First, I’m just going to point out the fact we brought matching outfits to conference and didn’t even plan it…? Now I’ll introduce you: this is Mariah. She’s awesome and she’s my friend!!!! Our first stop was Melfort Youth Conference. I’ve gone ever since I turned 13, except for when we were on our Gap year trip, and I have a blast every time! We got up at six on Friday morning and drove the six hours north to Melfort and arrived just in time for the meetings to begin. Gaius Goff and David Petterson were the speakers and they spoke on Choices and Consequences.

Our next stop was Edmonton where we did the West Edmonton Mall with our friend Janet. We rode all of the rides and screamed on all the rollercoasters – at least, I did… The boat was probably the worst though, it swung back and forth and it was probably the closest I have ever been to throwing up on a ride. We also rode up and down the escalators… When the closest mall to you is one floor and has around ten stores, big malls are a HUGE thing!!! So we rode down, and then up the other side, and then down again… Sometimes you just have to enjoy the simple things.

Then on Tuesday we drove the fourteen hours from Edmonton to Vancouver. We travelled through the mountains and as Mariah has never been through these ones we made a special stop; at a melting mountain river – cold enough to give you a shock, but not quite cold enough to make you go completely numb…

I saw a pull out ahead and yelled up to my parents, “We need to stop and put our feet in!!!” So my dad whipped into the pullout, we all ripped off our socks and shoes, and shrieked all the way down to the river as the little rocks were VERY sharp.  Then we bravely dipped our toes in and shrieked – probably loud enough to wake up a bear from hibernation… Then we had to climb back up – which hurt even worse, because our feet were now incredibly sensitive from the freezing water we had just dunked them in. My dad gave me a piggyback though so it wasn’t all that bad for me!

Probably the funniest part of stopping was Mariah remarking to herself while yanking her socks off, “So, this is what travelling with the Simonyi-Gindele’s is like…” But hey – she totally loved it – well, maybe not the debilitating pain… But the rest of it, yes.?

Mariah somehow managed to get the whole mountain experience as we saw some mountain goats on the highway just three minutes after the river and then ten minutes down the road there was a whole herd of caribou grazing by the road. I don’t think in all the years I’ve driven through the mountains that I have ever seen that amount of wildlife in such a short time period of twenty minutes.

On Wednesday we set out to tour Vancouver. Our first stop was Lynn Canyon Suspension Bridge, which is 90ft above a rushing river that goes over hundreds of waterfalls.

My absolute favourite part is jumping on the bridge and scaring everyone else off… I had visited this bridge with friends and family when I was a little kid and we always waited until everyone got off the bridge then would run/jump across. And you’re never too old to have fun so…

Every time we hiked this trail in the past I would climb up this rock… The sad part was that it was still just as hard to get up to the top as it was however many years ago we climbed it.

Side track for a second with me… This here is a picture from September 2007. The same rock we climbed on in April, eleven years later!

You can actually cliff dive here, I’m pretty sure the pool is 90ft deep – as you look down into the depths it just gets darker. As we were there in April the water was pretty frigid – but Mariah was still tempted to jump in with all her clothes on because she didn’t bring her bathing suit… We took off our shoes though, and jumped from rock to rock trying unsuccessfully to get across the river. Which brings me to a funny story… Grandad was carrying our shoes for us and went a little further along the trail but then ended up getting lost. So Mariah and I hiked back to the trail head in our bare feet – but it was okay because they were already numb from the river… It ended up being twenty minutes or so before he returned and we could be on our way to our next stop: Granville Island.

This is a pretty fuzzy photo but it is the only one I have of Granville Island so it will have to make do! It was around lunch so we decided to go to a bunch of the food booths and get try a little bit of everything. We had perogies, Indian, Greek, pizza, french pastries, a donut, and a frisbee sized crunchy cinnamon roll.  I sometimes struggle sharing food with my family – and Mariah had to share with a family that wasn’t even hers… Thanks for sharing saliva with us!!!? I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Granville Island – you should – but to give you a little picture: imagine crowded everything. There are people everywhere and stalls of fresh fruit, beverages, jewelry, baking, and just about everything else you would find in your dream market. It is built in a harbour, out on a dock so you can sit, eat your perogies, feed the seagulls and breathe in the tangy air.

Next we gave Mariah a taste of city transportation. We rode the skytrain and took the sea bus. We also almost left Lanaya behind… There is an escalator etiquette that some people obviously didn’t know. When you’re on an escalator you stand on the right and walk on the left – but these people were blocking the whole thing, almost making us miss our train. But we ran and jumped on the first car and the doors started to close. Lanaya kept running though and then realized we had gotten on so she ran back but the doors were already closing – and they aren’t like elevator doors that open again when you block them, they just keep closing. So Mom had to use her big pipes to hold open the doors so that Lanaya could squish through at the last minute… That was very stressful!!! Later that night we did a polar bear dip into my grandparents pool – and it was very cold!!! Like a “jump in and then flap because you don’t really know what else to do because your brain just froze over” kind of cold… And that may or may not be exactly what I did.?

On Thursday we headed down to Seattle. We crossed the border, and gave Mariah a taste of what “busy” border crossings are. In Saskatchewan it is a huge thing when there are THREE cars at the border crossing at the same time – and it can take up to half an hour too… We waited for half an hour in the line up and probably three hundred or so cars went through…? We stopped for lunch at MOD pizza – a favourite of ours, as you may have noticed by the amount of times it comes up in our trips to the States… This time, however, someone got smart and wrote how to pronounce my name… I thought they were a genius, at least until they person calling out the names still pronounced it wrong…?

In Seattle we stayed at Dawn and DJ’s, friends of my parents. Thursday, after we arrived at their place Dawn took Mariah and Lanaya riding on their horses, and then after that my Mom and Cassia – and in the rain, too!

We also went down to the Pike Place Market on the waterfront in Seattle on Friday.

We stuck our gum on the iconic gum wall, and Mariah was so disgusted she had to use a Kleenex…

We also took our picture under the original Starbucks sign – just to get the whole experience…?

Then we met up with my dad and DJ at the Starbucks Reserve. It was like coffee heaven! You walk in and your senses are flooded with the warm smell of freshly roasted coffee beans. There are fancy coffee trinkets everywhere, and coffee beans galore. We got affagato’s, which are single espressos over vanilla ice cream. It basically defines bittersweet. The ice cream is really sweet, and the coffee is overpoweringly bitter – but when you take a little bit of ice cream with a spoonful of espresso your mouth smiles.

These coffee bean imprints were littering the sidewalk outside the front door – and it was the perfect photo op. (Missing is my Mom, Dawn, and DJ.) After that it was up to Arlington on Friday afternoon. My dad and Steve Vance had another Hope and Healing Conference like the one in Ontario. They did a really good job of approaching somewhat sensitive subjects, and in fact I used some of their God-given wisdom the other day in school – and it was really cool to see. One of my friends was mad at another and I told her about the difference between Forgiveness and Reconciliation. Forgiveness is when you forgive someone, but to be reconciled is to tell them you’ve forgiven them and then to work on restoring your relationship together. She then told me later on in the week that she had forgiven the person and had reached out to them, looking for reconciliation.

It was so nice to have Mariah there so that I had a friend, and it was really nice to connect with old friends, and even make some new ones!

Mariah – thank you SO much for coming with me out to Vancouver. My whole family enjoyed that you were there – to give new life to the old and to make us laugh… Like when you accidentally “insulted” my dad – that was epic…? You are a beautiful person – inside and out, and I am incredibly thankful for you!?