{Butchart Gardens}

The next morning we headed to Victoria, BC. Our first stop there was Burchart Gardens. It doesn't matter how many people tell you how beautiful it is, or how magical or how breathtaking... you don't really get it until you are there.

I mean the trashcans even had beautiful flowers on them!

Beautiful. I think we spent a solid 2 hours just strolling around and stopping to smell the flowers. Gorgeous. It made my heart happy.

{Whale Watching}

Right after the hike we headed out to our whale watching tour! Woot woot! This has been on my bucket list forever and I was so incredibly excited! 

We decided that this would be both of our birthday presents and our anniversary present. :)

When we arrived it was us three and one other man in his early thirties and the guide. We all got in the van and headed out to the dock. Evette was cranky - she hadn't napped very well that day - and was crying for the majority of the drive to the dock. "Awesome," I thought,  "Just us with the noisy baby and the one other man. He's probably bummed that he got stuck with us and I'm sure the guide is thrilled to have us as well."

Turns out the other guy is has a wife and baby boy pretty much the same age as Evette. We had a nice chat about being new parents and he was just as nice as could be. Turns out he's from Dallas - literally about a 5 minute drive from where we live. Crazy! We exchanged numbers with him and we'll probably meet up with his wife and family while we're down here.

Once we arrived at the boat there was another family - 4 or 5 - there as well. We loaded up and took off.

Baby enjoyed looking out the windows on our drive out there.

Then she got cranky again. I nursed her and she fell asleep and I sneakily threw her in her carseat, covered the carseat, and let her sleep for about 45 minutes. It was awesome. She was then pleasant and smiley and made friends with everyone on the boat.

It was a pretty cold day - nice, but cold - so we bundled Evette up in lotsa layers and took her out on the boat to look at whales with us - yes, that is my fleece jacket.

  Now - I could bore you with dozens of pictures like this:

That is an ocra whale! That little tiny black dot in the distance! 

And here is a splash from a tail slap - 

But I won't.

It was an awesome [in the literal sense of the word] experience. We saw two different pods [family groups] of whales with about a dozen in each pod. AMAZING! Early on our guide said it was a little early in the season so we wouldn't be seeing tons of whales, but boy was he wrong. By the end of the tour he said that that was one of the best whale watching tours he's ever gone on! Dozens of whales - splashing and jumping and summersaulting. Cool stuff. We got pretty close to them, too.

[In the boat they had a family tree for each of the different pods. It was so cool. They had pictures of each of their dorsal fins with their name, birth year, and mother. So cool. There is one whale "Grandma" who was born in 1911 and is still alive. amazing.]

We also saw some seals, porpoises, and bald eagles.

It was a long day but absolutely fabulous.

{Orcas Hike}

I told the husband that he has to do this next post because I did NOT want to weed through the kazillions of pictures he took on this little jaunt of ours [he has a habit of taking a lot of pictures - maybe he gets it from his dad :) ]. But these last few weeks of moving in [more to come] have been mass craziness and he's starting work tomorrow [woot woot!] so he is now taking a nap with Baby Girl so he won't be so exhausted for his big day.

We went on a hike up in Moran State Park.

Evette was thrilled to be going on another hike - can ya tell?

She quickly got over it once we let her play with trees and stuff.

It was so cool looking - everything was just wet and mossy

Not always a fan of hikes.

Always a fan of plants.

After the hike we drove up to the top of Mount Constitution to go to the observation tower. Amazing view.

Orcas Island is gorgeous and I cannot wait to go back!

{Oh no}

Once upon a time Google said I had used all my picture space. That means I can no longer upload pictures to the blog.
Therefore we are going to stop blogging.  What's a blog without pictures? Sorry.


Just kidding, folks! There is no way I would stop blogging. It just means that we now get to pay for extra picture space. I was pretty upset when the husband informed me of this - he said I just wasn't being grateful for the huge amount of space that Google had already offered me. I'm coming to terms with all of it. [I'm just being dramatic - it's really not that big of a deal... sorta.]

Pictures and blog posts are on their way, friends!

{Orcas Island}

The next stop on our vacationing adventure was Orcas Island - it was amazing! We had only planned on staying there one night, but thanks to the ferry schedule which we did not thoroughly research we were there for 2 nights. We were very grateful for that extra night - what a beautiful place!

 Reading a book while waiting for our food. BTW - Baby Girl loves french onion soup - go figure.

We stayed at an absolutely beautiful bed and breakfast called Turtleback Farm Inn. It was lovely. Even Baby loved it :)

Seriously the cutest place I've stayed and the staff was super helpful and attentive. [The husband wants me to add that the breakfast was crazy awesome.]

Plus this was the view from our balcony. Amazing.

Wait for the next blog posts to see what we actually did at Orcas besides eat and sleep....