sensational snow-shoeing

About once a semester I make it out of town on a weekend for a hike or other outing—this time it was snow-shoeing! Thanks to friends loaning me snowshoes and offering to drive, a group of us spent the afternoon hiking Dog Mountain at Mount Seymour just over in North Vancouver. It was an entire forest of the deepest most enormous snowdrifts I have ever seen...at times we casually walked past treetops. The lookout point was a wonderful mountain panorama in one direction, and in the other: the city, waterways, and islands in the hazy distance. It was a great experience, and the most perfect day for it!

two bees in a pod

(No, its not a typo—several of my friends and I have pet names for one another based on bees. This new idiom was coined last week so I have included it here.)

My dear friend from my year in Oxford, Loretta, came to visit last week—she had already flown over from Australia to a conference in California, and was generous enough to come spend several days with me as long as she was in North America:) Although I still had several classes to attend (she accompanied me to one!) and a couple other commitments, we managed a good amount of our usual activities together: having coffee & pastries, walking around talking, praying together, and talking some more over a glass of wine. 

Such a joy and great refreshment to spend this time together!