Well John and Judith had their first official visitor, actually, I was more of a "test subject / hostage".
My mom asked me to help her hang pictures around the house and point out decorating ideas that she may have missed... such as a night stand with a clock in the guest room and some place to set a small travel bag and store bathroom supplies in the guest bathroom downstairs, etc... little things that she might not have noticed since they don't use that room on a daily basis. Their house is absolutely lovely. The pictures you see here do not do it justice. While the view never changes, it is different everyday. However, if you visit, be prepared to relax, enjoy the view and do nothing. At 6 months pregnant, Judith was afraid to let me out of the house for fear I would slip on the snow or ice. Plus with only a small grocery store, a hardware store and post office... there is not much to do on Pender when you are essentially snowed in and the power is out. Her statements of "we never get snow out here" are false. Apparently, they get a really bad snow storm every 50 years or so and this Christmas was the year for that storm. For those of you in Michigan, it was only a foot of snow and a very mild winter day compared to what we get here... but out there 4 inches of snow practically shut down the entire city of Seattle as I tried to pass through on my way out to Pender Island. Since they very rarely get snow, everyone just stays home until it melts. John and Judith viewed me as "carrying precious cargo" and didn't want to chance getting in a car accident on the ice so we stayed in most of the time. I did get to meet some of their friends by attending a Christmas party at the neighbor's house. We also visited a few other friends too, as they had prepared for lots of family at Christmas time and no one came due to the weather. We did get a chance to go shopping in Sydney and Victoria after most of the snow had melted.

At one point when the power had been out for nearly a day, I finally convinced my mother that we could at least take the dogs for a walk just to get out and do something. Pender has lots of walking and hiking trails but we avoided thoses since we could not see fallen logs hidden under the snow. We walked a half mile down the road to Mortimer Spit. It is a public beach access where the dogs love to run and play. We made the mistake of taking Taffy off lead. She got so distracted chasing birds that she didn't realize that part of the beach was gone due to high tide, snow and ice. She let out a yelp as she went neck deep into the chilly water... and that cut our walk short.
We quickly headed for home before she turned into a pup-cicle.

All in all, it was a wonderful trip and I was glad to see my parents and their new home... and they were glad to see me carrying their future grandchild.

Lee Ann Layman

 

Lee Ann mending dog toys in the living room.

Here is a map to put the view from their living room into perspective.
North and South Pender together are about 18 km long.