Canucks and a Weekend of Fun!

We went to a NHL game! Bucket list, check. Sadly they didn't win, lost in time overtime actually. That was a bummer. I might just stick with the Blazers from now on.

These smiles would have been even bigger had they won... 

Fancy shmancy rink with two Zambonis!

So weekend of fun went something like this...

• Drive to Vancouver and meet Alexis and Hal
• Have delish seafood feast at Joe Fortes
• Watch Canucks game
• Meet Greg and Lil at farewell drinks (not theirs)
• Sleep
• Drive back to Kamloops, and drop O'Hara at work
• 3 hour nap
• Pick up O'Hara and go to 65th birthday party
• Drop O'Hara home and go to karaoke birthday party
• Sing until nearly 2am
• Sleep
• Meet Wilson's and Dave and Kim for coffee
• Softball tourney for 5 hours
• Pick up O'Hara
• BBQ at Alexis and Hal's house

Also the weather was in the 30s. Aaahhhhhhhh-mazing! 

So for my delish seafood feast I had oysters and scallops. Oysters I've decided are better in Canada, than they are in Aus. I don't know why exactly, but I think it's because they are a bit smaller and more flavourful! 

Karaoke party for Sarah's birthday was so fun, I'm was still struggling with my voice. 4 days later! There were wigs and dress ups and some sweet dance moves. Jo and Gerad have a sweet set up at their place. There is a downstairs tiki bar, and now I have a new goal in my life! 

Beautiful -> Not so beautiful

Karaoke is better in costume. Fact

The softball tourney actually ran Saturday and Sunday, but I could only make it one day. A bit sad as the Saturday sounded out of control. They turned softball into stumps! Shotgun a beer, and the amount of time it takes to finish it is the amount of seconds you have to spin with your head on the bat. Apparently it ended with a lot of people on their butts! Hilarious. Sadly though at the end of the day we lost in the grand final. This is my first season playing softball so I'm not contributing a lot. Still, I've made it home a few times and got a couple of people out. It's about the best I can hope for! We bought our own gloves, so now it's just work to break them in and make them awesome. It's hard to get used to catching left handed, but I figure I'm better at that than throwing left handed. Also, I throw like a girl. I'm being trained by O'Hara.... Fitzy I feel you would have been much more useful on the pitch than we are. O'Hara's cut shots deliver a bit of a shock down right field but we both need a lot of practice!

Spring, not as exciting as you'd expect

In what feels like forever, the most exciting things in my life have been Boogie, our amazing Anzac Day/Farewell party and the Blazers made it to the final round of the playoffs (only to be ousted by jerky Portland).

I'd love to post more photos from the party, but I'm 90% sure we'd be fired

So, Boogie the Bridge is an annual run held downtown Kamloops last weekend. I did my first fun run in about a zillion years! Well tried. I still can't run 5k, I'm sure that's supposed to be a really easy distance! There is a 5k, 10k and 21k and this year 2400 people ran/walked. All for charity, it was a lot of fun. There's a bunch of people cheering and playing music along the way. I was told that would make it really easy to run, but those people lied to me.

I've always wanted to bite a medal!

Aside from that, Spring has been SLOW. The weather seems to be hit and miss (no smugness), Kamloops is dry as hell (dryer than Cobar, imagine that!!) so there's no lovely flowers and not a lot is really going on. Hence why my blog posts have been about zero. Luckily, life is looking up!

It's playoffs time in the NHL, Alexis and Hal got us tickets and we're going to see the Canucks play! Excited is an understatement. Lets go Canucks!

Next weekend it's a spa getaway, next it's camping with the bears and after that it's LA. So. Pumped! Also beach volleyball has started, we're playing softball and boot camp is outside. Vitamin D levels are on the up and my body thanks me.

Look forward to some way more exciting stories!

Sean and Jez's Ice Fishing Holiday

So, you've heard about the start of their holiday while Kristen was here. Ice-skating, snowboarding and winter fun. The rest of their holiday was much of the same, but also included a weekend trip to a cabin at Red Lake.

The most exciting part? I was allowed to go on a boys weekend away!! It's a miracle, but in their defence they didn't have much of a choice. I had to work all week while the boys were having fun, they weren't allowed to desert me! So what happens on a boys weekend? Scotch, cigars, cards, fishing, sledding, paintball, campfires, ribs, sausages, burgers and farts. Standard.

We burned out to the lake on Friday night and managed to squeeze in a bit of ice fishing. While we didn't know it at the time, Jez got the only bite of the weekend that Friday night. Guess what? He blew it. I don't think it was his fault since he'd literally only been at it around 5min. We were super excited, if there was fish this late in the day imagine what we'd get at dawn!

After packing up, having dinner, playing some cards and testing out the paintball guns, I for some reason decided that I really wanted to shoot someone. I'd never been paintballing before and wanted to know what it felt like, luckily for me Luke was a willing target (I think this had something to do with him being 100% sure he'd hit me, and only 10% sure I'd return the favour). We decided this is the best way to blow office tension, screw yelling at someone or giving them a dirty task. Shoot them with a paintball gun and all will be forgiven. This video is bad quality because it's dark, but I think it's hilarious. In my defence it's hard to shoot straight when you're pissing yourself laughing.

On Saturday there were at least 30 people on the lake trying to catch fish. We were armed with the underwater camera and spent a lot of time saying "ooohhh loook, there's a bunch swimming straight past!". On the way home we got pulled over by one of the licence checkers, who said that a lot of the fish at Red Lake had been conditioned not to take bait.... perfect. We're using that as our excuse for the dismal failure. So this leave the score at: Fishes 7, O'Hara 0.

We did try hard before lighting a fire and giving up

So to burn off our sorrows, we had paintball fights at the top of the island in the middle of the lake. I think we were those bogans (rednecks) who ruin what is supposed to be a peaceful day on the lake. Our only saving grace was the fact we weren't drinking, but with the skidoo burning around, us yelling during a paintball fight, having a fire on the lake and generally being loud and obnoxious we were ruining the serenity. I would have hated us.

Ever wanted to know what happens when you put a hot grill in snow? Awesomeness!!

How's that serenity? Braaaawwwwppppp

Always safety first!

Our sweet snow fort and why you wear a mask!

The rest of our trip once Luke left was trying to kill each other playing pond hockey. I am the worst skater, you can see that for yourself. I put it in fast forward and cut out all the sections where people didn't fall over.

So much work.... to get this photo right!

Even though Sean and O'Hara were harassed by the licence dude for what seemed like an hour, we made it back in time to watch our first Super Bowl. As we'd only eaten protein all weekend (literally. Sausages, ribs, burgers, bacon and eggs) we were feeling a great need for fibre. Our Super Bowl snacks weren't very traditional with stuffed zucchinis and mushrooms, cheese, vegetables and dip, and some more ribs. Thanks Alexis and Hal for coming and showing us how it's supposed to be done!

For their final day I took them up to Sun Peaks while O'Hara was in a training course. Jez only had 3 days snowboarding all up, but he was probably better than me (devastated). Doing jumps and calling me a pussy for not going down Black Diamonds with him. I guess it's true. Sadly snowboarding mid-week has kinda ruined weekend time for me. What sort of chumps works full time and only go up the hill on the weekends. Epic fail O'Haras!!

This is how it should be done. Midweek snowboarding>>>weekend snowboarding

Kristen's Mini Kamloops Break

While Jeremy and Sean were visiting us, Kristen managed to make a quick trip up from her US tour.

The night before Kristen arrived, we took Jez and Sean to a Blazers game. It turns out when the Blazers play on Monday night, the have an awesome game. I think it needs to happen more regularly. We had poutine, beer, hotdogs, a win in overtime and tried to dance for our dinner. For some reason, the camera loves me when I'm just sitting in the crowd but will NEVER come by when I'm busting my moves. Shocking?! We convinced Jez and Sean that everryyyooone does it, I don't think they believed us but were good sports.

Ohh yea, bust a move

Love Monday hockey

As a mid-winter holiday, the options are not necessarily limited but are generally focused around snow or ice activities. While Kristen was here, we had a full day of snowboarding and O'Hara took them for a half day ice-skating/pond hockey while I was working.

O'Hara being the sports jerk that he is, has managed to pick up skating and pond hockey quite quickly. Video suggest that he's the only one who can actually skate, where as everyone else sort of shuffles around. Kristen picked up skating after about 15 minutes and clearly states (on video) that she's mastered it and starts skating in circles. O'Hara promptly calls half time and everyone leaves the makeshift rink. It didn't make a lot of sense since he was on her team!

Sun Peak snowboarding was obviously a win. We had an awesome powder day which was perfect for Kristen and Jez to test out their first time. It was also the first time I've snowboarded power and actually been able to snowboard. It. Was. AWESOME!

They had two lessons with an awesome instructor that meant they were set. Jez is also a sports jerk and was doing black diamonds by the second day and tree runs by the third. I also had a lesson (it was a Wednesday so I was the only one) which was the best idea I've had all season. I was able to go at my own pace and he taught me a lot. I was taught how to do tree runs properly in theory (in practice I was falling over constantly and running into trees). O'Hara was heaps jealous!

Kristen getting all strapped in

On the slopes, covered in powder from falling over constantly

Love us

Canada Further East: Niagara Falls, Toronto and Fredericton

Finally finishing up the rest of our trip over East! We took the 10 hour trip from New York to Niagara, nice enough scenery but probably would have been better flying to Toronto. Trains make me so, SO sleepy. A 10 hour trip during the day had me sleeping around 70% of the time. Of course by the time we made it to Niagara I was EXHAUSTED!!

Niagara Falls, Ontario
The time of year that we visited was nice because it wasn't crowded at all, and also wasn't too cold. However, because Niagara Falls is actually a huge hydro electric dam they turn the flow down during the winter months. The Niagara Falls Power Company is required to maintain a minimum flow going over the falls, during summer days it's around 2,800m3 and during winter and at night time it's 1,400m3. So this meant we technically only saw the falls at half speed, but that's still a lot of water!

Beautiful Falls at night

They're thiiiiiissssss big!

Niagara Falls is a little bit like a small Vegas - casinos and tourist shops. We only spent one night there, but I think if you go for a few days it's worth while getting out of town and visiting the lakes and vineyard areas.

A prime example of the discrepancy between Canada and the USA. On the US side 1/4 price to use the binoculars!

Toronto, Ontario
O'Hara is in LOVE with Toronto. I think it's because we went all out with respect to food for the short time we were there. Toronto doesn't seem as hectic as other big cities nearby, but it has an awesome amount of diversity which means the variety of food is amazing. We also saw some fabulous design stores, which made us pretty happy. I can't wait to find a house we plan to live in for a long time and stock it with cool stuff. We'll have to go back to Toronto.

We checked out the Hockey Hall of Fame while there, and got to touch the Stanley Cup (NHL winners cup)!! Pretty cool, O'Hara is really disappointed with himself that he didn't lick it though. The Hockey Hall of Fame room was designed to be a bank. Canada decided that as hockey was going to be an integral part of it's culture, they would instead turn the building into a memorial hall of cups and best players. Only in Canada!

Emily with the Stanley Cup and the hectic vault used to store the old one

Australian Kangaroo (where else?) and a pretty church

Fredericton, New Brunswick
My little brother has just moved to Fredericton to do a semester of uni and be with his girlfriend (also Emily, great name). Fredericton is the capital of New Brunswick but it's a reasonably small town with about 30,000 people. Fredericton has a lot of French and English heritage which has lead to some beautiful downtown areas and architecture. The day we arrived there was a huge snowstorm which meant we had to circle the plane for an hour before landing, and also meant it was picture perfect when we got there.

On our first night O'Hara was convinced he should eat the Epic Burger at a local pub. This consisted of 2 pounds of beef, cheese curds, bacon, bacon, bacon and gravy. He ate it ALL! Epic effort alright. He didn't feel 100% that night, but lived through the ordeal without having a heart attack. The next day we went for a road trip out to the worlds longest covered bridge! Yep, it's a real thing in Hartland, New Brunswick.

Epic burger. Now you see it, now you don't!

Longest covered bridge. O'Hara's excited

GF Emily's family were kind enough to include us in decorating the Christmas Tree, which was a nice feeling as we didn't have a chance to get one in Kamloops. The day after, we spent with Jonathan exploring the scenic areas of Fredericton on foot. I finally found someone who slips on the ice more than me! Finally, and it's a good feeling.

Lovely duets and Christmas Tree

Of course all Australians want to do is find huge ice blocks and throw them off the bridge

Walking the the park with all the snow. So beautiful!

On our last day we went to the Farmers markets (they run all through winter which is awesome). There was a lot of local arts and crafts as well as food which was cool. I'm sad I didn't buy a pair of moose leather moccasins. I think I'll get Jonathan to pick me up a pair!

For dinner we went to Kings Landing, which is a historic settlement just out of Fredericton. The government was building a dam back in the day that would have flooded all the houses, so they picked them up and moved them! It's now an outdoor living museum. We had a traditional Christmas dinner that was wonderful and delicious. People came and sung us carols and made Jonathan (the only one not drinking) dance. Awesome!

Breakfast lobster roll at the markets, and Kings Landing dinner!

Hooray Lockout?

I am possibly the worst import EVER.

The NHL players and owners (Ice Hockey) are currently involved in a labour dispute that has lead to a lockout. I'm not 100% sure what it means (I've tried Wikipedia), but it's effectively the players being locked out by the owners because they can't agree on contracts. The NHL claim they want to make it fairer for the less financially successful teams (which I think is good), but the players wouldn't agree to changing salary conditions in their contracts.

Now in Canada, hockey is like crack. While I didn't get quite enough love out of the Olympics, hockey is another matter. I personally think that a salary cap would be the best thing to happen, but I'm not Canadian and therefore don't really get it.

Here in Kamloops we don't have a NHL team. A lot of people go for the Vancouver Canucks, and that's the team we support in the NHL. However we do have the Blazers, and I think they are awesome. With the lockout, people have to support the Blazers to get their hockey kick. Which means the home games have been even more awesome.

It doesn't hurt that they're also doing really well this season and are totally going to win!

We can smell the players when we're this close. It's gross

I used to be Digger's biggest fan... until I flipped him off for not giving me a t-shirt!