Meet Emma

Meet Emma, our dear friend. She has been the boys' faithful and hilarious companion in classes and fun for the last six months. With great excitement and enthusiasm, she bravely accepted our offer to join us on the boat...for three weeks. So after our two lovely nights at Sucia we headed north to Sidney BC where she was scheduled to arrive the next day. The morning after our arrival we hopped on the bus to the airport where we waited in breathless anticipation for her arrival. After weeks of worrying about the proper paperwork she should carry and how her flight would go from the US to Canada we all rejoiced when she bravely walked through the arrival doors. Thank you to her family for being willing to part with her for so long and brave enough to send her our way for a sailboat adventure. We are so grateful to share this amazing experience with her and have her wonderful, sunshiny presence on the boat. Though she had been awake since 3:30am she was excited and ready for the day. After dropping her stuff off at the boat we grabbed some lunch at Bistro Suisse before hopping onto a standing-room-only bus to Butchart Gardens. Everything was in full bloom and it was so fun to watch Emma's reaction to the gardens and see it through her eyes. The kids were totally blissed out in each others company as they lingered to take photos along the way. We managed to squeeze in for the final high tea of the day where we happily drank some much-needed caffeine and stuffed ourselves silly with delicious pastries. We caught a cab back to Sidney where we ended our day at a Thai restaurant. Exhausted and extremely stuffed we collapsed into bed. The following day we grabbed a taxi and headed into Victoria for the 132nd annual Victoria Day parade. After watching our fill of the 2+hour (cut down from from previous year's 3 1/2 hours) parade we got in line at our favorite fish n' chips spot, Red Fish Blue Fish, down on the pier. After a walk along the water we stopped for tea and eclairs at Murchie's. You may be noticing a pattern here. When we are in a city we mostly just eat and eat and eat. In the late afternoon we hopped on a double-decker bus back to Sidney where we relaxed a little bit on the boat before we headed back out to, eat.

Click here for photos.