For the past month we have been working so hard to get all our things together to move.  Room by room, closet by closet.  If you have ever moved, you know how much stuff you can accumulate.  How have we only been in this house for 2 years?!  

We are moving out for the first of April and then off to Saskatchewan for Easter.  We are excited to get back home and see all our family.  Finally, we fly out on April 14th for our new adventure in the Netherlands.  I may be off until we get there, but I’ll definitely let you know how Delft is going.

Bye for now!

The Paralympics began in Vancouver on Friday with the opening ceremonies.  After the athletes have been competing for the past 4 days, Canada has already hit gold!  Brian McKeever won the first gold  of the games in cross country skier.  Brian is visually impaired and trains in Canmore.  He is an amazing skier and even competed in the trials for the Olympics in February.

Lauren Woolstencroft won gold and Karolina Wisniewska won gold and bronze respectively in alpine skiing.  Lauren hails from Calgary and has topped the podium several times during her career as a downhill skier.  Amazingly, she does it on prosthetics below both knees!

In sitting alpine skiing, Canada has two medals.  Vivianne Forest and Josh Dueck both have won silver medals!  Looks like the alpine skiers are having better luck than they did at the February Olympics.

Canada is in third place in the medal count with 6 medals.  Russia is leading with 15 and just ahead  of Canada with 7 medals is the Ukraine.  Keep up the good work Canadians!

A couple weeks ago,  I was invited to a luncheon at the AdFarm offices.  I arrived thinking that I was giving a thank you lunch to my amazing sponsors, but when it began, it was a thank you lunch to me. I thought that was a little backwards since I am so grateful to Dow AgriSciences and AdFarm for all their support over the past 4 years.  We had some lunch and then Laura and Brian said some really nice words to me.  They then presented a video of the previous years we spent together doing everything from talks to walk-throughs of canola fields.  You can see the video here http://www.youtube.com/user/adfarmchannel#p/u/6/wqSJS-4HFl0 (thanks for sending it to me , Annemarie!).  I then made a tearful speech about how I was able to reach my dream goal of making the Olympics.  The lunch was very special and I hope to be involved with these two outstanding companies again in the future.

This is not a screen saver! Makalewena Beach

Hi y’all!  We’re back from our vacation in Hawaii.  What a time we had.  We stayed in an awesome little cottage.  We found it on www.vrbo.com.  Stands for vacation rentals by owner.  It was basically a guest house on someone’s property that they rent out.  It was perfect.  The bedroom and bathroom were inside “the house” and the kitchen, dining table and living room were on the lanai.  That’s basically a screened in porch.  So cool!  Everything in Hawaii is open like that.  Churches don’t have walls - only a roof.  Even the airport is like that.  Crazy.

Waipeo Valley

I’m a water sign and Arne is an air sign, so it is fitting that we love swimming and hiking respectively.  We alternated beach and hike days so that we would both be satisfied.  One day we hiked the Waipei Valley, the next we swam at Makelawena beach and so forth.  It was amazing!  And, it gave our burned shoulders a rest every second day.  (No Dad, we did not pre-tan, but we wore 50 SPF sunscreen that saved our skin - mostly.)

Lava Tube Hike

One of my favourite parts of the trip was watching the women’s and men’s hockey gold medal games.  We watched the ladies’ game at the Vancouver airport with all the other travellers.  Everyone was gathered around tv’s.  It was a pretty cool experience.  We scoped out the restaurants in Hawaii for the men’s game.  We ended up at a resort bar that looked out onto the water.   We watched the nail-biting game and the whales jumping in the background.   We weren’t the only Canadians there and there were some major high fives going around in the end.  What a game to top off the Olympics.

I want all those nay-saying reporters to eat their words.  Canada did own the podium - the top of the podium.  Most golds ever won by one country, than you very much!  And thank you very much to all those sponsors out there that helped out the athletes.  The media made it sound like we were getting so much money and the tax payers were getting gouged.  Just so you know - Own the Podium probably only met the minimum standard set by other countries - you know the ones that are always at the top of the medal count?  Ok, there’s my rant.  I just want people to be happy with all the performances of the athletes.  Trust me - even the ones getting last are trying their hearts out!