Summer 2005 -- In Vancouver

May to October, 2005 SUMMER AT HOME 2005

And what a summer it was--a whirlwind of trips, reunions, visitors, and special events. In May we crossed the continent again to help welcome Cliff's youngest brother, Rob, to the fabulous fifties. Five of the six siblings met in Silver Spring, Md., at Rob's place, for a great time of reminiscing and celebrating.

Later in the month, we proudly attended the official ceremony welcoming Orma's sister, Loryl Russell, to the Supreme Court of BC as Madame Justice. In July, we attended the beautiful garden wedding of Melissa, daughter of our good friends Henry and Grace Wiens,
and in August, flew to Winnipeg for more fun with the extended family at nephew Matthew Bowering's wedding. From Winnipeg, we traveled to Ottawa to visit Julie, Grant, Jenna and Luke, who are there for just a year while grant takes a final course before returning to Calgary.
What a beautiful city Ottawa is! We made like tourists and felt very proud of our fabulous capital city. There we also saw good friends Gary and Elizabeth Bielert from university, and they returned the visit later in the summer.


Our cruiser friends Justin and Alyson (The Answer !V) live in Ottawa now and have their boat on the St. Lawrence near Kingston.
They took us for a lovely 2-day cruise in the Thousand Islands, a much easier trip than the one we took with them from the Turks and Caicos to the Dominican Republic a few years ago.
We had a wonderful few days at Pioneer Pacific Camp on Thetis Island renewing old friendships with many friends from UBC days who, like us, were part of Inter Varsity Christian Fellowship and Pioneer Camp. The Camp was celebrating its fiftieth anniversary, and has maintained its original beauty and charm. Many happy memories were relived. We were able to attend reunions of both our high schools and were amazed at how good we all look 46 years later! John and Nora Durham, our friends from Venezuela visited, and we became reacquainted with Orma's second cousins from California whom she hadn't seen since 1960. We had visits with many of Cliff's cousins over the summer, and rejoiced with two good friends as they recovered from successful heart surgeries. It seemed that we saw everyone we ever knew at some time during the summer.


We are so blessed to have Orma's mother, age 96, still well and living nearby. Much of our spare time was spent with Mom and her sister, Beryl.



We had lots of fun with our family and enjoyed having the grandchildren for sleepovers. Next year they want to have sleepovers on Skylark!


Our kids arranged a wonderful family dinner to help us celebrate our fortieth anniversary, and we attended several other anniversary celebrations for friends also married in 1965. (photo) What a rich and heartwarming summer we had, and the six months passed so quickly!