Beyond The Maple Tree

Mt Kidd

After returning to Calgary, Jen's parents invited us to go camping for a couple of days. We introduced Dom to "luxury" camping at Mt. Kidd where there's electrical plug ins, flush toilets, running water, hot showers, a pool/hot tub, satellite TV...

... and internet! What better place to get a bit of work done than under the warm sun with fresh mountain air and no distractions!

Jen's dad also took us for a really great 44km bike ride along the Legacy trail that runs from Canmore to Banff. It's a fully-paved bike trail with amazing views of the mountains.. we highly recommend it!!

Growing Herbs in Winter

To keep ourselves busy while back home in Canada, we decided to take a stab at having a garden. We discovered that our roommates were also wannabe green-thumbs, so it became a fun activity/experiment to do together.

- Guy grew some carrots

- Chris grew a variety of indoor and outdoor herbs

- Jen grew spaghetti squash, potatoes, and some herbs

- Dom grew raspberries, tomatoes, onions, and zucchini

Sadly, Calgary's summer season wasn't so great with several hail storms and an early-September snow storm! :(

Just before leaving for the winter again, we decided to help Chris with his winter grow-op experiment. Jen had seen a documentary about LED agriculture in Taiwan, so Chris did some research on LED grow lights only to find that they were a bit too expensive to get. Since Jen’s parents were visiting China, we sent them an email to keep an eye out for the type of LEDs that Chris had found online. Lucky for us, they found some at a fraction of the cost, so they brought back some strips of red and blue LEDs. Dom and Chris built a contraption to test the lights out over winter.. can't wait to see if they'll actually work!

Arianne's Visit to Calgary

When Dominic, his sisters, and cousins were kids, they were all sent to Vancouver to spend a summer with his Aunt learning English. Since we live in an English province and Dom's sisters now have children of their own, we wanted to help keep the tradition alive with the next generation.

We welcomed Dominic's 10 year old niece, Arianne, as the first one to visit. We kept her entertained from making sushi, salad rolls, and fresh pasta, to playing frisbee golf... and, of course, we had to bring her out to visit our beautiful mountains.

As part of her stay, we helped Arianne create a blog (in English) to share her experiences and adventures with her family back home... (wish we had a uncle and aunt like us! ;) )

http://beyondlafleurdelys.posthaven.com

She stayed with us for a total of 3.5 weeks and although learning a new language isn't always the funnest thing to do, it was a great adventure for everyone and we look forward to hosting another niece or nephew in the future.

Grandma's 90th Birthday

This summer we went to Montreal to celebrate Dom's Grandmother's 90th birthday. His family came to Montreal, from all parts of Canada for the occasion (Baie-Comeau, Calgary, Vancouver).

It was a full day of fun spent hanging out by the pool, playing volleyball, etc., finished off with roasting marshmallows over the camp fire, beneath a beautiful full moon.

Back in the Canadian Cold

We thought we planned our trip perfectly so that we'd be back just in time for Spring!!

… sadly, Mother Nature had her own plan, so our first week back in Calgary was snow, Snow, and more cold SNOW!!! :(

Halloween in Canada

We've been back in Canada since mid-September, but it seems we've been a bit lazy in keeping our blog up-to-date! We were pretty busy with meeting up with friends and family and restocking on supplies for our next adventure... that's right - we're planning to leave for a few more months with Vietnam, Bali and Australia currently on the radar.

We spent Halloween in Montreal where we were invited to Dom's sister's Halloween/Birthday party... our costumes were a bit last minute.. hopefully we did not disappoint! ;)