Snowboarding & Dinah on Easter weekend—what could be better?! :)

Lucky me! Back-to-back weekends with visitors :)

For those of you who celebrate it, I wish all of you a Happy Easter, and for those of you who do not, a Happy Weekend (long weekend perhaps?)! Dinah joined me up in Vancouver for the weekend, and being such life-long friends (since about 5 y/o in good ole Ruxton) and practically family, it was truly such a treat to have such a great friend and "sister" join me for some celebrating. :) And celebrating indeed we did on Sunday! I found a nice little Presbyterian Church for us to attend a service in the morning, and then we hosted a small Easter brunch back at my place. By small, I mean the two of us and my friend Bridget from work :) We had a great time, and some great food too!

Dinah made a yummy spinach, artichoke & feta quiche and roasted asparagus on the side; Bridget brought yummy fruit salad--strawberries, bananas, blueberries & clementines; and then I contributed deviled egges and banana bread. We also featured an assortment of coffees and juices. Ok, orange juice and one coffee, hah :) I was getting on a kick with the culinary food descriptions. We were impressed with the spread at least, and everyone walked away with the banana bread recipe. Mom--way to go! (and whomever it came from beyond you :)) So that was Sunday.

Going back now. Dinah arrived Friday evening as well, but this time I had spent a full day snowboarding up at Cypress upon her arrival, not just working. Yes, they recognize Good Friday in our Canadian offices—what a treat! And yes again, I snowboarded over Easter weekend—crazy place I live now. That will most likely mark my last boarding trip of the season. I think I made a good progression over my seven trips up the hill in just nine weeks of me being here—not bad! I marked my accomplishments by conquering several blue runs by the end of my day--woohoo!! Hopefully I'll retain my skills for next season.

After rendez-vous’ing with Dinah in full embrace on the streets of Vancouver Friday evening, we enjoyed a drink at my place (me in my treacherous hammock, Dinah safely inside on the couch) before heading out to dinner and drinks/rockband later. Two notes. 1.) Yes, I finally hung my Costa Rican hammock and am in love! Need to work on some of the safety aspects of it, but it works. And 2.) Yes Liz, we played rockband at a bar--tell Adam! Do we have any other rockband fanatics out there??

Sadly I don’t have any pics from this weekend (Dinah—send me yours!), but I do have a few of the hammock hanging excitement from the weekend prior with Meghan--thanks for the photo shoot :)

Saturday we prepped for the Easter feast and tried to enjoy the city as much as possible despite the not-so-hot weather. Bit rainy and cold unfortunately, but we still made a trek to Granville island to show off the lovely markets there and explored a bit into Kits (on the other side of the bridge) before my tiredom from snowboarding and being out Friday night caught up with me. We decided on an early evening including a viewing of the popular "Twilight" movie from my local independent film store (Meg--I joined!). Not surprisingly, Dinah has read all of the books and I have read none, but we both enjoyed it on different levels, I'm sure. It is quite good though, especially if you're into vampires. I can't wait for the rest of the series to come out in movie format because I'll shock myself if I read them all :)

I hope you're all doing well. Linds & Jeff--you're next in the visitors lineup! Be thinking about what you'll want to do :)