Wednesday (Dec. 10) I made a trip back down island to Lake Cowichan to spend the night at Deb and Ray's. I have an appointment with a urologist at the Duncan hospital tomorrow morning at 9:45 for a cystoscopy. Steve stayed home as he recovers from his bronchial infection.
On my way, I stopped at the Woodgrove Mall in Nanaimo to finish up a little Christmas shopping. I arrived at Lake Cowichan just after 2:00.
Deb has done a beautiful job of decorating their Christmas Tree...
Chris and Angela gave this to us for Christmas the year Isaac was born (2018)...
These are the 2 Christmas decorations we started with years ago...
Thursday morning ( Dec. 11) I left Ray and Deb's at 9:00 to give myself plenty of time to get to the hospital. Thanks for your hospitality Deb and Ray! I'm glad I was early because the parking lot at the hospital was packed. I lucked into a spot just as someone was backing out....Phew!
The cystoscopy was quick and shows no indication of lesions in my bladder. No idea why I had blood in my urine but it was a small amount...maybe a burst blood vessel (?). I was finished and back home by about 12:30.
Friday (Dec. 12) we decided to go to Best Buy and purchase a replacement dash camera. Our old one is no longer staying on. We happened to have a gift card that neither Steve or I can remember getting...but I found it in my purse. It was for $150 so that paid for the majority of the new camera. Of course they did not have it in stock so we had to wait a few days for it come in.
We had some visitors behind our trailer today...
Saturday morning (Dec. 13) we did a shorter walk around the airpark. Steve is still short of breath so it's going to take him some time to gain his strength. He also still has a bit of a cough hanging on.
They erected the Totem Pole near the entrance to the park, just across from us...
Sunday (Dec. 14) was a very blustery, cloudy, rainy day! Rather than sit inside all day, we went out for a drive in the morning. Wave action along Point Holmes...
We had more rain, heavy at times, on Monday (Dec. 15) and Tuesday (Dec. 16), so didn't do much other than hunker down inside.
During a short break in the weather, we were treated to a rainbow...
Wednesday (Dec. 17) the sunshine returned...so nice to see blue sky again! We ran a few errands and then went to the riverfront for our walk. There were a couple of Great Blue Herons in a tree along the walkway. Here is a picture of one of them...
And a short 17 second video of it preening itself...
We were back to clouds and rain on Thursday (Dec. 18) and Friday (Dec. 19). There were some breaks on Friday, so we managed to get out to the airpark for a walk. Lots of new snow on the mountains. This is Mount Washington, the ski mountain...
Saturday morning (Dec. 20), we packed up the car and headed down island. Our first stop was in Bowser for a quick visit with Don and Rhonda (my brother and SIL). From there, we stopped for lunch at the Shady Rest Pub and Restaurant in Qualicum Beach before continuing onto Lake Cowichan and Ray and Deb's. We are spending one night and then continuing on to our son, Rob's, for one night before taking the ferry over to Vancouver to spend Christmas with our other son, Chris and his family.
Of course, Deb is cooking a fabulous dinner...she is smoking ribs on the Traeger...
Here is a 1:54 minute video Steve took of Ray's displays...
Their neighbours, Pat and Darryl joined us for cocktails and dinner...
Sunday morning (Dec. 21) after big hugs, we said goodbye to Deb and Ray and continued down island to Victoria and a visit with Steve's sister and her husband, Nadine and Mike. We enjoyed coffee and home-baked treats while catching up.
We left them, stopped to pick up flowers, and went to the nearby cemetery to pay our respects to Steve's brother (passed away in 1982) and grandmother (Bunica) and her husband Gus. After that we continued to Royal Oak (northern suburb of Victoria) to the cemetery where both my parents and Steve's are buried.
We arrived at Rob and Angie's around 3:00. Angie's parents are visiting from Winnipeg so they already have a houseful but were able to accommodate us for one night. We wanted to drop off their Christmas gifts...and they opened them while we were there. Conner and Bryce...
Tomorrow, we leave for the mainland...we have reservations on the 11:00 sailing but the weather got in the way. Stay tuned!
