The pack up was smooth, Gregg and Deb managed to find us, and we had a lovely relaxed brunch at the condo together before heading back down the hill. We realised how long one of the runs we did was when we drove past the lift long after we thought we had left the resort!!!. It was a magically sunny day and it was just beautiful with the snow glistening and distant views. The lake stretches the whole way along the road from Kelowna to Vernon and I was busy cl...

The lovely Bec Rodda picked us up at the airport from our red eye flight and showed us a bit of Kelowna, including her church - amazing, massive, alive- before driving us up to Big White to our condo - thanks so much Bec - it was great having contact with a friend from home as well as a very generous bit of help, saving us a very expensive shuttle trip. The condo is AMAZING. Thank you, thank you, thank you to Peter and Dianne for your incredible hospitality...

The flight back to Vancouver was not as comfortable as the one up there - no spare seat between us, I was in the middle seat with a big man next to me so we sat for 2 hours with squashed arms!! Oh well, it ended, with no-one sicking the sniffer dogs on me!! We grabbed our bags, headed straight for the sky train, managed to hop on one straight way, got to Bridgeport Station with 10 minutes to spare for the bus to Tsawwassen ferry, and had about a 45 minute wai...

I return to my original comment - exit row seats are worth paying extra for!!! As we couldn't get any flights with Air Canada for under $12, 000 economy!!! , we went with Air New Zealand and paid $10 more to get legroom from Melbourne to Auckland return. Unfortunately, being last minute, there were none available for the long haul and we only managed to get 2 seats together at the back of the plane . The hostess to Auckland was really lovely when we chatted a...

As I mentioned previously, the week home was a bit of a blur, but I felt I wanted to remember it in my dear dad's memory. It was a really sad time, but also a wonderful time with our whole family who had come from all over Australia to be there. There was a lot of organizational things to do, interspersed with lots of tears and laughter as we all walked down memory lane quite a few times.I had a lot of things to work through relating to being away at the time, b...