Woooo

My beautiful and amazing friend, Brittany, arrives home today from her trip to India!!! 

I am beyond excited!! I've missed her so much <3 

Kayaks, long hikes, and mud sharks!

Well, we just all returned from Pender Island. 
I got to kayak for the first time, which was awesome. Loved it as much as I thought I would. Next plan is to buy one and go on the lake as much as I can.
The house that we stayed in was beautiful. If I end up living in a house like that, I'll be quite content. Maybe even more content if it's a lake and not the ocean. But still, it was fabulous. 
We caught lots of crab off the dock and the boys even cooked some up one night and they said it was pretty tasty! 
One day we decided to go check out Roe Lake. It turned out to be a major hike to get to. Pretty much all incline. I don't think the majority of the people were very pleased with the trail, but I was secretly loving it. I absolutely love hikes and that feeling of accomplishment for making it to the top. So I had lots of fun that afternoon, I just wish we had more time to hangout there but it was unfortunately the day that we were heading back home. We got to swim while we were up there to, which I love. If I'm at a lake where I can't swim, I'm not a happy hiker. Ryan says he knows of lots more hikes like that one that we will try and do this summer. SWEET. 
We spent one afternoon on a boat ride with a fishing guide named Mike. We sadly didn't catch any yummy salmon but we did catch a mud shark!! Yes, that's right, a shark! Nothing too large, but it's still cool to say that we got to reel in a shark. Mike was super awesome to. Was funny and had lots of stories to tell. All in all it was a good day. 
The location was beautiful. It was so nice to look out every window and your view was beautiful. It was a nice vacation. It was the first vacation my bestie and I had together for a long time, so that was nice. 

After every vacation, it's always nice to come back home. Especially to my family and my puppy! It feels nice to be back at work to. Yesterday my mom and I visited my nan in her care home. She's been getting worse and worse with her memory and has made visiting her harder and harder on all of us. But yesterday was a great day. She remembered who I was for 90% of the day and hanging out with her felt so good. I love her so much and it's so amazing to be able to still have these good days with her.
 My garden is growing now! It's so awesome to pretty much have a veggie market in your own backyard. Picked a bunch of great veggies this morning. Last night Tina and I had a little date night. We went to menchies and then to White Spot for dinner. That's right, we did it backwords, and it was fabulous. This next weekend coming up is August Long! And what's also great about that, I get to dog sit my fur niece ZOEY <3. I'm very excited.

Hedgehogs and 30 year olds

Feeling lazy so I'll just briefly describe how this weekend went. 
It was great! It was Ryan's birthday and I planned a surprise birthday for him at the fort Langley pub and so many awesome people came out. I must say I honestly believed he was very surprised and he absolutely loved his gifts. Made me very happy. It was a lot of fun. Lots of laughs and good people.
It was also awesome having Garrett come seeing as how he leaves for Alberta on Sunday or Monday. I must say, it would be awesome to go with him so I could visit my other friends. I also miss Alberta quite a bit. I`ll miss Garrett a lot when he leaves to.

Today we were pretty hungover. So we went to Rickys and pretty much ordered everything on the menu haha. We then went to the pet store in Fort Langley and got to cuddle baby bostons and hedgehogs! 
Right now were just relaxing watching T.V and trying to decide what to have for dinner. Since the sun has decided to come out we might go for a drive after dinner around Glenn Valley. 

Here`s some other pictures from the past couple days : 

"Is this for real?"

So, something magical happened tonight.
I came home from a long long shift at work today. Super tired. All I wanted to do was eat dinner, shower, and go to bed.
As I finished dinner I received a text from Jordan. "OMFG GARRETT IS AT BETHS"
This guy --->

I called Beth right away and when she answered all I asked was "Is it true?"
She laughed and said "Yes, he's sitting in my garage"
In the background I hear "HI NICOLE"
I replied "I'm coming over"
I got in my car as fast as I could and drove to Beth's. Ran inside and we ran to eachother and hugged for probably 2 minutes. I was holding back tears. Actually, that's a lie. I definitely shed some tears. I haven't seen this guy in about 2 years. I couldn't get in contact with him because he had no phone and no internet. I missed him so much.
Jordan got there shortly after and their hug pretty much went the same as mine.
We all sat and talked and laughed and caught up on eachothers lives and reminisced about old times.
He says he'll be leaving Calgary in October to come to Kelowna to go to school. It's still too far away for my liking but it's much better than Calgary.
He plans to come to Ryan's birthday this weekend and I'm so happy that he is. I plan to try and see him everyday that he's here because I'm going to miss him again so much when he leaves.

Williams Park, Shopping, and Spiders

Well this past weekend Ryan and I didn't hike Lindeman like we had planned. We decided that it was just far too hot for a hike like that plus I wanted to bring my dog so it would have been pretty tough on him as well. 
We did however take him to Williams Park to get him in the water and swim! It wasn't as nice as Lindeman lake would have been but it was still deep enough to get him in there to practice his doggy paddle. He did pretty good once he got the hang of it! 

After Williams Park we took him to watershed park out in Glenn Valley where we let him do a little off leash walking on the dyke. He did pretty well, I still need to work on getting his attention back when he sees a squirrel or bunny or something like that. His prey drive just kicks in and my voice is no longer existent. 
We drove shadow back home and headed back to Fort Langley where we stopped in at the pet store to grab a few things for Ryan's cat, Orange. While we were there I ended up purchasing a backpack for shadow for all the hikes we will be doing soon and I even got to a hold one of Alanna's baby chickens! It was so cute. I wish I had more will power to not eat meat. It's just so damn tasty! 

We then headed over to the liquor store and went back home to drink and relax. Well, Ryan fell asleep and I drank haha. 
Sunday morning I drove home from Ryan's house pretty early to chill with my momma and get Shadow to try on the new backpack I bought for him before heading out to breakfast and shopping with the girls. My momma and I ended up hanging out in the backyard doing some gardening for a bit. It was super nice. 

Shopping was fun with the girls. We went to Guildford which was nice. I didn't end up buying anything but it was still fun being out with my ladies. 
After shopping I went back over to Ryan's who decided he wanted to go to Willowbrook to look at hiking shoes. So back to the mall I went haha. I ended up finding a dress there and some other stuff. Which was all on sale. I love it when that happens! 
Later that evening we met up with our good friend Mike to do a little fishing. We ended the night off by going to Menchies together and chatting for awhile. 
There was a beautiful sunset going on after Menchies, so Ryan and I took the long way home through Derby Reach to get a real good look at it. 

Today is Monday and it's going pretty good so far. Other than the spider that I encountered this morning on my jar of jam! 

 

I went back to the dyke with my mom and Shadow and we walked for a whole hour before I had to come to work. We saw a heron, 5 eagles, and a coyote. Which wouldn't take his eyes off Shadow haha. 

After work it's early bed time for me as I am half falling asleep already and have a busy week ahead! 

hoping for you

My wish for you is that you find something that makes you you. That brings out your true self. The one that I remember. That one that is truly and undoubtedly happy. The one that smiles for real. 
If your happy because it's someone else's life, well then, that's not truly happy at all. Your the most important person. You. 
I found it. I've found what makes me happy. What makes me me. It took me awhile, but I won't let it get away this time. I hope you'll find it. 

Queen friggen Charleotte Islands!

So, my boyfriend just called me to say that his work is sending him on a fishing trip to the Queen Charleotte Islands. It's a trip worth about $7,000. You get it to be rewarded for doing good work and what not. I am so excited for him because he's always talked about wishing he could go one day. No one deserves it more than him. I love him so much and I'm so happy for him!! 

 

Granisle

On Saturday Ryan and I arrived home from our trip to Granisle. We stayed with our friends Diane and Eric. Ryan and I both used to work with Diane at Army and Navy and have kept in touch since we both quit. Her and Eric bought their house up in Granisle about 6 years ago and Diane is retiring from work next year and they both plan to move up there and live there permanently. 

We had such a blast. The drive up there was quite long. 13 hours to be exact. But the weather was beautiful the entire time except for about 5 minutes when we drove through a rain storm in Prince George. I had never been up that way either so getting to see all the towns and scenery for the first time was super cool. We live in a beautiful province.
As we got closer we kept seeing more and more moose, you weren't able to get too close cause once the car got within 50 feet it would run back into the trees. But it was still pretty awesome to see. 
The town of Granisle was so tiny and no stores or gas stations. Just houses. Which I know a lot of people can't seem to understand why someone would want to live like that, but I loved it. 
We relaxed the first night we were there because we were so worn out from the long drive up. Especially Ryan, since he did all the driving. hehe :P

The first morning we were there, Diane and Eric took us to the first fishing spot which they called the outflow. It ended up being my favourite out of all of them and the spot where I caught my biggest trout yet.
Then that night after dinner we went down to a spot called Millionaires Pond. We didn't catch as many, but this was the spot where Diane caught one of the biggest trout I had ever seen. It was a super cool moment. 
Another cool thing, since Granisle is pretty far up North, it didn't get dark till about 11:00pm at night.
The next day we drove out a spot called the Big Rock. This was apparently Diane's favourite spot. It was pretty good but had a super gnarly trail to get down. I found myself having to slide on my butt at certain times because it was so steep and I got nervous of falling off the side. We spent most of the afternoon there and then headed back for dinner. Diane cooked us trout that we had caught from the previous day. I. ATE. SO. MUCH.  It was so delicious.

After dinner we drove down to the lake. It was so beautiful. This was one of the slowest spots we had been to the whole time but it was still very fun. We had a campfire and watched the sun go down.

The next morning it was time to head home. We stopped at Millionaires Pond on our way before heading out on the road.
The drive home was all sun and when we got back into the Fraser Canyon we stopped at the Thompson River to fish for a bit and stretch our legs. Only caught one little fish but it was still super nice. 
 
We both decided that 2 full days was definitely not enough. So next year we plan to make sure we have a whole week up there.