25 Memories for 25 Years...Happy Birthday Peter!!!!

1. May 23......told you that the entire country took a holiday for your birthday
2. baking with you (small blue apron)
3. your red jacket, red rubber boots and blue baseball cap
4. playing with Lanie & Laura
5. loosing you in Guildford Mall & finding you in the food section eating french fries with a
really nice lady....your words were..."hi mom"
6. Eric Carle book....Boa Snicka Snake, Boa Snicka Snake, who do you see?
7. Gr.6 Master Hug coupon (still have it)
8. traveled to Rock City with U.Kevin...didn't shut up until Nordegg
9. cross-country running during John Knox years
10. camping at Gold Creek on Vancouver Island (not good)
11. being a pall-bearer for Grandpa's funeral
12. fireworks, fireworks, fireworks
13.driving you to King's first year
14. notice that you took a lot of pictures that had a girl from Ont. in them (Sarah)
15.meeting Sarah for the first time and watching your face totally light up when you looked at
her
16.watching you mature at King's
17.visiting you at King's
18.having Sarah here for the summer and watching your relationship grow
19.your summer in Ont. (the year of the Rocket!!!!)
20.King's Graduation
21.working in Edmonton (no Peter that summer)
22. your engagement to Sarah
23. your wedding
24. having Sarah and you live with us before leaving for Australia
25. bringing you to the airport to begin your Australian adventure

Happy Birthday Peter. God's blessings. You have given us a lot in the past 25 years!!!

West Coast Update

Seeing as most of the family is back home, this update (from Dan's view) will basically be for you guys (Pete and Sarah).

Starting from a few weeks back when the Zomer's were here. At that time the Canucks were still in the playoffs and mom had converted Henry and Grace into Canuck fans for the night. I'll show you pictures and let mom do more story telling later (she flew to Winnipeg with U. Kevin last night and is on her way to Grand Forks, ND to see Auntie Biz's grad).

Basic idea behind the pictures is the classic farmer with the pitch fork and his wife.


Substitute the pitch fork for a hockey stick. Made for a good laugh!





Again I'll let mom tell some stories, since I was not around.

Last Saturday Jeff hosted a bbq for the Honduras team he was a part of in March. They sat on the back patio, made burgers and chatted for the afternoon. We got the bbq running and enjoyed the warm weather.

Here is a photo of Dad shooting a pellet gun Alex Degroot had brought. They were shooting at pop cans hanging in the tree.


This Sunday we also celebrate Mother's day. We had some special visitors from Ontario who are currently still here. Aunt Trisha, Janine and Jeliesa are visiting until Tuesday I believe. They're staying at U. Vince and A. Annette's place.

So Mother's day Sunday we all went to Pake & Beppe's for lunch. We watched the hockey game at U.Vince's, which we won (Canucks lost on Tuesday and were kicked out again). Jeff, Brian, Ryan and myself played some hockey in the cul-de-sac for a bit too.








Looking at old family photos. I had a decent beard Pete, but recently trimmed it because of a job.

I've been applying to jobs like crazy and I still haven't heard anything back. I've applied to places with BC Parks, environmental consulting companies, etc. Guess no one is hiring..don't know.

However, the other day I got an email from Matt Beimers asking me if I wanted to sub for a day at FVCH. I said sure and so I worked a day at FVCH in the L.A room and also in an English Class. This Monday I'll be doing 2 PE classes.

Apparently there is an employment opportunity for next year in the L.A dept and I've been asked. I'm not too sure, right now I'm leaning towards a 'no'. It'd be cool, but I really want to try and do something different.

Jeff and Rachel are getting good hours at 2 EE's while Mom and Dad keep plugging away at their respective jobs.

So here are a few things we want to accomplish over the summer:
- the steps/patio (we're going to work on that this weekend)
- Jeff and Rachel getting their driver's license
- hiking trips - the Chief, Grouse Grind, Teapot hill, many others hopefully!
- get a job (me)
- camping with the Klomps (Birkenhead Lake??)

Not sure if you guys have seen this, but its supposedly a compostable chip bag from Sun Chips. I'm going to test it out - takes around 13 weeks.


That's all for now! Cheers!

Beauty Through the Bad

Our van one early morning before work.

As most of you know we had an accident this past week Wednesday with our beloved yellow van. A quick re-cap, although I don't like to think about it that much and Sarah even less, she is not even here while I write this blog. On an evening after work at about 5:00ish we headed off to our mechanics house to have a utility bar put on the front of the van to carry a jerry can and a few extras. This would keep smells outside the van and give us some more space inside. Both Sarah and I were excited for this addition to the van as it would be just that much more customized to our liking.

In order to get to our mechanic's place we took a different route then usual, we approached a T-intersection, I turned right and did not see the oncoming traffic, I was T-boned just behind the drivers seat between the wheel base. No one was hurt and the old yellow van was able to crawl away from the scene after dealing with the cops, who were for the most part pretty delightful and easy going.

We rolled into the closest caravan park and what was somewhat of a bother this week was that you just can't seem to keep something like this off your mind. Certain steps have to be taken-insurance and the rest of it. By no means is it ever a convenience to get into a vehicle accident. In the evening before bed while I was approaching the world of my dreams the last thought I had were of the van, upon waking it was nearly the first thing that I thought of. Not a great way to start your day. Both Sarah and I wake up earlier than we did in our lives in Canada. With work we are even more routine in our sleeping. These are the sights that I saw approx 6:00am/6:30am, a lovely sun rise, too good not to be remembered. It was after all the first morning after the accident.

Pinks in the clouds silhouetted by some trees.

Pink sky in the morning -Salor's warning!

This particular day we did not see any storms though...

Grace and Henry had sent us a parcel which we had received only a day before this all went down. One book in the parcel was a small daily devo with sayings and bible verses associated with them. Sarah turned through the book and came across one that said "All things are hard before they are easy", how fitting we thought and ripped it out and hung it up in the van. Later on that night we read in the big book about how God sometimes tests us and those that stand the tests will be blessed. Maybe this is a test for us, what we will learn....? Hmm these learnings I find take quite a bit of time and usually it is not until we can look back on the entire situation from afar we see what was going on.

Through this incident we have already learned that we have an amazing support group around us, even when we are so far from our conventional support systems (home). Our boss rang us up right after the accident and has made some calls to people to see what they can do, Terry picked us up to bring us to his house this weekend and has knowledge of the motor vehicle industry, including insurance and the rest, his neighbor is a retired farmer, who offered to fix what he could on the van, but who is away at the moment on a quad trip through the Simpson desert as a support man fro 10 millionaires on an adventure trip (so we will see him in two weeks.). To cap it off there are a set of twin brothers, also farmers, who work in the avocado groves who offered us a car that was just sitting in the barn back home, with 5 months of rego left on it, so now we even have wheels to get into town and run our errands.

We are now at a caravan park that is close enough to work that it only takes us 25mins to walk, we cross a small airport runway and then zig zag our way through avocado groves until we reach the processing shed- hey not too bad either.

Until we have more details-you are all up to speed.

Can you see the beauty in the bad?!

-Peace-