Island Hopping

It's been go go go around here and yesterday we did a little island hopping and took a trip on the ferry over to Quadra Island to visit my cousin and her family :)

It's a short journey, only about 15 minutes before we docked again in Quathiaski Cove and then across the island to where they have a lovely home along the ocean. We were meeting up with another of my cousins and her family that are visiting us from France right now for an afternoon all together :)

I hadn't been here since they moved so it was so much fun to tour around their property and see her gardens, home and animals.

Everything was growing so well in the warm weather. Look at all that lovely lettuce!! Their climate is quite a few degrees warmer than ours and you can definitely see it in the growth difference.

I'm totally smitten with her little greenhouse and I've put it on hubby's 'to do' list for next spring *grin*. Just look at it packed with tomatoes, tomatillos and hot pepper plants. Just lovely :)

The kids had so much fun wandering and playing. L is exactly the same age as her cousin, only 1 day apart, and they played just as if they had spent every day together since birth *grin*. M was the youngest so he spent a lot of time following us, following the dog and playing with the girls when they let him and he wasn't too rough :)

As we finished looking through the gardens we started making our way to the water and along the way we came across the giant stump that my cousin's husband is turning into a hot tub. Isn't it cool?! It's absolutely giant and I think he came across it when he was beach combing a few years back but inside....

you can see how he has carved out seats for sitting in and he plans to pour a concrete slab to place it on and it is going to be a 'salt water' hot tub :) Love it!

Oh how I love being by the ocean. If I could combine our acreage with ocean side living I would do it in a heartbeat! This is looking out towards Kanish Bay and behind the little island is the Johnstone Strait. I could watch hubby go by in his tug with his log tows if I sat here all the time :)

We finally caught up with the boys down at the bay.

K was having some fun seeing if he could catch a fish. Earlier that day his older cousins had been down there baiting their hooks with clams and they had caught a good sized one but he didn't have any luck :(

It could have been due to the fact that there were only teeny tiny little ones floating around *grin*. It was a whole school of them and they were clustering around the side of the dock.

What a fabulous day. I only wish that we were able to stay longer or visit more often. I haven't had a chance to catch up with my cuz on Quadra in quite some time and I always enjoy it when I get a chance to see what she is doing. We do so many similar things with canning and homestead stuff plus she homeschools her daughter just like I do with my three. With so little family here it would be great to be able to see each other more often :)

~ Rosina