May Long - Monday

Well, Monday it was back to work! Scott finished the path, and my job was to sweep the sand around on it so that it filled the cracks...you can see here how much fun I'm having...



The finished path!







Once we had everything cleaned up, it was time to plant! Here's the two gardners surveying a job well done. :)



A few garden shots...



Tomatoes...











One of my other projects for the weekend was getting our end tables stained and varnished. Here's the finished product!



We also made and stained a shelf to go above our sink to have some greenery there. The pots on the end are oregano and parsley. Somehow, almost unintentionally, we managed to get a stain that matched our cupboards!

May Long - Sunday

On Sunday we headed up with our friends Brad and Kendra and their daughter Anika to Echo Dale, a park near Medicine Hat.


Unfortunately, there was no swimming to be had, as this is a man-made lake that's drained every fall, so I'm told. So all I had to swim in was a muddle little puddle...



But as you can see, I was determined. This is me SITTING in the deepest part of the lake... (right in the middle)



We still managed to have a good time, with a fire and weiner roast later.

Anika enjoying the outdoors.


Scott enjoying a hot dog. :)


Kendra and Anika


A couple shots of the coulee we were in.

May Long - Saturday

Well, we had an eventful long weekend! On Saturday we set to work getting our garden area ready to be a garden! You may remember this picture from last year...this is the "before".



A neighbour gave us a bunch of leftover paving stones from a project he had done in his yard, and for a while we've wanted to make them into a little path in our yard. This was the weekend! Here was our rough estimate of what it would look like:



We've got the flags up, ready to get this path laid!



Hard at work....





Almost there!


While Scott was working on this, my project was to clean out the shed from all the stuff the previous owners left. Here's some of the junk that was in there....







Sweeping out the emptied shed!

Uncle Danny in town

Lisa's Uncle Danny was in town today so we met for lunch at the Boston Pizza. He was out promoting the Sandman hotel he manages in Cranbrook, BC to golf courses in Alberta.

New church building, Easter in Manitoba, and Flames Game

Well its been a while since we posted to the blog so I'll do a catch up post for March. First off you can see some pictures of our new church building (Taber Evangelical Free Church). When Lisa & I started going back about a year ago they had just purchased the building and were in the process of selling the old building. The old building sold very quickly to a Mennonite church from Vauxhall - so quickly that they agreed to buy it last summer and share it with us until the new building was ready! So finally we moved in - our first service was January 27th and the 0fficial opening was March 16th. We'll probably be working on the finishing touches for the next year but its a pretty amazing transformation of the old Home Hardware building.


Next was visiting family in Steinbach, MB for Easter. We arrived Friday night and left Sunday night after diner. A quick visit but still very worth it since I'm approaching my busy season at work and won't be able to travel until fall. We got to play with our niece for a bit. Below are a few pictures from the visit.


And to round it out we went to a Calgary Flames game! It was the Tuesday after Easter. So after traveling over 2500kms round trip to Manitoba we headed out the next day to Calgary and back (600kms round trip). It was a long drive back (getting home at 1:30am Wednesday) but it was definitely worth it. I won the tickets from a raffle by Taber Minor Hockey to raise funds for the provincials in Peace River (about 1000kms north of Taber). These weren't just any tickets - they were Top Shelf. Donated by a local business man they included premium parking, full diner before the game (with the president of the Flames coming by to answer any question anyone dared to ask), and premium seats behind the goalie. If you have a lot of money you can buy these tickets anytime for only $600 each. That's not a typo. I really meant six-hundred. Each. Amazing time and they won too! It was a playoff style game as they are vying for the top and they were playing a team (Vancouver Canucks) that is also vying for the top.

West Edmonton Mall Waterpark!

This past Family Day weekend Lisa & I went to the West Edmonton Mall Waterpark. We spent over six hours in it just going on waterslides and playing in the wave pool. The wave pool (in the foreground) turned out to be a lot more fun than we thought. We rented tubes so we could join in the carnage when the waves come. One time I ended up behind Lisa when I started in front of her! (Oh and by the way - we didn't take our camera with us - this is just a picture I got from the internet.)

We went on all the slides that were open - some were closed due to renovations but it meant $18 rather than $30 admission (each). The red one was open. We built up our nerve all day to go on it until finally i said - nope, not going on it. Lisa said yup, I'm gonna do it. On our way up to the purple one I accidentally continued up to the red one. So i thought i'd at least look at what it looked like from up there. After about 5 mins i finally decided to go for it. Funny thing was there were no lines for that one so we just got on and went. It was the fasted ride i've ever been on! Lots of fun! And by the way - its a 100' drop. its hard to see from the picture but you go nearly straight down for the first 50' Imagine a 45 degree angle and then cut that in half.

Travelling to Idaho

I was gone to the University of Idaho Potato Conference last week in Pocatello, ID. It was a long drive - about 900km - but it was beautiful for most of it. For about 500kms you drive through the mountains. The road conditions were pretty good considering that they are mountain passes. Here are a few pictures I got on the road. You'll note that for some I pulled off the road to take while others I did not. However - I have a mini-tripod that I put the camera on and duct-taped it to the dash so taking pictures was no harder than changing the radio station - just turn on and hit the shutter button.