A ray of sunshine...

I haven't posted in a while because we've been busy busy. My brother, Josh was here this week visiting from Florida and we really enjoyed some quality time together. He arrived late Saturday night after a long flight (so long he had time to watch a movie, two episodes of The Office, an episode of The Simpons and still have time to read his book). Yes, we're really far north. The customs agents here are really tough and he was harrassed a little due to the large number of stamps on his passport. He's quite the avid traveller and they were curious. "How exactly do you afford to travel to so many different countries??" After answering a series of questions and giving them his life story (and ours), they finally let him through. Unfortunately, he didn't bring any warm Florida weather with him. The warmest day was a high of -3 degrees Celsius (about 25 degrees Fahrenheit), but we didn't let it stop us. The Florida boy was quite the trooper and didn't complain about the cold temps once. Josh has an excellent sense of adventure and a really great "why not?" attitude so he was the perfect visitor to have when everything here is new to us too. We explored town together, worked out at the gym we just joined, cooked, drank wine and the boys watched plenty of football.

Tuesday night, we headed downtown to see our first Canadian hockey game - the Edmonton Oilers against the Vancouver Canucks. Even on a week night, the game was sold out. Canadians rally around hockey like Americans love their football and it was fun to be a part of such energy. We had a fabulous view of the action with our 4th row seats. The guys next to us were pretty hardcore fans and were happy to fill us in on any rules we weren't sure about. It was quite an exciting game. The score was tied into overtime, with the Oilers finally winning it in a sudden death shootout and the crowd went wild. Canadians sure do love their hockey!
On Thursday, we prepared a feast to celebrate the American Thanksgiving. After gorging ourselves on turkey, we took a soak in the hot tub, then shot a couple of games of pool and of course, watched more football. Today Josh had to fly back home to thaw out. We won't see him again until the next time we visit Florida.