Hello 2009.

My little family took a trip to the Island with our extended family to ring in the new year. That's why I haven't posted in a few days...I was otherwise occupied stuffing my face with tasty food, playing Guitar Hero and lazily reading books by the fire (just Uncle John's Bathroom Reader...nothing high class or anything) in a super cute little cottage in Parksville.

Getting to the Island was uneventful. We dutifully booked our ferry reservation weeks ago only to discover once we got there that we were pretty much the only vehicle with a reservation. D'oh!

Once on the Island, we met up with the rest of the family (my brother, his wife, son, daughter and dog, my mom and dad, and my aunt) for lunch at our good friends, the Moreaus, in Nanaimo. We've spent a lot of New Years with the Moreaus over the years, so it seemed fitting that we at least stop in for lunch. Sadly, they weren't able to join us for the actual celebration.

After lunch we piled back in the car (which we had to park at the top of a very steep hill for fear that our all-season tires wouldn't make it down and we'd wind up sliding right over a cliff and into the ocean below - far below) and headed off to pick up our provisions for the trip.

Have I mentioned that my family is A) organized, and B) really fond of food? What this means is that each of us had meals assigned that we would be responsible for preparing for the whole group. My brother and I were teamed up and were assigned one breakfast and the fondue on New Year's eve. Where being organized comes into this is that we had a spreadsheet listing everything we'd need for these meals plus who was responsible for bringing each item. It was colour coded. Geeky? You betch'a. Did it work? Absolutely.

I can't say enough good things about the cottage that we stayed at. The set up is a little weird in that the cottage is part of a very dense little cluster of cottages on Parksville's resort road. Each unit is owned individually, but the owners are only allowed to live in them six months a year. The rest of the time they are rented out to people like my family. The place was plenty big to comfortably house the three of us, plus my brother and his crew. I don't have any pictures that do it justice, so I've stolen these ones without my brother's permission (that's what brothers are for).

Our fondue went off without a hitch. We determined it would be safer to have a cheese fondue first before Ryland and the girls went off to bed and save the oil fondue for later for just the adults. My family is very fondue-safety conscious as we all remember a little incident a number of years ago when the hot oil accidentally got poured down my back. Luckily, it was in the 90s and grunge was popular so I was wearing a very thick flannel shirt that protected my skin - so no burns.

Though we didn't plan on it, TDSH and I were awake to ring in the new year thanks to a little crying session from Abner.

Over all though, not a lot happened during our stay (which is kind of the point of a vacation, isn't it?) We became mediocre Guitar Hero players, feasted on way too much delicious food, played a few games, swam in the complex's indoor pool, read books, napped and ate some more.

Even my mom and my aunt got in on the Guitar Hero fun!

The Dear Sweet Husband was such a hard core rocker, he even played while Abner napped in the Ergo. Who's a rock star baby now!

It was Maryn's first time swimming, so Abner showed her the ropes at the pool.

She also had a blast getting tossed in the air by her daddy.

My brother brought along something like 50 games for us to play...we only managed to get to about four or five of them.

Before heading back on the ferry, we took a little walk along the beach in Parksville. It was lovely, but bloody cold.

Abner has ridden a few ferries in her short life, but this was her first time travelling with her daddy and aboard one of the newer BC Ferries. Must say it was quite a bit better than the old boats.