Back home in Indiana....

We recently traveled back to the states to Indiana to visit Matt's family and to also go to the Indy500.  We flew out of Calgary, leaving the chilly spring weather behind, and arrived in Indianapolis, where summer was already in full effect.  We rented a car (Matt tried his hardest to land us a sporty convertible to allow us to soak up the sun while driving around Indiana, but all they had was a Nissan Maxima with a sunroof...) and drove the hour or so to West Lafayette.  It felt so nice driving with the windows down, taking in all of the midwest scenery.  

We spent the first few days relaxing in West Lafayette with Matt's parents, uncle and sister, with a few trips back and forth to Indianapolis.  On Saturday, we traveled to Papa's house (he lives right in Indianapolis).  We spent the night there in order to be close to the Speedway for the race on Sunday.  Saturday night, we grilled out and had delicious birthday cupcakes to celebrate everyone's recent birthdays.  Papa really enjoyed his German Chocolate cupcake :)

Melissa and I prepared ourselves for the race by painting our nails, Indy style.  We wanted to try to fit in with seasoned race-goers.  This was actually Melissa's first time at the race.  I have been twice before, and always look forward to the people watching, almost as much as I look forward to watching the race.

Matt, Melissa, and I were enjoying the warm weather in Papa's backyard.

Each year, the Meyers go to the race with the Surfaces (long time family friends).  Skip works for Budweiser so he is usually able to get tickets for us.  Sunday, the day of the race, we got up around 7AM to get ready.  We left around 8AM and drove to our parking spot.  Everyone who lives even remotely close to the speedway turns their lawn into a parking lot, charging $20 to park.  So, we parked and started to walk, each carrying an empty cooler.  We headed to the Bud tent where we enjoyed some shade, some hotdogs, and then stocked our coolers.  Surprisingly, you are allowed to take coolers into the stands.  About an hour before the start of the race, we headed to our seats.

Let's go racing!

We were very close to being a part of history at the race this year, but missed it by one degree.  The temp on race day hit 91 degrees, just one degree shy of the hottest race on record, set in 1937.  It felt nice though because there was a breeze blowing up in the stands.  We watched the first 50 laps in the stands, and then headed to the "snake pit" in the infield.  The "snake pit" is definitely a spectacle.  I'm pretty sure that most of the people in the infield aren't even aware that a race is going on...

Melissa took this awesome picture

This is a picture of the infield from the stands.

I finally discovered that you can post videos on here!  So, here is a video of the race.  The sound of the cars is pretty amazing.

We finished the race back in the stands.  It seemed to go by pretty fast this year.  Once the race was over, it was insanity.  It is chaos trying to navigate through the crowd while still keeping track of everyone.  In fact, we lost Matt's uncle and had no idea where he was.  Also, his phone was dead so we had no way of finding him.  We decided to take a "pit stop" at some random lawn to figure out what to do.

Not sure what Melissa is doing in this picture, and you can just barely see Matt's red shoe in the bottom corner.  He was taking a quick nap while the rest of us figured out what to do.

We decided to head back to where the car was parked and hope for the best.  Amazingly, we found Matt's uncle there!  After the race, we headed back West Lafayette.  We had another day there to enjoy the summer weather.  Matt and I got to walk around the Purdue campus.

The next, day we caught our flight out of Indy back to Calgary.  Another race in the books...

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!

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!

Belize! Part 2

For the second half of our Belize trip, we headed to the island of San Pedro.  We took a two hour shuttle from Chaa Creek to Belize City, where we then took a tiny plane to San Pedro.  The plane only sat 10 people and gave us the most amazing views of the sea and islands.

It was about a 20 minute flight and then we landed in San Pedro Town.  We hopped on a water taxi for a 3 mile ride to our resort, Coco Beach.  When we arrived, we were greeted by a woman with complimentary arrival drinks and then she took us to our room.  The resort was beautiful and the pool was AMAZING.  In fact, we spent most of our time at the pool, rather than the beach (the shoreline had lots of seaweed and wasn't ideal for swimming).

Our first day we relaxed at the pool.  Later that night, we took a water taxi to the town of San Pedro for dinner and drinks and shopping.  The second day we rented bikes and rode down to town to catch a boat to the tiny island of Caye Caulker for the day.  Caye Caulker was much less touristy and much more quiet.  We were able to walk around along the beach and even got to take a dip in the crystal clear blue/green water.

At Caye Caulker

 One night, we went to town to watch the "Chicken Drop".  This was a weekly activity that drew a big crowd.  They sold tickets for squares with numbers on them and wherever the chicken pooped, whoever held that ticket would win money.  It was definitely entertaining but we didn't win!  

We had dinner at a restaurant called Caliente's afterward and it was so delicious.  Matt bought a Cuban cigar to smoke on our last night in Belize.  We also got to see some pretty beautiful sunsets while we were there!

  Finally, after six amazing days, our trip came to an end.  We took a tiny plane from San Pedro to the International airport.  I was lucky enough to get to ride in the co-pilot seat!  It was so cool to see the pilot fly the plane right next to me!

After we landed at the International airport, we waited to board our plane to Houston.  Apparently, Prince Harry landed at the airport while we were there!  We were so lucky to be able to take this trip and also lucky to be able to see all of our friends while in Houston!  Matt and I are ready to plan our next get-away...