weekend in courtenay...

Ok, so we had a long day of travelling to get from Winnipeg to Courtenay, BC (that's on the island, for those of you who aren't sure, and it's about half way up the inland coast of the island). My Dad informed us at the airport that he had booked a marine tour for the next day at 8am, gulp! We arrived in Courtenay totally exhausted, having spent nearly 24 hours travelling by plane, car, & ferry, but were greeted by very friendly B&B hosts, and a beautiful place to stay. It's called the Baywood House, and we highly recommend it! In the backyard, which faces the bay, there's a beautiful garden patio with a fire pit, too bad I don't have a picture of that.

The collage of pictures is the suite that Michael and I had to ourselves, gorgeous isn't it? Anxious to get some rest and be ready to enjoy the boat ride, we crashed pretty much right away. The boat tour was a ton of fun, the guide was a great story teller. We got to see lots of wildlife: sea lions, seals, bald eagles, seagulls (does that even count?), and hold an octopus! The guide had prawn traps that we got to pull up and keep the catch from (that's where we found the octopus). So, he showed us how to take off their shells, and then promptly popped the fresh meat in his mouth. So, Michael and I sampled that as well. It has a pretty sweet mild flavor, it's the really really slimy texture that requires some blocking out to avoid the gag reflex kicking in.

The rather ugly looking teal green fish in the middle is a link cod, which was unfortunately just a little bit too short to keep, but it was fun to watch the guys catch it! The lighthouse is one that is actually still manned by real people who live there all the time, which is less & less common these days apparently.

If you're wondering why we went to Courtenay it was for my cousin Luke's wedding. It was a great weekend relaxing, and helping out with last minute details, since nearly everyone was from out of town.

If you look closely at the bottom right of the picture below, you'll notice the corner of a white blanket. This was one of the last minute details that I took care of. Heather wanted a white blanket for the flower girl to sit on so she wouldn't dirty her dress (not that it helped, the flower girl was sitting on the edge of it and digging in the dirt during the ceremony!). Anyway, I went to Walmart in search of a plain white baby blanket, but there was no such thing. So, I checked to see if they had white fleece and they did, so I bought a metre, and borrowed the scissors from the lady who cut it to cut a fringe into the edges, and then we tied the fringes into knots, viola! a blanket!