. We sent her to the Bluebird Riding School for summer camp for a week here in Parksville.

Here she shows us her all time favourite horse, Jesse James!

On the last day of camp, every girl decorated themselves and their horse and paraded around the front paddock to show the crowd of parents and grand parents.

Nessa led her horse around, decorated as the Sparkle Twins, with a little help from Nana's boa and some Christmas decorations.

The kids had such fun - they rode, they had classes in grooming, learning all the parts of the horses, the equipment and the barn - including mucking out stalls!

Now here is the face of a happy camper. They each got a certificate, a trophy, and a picture of each of them, set in a horse shoe which each girl decorated in crafts class.

The school was founded by Karen, who brought 30 rescue horses from California after her home and stables burned down in one of the big California fires. She has set up here, right beside the Rockinghorse Pub, which is a great little country pub. Great job, Karen - see you next year!

Supper at the beach

You can't have an active kid in your life without going to the great community park and beach for an evening.

The waterpark is always a hit, especially on such a hot day.....!

We all swam in the ocean, which was wonderfully WARM!!!!!, had a picnic supper of roast chicken, potato salad, fresh veggies, The World's Best French Fries and of course ice cream to finish off.

After 4 hours at the beach, it was time to go home, and Nessa and Miki chose to go "camping" in the backyard to test out the new tent. They had a great night, and I enjoyed mine in my nice comfortable bed as well.........Nana does NOT go camping!!!!!

African Children's Choir

Janice invited us to come see the African Children's choir, performing at the local Baptist church. It was an amazing group of Africa's poorest kids, from 7 countries, and this program ensures that they are well fed, educated, get to sing all over the world and get a big step up in life.

They must have sung over 20 songs with a 15 minute intermission to change outfits, and they not only sang like angels, they danced, they clapped, and they all were really enjoying themselves.

These wee boys - all the kids were between the ages of 8 and 10 - were the drummers.

The music was uplifting, happy, and featured many of the kids as soloists.

They got a standing ovation and did an encore number as well. Truly a very special evening, which of course raised funds for the program, enabling so far 7,000 kids from Africa to participate in this choir.

and now for something completely different....!!!!

On Friday night we went with Anne to - are you ready for it? - a burlesque show!!!!
They are group of gals from Vic who are called the Cheesecakes and did this show as a fundraiser for Pride at a local nightclub. It was full of great music, great costumes, and was just plain fun!!!!


Saturday morning we popped by Marnie Kim's for coffee and cinnamon buns, but mostly to FINALLY meet Amaury, her newly arrived Cuban husband. Just a lovely guy, whose English is probably better than our Spanish, who is a salsa champion in his native country, plays drums and has already had 3 jobs, so is a go getter as well. Congrats, Marn and Amaury on your 1st Anniversary too!!!








Then we met Jutta and family at Shawnigan Lake (where they were camping for the weekend) and picked up Vanessa, who is here for a week to attend riding camp. Here she is trying out the new roller blade runners her uncle Marco gave her in Germany.




Then we walked down to Boston Pizza for supper, after which she ripped into a cookie!! As of this moment she has just won her first scrabble game of the week against Miki....lol!!!!

Happy Birthday Canada!!!

July 1st we all gathered at Sharon and Jenny's to celebrate our country's birthday!

Shirley was our great bartender again.

Julie, Jane, Jenny and Elaine enjoying the great feast.

Gwen, Robin, Patty, Sherry and Miki share a joke - you will notice everyone has warm clothes on...sigh!

And of course we all had to gather and sing a rousing version of Oh Canada! Great party, great friends, great food! In the house, Moira, Marg, Shirley, Libby and Shirley cut Linda's wonderful Canada Day Cake!

Warrior Terri!

Our friend Terri belongs to the Warrior Dragon Boat team, so we met her after work at Glo and had a refreshment before she went off paddling.

Here they are getting ready to launch - Ter is at the bow, on the left - watch for that little black cap.

Working full out, 10...9....8....7.....

Coasting into the dock.....great hour and a half workout and the sun even came out to cheer them on!!! Go Warriors!!!

Rick Mercer in town!

Lind kindly invited us Miki, Mary Lois, Lee (who refused to be in the pic) and I to a presentation at the Victoria Conference Centre last week, which included a great dinner, a presentation about an investment opportunity, and THEN - the keynote speaker/entertainer was RICK MERCER!!



This is not a great pic, but suffice to say he was fabulous! Funny, smart, sarcastic and very pro Canada, of course.....or is that anti American...???No, not really, but if you have ever seen his clips of Talking to Americans, they do make it pretty easy sometimes...:-)

Thanks, Lind (and Rick) for a great evening!!!