Last Day of School...

After finally finishing up exams and being homework free, there was time left to hang out with the pals before saying goodbye for the summer.
We started off with a dorm sleepover in our lounge as we all dragged in our mattresses. We found these made excellent landing spots for jumping off the couches, so we did that for a few hours late into the night before finally crawling into bed.
Hannah's karate skills.
Marianne soaring...

Kelsey's classic flip.

Flying with my cape.

Rachel and Kari looking crazy.

Quad jump.

Last 4W Dorm breakfast before Candace and I took off.Walking in the rain with Kels back to the dorm.

Then we met up with some of the guys for our final adventure in learning of dry ice bombs.

Preparing...Waiting with Hannah and Sarah...
It was a fairly quiet 'boom' since it was buried, but it was still pretty entertaining.
Then Han and I grabbed our last coffee together for the year. Brenda let us crawl under the counter and help her out. Then it was off to finish packing for me until Mom and Dad arrived.

It's still strange to me to look back and see another year has already gone by. I know it's like that for a lot of people, but it always leaves me in a weird 'shock' faze. Regardless, it was a challenging year in different aspects, but looking back after finally finishing I can say that it was good. Good to learn, good to be stretched, good to fail and get back up again... God has been good throughout it all. I'm so thankful to be able to look behind me and see God's work, not only in my life, but in the lives of those who are around me. It's encouraging to be reminded that He is working now as well, just sometimes we don't see it until we look back.
Summer days are pretty much here:) Starting work in a few days too, so that should be swell. A few weddings coming up which are wicked exciting. More photos to come I'm sure...

I'm done!!!

This is me stoked to be finished. I survived final exams...and now home is calling me.

The End is Near

Just a quick post to say I'm a live and well. The year is nearing to an end, one final exam to go and I'm heading home. I'm so stoked to be getting back to the island, but it will be sad to say goodbye to some great friendly faces. Especially some special ladies who won't be returning again in the fall. We've definitely had a superb dorm, as well have met some other rad people. The year has been good, and I'm sure I'll write more later - but just a few pictures of the last few events. The one above is our dorm in the beautiful cherry trees...

A few of us taking a break from our tandem bike tour around Stanley Park.

Picnic in the park.

Our dorm and the other sweet dorm we share a hallway with.

With my fantastic roomie that I'll be separated with for a few months...absence makes the heart grow fonder though.
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"The LORD your God is with you, He is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing." Zephaniah 3:17

Hmm...is that really a flower pot?

Childhood Memories...

I snuggled back into the warm covers as I glanced up at my clock reading 9:00am. Not quite feeling like I can crawl out of bed, I lie and listen to the mumbling out in the hall. Quiet whispers of 'snow' drift under our door, and Hannah lifts herself out of bed a heads towards the window. Lifting the blinds, the gray-ish white light peers through the glass and she responds in despair 'Oh no'. I lift my head, and to my disbelief I see large snowflakes flowing and falling to the ground. It's April 2nd, and our warm weather sunny streak is strangely brought to a halt by snow? The only hope was knowing that our spontaneous west coast weather would probably counteract the snow, and it did indeed. The expected drizzling rain appeared much later that morning, and as I stepped out of my second class I was surprised to be met by the smiling rays of our good friend 'Sunshine'. Just another day with the wacky wonderful weather...
The last few days, I felt like I've returned a bit to my childhood, the more simple days of just playing and being 'free'. It all started with taking a walk Friday afternoon, and just letting my thoughts flow and my heart settle in peace after having some good prayer time. I returned to the cafe to grab a dinner and was met by some of my wonderful dorm gals. We had quite an enjoyable dinner full of lots of random conversation and gut-hurting laughter.

Afterwards, we crammed into some cars and took off to go cheer for our dorm girls and guys baseball game. We made some signs, did lots of yelling, but they still lost - yet I think they had more fun than the other team, mainly due to them being the only team with fans.
Once they were done, we all piled onto the kids playground and played games we hadn't played since back in elementary school. It got pretty intense running around, but it was great. We hit up the swings later, played four square, sat on the see-saws, and slid down the slides. Then when the darkness started settling in we headed home, but not before grabbing some smoothies. On Saturday, we had our last Kid's outreach in Vancouver. We blew up a huge amount of balloons to play games with the kids, but before they all arrived, we found ourselves playing with them for quite a while. But it was a good finish off to the year, fun to hang out with the kids and do some fun activities.
That night Janelle, Han, Sarah, Rach and I took off for a mini-adventure and ended up finding a secret hideout with some cool passageways. We then took it upon ourself to go tree-climbing on the 6 cherry trees at school, taking turns telling stories in each tree. And after hoisting Rachel and Janelle up a huge tree to try out the hammock up in the branches, we headed to bed.

Sunday, a few of us went to Fort Langley to toss around a football and walk around the fort. I was excited to find a semi-decent hill which called for hill rolling, then that turned into spinning competitions. Some of us were a little better and spinning and running afterwards, while others ended up getting a few more grass stains.
Then in the evening we had a big dorm tea party. Candace made some treats to eat, and then we made a big 'bowl' of tea. We've yet to get a tea pot, but it's coming soon. It was such a blast, and it reminded me of the many tea parties I used to have with mom in the mornings before school, and all the tea drinking with Nan and Grampa growing up. I think Rika won the tea-drinking competition with her 4 cups, impressive is the only word that comes to my mind.
Thus, even though I know I have a bit more work to finish up before the year is done - it's been refreshing doing some of the more simpler things in life.