My vacation: Vancouver- round 2!

Now we continue my vacation saga, day two in Vancouver we go to my Aunts house to help her build some shelving units, a few hours turns into an all day event. But it was fun none the less, we were able to visit with each other and spend the day together. Late that afternoon we browsed Granville Island and bought some Granville Island beer right from the brewery and I was able to visit my favourite store in the world.....Dragon Space. That's a store that sells nothing but fantasy related items, if your in need of Gryphon's, Unicorns, Fairies or Dragons- you need look no further. After that we went back to my Mom's house to have a BBQ and celebrate my younger sisters birthday.

The following few days went by in a blur of visiting friends and family, we were able to visit a few favourite haunts but the majority of our time was spent trying to see everyone we could. I was able to catch up with everyone I had hoped to see and Im so glad it worked out that way. We were also able to do some shopping....so much so that I had to ship some of my clothes out to myself to make room for my purchases in my luggage.

On a visit to my Grandmother's house my sister rear ended a car in front of us and totalled my Mom's car. We eventually made it out to my Grandmother's house after driving the car back to mom's house and contacting the insurance company. We visited my Grandparents and had a HUGE lunch at their house. We found out that they were going to be selling their house of 25 years and moving into a condominium near the beach.

They were pretty happy about the move, although I found it was a little bit sad to know they would be leaving the only home I remember them ever being in. What really makes it tragic is my grandmothers massive floral garden and my grandfathers vegetable garden in the back will eventually be bulldozed after the house is rented out for the Olympics to put up an overpass. 15 year old grape vines, roses, fig trees and hydrangeas among other flowers and vegetables will all be lost to "progress".The visit went well though, we poured through some old photo albums for a few hours and listened to some old stories about the good old days. It was nice. Having not seen them for over two years the good-bye was a bit emotional, living on the other side of the country from your friends and family can be tough. It turns out not just for us but for them as well.

Towards the end of the week we were trying to help Mom get her wedding organised, to no real avail. Eventually we just threw our hands up in the air and had to say 'its her wedding, not ours, let her handle it how she wants to handle it'. With the relatively little amount of planning and the huge last minute venue change (three weeks before the wedding) everything really did come together rather nicely. I must give allot of credit to My Aunt Sherry and my Sister for the amount of things they brought to the table to pull it all together, including flowers and getting my Mom to the bridal shops early enough to have a dress to wear on her big day. She wanted to go dress shopping a week before the wedding.....can you imagine that potential disaster?....gah!!.

I was able to make the best speech at Mom's wedding by singing a song instead welcoming my "My new Jewish Dad" to the family. The entire room was laughing and it was great. We danced we drank and we had a great night. The following day was a day for good byes as all our family from Ontario was preparing to leave and my sister left to go back up North to B.C. More tear filled goodbyes for all. Chris and I packed up and were ready to head out for our flight for the second leg of our trip...Saskatchewan. To be continued......