The end of 2009

Lake Louise- Banff Canada November 2009

The festivities are over and I'm just sitting here alone on Boxing Day night. Colin has had to work 7 days strait every evening (tomorrow is his 7th) and it hasn't been the most normal Christmas week.

We've been busy in the mornings while Colin is at home, then the evenings are relaxed and uneventful.

But we did get a lot done like getting Brooklyn and Reina to ski school for three consecutive days, having all the Joneses in town over for Christmas Eve lunch, wrapping Christmas presents and introducing the kids to the classic movie Ben-Hur - which they seemed to like.

But mostly I think this year represents a lot of traveling for me. We had the big move from Toronto over the summer. Since we've been here we drove to Utah twice (once for Canadian Thanksgiving in Oct

ober and

once for American Thanksgiving in November). And now no more traveling for a little while so we can save up for a down payment on a house.

Colin really likes his job and the people he works with. We feel like they've treated him very well and he's happy about his final outcome with all his training. I get pieces of his life when he shares stories from time to time like:

*I had to put a catheter in someone's salivary gland today to inject with contrast and get a CT to look for a big mass

*Someone came in with abdominal pain and we had to inform her it was because she was pregnant

*If you want to find the lymph node that is the likely next cancer culprit on a suspiciou

s breast mass patient you have to inject the breast right by the mass and watch where the radioactive particles accumulate

*I read a shoulder MR today that was really tough and everyone was glad to see it go off the list.

*Sometimes when I get home I don't want to talk, I just want to listen, because at work I'm talking and thinking as fast as I can for eight hours strait.

So I'll leave you with some picture of the road trips which typify my sentiments.

(1) Banff National Park

(2) Somewhere in Southern Alberta

(3) Probably Montana

The Canadian Rockies

x

We've been living in Calgary for about 3 weeks now and Colin could hardly wait to get to the mountains. So here are some pictures of what we can drive to in about 1.5 hrs. 

Here the kids are at the top of Sulfur Mountain overlooking th

e town of Banff.  We took an

 8 minute gondola ride up to about 7000ft and then climbed the extra bit to the cosmic ray station.   Of course while we w

ere up there it did snow a little bit- and that's par for the course in August.

The other picture shows 

Two Jack lake and that is where we brought food for a pick nick.  There is a wandering trail around the lake that the kids had lots of fun on and a camp ground on the other side that looked perfect for another time.