Vancouver...

Our Caribbean adventure has come to a wistful close with our recent departure from Grenada, and we have just finished recharging our batteries while visiting family and friends in the Great White North for a couple of weeks. We enjoyed many meals with Christine, Mike, Tyler, Jenny and Derek while visiting them in their homes or at restaurants. We even got to have sushi one night - awesome!

My daughter and her husband invited us to join them on their boat for Easter weekend with their local boating club. Theirs is a 40 foot power boat with a great layout that easily gave privacy to two couples and three dogs. It was a fun filled few days with boats, dogs, great food, boats, fun people, eating out, boats, great weather (albeit cold), fabulous scenery, boats, painting, tequila tasting, boats and more boats.

We had a great time visiting with family and friends. We spent some quality time in both our daughters' homes warming up by the fireplace. Yes, we were cold.

We stayed with one of our daughters. It is one of the best all-inclusive places to stay in the lower mainland, beautiful and comfortable surroundings to relax in, three dogs to play with, and, on top of many other things, my daughter is an awesome cook.... we gained 10 pounds while we were there! Our son-in-law made us a couple of trays of lasagna - delicious! And then he made us his world famous cedar plank BBQ salmon. We got to enjoy that with our new friends Chris and Jeanette who were invited to come over for dinner.

We got all of our shopping done during the first few days of our stay and even managed to see our doctor. All of our shopping and errands went well. We even bought new phones.

We stopped by the Mexico consulate in Vancouver to drop off forms for a one year residency permit for Mexico and had an interview with them about living in Mazatlan for a year. So far so good. Hopefully our upcoming visit with Mexico Immigration in Mazatlan will go smoothly so we can get our one year temporary residency approved.

We are leaving Canada again with full tummies and happy hearts. It was great to see family members again and spend some time getting caught up. All of the kids are doing great and they all make us proud. Our long time friends, Tom and Shirley, stopped by for a quick visit and it was nice to catch up with them again too. We also had a visit with Dorothy and Paula - great to see them and talk about their retirements. And we got to have a nice dinner with Michele and Greg at the Press Box restaurant where we enjoyed our favourite Cajun halibut sandwich.

Our flights include a stop in Calgary to pick up more people looking for warm weather in Mazatlan – where I am writing this post. We are going to miss our family and friends in Vancouver but are happy to be on our way again. We must admit that it was a big shock to our bodies to have to wear more than just underwear around the house. And we suppose our Canadian family friends appreciated that too...

In the meantime our feet are undergoing a radical change being wrapped up all day long... Our flip-flops are still sitting quietly in our suitcases awaiting new paths. They had to lay dormant for two weeks until they get the chance to get engaged once again when we get well south of here.

And now... off to Mazatlan!