From plus 40 to minus 40!

We had a fantastic last few days in Vegas... Mamma Mia was brilliant, the Grand Canyon Tour & Hoover Dam flight excursion was amazing and Tom Jones was the perfect way to end a such a great fun week. Back to reality now!... Mum has had a great time with the kids and has managed the daily routine with ease including being caught in a blizzard on the school run!... Mum, myself and the kids should be blogging tonight from The Rockies...however we haven't managed to make it that far and have had to stop off here in Calgary! When we left Ralston this morning it was a chilly but pleasantly sunny day... but 1 1/2 hours driving time from setting off, we found ourselves in what only can be described as the worst driving conditions I have experienced so far here in Canada! With zero visability (due to a snow storm), severe weather warnings on the radio, a temp of minus 27 with a windchill of minus 42, a 'NO-TOW' enforcement on the Highway (ie if you cream off the road no-one is going to come and get you!) and a frost bite limit of 5 minutes outside, it seemed the sensible thing to stop off here in Calgary! So here we are in the BATUS house ( luckily it was available) for the night and hopefully conditions will be better tomorrow so Mum can at least see The Rockies before she heads back on Tuesday. All a bit of a culture shock from the relaxing times in Vegas!
(I know that will make some of you smile!!! :)) All the while Leigh is busy working in Ralston as we didn't win any money in Vegas either! (More smiles?!?!) So hopefully my next blog will be from The Rockies with a picture of Mum coming down a black run or at least the cable car on Sulphur Mountain!

Viva Las Vegas!

Mum made it over without any hitches and we had a great few days together before we set off to where we are now - Las Vegas!! We are having so much fun here! We arrived on Sunday morning to a very pleasant +50 degrees which compared to -18 when we left Calgary - it really felt like we were in the Tropics! Great flights down here - we went via San Fransisco and saw the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz - albeit very briefly from the air. We've done so much already, including a helicopter flight over Vegas at night which was just awesome!
Las Vegas has to be one of the funniest places anyone can visit. It seems that after being here for just a couple of days, nothing can suprise us anymore! We are at the point of not batting an eyelid when walking past the Colosseum, King Tut's Tomb or the Eiffel Tower! The Casinos are bizarre. There are so many of them and they are so huge and dark you could lose track of whether it is night or day in there! We've yet to really gamble and have only done the $ slot machines so far! Tonight we are going to see Mamma Mia at The Mandalay Hotel. Tomorrow we are off on a aeroplane tour over the Grand Canyon & Hoover Dam which we are really looking forward to, and then perhaps a trip on a Gondola at The Venetian Hotel when we get back! And, as if this week could not get any better, we have tickets to see the one and only Tom Jones here at our hotel, The MGM Grand, on Thursday Eve.
I thought going to Glastonbury was cool, even seeing Chico at Butlins, but Tom Jones in Vegas! I can't wait! Knickers are at the ready - well not my best one's of course!

A much needed quiet week here in Ralston... Ben & Olivia back at school, Charlie back at nursery, Leigh back at 'work'. I say 'work' as he has been away on an advanced skiing course for the last 5 days doing very silly things like double black runs and off-piste stuff! Not at all envious! So it's been a pretty steady week. Ben is back playing ice hockey
twice a week and if the kids are not at the ice rink then they are sledging down Higgins Hill which is just next to the school. What's even better is that I can see it from the window here at home so I don't have to go! Leigh is back tomorrow and is picking up our very own Mary Poppins (AKA Granny Plymouth, (my Mum)!) en-route. Mum is flying out for two weeks to see us all, and give Leigh and I a bit of a break. So taking full advantage of this rare opportunity, Leigh and I are off to Las Vegas for 5 days on Sunday. Yipeeeee! Hopefully we will win some money whilst we are there to pay for our current lifestyle! Failing that, Leigh will be back out on the Prairie for 6 months during the summer! So by popular demand, (and the coincidence of a boring week!) I'm posting recent pictures of Olivia & Charlie... and won't mention myself playing ice hockey or skiing! Hee Hee! I'll blog from Vegas if not before...

We are back from The Rockies after another great week there. We saw the New Year in with Paul, Marluz & thier son Paddy Flavell - friends of ours who were staying in the same hotel. We had a really nice evening with a Spanish twist at Midnight. As you may have guessed Marluz is Spanish and it is their tradition to eat a grape with each midnight gong and make a wish - we had to do the gong's ourselves though as we didn't get them here! The sleigh ride on Lake Louise was really lovely, though it was so cold the children rapidly lost interest and were soon complaining! The plan was to actually skate on Lake Louise afterwards but we were so cold we headed
straight to the restaurant. Another time perhaps! There is even a really beautiful ice castle which has been sculptured and put on the frozen lake so people can skate around it. Very pretty - especially when admired from indoors! As I mentioned in my last blog, Leigh, Ben & I had a day's skiing whist Olivia & Charlie went into day care (which they loved!). A great day but I think it would be fair to say that I am not a natural skier...I seem to remember swearing alot at leigh coming down a hill, which in my opinion he should have recce'd first! But it was fun and I think I might
have just mastered the art of getting off the chair lift without falling over! I had a few 'rest's' during the day to let the boy's go off and catch their hair on fire - which they did. When Leigh checked the map of one of the hill's he and Ben came down, it showed that part of it was a black run! Ben loved it - that's my boy! You wouldn't catch me making that mistake!