A World without walls
everyday life while homeschooling overseas
Sometimes you just have to sit on a bench and eat your date night treat sitting next to a giant gaggle of Canadian Geese.
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A family in our ward invited us along on a picnic that just happened to be on Devin's birthday! And it just happened to be all of Devin's favorite things: outside, good food, and new friends. :) It was a really lovely day. Andrew and Claire got to ride on their motorcycle. Everyone took turns using the paddleboard. We ate some super yummy food and even got donuts! It was such a great outing! And SO FUN to be with people again! :) A day that did my heart good! We finally met some of the North Shore Homelearners! They organized a day at a beach and we joined in. It was so spectacular to find a group with lots and lots of teens the same ages as my kids! They all seemed to fit right in together and it was so happy to see them laughing and talking and even singing!
Devin found a place nearby for us to take a little afternoon hike. It was so beautiful! It's really fun to go to many of the places nearby and see the Olympic rings still standing from the time that Vancouver hosted the Olympics in 2010. (It's also funny to hear the stories of how it didn't snow that year, and they had to truck in snow! HA!) We did it!! We're free!! Now we can explore the outdoors and our apartment building! We went on walks through Stanley Park, rode bikes through Stanley Park, got our car and went for a drive to buy furniture, went swimming at our building's pool (the heater was broken, so it was COLD), got more IKEA furniture so that we had enough shelving... It has been the most glorious week of my life. I don't have words. I love this place. Our apartment building is just to the right of this picture. Stunningly gorgeous doesn't even begin to describe it. I love walking on the paths and seeing the view. Vancouver is just SO PRETTY!
He did it!! And while his ceremony wasn't what I had hoped it would be, he really stepped up and helped me to make it the best virtual graduation ever! Congratulations, Josh! I know it wasn't the 'rite of passage' that I had hoped, and there were so many things that made this hard, you're a real trooper and I'm grateful for your hard work! I'm so sad that I don't get to plan your school year anymore, but I'm looking forward to seeing what YOU do with your life!!
We are now in VANCOUVER!!!! We LOVE our new apartment, even though it's been hard not having much furniture... I'm sure grateful for that time in November-January when we were evacuated! I spent that time finding beds for our future home in Vancouver, and it has been a blessing to have that! One interesting thing that was an INCREDIBLE blessing--usually they give you 60 days once you arrive in Vancouver to find your housing. We decided that if we could, we would try to get our apartment BEFORE arrival! Through some really amazing experiences, we did it! We found a place that ALL of us liked (we didn't know if that was going to be possible)--a lovely apartment downtown with an incredible view and access to a pool, jacuzzi, sauna, gym, theatre room, billiards room, and even squash courts! And we're right next to the ocean and the sea wall. We also were incredibly blessed to have had almost all of our shipments arrive before we did!! So during our two week quarantine, we put things away and organized (mostly) our house. That was really huge! We had some things to do and we enjoyed looking out the windows and watching our 'reality TV'. :) While it wasn't easy staying inside for 2 weeks, we did it. And now...we're freeeee.... Our last week or so in Bolivia was spent trying to take a few walks with our masks on...which is no small feet at 11,000+ feet above sea level!!!! We were able to pack out during a little lull in the lockdown, which was perfect timing! Because the day after the truck trundled down the road with all our belongings, Bolivia shut down yet again. All in all, we spent 4 1/2 months in quarantine--stuck INSIDE our house. That wasn't easy. During that time, we spent much of it under a great deal of stress as we strived to figure out how to move from Bolivia to Vancouver!!! Talk about crazy amounts of stress! All of our moves are hard, but this one takes the cake as the ultimate in levels of difficulty and complication. I hope to never have to do something like this again. We did a few things with people before we left--our dear friends, the Pozo's, allowed the kids to swim in their pool/jacuzzi just a few days before we left (yet another lull in lockdown). And the BEST was our last Sunday--our Zoom devotional meeting where Luchy and I spent the whole time finding funny things to do with Kleenex! We were laughing so hard! I miss that lady terribly. In the end, it all worked out for us to leave. We got all the approvals and jumped through all the hoops to get onto a chartered flight. That was insane! Getting all the approvals was SO hard and every day left us elated and discouraged. We got onto the list to leave on the chartered Med flights, but then, the week before we were supposed to leave, we found out that Dev had to change his orders because we'd be leaving through Florida and not taking homeleave. That took a few days and it was ok. THEN they required us to change them again, because we were flying through a different place. We got all the approvals the night before our flight!!
They sent a car to pick us up and it was so weird to just jump in the car and drive to the airport with no one else on the street! We left like 'thieves in the night'! The car drove us right onto the tarmac and right up to the little plane. Since the airport was totally shut down, we didn't go through any security or passport control or boarding gates! There were a few airport security people there to check our passports and make sure we had no drugs in our bags (seriously--they had the drug-sniffing dogs there!!), then we just walked up to the 11 passenger plane and enjoyed a flight with just a few people! We stopped off in Bogota to drop off a couple who were traveling to post there, then ended up in Florida around 1am. It was SO WEIRD to land at this airport where, once again, we didn't have to go through customs or baggage claim. The plane paused by the passport control, we walked off the plane, had the guy check our passports and welcome us back to the US, then we jumped back onto the plane as it taxied us down the tarmac to another spot. We then simply carried all our luggage off the plane and we were ready to go! Of course, we couldn't find a taxi or an Uber, but one of the hotel workers there gave us a ride to our hotel, which was really nice. We caught our flight to D.C. the next day, met up with Josh who flew in about an hour after us, then spent the week hiding in a hotel room, waiting for our passports to get their stamps in them so we could get into Canada... We dropped them off at FedEx on Monday, they got to the Canadian embassy on Tuesday morning...they stamped them and popped them back into the mail Tuesday afternoon...then the FedEx guy was trying to deliver them to our house on Wednesday morning, but the hotel was surrounded by police, so he didn't stop!! (Still have no idea what happened...) Devin ended up going to the FedEx office to pick up the passports, because they said they couldn't drop them off that day, and would try again the next day!! GAH! So, Devin got the passports, and then Thursday at 5am we left for the airport. We almost missed our flight because it took SO LONG to check in. So lame. Because the Canadian border was closed, we had to have all the paperwork to prove that we were allowed to go. We DID have the paperwork, but it had to be checked by a LOT of people. Lame. But, we made it. We got on the plane, made our connection in San Francisco, and finally landed in Vancouver, ready for another post of amazing and unique experiences. We will miss Bolivia. We experienced SO MUCH there that we could not have experienced any other way. I'm hopeful that someday we'll be able to go back and experience all the things that we didn't get to do. Our trip to Machu Picchu was set for the week after all of South America closed, so we didn't get to go. We didn't get to go to the Salar de Uyuni because we waited until the end of our tour...and it was closed. So many places that we didn't get to explore! But more than that--so many people we didn't get to hug when we left!! I hope I get to hug them all again someday... The third week of our deliberate quarantine weekend fun: The Great Boredom Bake-Off!! For this activity, we all picked something we wanted to bake/create, and we took turns locking ourselves in the kitchen to work on our fun food! In order to start our day off right, we watched a few episodes of 'Zumbo's Just Desserts' on Netflix (one of our most favorite cooking shows--and we like a LOT of cooking shows)! After watching our show, everyone took their turn in the kitchen. When they were done cooking, they hid their creation so that we could unveil them all at the end. It made the day go by VERY fast! :) Devin and Peter went first--they made a really lovely starlight vanilla cake that had strawberry cream cheese frosting (cream cheese with icing sugar and frozen strawberries all blended together)! YUM! It smelled delicious! I wish I could have eaten some. I went next. I made a beet/tomato salad (my favorite) and Italian breadsticks. Claire was next. She made a giant shortbread cookie that was layered with homemade caramel and tempered chocolate. What a kid! She won, by the way. I didn't get to try hers, either, but it smelled and looked SO GOOD! Plus it said, "Quarantine GBB' on the top, so she won because she 'branded' her dessert! :) (Just like Cupcake Wars!) Andrew went last. He actually made a Caesar Salad with homemade croutons! I was pretty impressed, and his salad was very good (THAT I could eat!) and went really well with my beet salad. We really enjoyed our day! I wonder what next week will bring for our weekend? |
Who Am I?
As a Stay At Home Mom of 4 wonderful children, I have the amazing opportunity not only to home school them, but to do so in many different places! I am married to the most amazingly wonderful (and handsome) man in the whole world! Together, we seek out, every day, that Joy in the Journey that makes life exciting! Archives
November 2020
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Emily's books
by Dan Brown
I like that the plot twists and turns a lot...and it makes you think. However, I don't appreciate Dan Brown's endings in his books. I find the endings incongruent with the rest of his stories--why make it a romance for the last chapter...
by Shannon Hale
I loved this book. I'm a sucker for fairy tales/fantasy. This was so well written! I can't wait to read all the rest of her books!
by Shannon Hale
I'm reading this one again. I liked it the first time I read it. I'm still liking it for the second time around. I like all of Shannon Hales' books.
**Still lots of fun the second time around! I do like this book for a comfortable...
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