Hi all,

I'm still in British Columbia, (near the town of Sechelt, a ferry's ride from Vancouver) enjoying this time with my daughter and her husband as we wait for their first child to be born. Though the "due date" was a week and a half ago, the midwife assures us that she is still in the safe range.

The name "Sechelt", pronounced like "sea shell" with a "t" on the end of it, is a native name meaning "land between two waters".

(Instead of using the words "tribe" or "nation", the word "band" is used for an indigenous group. You hear the term "native band" often, such as "the gravel pits are a business owned by the native bands on the native lands".)

For those of you who are on the group Facebook page (either the family one or the travel one) this blog will have some (much!) repeat content.

A couple of days into my visit, we had a chillier night, and the fall color was suddenly more noticeable on our daily walk.

She and I have had a lot of nice lunches together. Here we are at a Punjabi restaurant in Sechelt.

My older son, who is a construction management engineer, was here for the weekend, as his company (J.P. Kiewitt) has had him working on a bid in Vancouver and they wanted him to stay close over the weekend in case they needed something fine-tuned as they turned the bid in. He and I spent a nice afternoon in Gibson's Landing, about a half an hour a way  We had lunch in Gramma's Pub, overlooking the water,
and went to the little museum there.

It was a super little museum, two floors of everything having to do with the history of Gibson's Landing. Logging, fishing, whaling, "summer vacation camps", the ferry lines. There was also an exhibit about the longest-running Canadian TV series "The Beachcombers" which was filmed in Gibson's Landing.

On the way back from the museum, the fog had lifted and we could see the marina much more clearly.

When we got back to Davis Bay, (though technically my daughter and her husband live in Sechelt, they are right on Davis Bay, both on the Georgia Strait) the tide was high and the sea looked really dramatic, so we took a walk on the sea wall.

When my daughter saw the photo below, she said that if I did not put a watermark on it, it would "end up all over Facebook with a motivational message across the clouds". She was probably flattering me, but I let her help me put the watermark on it, which some of you will recognize as the signature use on any artwork I post.

On Sunday evening we had Thanksgiving Dinner with my daughter's husband's folks, as Monday was Thanksgiving here in Canada. The table was gorgeous, the food was delicious, and everyone made us feel so at home!

The day after that, she and I went for a beautiful walk on the seashore park at Sechelt ( Though their address is Sechelt, they are actually two miles from the shops and restaurants of the town of Sechelt.)

We have walked at least a mile a day every day that I've been here.

The following day, we had the only brilliantly sunny day we have had since the very first day I was here. 

My daughter has kept busy knitting wonderful baby items such as these little pants:

Lately she's been to a couple of acupuncture treatments, with an acupuncturist especially trained to do treatments which encourage the body towards birth, and also we've been doing extra walking, taking a detour on the way home which includes a lot of uphill and downhill through the forest.

Well, I will sign off as we've got an appointment at the hospital (just for checking vitals and so on) and she wants to walk the two miles there! She really wants to do everything to get this baby started, as beyond a certain date, a hospital birth will be mandated.

Love,
Grace Hodges Clark
"Lennie"
"Grace"