The weather is still wet but warm with the odd bit of snow but hardly enough to even lay. With all this rain and warm weather the plants and grass are really shooting up and the mowing season is starting early this year.
It is an exciting time to be in BC with the Olympics being held across the water in Vancouver. We managed to watch as much of it as possible and are truly in the Olympic spirit. We believe!
We were not able to get across for any of the events but Daniel and some of his friends went over for the final night and joined in with the thousands at the street parties and he said the atmosphere there was electric.
Daniel had a good basketball year and they qualified for the British Columbia Provincial Championships in Vancouver. Daniel had an exceptional first game scoring 31 points and winning the Player Of The Game award. They were in provincial and local newspapers and because this game was recorded they were even shown on different television stations across BC. Unfortunately they were drawn against the BC number one team and eventual tournament winners in the next round and lost but they had a great experience and I think they enjoyed their moments of fame!
Anja performed in her musical with seven shows at the Cowichan Theatre and two shows in Nanaimo. She really enjoyed doing this musical and has already put her name down for the next one. She was also in a dance show in Nanaimo and the focus is now on her end of year show in Duncan.
We had a special reason to enjoy the start of this year – we became Canadian citizens! We had to sit a citizenship test, not the kids as they are under 18, and we were told we passed about ten days later and attended a citizenship ceremony about ten days after that. At the ceremony there were sixty of us representing twenty nine different nationalities. We had to swear allegiance in both English and French in front of a citizenship judge and we received our official documents from the judge, a Mountie and a war veteran. We now have citizenship cards and certificates and we quickly applied and got our shiny new Canadian passports! Daniel and Anja both took friends with them and we went for a nice meal afterwards to celebrate.
This was the final tick box in a journey that started in 2001 when we first decided to emigrate to Canada. A journey that has been well worth it and one that we very much look forward to continuing on with. Canadian eh