And what a journey the last several months have been. It has been 6 months since I last wrote a blog entry. Little did I know when I wrote that entry that about one week later Maureen and I would have a major "OOPS"...in fact, it wasn't until May 20th that we found out that we were expecting our first child (due date Jan 25) - and it has taken the better part of the last six months for us to come to terms with it. Not that starting a family is a bad thing at all...it's just that it was not expected and the timing didn't/doesn't quite fit with what we had "planned". We were hoping to start with a puppy, but hey, things happen, and I'm just hoping our kid is really cute so that nobody has to lie when they tell us that he/she is (you know what I'm talking about...you've all done it)

Maureen had been enrolled in a hairdressing program that was supposed to start in August - but due to the due date falling right in the middle of the 9 month program she was unable to do it. Instead, she has been going to school - studying Geography at Concordia University. While it has definitely been an adjustment for her to be back in school again, she has been doing an amazing job so far - even knocking out a 96% on a technical "Air/Water" midterm.

Aside from that, I've been putting on sympathy pregnancy weight and slugging away at bringing in new business for C.H. Robinson here in Montreal. It has been a tough few months in that regard, but our office has continued to expand and we have now hired another person and shuffled the deck a bit so that there are now two of us working in the Business Development group. The rising Canadian $$ has hit hard at manufacturing out here in eastern Canada, but at least it has made shopping trips to the US cheaper.

Speaking of trips...we had an absolutely amazing summer here in Montreal. While the weather took a little while to warm up, we've had a great time visiting family, having family visit us out here, camping, driving...etc.

Where to begin? Well...here's a few pics from the last several months. Click on the PHOTO GALLERY link at the top of the webpage to see the rest of the "best" photos.

Julia's grade 12 grad (Jeremy and Erin, Mom and Dad, Julia, Stephen and Melissa, David and Maureen)

A Cattle Drive while visiting the Esau side of the family in June

on the boardwalk at Virginia Beach - August

Canoing in September

Hiking at Lac Munroe - October

So yeah - it's been a bit busy!!! :-)

In June we went to BC to celebrate my sister Julia's graduation from high school. As of two weeks ago she is now going to school at YWAM in Lausanne, Switzerland. I can't tell you how jealous Mo and I are of her traveling.

Following her grad we went up to BC.....

(see the gallery for more pics of snowboarding and Mo's trip to BC)

- Maureen went to BC last week to see her family so I was flying solo for a little while. I spent a day snowboarding at Tremblant which was pretty fun, but it's definitely more fun when someone else is there as well. I'm not actually sure what I did with the rest of the week but it went by relatively quickly. We also got out to Bromont to go snowboarding back in Feb and in March we spent a weekend at Jay Peak. There are a couple pics from that weekend - it snowed over 20 inches in one night and it took 2.5 hours to drive 100km to the hill, but the conditions were unbelievable. Definitely worth the trip.

-Congrats to my brother Jeremy for winning his second Juno award (Canadian music award) with his band "Downhere".

...click below to keep reading...

the problem for me isn't that there is no shortage of things (and people) to write about - the problem is that such people may in fact read this blog at some point and so I have to be diplomatic in my story telling to the point where I don't write as much as I once did. It was much easier to write about Indian men or a guide in Nepal or a crazy karaoke character on a bus in Thailand than about my coworkers or Mo's coworkers (who all believed for a while that I had no social skills - not too far from the truth I guess)......anyway...

...if you're wondering why Mo is wearing 4.3 lbs of makeup you'll have to keep reading.

I'm also doing some independant studying on the side...just for my own knowledge. David has dug out some of his favourite articles and studies, etc from his BA for me to read and write little summaries on. I just finished reading one yesterday on the outbreak of World War I...how and why it happened.
It was very interesting but frustrating too as I realized that so many people died for the pride and/or disillusionment of a few men and their main advisors. So much of it doesn't make sense to my standards. It seems like leaders then believed almost that there was no choice but to go to war...the wheels had been set in motion and it was inevitable...however I believe it was just one miscommunication after another. I wonder if things would have been different if there had been telephones and they could at least hear eachother's voice...as it is impossible to hear the intended tone in a telegram.
It's hard to believe that it's almost been 100 years.

Those are my thoughts for the day.

Speaking of pictures, we have now posted the photos from our Christmas holidays so make sure to check those out.

We watched the season premiere of 24, season 6 last night...2 hours jammed pack full of stress. I don't know why I do it to myself...or encourage David in his desire to be Jack Bauer...but nonetheless, we're hooked:o)

I've started one of my courses now. I have French on Monday and Wednesday mornings and Cross Cultural Development on Fridays mornings. I haven't started French yet but I've one of the CCM classes and it seems really awesome. I'm really excited about it...so far I'm the only Canadian in the class so it makes for very interesting discussion and input.

David is back at work today and it is our first day of real snow this winter. Maybe we'll get to use our snowboards yet. The snow plows haven't been able to keep up at all so the sidewalks are covered in about 6-8 inches of snow. I'm not complaining though, I have been waiting for this!

There is a lot of money in oil. A lot. Like...it's silly. I can't quite wrap my mind around it.

The sun sure doesn't spend much time in the sky here. It starts to rise above the horizon just after 9am and it isn't fully "light" until 10...then it is setting before 4pm for a grand total of just over 7 hours of daylight (according to Environment Canada). Throughout the day the sun seems to hang in the southern sky not more than 30 degrees or so above the horizon...

Mo went snowboarding yesterday and ended up in the hospital briefly due to torn cartiledge in her ribs. She's been sick for a while and a week or so of violent coughing caused some damage there. I woke up this morning with a sore throat of my own so I'm not looking forward to what is most likely coming.

...anyway - how 'bout that Canadian hockey team? Nothing quite like beating the US in the 7th round of a shootout to brighten one's day.

We flew out of Montreal Dec 24th to Saskatchewan - by the time we drove the extra hour from the airport to my parent's place we had 1/2 hour to chow down on supper before my whole family led the music portion of the Christmas Eve service at my parent's church.

The CH Robinson Christmas party at Mont Tremblant was awesome - we had a great time and thoroughly enjoyed staying in the Fairmont Hotel - although it definitely was a bit weird to have people waiting on us hand and foot.

However......

We absolutely took advantage of every moment we had as there was so much to see and do in such a short amount of time...

(We've finally posted some photos from the last few months. Check out the photo gallery)

Last weekend we made a roadtrip to Boston...

There are all kinds of corresponding photos in the photo gallery (click on the link at the top of the page)