The big news around our house today is that Miyuki got her L! This means that she and I will be taking the big boat of a Volvo stationwagon down to the old Canadian Tire parking lot and practicing driving up and down every night for at least a couple of weeks before I let her get out on the road, LOL. I think that I should invest in stock in L'Oreal because I am going to be buying LOTS of hair colour to cover up the increased grey I will be acquiring from teaching her how to drive!

On another note, we have had another couple of couch-surfers stay with us. Melissa and Mike are from Wyoming and are a very nice young couple. Melissa is a tea expert and taught us all about different kinds of tea. She even, very kindly, left us some. She sells tea for a company called Let's Do Tea.

So, before I go much farther with this blog, I need to tell you all about something very cool that we have been doing. We have become members of a group call Couchsurfers - www.couchsurfing.org - couchsurfers from all over the world register a profile on the site and then you can either host travellers or stay with people. There is no charge for this but the purpose is not to have free accomodation but to meet people from all over and share experience and culture, etc. So far we have had 3 sets of guests and we have one more coming next week and another in August.

This lovely couple is Denis and Heather from Wellington, Australia. They were our first guests.

This is Vicki from Mount Albert, Ontario. At 54, she packed up her life and is spending the next 3 years travelling across Canada. Her website is www.questacrosscanada.com.

This is Fabio from Ottawa. He and his two kids (both cuties) are travelling across Canada and the States.

So while Miyuki and I were away enjoying the weather and the company at Camp fYrefly, Nick was at home overseeing renovations on our house.  We had the kitchen reno-ed in January and it looks wonderful.  

So now we are having the outside of the house re-sided.  They have pulled off all the vinyl siding and will be replacing it shortly with Hardiplank.  The house will be white with brown and cranberry trim.  It was a good thing that we had all the siding pulled off because we found out that the wood under the sunroom had started to rot so we are having all that wood replaced.  We also found out that there were not enough posts holding up the sunroom so we are having more posts added and more insulation added.  In the middle of all this the hot water tank went.  Fortunately we caught it before we had a flood.  This is definitely our year to focus on the house!

 

Miyuki and I spent our first few days of summer at Camp fYrefly.  Camp fYrefly is a camp that was started at the UofA for queer kids and their allies.  This is the first year UBC has put the camp on and it was a wonderful experience.  I was there as an adult volunteer but it was such a great camp and the kids were so terrific that I got as much out of it as the campers did.  Here are a few pictures: