Enchanted evenings

One of the advantages of living far north is that the days in June are incredibly long - still twilight past 11 PM. The evenings are my favorite time. On a warm windless day, it stays warm in the evening, and it is great to sit outside and enjoy the scenery as the sun slowly goes down, and the soft light gives everything a red or yellow hue.

Jord and Char invited us for a wiener roast on just such an evening - great food and great company. Thanks, guys.

Pike Place with Mom!

This happened a couple weeks ago, but I wanted to mention what a great time Mom and I had at Pike Place Market before I left for LA! Pike Place is one of my all time favorite places to visit, and I of course wanted to go there while I had the chance. So Mom and I went and had a great time walking around and visiting all the crafty booths, stopping to watch the Flying Fish workers fake out another audience, and listening to the crazy buskers. We also got delicious gyros at a Greek food stand and some yummy mini cheesecakes. We couldn't leave without picking up some flowers too! All in all it was a fabulous outing and it was good to reminisce on the days when I frequented Pike Place. Mom and I have had some good bonding time in the past couple months we've had in Seattle, I am so glad we could hang out a lot! Love ya Mom!

Chile bows out of the World Cup and summer in Edmonton

So Chile suffered a pretty bad defeat to Brazil in the Round of 16 in the World Cup. The country should still be pleased of their performance since they were expected to get out of their group which they did. Hopefully Chile can learn what it takes to play at the high level since they played Spain in their game prior to Brazil. It was nice to see them play as it brought back memories of their world cup qualifying campaign when I was serving my mission in Chile.
Anyway, so far being up in Edmonton has been great. It has been a bit of challenge to navigate my way around the city, but now it is becoming easier. G&G always give me some food, so that is always a bonus. Well thats all for now.

Interning

So as I do the internship I realize that I have had quite the sort of interesting jobs. Let's just say you could call me odd job. My jobs include construction, land scaping, telemarketing, server, dock worker, warehouse worker, construction clean up, newspaper and flyer delivery boy, LSAT instructor, snow board instructor, Legislative Assistant, Porter, Research Assistant, pressure washer, grass mower etc. etc. As you can see almost all of these jobs enjoy physical labour. And here in lies a problem I think I have been struggling with ...... I think I kinda enjoy physical labour. I enjoy seeing how many boxes I can load in an hour, I enjoy trying to line up all the screws and nails in a base board properly before 5 o'clock. I enjoy racing to see if all the sod can be unloaded before the rain begins to fall. Which is all fine and good but I've realized that I struggle to motivate myself and work with the same energy when the activity is predominately mental rather than physical. For example, I have struggle focusing on writing papers (except for the day before the paper is due in which case the paper writing becomes more of a physical rather than a mental exercise as in how fast can you type). My new goal come September is to treat the mental work as physical work. Thus far in my interning experience I have been dealing with mainly physical activities which is good but when it focuses more to mental activities I will need to get creative in keeping myself motivated. Suggestions are welcome.

Soccer season comes to an end

It's been a fun two months for me coaching Oliver's soccer team and also a fun two months for Oliver since he started playing. We had our doubts as to how much he would enjoy it seeing as how he never played before and seemed to get discouraged easily when we would kick it around in the backyard. When Nana and Gramps came to visit us last October I even remember him directing them to pass the ball to each other while he sat down on the sidelines and happily rested. He was keen not to get involved and also realized that having them kick it around would detract from us trying to get him to play. But after a couple of practices he really started to get into it, was always keen to get "coach" as he started calling me to tell him he was playing well. We're definitely going to get him to keep playing and hope that his Scottish roots will give him that extra advantage over the years to come.

Drive from Provo to Los Angeles

So after I finished spring semester at BYU I had to make the drive from Provo to Los Angeles on my own. I had never done the drive before, but I had heard it was about a 10 hour drive. I am pretty used to driving long distances, but the night before I had gotten a pretty bad sleep since school was over and there was no real need to go to bed at a reasonable hour anymore. I was feeling pretty drowsy after just two hours of driving so I pulled over to a rest stop. I realized that the main reason I was getting kind of sleepy was because the drive on I-15 in Utah, looks pretty much like this (look above) as far as the eye can see. But it worked out and the drive got a little more interesting once I got closer to Las Vegas. Nonetheless, it was still fun to see a part of the country I had never seen before and I made it into Ian and Melissa's place without getting lost thanks to the handy iphone. Although I had to talk to myself to stay awake once I was in LA.

New Couches

We decided, after lots of debating, to recover our couches. It really seemed like an extravagance considering they're probalby going to be trashed again in a couple years, but they were truly disgusting and the expense wasn't as bad as we thought it would be. It makes me soo happy to have nice designs that I love. I've been putting off doing anything to decorate because I feel we're not going to be here long enough, but I'm glad I made the effort. It was stressful at times, driving around trying to find fabric (to give to the upholsterer- I didn't do it!!) and get the best deal- but now that it's over ~I'm glad I dID it. I worked with a pretty funky colour palette, and Lindsay and her artist friend helped me with a beautiful 'painting' that ties things together. Thanks guys!