Lindeman Lake

Gary and I attended the FVC grad last night and again, it was great to see so many wonderful grads. It's always hard to believe that the kids I taught in grade 9 and 11 are all graduating. I remember the grad of my first year teaching, I almost cried because I thought I would miss the grade 12's so much! I didn't get to talk to as many people as I would've liked but it was good to see so many people. Because it was a long evening out (3-10pm), Kai stayed at gramma's house. We decided that because they live 30 minutes away, that Kai would spend the night. He did really well, although, he did wake up (and stay up) at 5am for gramma...oops!

Gary and I decided that it would be really nice to go for a short hike this morning before we picked up our little monkey. We went out to Chilliwack Lake and did the Lindeman/Greendrop Lake hike. We just went to the first lake (Lindeman), and it was fabulous! We got up at 7am and were out of the house by 7:05am. The hike was supposed to take 3 hours but just took 1 1/2 hours. Not sure if I've been scenery deprived lately but it seemed so beautiful to me. Gary and I are both biologists and not botanists in any way, but boy, did we love all the lichen, fungi, and moss. I have never seen so many varieties in such a short hike, a few are below (I may have named them incorrectly but this is what they may be):

`Devil's Matchstick' lichen?


`Tar Jelly' lichen?

I could not believe the concentration of sporangium in this patch of moss.

Walking across a fun bridge. The hike was pretty much 10 minutes easy walking and then 30 minutes that were somewhat steep. I would def. like to do this one again and go to the next lake when we have more time. It's just fun to go somewhere that you have never been. Gary spent a large portion of his childhood in Chilliwack and he had never been out there, so it was good for both of us to head on out there. On the way home, Gary showed me his childhood home and schools as we took the back roads `short cut' back to the highway.

What a beautiful way to start the day! When we went to gramma's (Gary's mom) to get Kai, I wasn't sure if he would be excited to see me or not, and he wasn't!!!! It could be that he was tired? Just wanted to keep playing? Either way, it was a strange feeling. He would be okay without us, this is comforting yet also somewhat sad. Overall, it was very, very nice for Gary and I to go hiking just the two of us. We could concentrate on our surroundings, talk about a lot of things besides Kai, and we could go on our own schedule and speed. I felt like we were dating again or something:) I hope we are able to do at least one hike a week this summer.

Finally, I have been very suprised about all the people I have run into that say they read our blog. Wow. It's so strange because when I talk to one of these people, they already know exactly what's going on in our lives. Thank you for reading and caring about what goes on in our ordinary lives!