Our annual January 1st boating day was with the Youngs to Discovery Island, and we saw wolf tracks and scat – Yolanda also saw a figure moving along a cliff just before we got to the beach with the tracks, but she didn’t think it was anything to point out – maybe it was the wolf!
We discovered this January that every Sunday the local Rotary group hosts a fund-raising breakfast at the Kiwanis Tea Room at Willows Beach near our house. 2018 was their 6th year doing so! We attended almost every Sunday and watched some fabulous storms whip into the bay.
January to March 2018 was a tough go for sister Laura, whose time with her daughter AnneSophie ended and little AnneSophie now lives full time with her dad Boyd Remillard. It was an emotionally trying time, and in some ways there is no way to recover – time might not heal the pain of this difficult period.
There was wonderful brightness from early January to later February as we helped out with the Harbeck-Sandoz boys quite a bit as their granny au pair Lily from Belgium went home to convalesce from a fall in the ice. It was super to spend some time with little Luca and of course our friend Francis. Francis had a tough time thinking through his little brother sharing time with us, but we all grew new understandings from the experience.
While the Harbeck-Sandoz family were at Mt. Washington for skiing in early February, we had an almost all-expense-paid four days cross-country skiing at Fairmont Hot Springs, near the Rocky Mountains, and niece Katy Salkeld stayed at our house with Frances Reid, as she had done in October and early November 2017. There were no trail fees, as we alternated days on the golf course by our condo and on a long hilly run by the downhill skiing area – it had no fee as part of the trail was closed due to a landslide. The condo was almost free, as neighbours Tony & Susheela had time-share days that they could not use, so it was only about $40 a night for the change fees and registration. The gas to drive to the mountains and back was paid by gift-gas-cards from the Harbeck-Sandoz family. Fortunate us!
On our way back home we stopped in Port Coquitlam for a few days and Frances came over to join us for a cross-country ski day and snow-shoe-fondu evening. The next evening we presented a Random Ravioli class with brother Rick & wife Maureen and boys Sean and Matt & Matt’s wife Kari. What a great success and a lot of fun!
We did our second Random Ravioli class at our house in later March with pals Diane Thorpe & Jim Norie – again a success and such fun!
We celebrated Bob’s 60th birthday with a few small family dinners, as Bob insisted he did not want a celebration. Bob has been celebrating in his own way for the past year, including getting trailer Gr@y, going to India, finishing our bike trip across Canada, and returning to Eastern Canada with Gr@y to see fall colours and canoe in Quebec and Ontario. In total, Bob was in trailer Gr@y for three months!
It was Chinese New Year February 17th and we were hosted by pals Cecil and Lee Sharp – Lee sent us home with two big bags of her fantastic flavour and texture homemade spinach linguine – which we enjoyed with Frances Reid on two occasions.
We hiked a bit with Frances on a few weekends, with our favourite hike outing being with the Salkelds (sister Sonia, husband Tim and children Joe, William and Katy) for Willliam’s birthday. Willam’s wish was for an outing to Avatar Grove and we also hiked in to see Lonely Doug.
Mostly in March we gardened, with Bob doing his annual pruning for the Oak Bay Garden trimmings pick-up.
One day brother-in-law Tim and nephew William arrived with their chainsaw and utility trailer and helped Bob cut down our ancient apple tree, which was no longer fruiting – the wood would be put to good use by Tim, and Bob harvested some branches for natural suet feeders.
