Our trip to our first couples retreat!

Keith and I had such a great time away this weekend! We travelled to Victoria, BC with 85 couples from our church for our couples retreat. Keith got the entire weekend off, a feat that has not happened besides our wedding for a year (hey once every 6 months getting a full weekend off, yeah that's cool) and we SO enjoyed spending time together!

We headed out on Friday to breakfast with some couples and then to the church to meet up with everyone, loaded up 3 busses and headed downtown to the Clipper dock. When we arrived the Clipper staff came through and checked that we had all of our documentation and then off the busses we went and into the line to get onto the boat!


The boat was a private charter so we had the pleasure of spreading out, walking around to talk to each other, play games and generally goof off until our arrival in Victoria. It was raining a touch, just a little drizzle and we were told we had 5 hours until our first session and we had free time. I had looked up the tours of Parliament and found that they were only available Friday so off our little group went to the Parliament.


Parliament was amazing, no security, everything available for you to read, take pictures of, etc. We took the guided tour at 4pm and I loved it. We then headed to Sticky Wickets for Linner (4:30pm dinner?? or lunch??) we hadn't eaten on the boat so we were all starving and the Sticky Wicket was perfect. I had a grapefruit hard cider and Cori and I split a burger but I added a salad, Keith, Tod and Ben all had the Jack Daniels Ribs which sounded like they were pretty good! We killed time there until we needed to head back for our first session.


Our first session was from 7-9:00pm, it was a great time of worship and learning and I really enjoyed the speaker, the games and jokes at the beginning were a blast too! I won a prize in let's make a deal by running over people (sorry Ben) to be the first to give Shannon a Metro bus pass and they slayed us by showing our favorite comedian Tim Hawkins as he did "things you don't say to your wife" which Bill had used during our premarital councelling.


After session we went with a big group to Irish Time, a great Irish pub with live Celtic music (I don't know if browned eyed girl with a Irish twist works but it sounded pretty good to us!) We ate, drank more hard cider (this time pear, then peach, then pear again) and had a great time, we left around 11:30 because we're old and needed some rest. On the way back to the hotel we stopped in the 7-11 to get grub for breakfast and then back we went.


Our room was beautiful, we had a view of the Empress hotel and a cushy comfy room, we had a great night of sleep in a SUPER comfy bed!


Saturday morning we ate in our room and then headed down to session, then a HUGE group of us decided that china town was a must do for lunch. Each couple ordered two dishes and we ate family style and MY GOODNESS IT WAS GOOD! Someone ordered beef broccoli noodles and I'm still thinking about the wonderful dish this was! the sauce was this garlic beef sauce over skinny rice noodles and wow. just wow. We all ate and ate and ate and when we were all full we headed out into the drizzle to do some shopping.


I got to take the group (Cori and Dave Lewis and Keith and I) into Murchies, and Fruits and Passion and the boys made a trip into the athletic supply store. I actually walked in as Keith was looking at a BAT! WHAT?? we're in Victoria look at tea or something! ;) We did our tourist shops where I picked up a treat for my Mom and for Mikayla and then we headed to the British Columbia Royal Museum.


The Museum was amazing! We spent a good chunk of time going through the first peoples exhibit and then we headed into the BC exhibit (much more on both of those later!) We took a ton of funny photos, found lots of Bryan Adams memorobilia and had a generally great time!

We made it back to the hotel with just enough time to go to dinner, we asked our adorable bell hop Conner for ideas for dinner and he sent us to Darcies a fabulous pub where I had acai berry cider (notice a theme here??) we had a blast and headed back for session.

At session they asked for the newliest married couple, Shannon staring right at us, and yep, that was us! We had to go up front and get up on stage and then the questions started. We were asked how we met, a normal question for most but not so normal for us. Let's say we're not the typical couple. We made it through the questions, what attracts us to each other, what is our favorite quality in each other,etc. it was fun. At the end of it, Shannon said she had a prize for us and it was a gift certificate for a weekend away at Ocean Crest! the honeymoon continues!

After session we asked Conner for ideas for dessert and he sent us out to Detour Desserts on the far end of town, it was fantastic, more on that later! We walked back to the hotel through town talking, laughing, cracking wise.

Sunday morning we got up, packed, put our luggage out for the Clipper crew and headed to breakfast next door to the hotel at the Days Inn and then headed to session. After session we ALL walked over to the boat and loaded up and headed home!