Whistler

Okay, so I am home from our staff retreat in Whistler.

It was so awesome! The drive up was a little crazy as it was raining, dark & there is a lot of construction happening on the Sea to Sky highway in preparation for the 2010 Olympics happening here. Thursday night was a low key night as we arrived around 9:30pm (after getting a little "misguided" as the directions we had were very unclear and we were looking for a road that was supposed to be after the Whistler village but was actually before it, but we got creative, asked a truck driver and found our final destination on his map -which was only a block from where I ended up stopping to ask for directions, but we had driven 18kms past that and had already turned around and came back!)
When we arrived at the B&B (Cedar Springs B&B - I would recommend it highly!) we all got our room assignments and went and settled in, a few brave souls stayed up and played games but I was exhausted from a late night and early morning and was ready for bed! But, not before enjoying a couple of homemade gluten free chocolate chip cookies that Jackie & Joern (the B&B hosts) had set out for me (everyone else also got homemade cookies) ! They were great! Friday morning I was up early and enjoyed a fabulous hot shower and saw a couple of white snow flakes falling but nothing stuck! Breakfast was another delight as we all enjoyed waffles with whipped cream & strawberries, mine was gluten free but oh so delicious! They also had freshly baked bread, fruit, yogurt and a variety of cereals available. Jackie had gluten free bread that was brought out for me and it was quite good toasted and with jam! After breakfast we had our group session which was a video from Willow Creek's Leadership Summit this summer which our pastoral staff had attended. The session we watched was Go Put Your Strengths to Work with Marcus Buckingham, consultant, speaker, and best-selling author. It was a great session and we will continue to learn and work on the things we learned this weekend. After our group session we headed into the Village for lunch at Splitz Grill which is a burger joint. The burgers & choices of toppings was quite amazing. The chef was quite accomadating to make sure that my chicken breast was cooked on a clean spot without any sauces. After lunch was our "surprise group activity" that NONE of us knew anything about other than Terri who had booked it! We walked from lunch down the village until we arrived at Expressions Art Studio
and learned that we were all going to paint our own ceramic item. We had a price range that we could pick any item in and then choose a design and paint it. It was a hard choice but I finally decided on a small jewelery box that I painted for Ronel and am going to send it to him for our anniversary. After we were done with our ceramics, some of us were done earlier than others, we walked around the village and checked out some of the stores - there is some neat stuff up there! When we were all done, we headed back to the B&B for some more free time & to get ready for dinner. Dinner was at the Keg in the Village which was lovely. Our waiter, Graeme, did an awesome job and was very knowledgeable about celiac disease and quite willingly checked on any menu item that I was questioning. Dinner was yummy and having the time to just hang out and talk with everyone was also fun. After dinner we loaded back into the vans and once again headed to the B&B. Once we got back, most of the girls went into the hot tub (that is outside on the deck!) and then jumped into the sauna afterwards. Those of us that didn't go into the hot tub, sat in the guest living room and played games. A group of us had a lot of fun and played games until early in the morning and we got to watch the snowflakes begin to fall about 1am. The next morning when I got up, there was white everywhere! By breakfast the snow was gone from the roads but still on the trees and it was so pretty. After a savory breakfast of Eggs Benedict we packed up the vans and said goodbye to Jackie and headed into the Village for some shopping and sightseeing before we headed back home. We wandered around the village and checked out a lot of the stores and while most of us didn't buy anything, we all had fun. We then drove to Squamish and had lunch at White Spot before heading back to Delta and going our separate ways. The retreat was a great time and I know that I got to know some of my coworkers better and also got to get to know Matt (my team member - we work with the gr 2 & 3's together) a bit better and get to know how we can work to be the best team we can be.

Overall it was a great weekend and I look forward to seeing what changes come out of this weekend!