Winter Adventure

Rhys, Aaron, and I went on a winter adventure today. We started with getting ready - I had forgotten how much work it is to get two kids and myself all bundled up to go outside. But after fifteen minutes or so we had it managed and the task complete. Thankfully the snow was not snowball making material so we were able to dodge that event. We climbed on the jungle gym which I have learned I'm a bit to big to play on now... how unfortunate. We made snow angels, I haven't done it for years, I felt like a child again!

After hanging around the backyard we ventured down to the beach with the hopes to feed the swans. It was a windy day and throughout the night the snow and been blown around so we had snow drifts to frequently dodge and the swans were nowhere to be seen. In many places the snow was deep enough to make me fall down, and Aaron just had an adventure of a time getting down the hill. We all loved it though: falling, getting stuck, pulling each other up just to end up on top of each other, I haven't played in the snow like that for a number of years. 

Upon arriving to the beach the boys took off to find the ice which had been cover by a fair amount of snow. Once they found it we started attempting to remove some of the snow and we found a rock under the ice. The boys decided that this was a turtle. I think this is coming from the new found love for my friends turtles that they have gained over the course of the day. They barley know her and haven't seen her turtles but think that it would be a great idea if she would share them... ah, the joy of little boys imaginations! They still won't accept my answer that it is just a rock, so I will go along with this fabulous finding. Although I'm not too sure about the daily walk to the beach until the ice melts and the "turtle" is freed so we can save it and take it home for a pet. 

On our way home we hit the same snow drift dilemmas, and had just as much fun with them. Upon reaching the top of  a short hill from the beach Rhys and Aaron decided that it would be fun to jump down the hill numerous times just to walk back up. Our cat also found us, he had began following us when we first left but I thought he decided it was cold enough to go back home. It appeared not. The cat is like a dog, staying far enough behind us to make sure everyone was heading the right way. So cute!

We made it home again, took off all our snow clothes and settle down with a cup of hot chocolate. Wesley and Taylor are spending a few nights at Aunty Debb and Uncle Neil's place in Kamloops, the teenagers are working and hanging out with friends, so it is just Rhys, Aaron, and I around for a few days. Who knows what adventure we will take on tomorrow!

Merry Christmas!

The joyful Christmas season is upon us! I have already had a busy one and am now looking forward to taking a bit of a break and spending some time reading. Just me and my book! 

After I finally finished all my papers and assignments I was thrilled to be heading home for the holidays. The kids (Wesley, Taylor, Rhys, and Aaron) had their Christmas concert at school, they did such a great job! The next day (Friday, December 18th) I was back at the school to help with Gingerbread houses, it was like when I was in elementary school, so many years ago. I had youth group that evening and on Saturday we had our Youth Christmas Dinner and Party, also a lot of fun. We had beef on a bun and enjoyed each others presence, made some Christmas decorations, and practiced our Christmas production. Sunday the youth were doing the church service so we all gathered again and had ton of fun doing the service! Monday I went to the church in the morning and met up with Rev. Dan, it was finally time to set up the Christmas decoration in the church, always an exciting event. I spend the remainder of the morning and early afternoon helping with the Food Bank's Christmas hampers. 

My adventure on December 23rd was spending a late evening in Kamloops, we picked up Stewart from work around midnight and stopped at the gas station to get a drink for the drive home. I got a small cup of cappuccino because I wanted something warm but not hot chocolate. Now you need to know that I don't generally drink caffeine; never had coffee and cappuccinos have only ever been iced! So as a result I ended up full of energy and up until 5:30AM - eek, I've never stayed up that late before. But, I got all the Christmas baking done that I was not going to get done and most of my Christmas cards, in the end I guess it was a successful evening.  

Before I knew it Christmas Eve was here. We had a Christmas Eve service at the church at 4PM and the children and youth did their presentation of "Matt and Lucy's Version Births". It was lots of fun and everyone did a great job! During the service I was presented as a Lay Minister of Word and Sacrament for St. Hilda's, Savona. I'm excited to embark on this new journey in ministry. After the service we all gathered at Grandma and Grandpa's house for dinner. It is always nice to gather will all the aunts, uncles, and cousins. 

Christmas morning soon came and the littlest of the children were up and attempting to get me out of bed. After a few kids came in to convince me to get out of bed (we don't open gift until everyone is up) I finally got up. We gathered around the tree and opened gifts, were joined by Aunty Debb and Uncle Neil, Grandma and Grandpa, and had brunch. It was a great morning filled with excitement! I think I took a total of two naps (I was exhausted), both times I was attempting to watch a movie with the kids and fell asleep! 

Today (Boxing Day) I have just been updating some pictures online and the blog, watched Horton Hears a Who - without falling asleep - and now am going to finish responding to some emails. Over the next few days (hopefully) I'll put a recent picture of the kids and update on what they are doing, I'll probably only get a few done each day. Until then I have updated the pictures on my picture site, from "Sorrento Centre" to "Winter Fun".  Take a look!!

I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and are enjoying the holiday season! 

Seussical and Amazing Grace

Stewart and I took the kids to Seussical - a Dr. Seuss musical - on Thursday for their Christmas present. They loved it, I loved it, we all loved it. It was a "magical" Christmas present to share with them. And, it got them involved with the arts in our community, always an important thing to do. At the end where the egg that the elephant has been sitting on hatches and all the characters are around it, and someone says "it's a bird elephant" Rhys went "of course". I guess he already knew that would be the situation because it was a bird's egg and the elephant sat on it! He's a smart one, even I didn't make that connection before they told us. When we were leaving the theater it was snowing, and it had snowed enough that it was all over the ground and vehicles. Aaron said, "that was a magical show, look there is snow!"It was really a wonderful experience! 

Amazing Grace... well you see the Council of the North decided that as a fundraiser and to get parishes across Canada doing something together they were going to start the Amazing Grace Project. Where parishes and ministry groups in the Anglican Church, across Canada, would sing Amazing Grace, tape it, send it in, and each person donate a toonie. The videos would be uploaded onto youtube and combined as one big movie afterwards. So, with that said, here are a few that you might want to check out!

Generation 2008 - The first ever national youth leader gathering in London, ON in June 2008!

Sorrento Centre Staff - The staff all in their green shirts from Sorrento Centre this summer. (I'm in the front somewhere!)

Sorrento Centre Guests - Some of our guests at Sorrento Centre join in for the singing!

BCYAYM Council and All Saints Lutheran - The council met at All Saints Lutheran and we started the service with a sining of Amazing Grace!

Savona Community Church - This is the parish sining in Savona, where I attend, but I'm not there - I was at BCYAYM Council. 

St. Hilda's Youth Group - We sang this at our Jr. Youth Sleepover - lots of fun. I'm short enough that I blend in with the group!

Well, there you have it, there are a lot more recordings at the Amazing Grace Project site with parishes from all across Canada. It really is amazing!

I'm down to one exam tonight and two more essays to write - I'm hoping to be completely finished at the end of the week and onto Christmas preparations! And, where is that snow??

Advent Musings 1: Stilling The Heart

The Anglican Church of Canada is providing a series of meditations by Canadian Anglicans that will be published on the national website each Monday in Advent. 

The first mediations was written by the Rt. Rev. Gordon Light, Bishop of the Anglican Parishes of the Central Interior. (Yep... that's where I'm at!) The prayer comes from the New Zealand prayer book.

The prayer in this weeks Advent Musing really spoke to me, I invite you to read and spend some time meditating on it. 

Lord it is night. 

The night is for stillness. 

Let us be still in the presence of God. 

It is night after a long day. 

What has been done has been done; 

what has not been done has not been done. 

Let it be. 

The night is dark. 

Let our fears of the darkness of the world 

and of our own lives 

rest in you.

The night is quiet. 

Let the quietness of your peace enfold us, 

all dear to us, 

and all who have no peace. 

The night heralds the dawn. 

Let us look expectantly

to a new day, 

new joys, 

new possibilities. 

In your name we pray. Amen.

Happy Advent!

Happy Advent!

Yep, Advent is upon us once again - the season in the church year of waiting and preparing for Christmas - Christ's birthday. It's the longing and waiting for Christ to come, quite exciting really!

The coming of Advent also means a few more things, usually the marking of other things that need to be done. It's now time to start preparing for the Christmas play the youth will present on Christmas Day, and it means that the Fall semester of school is almost over.

 

I had my last day of classes today, YEAH!! But, I still have four more papers to write and an exam next week. Even though its very exciting to be finished I still unfortunately have a fair amount of work to go before the freedom actually comes my way!

On Friday evening I attended Bishop Gordon's retirement banquet. It was really nice to be with him and many other people in APCI to celebrate his time and work in this ministry within APCI. We will miss him, but this is a part of the cycle, the cycle of life and leadership. It was great to see so many people there who I haven't seen for such a long time. In particular, Rev. Ethel and Jim came up from Alberta for the celebrations. I haven't seen them in a very long time - it was so great to catch up with them!

We had a youth sleepover this past weekend, twenty junior youth came - it was a bast. It was busy but we all really enjoyed it. Youth sleepovers mean many things, other than a great time together they also mean: many, many dishes; incidents like youth who end up sucking a sucker and it somehow ends up in the nostril cavity causing blue snot (ew); almost no sleep whatsoever; lots of fun games (Honey if You Love Me... I Have Never Ever, anyone?); silly camp songs; and the continuous use of the all important virtue: patience! I personally love youth sleepovers, I'm that person in the world who one day after the sleepover is ready to plan the next one - even after a lack of sleep!

Tomorrow Stewart and I are taking the kids to the Seussical! The Dr. Seuss musical - it should be great and lots of fun, it's our Christmas present to the kids and we are excited! The kids don't know, its going to be a surprise. 

BCYAYM Council Meeting

I spent the past recent weekend in Kelowna at the British Columbia and Yukon Anglican Youth Movement Council meeting. This is the working group that organizes the BCYAYM Fall Conference over Thanksgiving Weekend and usually also tries to do a Spring Retreat and Summer Ministries. This council tries to meet four times a year, our next meeting is in February. 

I am the Communications Coordinator, so I do some of the correspondence. Write thank you cards, and write to some potential theme speakers... all that fun stuff!

So, I took the bus on Friday evening to Kelowna, spent the evening visiting and watching movies, and then we eventually made it to bed. Saturday was filled with meetings and some free time in the afternoon. We had dinner and went to Kelly O'Brians for patchos for a late evening snack. Sunday we got up and cleaned our space and then joined the parish for their Sunday Service. 

We were at All Saints Lutheran Church which is actually a "church house". The pastor and his family live in the house upstairs and the basement is the church. It was very cool. I know the pastor and his family; him and his wife have a nineteen month old little girl who is so cute! I got to play with lego, dolls, books, and all that fun childhood stuff. They were all up at Sorrento Centre for a week during the summer, so I had met them there. 

This week I am doing a whole lot of school work. End of semester is always very full of work. I think I am down to six more papers and two tests/exams. Eventually I will be done classes and done assignments for the Christmas holiday. I'm looking forward to having almost a whole month off!

This Friday I have a meeting with the Task Force on the Future of APCI in the afternoon then Bishop Gordon's retirement banquet in the evening. I am excited to see so many people who I haven't seen for a few years. Friday will be my reward to a very full week!

We still don't have snow, I'm patiently (or trying to be patient) waiting for it to come!

Chopsticks and Geography

A few weeks ago Stewart and I went to the Wok Box for dinner. (It's really fabulous that we are both in university now, we spend more time together then we did in highschool - I think!) Anyway, Stewart starts eating his dinner with chopsticks, and I of course really want to but have never been able to successfully learn how to use chopsticks. Well, guess who took the time to teach me??!! Yep, Stewart!! I'm still thrilled to this day, I think I came home and ate potato chips with my chopsticks - I know that is just wrong and going way overboard. But, I was just so excited! Yeah, so along with a great visit with my brother I also learned how to use chopsticks!

Geography was really never my choice of subject to take, if I could of I never would have taken it. But I need six credits of lab science to get my Bachelor of Arts and Geography counted as three of those credits. I had my last Geography lecture for that course last night, and we are supposed to have like three more classes - I'm not complaining. One more lab quiz, two essays, and then that course will be finished. 

What I can't believe is that only 8-10 students out of at least 30 registered students actually show up for the class. It amazes me, yes your attendance might not be part of the final mark, and yes all the slides might be put up on moddle - but really?? The professor was a bit shy but had so much knowledge to share, I guess in the end they missed out. One class almost complete!

I am off to Kelowna this evening for the British Columbia and Yukon Anglican Youth Movement Council meeting. Somehow I also have to get homework done... this shall be interesting! Michael, Bailey, Deana and an adult parent supervisor are doing youth group for me tonight - a discussion on prayer in small groups, I'm sorry I'm going to miss it. It's one of my favorite discussions to have with youth, especially when they realize it doesn't have to be a formal process! Pray anywhere, however, whenever, and for however long! It's an amazing conversation anyone can have!

Hope you are all doing well!!