Vancouver Day Two!

The Telus World of Science!!

This place was like candy for me. I am such a junky and a nerd. :) It was amazing. There are exhibits all over. There are signs by each exhibit that tell you what to do, but then it is up to you to figure out what it does and how or why it does what it does. I could have spent a few days in there. On the first floor had tables that were full of different puzzles to sit down and do. It took so much time to do just 3 that I figured that if I did the puzzles then i wouldn't be able to see the rest of the place and I really, really wanted to.

The first thing we did though, for a half an hour was look at Optical Illusions. We had so much fun just trying to figure out why our eyes were seeing things the way they were. For example in the picture to the right, squares A and B are the same shade! We didn't believe it at first, but then Jerrod covered up the squares surrounding B and sure enough, the squares are the same shade. There was an illusion of Einstein that when you looked at it you couldn't tell if it was a depression in the wall or if it was poking out. Then if you moved his head turned to follow you! It was way creepy.





In this illusion to the left, the picture looks like a spiral, but if you look closely it isn't a spiral at all, but a bunch of circles nested inside each other!



Another fun illusion was of a wheel that spun on the wall. You looked at it for twenty seconds. It was a spirally kind, but the spiral changed directions a few times as it swirled toward the center. Anyways, after you look at it after twenty seconds you look away at the back of your hand or at someones face and your eyes perceive that the skin on your had is bulging in some parts and sucking back in others. Jerrod compared it to the effects of the fruit the guys ate in the movie The Rundown. It was hilarious to see everyone's reaction.



In the illusion to the right, the rings around the center looks like squares with rounded corners, but if you look closely and trace one with a finger, you will find that it is actually a circle! Crazy huh?!


After going through some of the optical illusions, we went and saw the omnimax movie that was showing:
It was all about how the body handles
risk and followed base jumpers and skydivers around. It was fun to see on the humongous screen. It was dome shape and the movie was projected on it and it literally surrounded you. It could make you dizzy if you weren't careful! It was thrilling to just see people jumping out of airplanes and off of cliffs and then see it from their point of view. I have decided that I need to figure out something that will give me an adrenaline rush so that I can have the blissful peace after it. :) That sounded wonderful to me. :)

After the movie we played around with the different activities. Joie and Brit had a blast on the shadow wall! Unfortunately hardly any of the pictures worked out, this was the only one. Anyway, how this works is you go and make a pose in front of the screen. There is a bright, flash of light and then you walk away from the screen and see your shadow produced on the screen! They had so much fun. I swore a giggle fest erupted in that room. ;) I am just glad other people enjoyed Science World as much as I did. It also felt good to let my inner child out and just let it run. :)

Science World in located in downtown Vancouver. This was the first I was able to see it during the day. It is amazing to see all the houses up on the hillsides. The hills are steep and instead of digging out some earth for a better foundation, these guys just use the earth around them and place beams under the house to make it even. I hope an earthquake never hits the Vancouver area because a TON of houses will be destroyed. As we were headed back to the house, we saw this view. I snapped the picture for: a- a reminder, and b- because I swear that the houses spell something. The neighborhoods are cut out of the trees so straight that it looks like there could be some letters. Lol. I think I spent too much time using my brain. Now it is trying to make something from scenarios that are absolutely just that way, not done for a reason for a trick or whatever. I think that would have been cool, but whatever.


While trying to find our way back to the house we drove by this restaurant Dae-Ji. It is a Korean resaurant that specializes in pork. In fact, "dae ji" means pork, I am told. I didn't care much about what I have written. Lol. I had Joie snap the pic because of the cute little pig. He is so cute and it reminded me of Aunt Cheryl, the pig-o-maniac, well the collector of pigs anyway. Lol.


When we got home, I snapped this pic. It is the view from the road before you decend down the mountain twenty feet to get into the house. Lol. It looked gorgeous, especially since it rained most of last night and this morning. It stoped while we were in Science World and ended up being a beautiful rest of the day. I wished that Jordan and Jon would have come with us. It would have been a wonderful opportunity to go and bike the seawall in Stanely Park. I just hope we get the chance to do that. I would love to get out and see the lighthouses, the beach, the ocean waves crashing on the beach. With weather the way it has been, which is mostly rainy, I'm praying that we will get another bright, sunny day.

This is the view off the balcony of the house. It was gorgeous tonight. All week we have had gray clouds at sunset and it was nice to see an actual sunset. Not the prettiest I have seen, but I love the picture. I love the ocean and hope that I have a chance to get in it a little.

When we got home, we fixed dinner and then played games. I had to stay busy today because cancer thoughts followed closely behind me. If I ever left my brain on idle, to soak in the sun's rays through a window for example, it was a spiralling downward hole which is hard to get out of. It is just hard sometimes to forget the reason for this trip. It is a family vacation. We are to spend time as a family, strengthening bonds, and making memories so that when the worst comes people can have something happy to remember. After a few people didn't go with us today, I have been nervous about the rest of the schedule. There are going to be even more things people won't think they are interested in and therefore skip to save money. It makes me sad the some people priorities are not how they should be. I just have to remember that it was their choice not to come and their choice had nothing to do with me. I need to let it go and not blame myself for their actions. Stop telling myself thing like, "If I had planned better things they would have come" or "if I had taken the time to tell them more about it they would have come," and not be bummed or sad about upcoming adventures. I used to be really excited to go to Victoria, which is what we are doing tomorrow, but now I don't even know why we came to Vancouver. People just wanna stay home and watch tv or play games anyway. We could have just had a pow wow in Huricane. It would have been much cheaper, I wouldn't have like it as much, but everyone else would have.

It is no fun when you have planned all these activities that you think people will really enjoy and that you are totally excited about and then with people's actions and comments all of that excitement is squashed, deflated and nervousness, frustration, and sadness all comes crashing down, which all of the frustration and sadness have spontaneously surfaced with no spawning thought from me lately. They are right under the surface of the umbrella which is over all of the feelings, thoughts, and sorrow that I have been trying to suppress for so long. I can't suppress things for very long anymore, I don't have the energy or whatever to keep that up for very much longer. Pretty soon I am going to crash. Just cry hard for no other reason than I cannot handle it that day and let it all out so that hopefully I will be able to shove it all back under that umbrella or attach it to an anchor and throw it overboard and pray someone hastn't attached a bouy. :(

Anyway, I am on vacation. I DO NOT need this right now. A vacation implies that you are going away, leaving problems behind, taking a respit. Not so in my case, but I am going to try my hardest to make it that way.

Vancouver Day One!

Capilano Suspension Bridge

This place was amazing! There were tall trees that blocked us from the rain, beautiful ponds on the Eco-Walk trail, shockingly high cliffs, and tons of fun! The best way to do this post is just to post the best pics and then comment on them. After all a picture is worth a thousand words, right?

The Visitor's Log

Capilano Canyon was called so because of the Capilano Indian tribe that lived in the area. They were not known for their totem pole making, but for their trapping and hunting skills. When "White Man" came and started foresting the trees in the canyon, the Capilano's helped them out. I am not sure how exactly, but anyway, they ended up doing totem poles. They are huge, beautiful creations.

Crossing the Bridge!!!

Crossing the bridge was exciting and played with your sense of balance! It was so much fun. All you had to do was match your steps with the person in front of you and the bridge would begin to sway. Needless to say, it takes a while to find your . . . uh . . . "Bridge Legs" and then once you get off the bridge on to solid ground it takes a while to stop feeling like you are still swaying up on the bridge. Also, the closer you got to the ends the harder you had to work because someone walking across would be stealing your "bounce" like on a tramp, so all of the energy put forth to make it up the slope is lost and more energy is needed. Erika and I had fun with this concept on the Eco-Walk trail, which I will talk about a little later. Lol.

The river was so far down! Good thing I'm not afraid of heights! :) Well, as long as there is something there to keep me from falling I guess I'm not afraid of heights. Lol. Without the "railings" I'm sure I would have had a problem!

So far down! In the shadows on the left we could see young Salmon swimming near the bank. It was pretty and acrobatical! One would be swimming and then all of a sudden it would flip upside down and we could get a glimpse of it's beautiful silver looking belly. It was amazing to be so high up and still be able to see that.

The Eco-Walk!!

On the other side of the bridge there was a plank trail made for tourists to explore the forest. It was awesome! It went down and under the bridge, then further up the mountain to where a few ponds lay, and then it goes up into the trees! Like the Ewoks in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. There were suspended bridges going back and forth between huge, thick trees. There was a sign that said that the suspension bridges gave the trees exercise. I am not for sure how, but Erika got a picture of the sign. I'll post it in this post later. Anyway, up in the Ewok part of the Eco-Walk is where Erika and I had fun. If you ran across the bridge and someone chased you, you ran out of steam trying to get to the other side and sometimes the bounces from their steps gave you more bounce while you were in the middle of the bridge, launching you forward! Yes I was able to run a bit. More of a jog really. :o It was like I was a kid again. Nothing mattered. I even played in the water and with the fish in one of the ponds! It was hilariously funny, I'm sure, to see a 24 year old girl having fun like a three year old! :) I didn't care. Like I said last night, I'm going to have fun, even if it kills me. Well, I guess I'm willing to put that to the test. :)

Looking up into the protecting treetops!

Trout Lake

It was full of fish. While Erika was taking a picture of me I got distracted by some of the fish jumping out trying to catch water skeeters. :) That was something I hadn't seen for years. The last time was at my Grandpa's Ranch. It gave me a thrill to see it again. I took this picture lying on my tummy on the boardwalk. I stayed like that for a while and swirled my fingers around in the cool water. It was great fun. :D

Part of the Eco-Walk Trail

I loved being in the trees! It was beautiful with greens, browns, yellows, ponds, streams, and a protective covering of the treetops from the rain that started to fall. It was peaceful. I could have stayed there for a long time, just relaxing, taking in all the sounds of birds, squirrels, and bugs. I can not describe how much I loved it. I am so thankful that I chose to come to Canada. It is so breathtakingly beautiful that has resonating shouts that there is a God and that he created all that I see. Everything lives in harmony. The old fallen trees becoming nurseries for new fronds and trees. Feeling the pull of the bridges on the trees and the trees pulling back causing you to sway with the trees. Feeling the soft textures of the bark of all the old trees and the old planks of wood that made the boardwalk, worn down by thousands of shoes. Feeling the hard bark of the new saplings. Seeing the moss growing on new trees and old alike. Listening to the little streams putter their way past you to eventually plummet over the edge of the coming precipice. It was marvelous and I felt rejuvenated, uplifted, and blessed to be a part of it.

Everything seems to grow big in British Columbia. Even their spiders! Nikki almost walked right into this spider's web. I'm sure that would not have gone over well. :) Lol. I was very impressed by it's size, although, I am sure they are bigger somewhere out there. :)

As we neared the end of the Eco-Walk it started to sprinkle. After we got back across the bridge and done purchasing some Capilano souvenirs, it wasn't sprinkling anymore. As I was walking out I caught this out of the corner of my eye and I am so pleased so see that the picture turned out like I saw it. It was a beautiful, blessed day.

Pictures from the last post

The airplane ride to Seattle!

Jordan and I were so bored after about 10 minutes into the flight! lol

When Joie flies she needs to find here happy place where things like gravity, pitch, roll, turbulence, and, most important, STOMACHS don't exist. lol

I have no idea what Mom and Dad did on the flight, but I wanted a photo and the best ones of them are the ones where they are caught unawares. :)

In flight Photography

Mount Rainier! Isn't it BEAUTIFUL?!

The Sea of the Cascade Mountains. Pretty!

Puget Sound From Tacoma. Actually from the parking lot of the church we went to on a ridge just up above the bay. It was pretty. It is too bad that camera's don't always catch the things that take your breath away. :(

The Monument at the US/Canada Border

Vancouver!!!

Yea! We are finally here!

Today seemed like a week! We left our house at 8:30am to get on our flight to Seattle, Washington. By the time we got through security and to our gate, they had already seated our section (Southwest does seating a little funky, lol) and so we just jumped ahead of the line to board. Mom and Dad sat together on the flight and Joie, Jordan, and I sat together. It was a short flight of about an hour.

The views outside the window were amazing! I love the Cascades! It was so cool to see the topography from an airplane! We were able to see all of the dormant volcanoes that dot the plain lands and through the Cascades and flew right by Mount Rainier!! It was wonderful and it made me miss Grandpa Hale terribly. I wish that he could have been there to point out all of the geological marvels that we flew by. I had tons of geology questions. It is easy to think geology for me when I am in the air. I can see things so clearly from that point of view. I love it. :)

Since we got to Seattle so early, we went to church in the Skyway Ward. It was a wonderful ward and the people were so friendly. The spirit flowed strongly throughout testimony meeting and then through Sunday school. By the time Relief Society started I was hurting to bad to pay attention to anything. I had been sitting for too long and I was pretty cold. Two things that can spark bad pain attacks. I do not like it. After the meetings, the ward has a tradition of "Break the Fast" where they do a potluck and break the fast together! They had invited us fourteen gajillion times . . . and . . . well . . . we were hungry! So we went. Lol. Talk about feeling out of place, but welcome all at the same time. They were pleased that we would come and join them. The people in that ward know how to make people comfortable. ;) People were always asking us who we were, where we were from, if we were visiting or had moved into the ward, and then making the rounds again to talk to us again about anything! It was fun! I felt pretty special in that ward. They didn't know us from Adam, but were still willing to share all that they had. It was truly ONE CHURCH! No lost sheep in that congregation. And in testimony meeting there was not one quiet stretch of time! It was person after person, group after group! And it was pretty entertaining. Never a dull moment where you wished you could fall asleep like there are so many times on fast Sundays. Lol. It was great.

After that, we hung out in the rental cars until Nikki, Jeremy, Jerrod, Erika, Jon, and Brit's flights came in. Joie, Jordan and I played a card game to pass the time and had a hilarious time! Once everyone was packed in the vans, we got a quick bite to eat at Jack in the Box by the Qwest Field, the closest I have ever been to a NFL game, lol, and then hit the road for Vancouver!

None of us were prepared for how long it would take. lol I still don't know how long it took, but I think around three to three and a half hours. I was so cold that my right hip was starting to act up again and there was nothing I could really do about it. Everyone in the car was hot so the A/C would go on, then I got too cold so the heater would go on! Eventually, as we got into North Vancouver, they left the heat on and rolled down their windows. lol I had my heat and they kinda had their cold. :)

The stop at the boarder was uneventful, thank goodness! They do have a cool monument there that has a cool saying on it. I knew I wouldn't remember it, so I had Erika write it down. Unfortunately, I am blogging at 4:30 in the MORNING! Erika is fast asleep, so I will get it later. The picture is the only souvenir I got. THEY DIDN'T EVEN STAMP PASSPORTS! The whole point behind getting a passport is to get the stamps to brag about the places you've been to outside of the country, right?! Sigh. I'll live though. :)

Well. There is nothing else to write about right now. I am going to do my best in posting while in Vancouver. It is a special experience and should be documented. :) Plus, I know I have about 50 people who will be excited to see that I have posted. :) At Jordan's homecoming and other places, so many people commented on how I haven't been writing. It was funny to me at first, but then I realized that more people were reading my thoughts and feelings than I was aware of. Not only that though, people have been wanting more. It made me feel shocked, humbled, and loved.

Recently, I have had the overpowering awareness of how many people are . . . touched? . . . by me. It is an uncomfortable feeling for me because I don't feel like I am doing anything that should evoke kinds of words and feelings like: "hero", "I look up to you", "You touch my heart", etc. It troubles me so much, but last night after I had packed, I picked up a very special book to me. When I had been released from Primary Children's Medical Center after my bone marrow transplant (BMT) my outpatient coordinator gave me a children's book called "The Blue Spot". It is about a blue spot that hangs out in the book and has everything it needs until one day (today) it decides it is missing something and asks you to tilt the book to the right. It runs (like blue watercolor) across the pages! You finally say, "Hold on! Where are you going? This is my book and you belong in it!" The spot replies that for so long he has had everything he needed, but now he is curious to see if there are any more spots in the book and to see if they would be his friend. Knowing the value of friendship, you decide to tip the book to the right and follow the blue spot to the end of the book where a yellow spot is found! Then you slightly close the book and the colors run together to make a green spot. New friends right there at the end! Anyway, it is not the story that I love about the book. My outpatient coordinator had all of my nurses, doctors, fellows, and anyone who has helped me through the last (at the time) two and a half years at the hospital sign the book. When I opened it for the first time I was overwhelmed by the comments in the pages. They were all touching and along the lines of love, spirit, hero, example, happiness, joy, etc.

When I picked that up last night and reread the comments in the book, I felt overcome with love, tenderness, remembrance of hope at being done with cancer treatments that had turned into sorrow when I relapsed AGAIN and finding hope in something else, and trying to figure out what exactly is going on inside my thoughts. It is a muddy maze without any clues as to where to go from where I am. I am trying to find out where I am in the maze with no vision of how big the maze is or what it even looks like. It is quiet frustrating, frightening, and lonely trapped in the head on my shoulders. Not knowing if what I am thinking is actually how I feel or if it is the front I put up for other people to see.

For example, I am a different person when I am at home and when I am up at Primary Children's. At home, we don't acknowledge the big elephant in the room and continue our lives as if it doesn't exist. At Primary Children's, my emotions are close to the surface and I cry most of the time I spend with particular people. It isn't fair to those people that from the moment I see them, I cry. They wish with all their heart they could do something to take away the heartache, sorrow, shame, and anguish that floods my being at that moment. I stop crying, out of habit. So now I am wondering which person am I really? Am I the person that doesn't mind not mentioning the Huge White Elephant in the room? Or am I so distraught that I need to talk about it? When I have talked about it it feels good at the time, but then that goes away, and I am left with all the overpowering sad, down trodden feelings that I don't know what to do with, but ignore them. So does that mean that I am in denial of what is really going on and am not working within the realms of reality, or am I just following the crowd I spend most of my time in and am comfortable with how "things roll"?

I do not know and this is what bogged down my brain as we drove from Seattle to Vancouver. Sometimes crying. Most of the time trying to crowd out the thoughts with the heavy bass booms of the music playing in the car and then trying to keep my brain busy so it couldn't go back to the black cloud. So which one am I? Or do I play all the parts and just pick and choose which one depending on the people I am around so that I can get their attention? I DO NOT LIKE THIS FRAME OF MIND! I WISH IT TO STOP AND TO STOP IT MUST! THIS WEEK IS GOING TO BE FUN! EVEN IF IT KILLS ME!

Extremely Odd Hour For a Post LOL

Yes it is not my normal time, but I am taking advantage of feeling good while I feel good. :)

Yesterday was almost a breaking point. I was so sick and tired of hurting that I didn't even take pain pills in the morning when I got up and just decided to hurt. My brain did a pretty good job at suppressing the pain, but when ever one of the nurses at MSTI asked how I was I just said I wasn't answering that question. I got a lot of sad looks from people.

Then Nick, one of the nurses came, sat down, and talked to me about what was going on. The tears I had been holding back just spilled over. I couldn't contain them anymore. I was so frustrated with my body. It can't fight like it used to. I feel like it has given up and when it hurts the most is when it drags me down to it's level and I start really feeling like I want to give up, call it quits. It is demoralizing. I don't like feeling that way and it aggravates me to do so. And then it aggravates me more because I don't have anyone around me that I can just cry into their shoulder and be comforted. When I start crying around here whoever is in sight starts crying and that just ruins the cry. :) I feel like I have to buck up and be strong for them so I never get a good cry unless I am alone and can't hurt anyone with my tears. That is why I am lonely. There are plenty of people to share my grief with, but I don't want to wallow. I want to be comforted and strengthened. That doesn't happen very often and when it does I can't get enough of it.

Sheesh. This is supposed to be an uplifting post. So much for that. :(

I want to thank Heavenly Father for my good days. I wish there were more and I think he does too. I am thankful that I have a day where I don't hurt, I want to go do something, I have things to do, and I have a good attitude. Not everything is perfect, but it is good and that is all that it needs to be for me now days.

I also want to thank those that offer their shoulders to cry on. I know it isn't easy for anyone to be around me especially during the bad times. I am thankful still and wish I could break down without caring, include more people into my grief zone (that sounds horrible, but I try to keep people out of that because it is horrible) and let more people buoy me up. God knows I could use it.