In Miranda’s words:
One day a girl named Miranda who was going to Vancouver for a holiday. when she was in Vancouver she got to go to a store called IKIA she got to get a rat toy she named it cheesy when she got to the motel she had a bath when she was finished her bath she watched some tv then she went to sleep. The next day she to the fairy boat and went home. the
end
😀
Since I’ve got a couple of minutes to scrape together here, I’ll fill in the gaps in Miranda’s fine rendition of our trip… 😉
I guess it started with me sending an email to Tammy suggesting the IKEA hack for storing bicycles. Since we have two cars in the garage now, there isn’t a lot of room for a plethora of bicycles. There isn’t really even a lot of wall storage space or opportunities for ceiling hangers (darn those short people I live with). Tammy had been suggesting building a shed for bicycles. Once I suggested something related to IKEA, then she was all over a trip, but with the way things worked out on my week off, there didn’t seem to be a day that nothing was scheduled.
Finally, on Thursday morning, I checked the ferry schedule and used the hotel finder from work to find a reasonably-priced room for us and laid it down: it’s today or never. Miranda misses her piano lesson, and her karate lesson, but this is it. An hour later we were out the door and on our way.
The weather was great for the trip. The ferry ride was great, with the Coastal Celebration having a broken door, no trucks or buses were on the boat, so there was tons of room. The north shore mountains were clear as a bell. We also saw a pod of killer whales on the way. All in all, great timing. We found everything we were looking for at IKEA, Tammy got to visit her first Apple Store (at the Oakridge Mall) and the kids got to play at King George Park, which was very near to the hotel.
It took a bit for the kids to get to sleep. Miranda probably would have dropped right off, but Ian was fooling around. They had a hide-a-bed in the "front room" of the hotel suite. The cable didn’t have Treehouse, go figure.
The next morning, we hit the IHOP and debated finding some other activity to pursue or to head for the ferries. With the long weekend kicking off, it was wiser to go earlier, and as it happened we caught the same boat, but the 10 am sailing back. So we were back on the island before lunch. We stopped at Home Depot and Superstore briefly and then we were home again.
Lightning trip, but certainly fun in a spontaneous way.