Monday, April 30, 2012

Melissa's Extreme Surprise Visit!

For my birthday, I was so excited that Melissa came to visit.  It was a surprise planned by her and Matt, although I did have a sneaking suspicion that Matt was up to something...
We did so many fun things and adventurous activities that we nicknamed it Melissa's Extreme Vacation!  The day after she arrived, we took her on a tour of downtown Calgary, also known as "the core."  We did tons of walking but had a great time because it was such a pretty spring day.
Cool statues on Stephen Ave
Calgary Tower
Our next big adventure was the ice walk in Banff in Johnston Canyon.  Matt and I had done this before but we did it back in January when the winter was in full effect.  This time, it was so treacherous because the pathways were no longer covered in snow, they were covered in a slippery, slushy mess.  We were slipping and sliding all over the place and poor Matt fell a record 7 times!  We also decided to take the ice walk to the next level and continued on to the "ink pots."  It was an additional two hours and it was basically like climbing a mountain, so the entire hike was about 4 hours.  The "ink pots," which were supposedly "brilliantly colored pools" were a bit of a let down, but the views of the mountains were totally worth it.  We also think that we heard an avalanche on the way there.
Love this pic that Melissa took!
This posed picture was quite a difficult task.  The snow was knee deep on either side of the skinny packed down path, and we kept sinking in every time we moved!
One of the Ink Pots
The weather was really nice for a couple of the days that Melissa was in town.  It even made it into the high 70s one day (which I have been told is extremely rare for this time of year) so Melissa claimed that she brought a little Houston weather with her for us.
We got to soak up some sun in our backyard! 
Penny enjoyed the nice weather from our rooftop balcony!
We took a break from our extreme adventures to celebrate my 29th birthday.  We had a soccer game on my actual birthday at 830PM so we weren't able to do much that night.  Although, Melissa did have our entire soccer team singing "happy birthday" to me after the game.  The next night, we went out to a fancy dinner at Mercato, my fav restaurant in Calgary to celebrate officially.  It was AMAZING!  
There was a pretty rainbow on my birthday!
We continued on with our adventures and went skiing and snowboarding in Banff.  Yes, the mountains  were still open for skiing and snowboarding at the end of April.  Seems crazy, I know.  Melissa tried skiing for the first time and did really great!  The first run down the mountain was tough but the rest of the day was great!
The drive up was VERY foggy.
All three of us on the lift
One of Melissa's few falls.  Don't worry she made it out of Calgary in one piece!
The last big adventure of Melissa's extreme vacation was horseback riding in the mountains!  We rode through the woods with views of the Rockies all around us.  I had a horse named Yuma, Melissa rode Cuba, and Matt rode Dallas.  Melissa's horse was very stubborn and lazy and had a hard time keeping up with the rest of the horses, but she got a workout trying to get Cuba to catch up!
A much clearer drive up to Banff this time
The whole week was so much fun and it was an awesome birthday surprise!  We were definitely sad to see Melissa go, but we will be meeting up again at the end of May in Indianapolis for the Indy 500!

Monday, April 9, 2012

I'm Employed!

So, it's official!  I found a job here in Canada to keep me busy!  I started about three weeks ago and it's going great so far.  Instead of my job being in the teaching field, it's actually in marketing.  I am working for a company called Chaordix.  Chaordix is a company that offers a crowd sourcing platform for companies to do market research.  So one of our clients is Genius Crowds.  Genius Crowds is a cool place where people can submit invention ideas, get feedback from the community, and have a chance to have their idea make it to the shelf.  This is where I come in!  I am a moderator for the Genius Crowds website, so I welcome new members, comment on posts, answer questions, etc.  I am really liking it so far and am going to soon become a moderator for some other clients as well.  Right now, I am working about 15-20 hours per week but will probably take on more hours soon.  I also have the opportunity to work from home so I go into the office Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and work from home the rest.  SO!  If anyone has any great invention ideas, join the site and submit (and even if you don't have any of your own, join anyway and check out everyone else's ideas)!
The view on my commute to work!