Well my contract has been extended til the end of January! The girl who is permanent still hasn't made a decision of whether she is coming back or not (I have 8 working days left on my contract) so my boss just made a decision for her haha. It also will give me time to see what happens with another job I have my eye on.

This week has been wonderful! So close to Christmas :)! Alex is being a grinch about decorating but it's going to happen whether he likes it or not! Here is a picture of his current Christmas tree... pitiful:

We had a little party last night at our friend Katie and Adam's place! They just bought a new quad. I need to get people to start buying sleds up here. I know this probably isn't too surprising but tons of people use their sleds and ATV's to get around town up here. It makes me jealous! I want a sled.. a pink or purple sled... Who wants to buy it for me :)? Last night was great though! It was just me and a bunch of boys, then Katie came home from work :) Here's some pictures from last night:

Katie and I

Here is Bambi, myself, Noonan, Curtis, Katie & Adam

Hahaha, here is Adam playing his bagpipes at 2am. Noonan is holding up the music sheet for him. Love it when he brings out the pipes!:

Here's Katie and Alex arm wrestling... Alex looks like he's about to pass out:

I hope everyones December is going well! Drive safely! Too much tragedy in the past four months, we don't need another one :)! I'm very jealous of everyone with a ski hill around them. Alex and I both miss the Koots but it's not time to go home quite yet!

Not last week but the week before we had -32 weather (-40 with windchill) but now it's hovering at around -20ish. The sun is setting at around 3:30 and rising at around 9:30. What have we been doing for fun you ask? Well I went to yoga and the tree lighting ceremony. Here is a couple pics from the tree lighting. It is Kalina and Meagan in the second pic:

Not this past week but the week before I went to Edmonton for an MRI. It was pretty sweet but quick! It was so weird being around civilization again haha. I was in West Edmonton Mall and there was probably probably double the amount of people in Smith in that mall. The lights, the sounds.. so overwhelming lol! Traffic lights and buildings higher than 2 stories! Here is a pic from my hotel room with the clouds hanging really low:

My MRI results came back and they ended up scanning the wrong part of my spine so we will see what will happen now :). Maybe another trip down there.

Here is some pictures from last Friday. The first one is of myself, Katie on the left and Sheena in the middle. The second is of Kalina and Meagan. All amazing girls!:

Alex and I decided to go for a drive yesterday about 30 minutes outside of town. We told Kalina and her boyfriend where we were going just in case we got stuck and didn't come back to Smith that night. It didn't go great but we managed to make it a little ways down a road that wasn't plowed:

We got a little bit stuck but it wasn't too bad. Katie and Adam went to Hay River the same day and got stuck on the way back to Smith. You have to be careful because there is no cell service. Very wise to wear your long johns and bring food, water, blankets and candles. We were too cool for that and didn't do any of the above... maybe next time!

Things have been going well up here. Nothing to complain about! Still waiting to hear if my contract has been extended since it's up in two weeks. A little stressful but thats ok! A couple friends have started working for the GNWT now and are loving it!

The Governor General of Canada is coming to Smith this week. I knew him from when he was the president of the University of Waterloo, kind of weird he is the GG now!

That's all I really have for tonight. I don't have big plans this week. Just working and studying. I need to decorate two houses for xmas. I have to go on a shopping trip to Fields and buy decorations before they all sell out! Hope the season is picking up for everyone down south!

Well it is -23 and -28 with windchill right now. It was really cold yesterday too. So what did we do for fun? We went for a drive to a lake (that was closed, we couldn't get in) and then we fired a rifle! This is for all your viewing pleasure:

Kind of scary, eh?

We had a really tame weekend. Friday we didn't do much and Saturday night we had a movie night at Kalina and Tom's place. We watched Elf to get into the Christmas spirit!

Our diet is interesting. We're doing really well on it but it does suck a lot. Some examples of meals we've tried:

Cooking 100% cocoa and putting almonds in them and freezing them. My roommate tried this.. didn't taste so good apparently.
I've make a few meals that I just threw out because I didn't like them haha. Why does that not surprise anyone who is reading this?
Eating buckwheat hot cereal with apples, cinnamon, and coconut... I didn't like it very much but Alex liked it.
Plain yogurt, cinnamon, and apples.

I'll have to think of some more tomorrow because I am falling asleep!

It's been -17 for a few days now... -22ish with the windchill. Brrrr... It's good times though! Everyone is whipping out the parkas. For daylight it's definitely getting darker. It's dark when I go to work and dark when I leave work already.

I get to go shopping next week :)... if everything gets approved in Yellowknife. I have an appointment for an MRI in Edmonton next week. The way the flights work, I'll be staying at least one night.. maybe two depending on my appointment time. The flights all arrive from Smith at about 1ish and they all leave around then too. Hopefully things go through because I wanna go shopping :)!

My roommate and I started a diet this week. It's a health diet but it's kicking our asses at this point. We are going to power through though. We are not allowed any wheat, dairy, anything with sugar (including fruit), nothing with vinegar, the meat has to be organic (HAHA don't have that in Smith), nothing starchy.. so no potatoes or related veggies. We basically can't eat anything haha. I've been living off of chicken and brown rice. Alex made me a soup tonight :). We are on day 3 today and we haven't cheated yet but it's hard! If I end up in Edmonton I don't think I'll be able to make it because I don't think any restaurant will be able to accommodate my dietary needs lol.

My contract is going to be extended. I've also applied for another job that's permanent so we will see what happens there!

Oh I saw the ears, nose and throat guy. The tumour thing on my tonsil he would like to remove. He said he thinks he has seen something similar a couple times before HAHA. Sounds like a whole lot of confidence there! He gave me three options: take my tonsils out, biopsy the tumour in Yellowknife, or leave it and see if it grows. So we decided that it's best to biopsy it but that we will wait three months to see if there are any changes. He also wanted some time to think about it HAH. Oh boy. We actually didn't talk too much about my health because through talking we found out that both of us grew up partially in Trail, that he also partially grew up in Pine Point and that our dads both worked for Cominco HA! So crazy. The connections are ridiculous.

Ok that's all I got for right now. I've been meaning to do a post on what we do for fun in Smith. Hopefully that'll come in the next week or so! Hope everyone is doing great :)!

Here's a picture of Me, Kalina and Meagan after breakfast on Sunday morning :)

Things are going well here! Not a whole lot to report. Work is going well! We're a couple weeks into construction. Here is a picture of our office. There are 3.5 of us (my boss has a office offsite so she's only in our office a bit) in there and it's our only separate room at the moment so we all get kicked out from time to time for meetings. It's an adventure!

I have more pics in posts below of the past couple weeks!

Alex showed me around all the hangars at his work this weekend and he showed me this little gem! It's the first plane made in the NWT.

Smith Shopping!

This is what we do in Smith when we want to go shopping with friends. We have a clothing swap! Tons of clothes, it was a fabulous time!

Everyone brought stuff to Kalina's and it was a free for all. You can give or take as much or as little as you would like regardless of how much you brought. We're planning another one for the spring!

On Friday night Meagan and I decided to go crazy with photobooth (an application on Apple computers that lets you take pictures and use different effects). When Alex came over we pulled him into it. For the record, Alex and Meagan were drunk by that point, I don't have an excuse!

Bad Day :(

I'm going to rant about my crappy day!

First off I completely over slept and was late for work... oopsie! Then I go to the pharmacy to get my meds, including the one I've been waiting for, for a week. Turns out that the drug was back ordered from wherever they order it from and they said they will be lucky if it gets in by Friday. The joys of living up north haha! This is a drug for a really bad infection... so lets just let this infection go without any meds for 2 weeks and see how it does! The good news is that I got a compounded cream that looks to be working on my finger :)! I also have 10 days worth of antibiotics if the cream doesn't work but I don't want to take them.

Ok back to my bad day.. this isn't suppose to be a happy post! So I get home from work and go to take a shower because I'm dirty because I couldn't shower this morning because I woke up 10 minutes AFTER I was suppose to start work and there is no hot water. Then I realize that the house is really cold. So either our landlord didn't pay the bill and it got cut off or our hot water tank is broken. Today it was really cold out and tomorrow it's suppose to be -5 but it will feel like -9. I did go take a shower at the boys' place... a nice, warm shower :)! Now I have my long johns on, a wool sweater, fluffy socks and I'm curled up in bed for a nice long cold sleep!

Goodnightttt!

HALLOWEEN!

Happy Halloweeeeeeeen! We had a great Halloween weekend here. On Friday Kalina and Tom had people over for a little pre-halloween party. On Saturday it was our lovely party! Everything went really well! No big mishaps. Here is a group shot of most of our friends haha:

Here is one of my roommate and I. She is the black swan and I'm hurricane Katrina but it's hard to see the hurricane part:

There's a few more on Facebook for people to browse but not that many yet. People are slow to post pictures sometimes.. I know I always am! There isn't a whole lot else that's going on here lately. My finger is officially infected again.. surprise surprise! It's windy/snowy/borderline cold with nicer times mixed in! CHRISTMAS IS COMINGGGGG :)!

SNOW!

Lots of snow up here... well not lots but it has been snowing a lot in the past two days. It warmed up a bit today and melted quite a bit and now it is snowing again and freezing the water... the roads are very slippery. A vehicle actually rolled this morning on the main road. Not often you hear sirens up here at 7am. I have more pictures :):

The sunrise yesterday morning :):

On the way to work yesterday morning @ 8:30am. Yep it's still dark-ish!

First snowmobile tracks of the year. They came pretty close to hitting me! Good thing they weren't going too fast:

Some ravens in the trees:

Another raven picture:

My crazy purple tongue! Alex thinks I should go for Halloween as a purple tongued rat girl... I should have never told him Jordon's nickname for me because he loves calling me that now!

Back to the doctor tomorrow :). I have tomorrow afternoon off and I'm so excited. Our building has reno's being done and I'm being displaced from the building until my office is redone! Should be interesting! I'll still be there lots obviously. Our Halloween party is Saturday and it should be a fabulous turn out. We are going to decorate and finally get our place in order. Lots of jello shooters and Halloween baking! You all are invited! I'll take lots of pictures because I'll be sober... one of two sober people if Alex's roomie is coming.

On Saturday my roommate and I are carving pumpkins! I am convincing Alex to do it too as he has never carved a pumpkin before! He will be hooked and will carve a pumpkin every year to make up for all the years he missed!

Ok that's all for now... I'm going to go look through the Wish Book! There is a post below this explaing it :)!

Goodnight!

Wish Book

I got the WISH BOOK! Well my roomie got it and I never really realized how exciting it is to get a sears catalogue in a small town. Growing up it was awesome.. since Trail really doesn't have any decent stores. It was really like Santa gave you a book to pick toys out of. I wonder what growing up in a city would have been like? Diane did you get excited by the Sears Wish Book? HAHA. Ok I'm going to write another post then pick out some toys for Christmas! LESS THAN TWO MONTHS TIL SANTA GETS HERE :)! (Mom that means that I still get Santa presents because my previous sentence proves that I still believe in Santa!)

Long time since I posted anything! I'm still sick.. surprise surprise, so I've been a bit under the weather.

There really hasn't been much to write about! Days are getting colder, days are getting shorter but everyone is experiencing that :). It's getting into freezing temperatures but at the moment it's 2 or 3 degrees out. I tried out my jacket this weekend even though it's not really that cold yet. I love it! The jackets nickname is Pepto Bismol... they are identical colours. My boots came in too but I ordered the wrong colour.. too bad it was my own fault haha.

I went grocery shopping today. I was disappointed that they didn't have any bananas... however they did have radishes! I haven't seen those things in awhile. I'm sure they have had some in but I haven't seen them.

Here are some pictures from Friday. I know I've been slacking on them since I lost my camera.

This is myself, Vina and Kalina:

This is Curtis and Kalina playing beer pong. Kalina is getting feisty!

This is Sunny, Jeff & Vina. Sunny is from Kenya and invited us to his beach house there. How sweet of a trip would that be?

Here is Alex and his roommate Adam (one of the guys that lived in PG at the same time as me) peeling apples for the apple crisp that I made for Thanksgiving!

That's all I got for pictures! There should be lots after next weekend. I don't know if I mentioned it before but Meagan and I are having the Halloween party for our group. We decided this a month ago thinking I'd be drinking again but I'll probs be sober for our party haha. At least I can enjoy all the stupid stuff that people will end up doing. For the past couple weekends people have been asking me if I'm preggers... they are serious too haha... I'm definitely not.

I should probably go study :)!

Random Thoughts:

I ordered stuff from Sears (bookcases and a vacuum) at the beginning of the month. Estimated delivery date? October 28th lol. Then my roommate ordered a bed from Sears... EDD? Next week and she ordered it a couple days ago. Stupid Sears. Hopefully they come at the same time.

Interesting stuff about health care up north. Down south it takes FOREVER to get into see specialists. Often over a year to get into see an ortho surgeon. Up here I was referred to one to get an injection and I saw him yesterday. Yep it took less than 2 months. I am also going to be seeing a ENT (ears, nose throat) and internal med. specialists and it shouldn't be more than a month. Crazy fast. I think I'll stay up north :)!

Ice Pilots NWT premiered for the season yesterday. It's up on the internet today. Gives a glimpse into life in the north. It features Yellowknife and Hay River (my birth place). The guy who runs Buffalo, "Buffalo Joe" used to live in Smith for a long time.

Speaking of airplanes.. I found this kind of funny. Because the pilots fly only when it's light out for so many months they have to do what's called night circuits. Basically when it gets dark they have to take off and land multiple times in a row at night to get used to it again. Tonight Alex is doing his and he has to do five take offs and landings. Pretty soon they'll almost solely be flying in the dark.

It is starting to get colder and darker. It's dark when I get up and starts getting dark when I get home, depending on how overcast it is. There was tons of frost this morning and my friend Kalina was telling me that were suppose to be getting snow this weekend. Weather reports never seem that accurate up here though.

Kalina, Katrina, Katerina, Katalina. It's almost a rarity for someone to call me by the right name up here. Everyone gets Kalina and I confused. It happens all the time. Everyone laughs about it a lot so we came up with a combined name... Katalina. Katerina is a lady who works for the health authority as well. It's almost daily that people call me Katerina. All you can do is laugh about it!

It looks like my contract will be extended. We are still waiting for it to be official but my boss came and asked me what my plans were today. She wanted to know if I will take the extended contract. I was telling her how I was worried about being locked into a contract in case another position opened up and apparently it's not a problem. She said I would just have to get permission from her and the CEO to apply and that it wouldn't be an issue. I just didn't want to be stranded in May and be disappointed that I couldn't apply for any openings that might come up that are permanent. Great news that that won't be the case :)!

Here is something random. There is a girl who is a teacher who moved up here from the states although she is Canadian. I found out at our Smith Family Turkey Dinner that she is actually up here to save money to go back to school to do the same thing I want to do. She is also taking the prereqs to apply to a program like me and she is also planning on doing it in the states. Pretty random and sweet!

Finally, a very big, huge CONGRATS to Jo and Andrew on their beautiful baby girl :)! I'm sooooo excited to meet that little munchkin!

That is all for now :)!

Since this seems to be a common theme to start my posts off with... let's start with the bad news. No plane crashes, just car accidents involving moose. A friend of ours up here passed away on Thursday night after hitting a moose :(. Greg was driving to Canmore and hit the moose after High Level. Very sad. We were hanging out with him last Friday. He worked at the college and was from Alberta. He was very known for being a creeper on the girls in the nicest possible way. I met him my first week up here at the grocery store when we ended up in the same aisle a few times. With him recognizing that I was new in town thought the best way to make me feel welcome is to accuse me of stalking him in the grocery store. Every aisle he would say more and more and when we ended up in the same check out he asked me how I was liking town and what not. Looking on comments on his Facebook so many people are commenting on all the lame pickup lines they learned from him haha! My roommate Meagan had the claim to fame that she was the only girl in Smith to scare Greg off and now she has to write the newspaper story on his death. The joys of living in a small town!

From Thanksgiving on, we're hoping for only rainbows and cupcakes up here! Yesterday we had a big Smith family thanksgiving dinner at our friend Lisa's. 13 of us piled into her little place and it was a feast and a half. On Friday it was one of the boy's birthday so we celebrated. I celebrated with coffee and everyone else celebrated with copious amounts of booze. Still trying to fight off my infection.. I'm on day three of three of the drug that's awful for your liver. the regular dose is 1 pill and that's it and mine still isn't gone. Fingers crossed that this last one does the trick. When I went back on Friday I found out that I most likely have strep on top of my other mouth infection and I also have a growth on my tonsil. It looks like a sideways uvula (dangly thing in back of the throat). I can't have antibiotics for the strep until it's confirmed through the lab because my immune system hates me. My good health news is that my finger is still looking like a great finger :)!

Ok back to cleaning :).

Well let's start with the sad news. Another plane crash. Yep that's right, four in less than 6 weeks, not including Reno. The one people may not have heard about is a man who was flying solo went down and wandered from his plane up here but they found him alive and well. The one yesterday is pretty tragic. Another pilot and passenger dead, two survivors. Apparently it's harder to fly up here between the seasons but still this is getting out of hand!

In happy news, we had a great weekend here. There was the International Travelling Lute Festival lol. We went to it, it was at the church and yes it's lute not flute. It was really good but really long. After that there was a celebration for Smith's 45th birthday. There were some amazing fireworks and birthday cake for the town. There was also free skating during the day and it was someone's b-day here so we went to bonfire after the fireworks. Here is an Iphone pic of the fireworks... turned out really well:

The fireworks lasted quite a long time. Very wonderful for such a small little town.

On Friday night we had a great night. Went to a friends place, then to the bar, then to an after party at another friends place complete with a bonfire! I stayed sober (yay me) for the third week in a row. It was still tons of fun. We got home after 4 but heard the next day that a friend tried to break up a fight at the bonfire that some randoms started (normally it's just friends but rando's showed up) and he got pushed into the fire. His arm was burned. Pretty crappy.

Other sad Smith news. This is typically what we hear about but in the past couple weeks there were some other crappy stuff going on. A man broke into a house and raped a girl and was on the loose in town for about a week. He had previously done the same thing and was released from jail after a few years. He turned himself in thankfully. Also someone stole a van from our Healthy Babies program in town and another building was broken into and vandalized the same night.

Here's a nice picture of a fish that Alex caught when we were fishing. Making this post end on a cheery note :). We caught lots of fish this time but let them all go because we're nice people:

Fishing season is almost done. It's getting pretty cold up here and darker too. It was 3 degrees when I woke up the other day. We're starting to lose a lot of light. Thankfully Diane is going to come visit me in the dark around my birthday and I'm sooooo sooo excited! I'm still trying to figure out Christmas plans. We have a pretty sweet deal with holidays and what not. On top of all our vacation time we get 5 mandatory days that we have to take each year (vacation can be carried over). If you take these 5 days between certain dates (in the winter) you get bonus days off. Basically I could take 2 weeks off and not really use any vacay time.

For Thanksgiving one of our friends is having a little Fort Smith family feast which is really nice of her. Gotta love Smith! My roomie moved out and I have another in the process of moving in. The new reporter for the newspaper. Very exciting to unpack my stuff. It's like shopping because I haven't seen anything since I was in PG. Speaking of PG I still think it's weird that Alex's roomie and another pilot and myself all lived in PG at the same time and ended up in Smith in being friends. I should get a PG friend picture to post. Unfortunately I lost my camera during the GloBall Tourney so I'll have to order a new one. Back to shopping; even though I am unpacking I still wanna go shopping.

I KNOW WHAT I'M BEING FOR HALLOWEEN! It took forever to think of and I don't know why I didn't think of this previous years but I'm going to be Hurricane Katrina. Oh yeah, I'm stoked!

Ok that's all for now. I'm just delaying unpacking! If anyone has bookshelves, a pantry (very small kitchen), a vacuum, side tables, a dresser, and a desk (I think I've found one) that they want to ship up to me... please feel free to do so. People might have thought I was crazy for bringing up so much stuff but there's still stuff that is necessary.

Ok that's really it.

Byebye!

I ordered my winter jacket I am stoked! It took some detective work too. I really wanted the Trillium Canada Goose jacket in pink. However it was super hard to find. None of the online retailers carried the pink so I contacted CG, turns out there is only one store in Newfoundland (out of all of Canada and the states) that carries the pink jacket. I emailed them and had amazing service. They emailed me back this morning and by noon they had already put it in the mail for me :)! The company is theoutfitters.nf.ca if anyone wants to order in a jacket. I guess that anyone who is reading this doesn't really have to order things in... you can go to that thing called a mall or a clothing store. I bet your jealous that you don't get to be a Canada Goose Detective like me. This is the jacket that I ordered:

http://www.canada-goose.com/products-2/womens/trillium-parka/

In the pink (not the berry colour).

What else is new? I got my flu shot and my mouth is full blown infected again (surprise surprise). It was ALMOST gone on Monday you could barely see it but I was out of meds so I went back to the doctor and it was a different one. He gave me a prescription for the same med I was on but when I went to get it filled I saw that I had a completely different dose. I went from 20mL a day to 3mL a day. Needless to say it took about a day and a half to go back to where it was a week ago (last Thursday I had to stay home sick because it wouldn't stop bleeding, gross!). Anyways I went back today to the same doc I saw on Monday and he put me back on the regular dose for another 10 days (I think that 3mL was a mistake). I also have this mixture of drugs that he wrote a prescription for.. he had to look it up on his palm pilot (he said he had heard about a mixture that helps when your mouth is burning lol). The mixture is liquid benedryl and this clay stuff that is used as a medicine. The texture is very interesting! Hopefully in a week it'll be all gone :).

Alex and I went fishing and caught a bunch of fishies! We let them all go but we took some pictures. I am tethering to my iphone internet right now so I can't upload them though.

For those of you who didn't see the pictures all over the news, here is a picture of the plane crash:

Apparently Nicole's funeral was a huge celebration of life that lasted hours. So many people showed up that a hundred people had to be turned away. They had it filmed so that people could cram into the basement to watch it as well on the screen. Very tragic and sad but it's amazing how much she was able to fit into 26 years!

It's bedtime for me! I am attending (for special circumstances) a funeral tomorrow for a younger resident of our facility who passed away this week.

Speaking of so much death this article has been making me think lots this week. Very interesting read! It's about the lack of morgue's in the north and families having to keep their loved ones in deep freezers in their houses. We also don't have funeral homes up here in the smaller communities (ours included). It's considered the families responsibility to prepare the body for the funeral (bathing, dressing, grooming, placing into casket, etc.) Kind of crazy and interesting!

http://nnsl.com/northern-news-services/stories/papers/sep26_11no.html

On that sad note. Good night! xoxo

Well I can't sleep :(! My infected mouth (ew) is sore.

Super sad that there was another plane crash :(. It wasn't NWAL, the company that a lot of my friends work at thankfully. Unfortunately the co-pilot (who passed away along with the captain) was a friend of Alex's and another one of his friends up here. They all went to the same flight school and Alex worked with her in Calgary at the airport. :( There were 7 passengers who survived.

Here's another sad story. One A's friends knew the girl who passed away as well as knew the Canadian couple that died in Reno last weekend.

It has barely been more than a month and there has been the Resolute crash, Reno, Yellowknife.

Well that's enough sad news for one night! Night!

Let's Play a Grocery Game!

Yay... Grocery games!

How much did my bag of groceries cost me today.... anndddddddddd what is in the bag?

So how much did it cost +the whole wheat buns?

Yep... $108.26!

-Just ignore the bucket of ice cream listed on the receipt. So what did I get for $108: Ice cream (obviously), tomato, avocado, spinach, bananas, apples, a frozen pizza, some cheese and lunch meat, yogurt, buns, frozen strawberries, and honey. Not bad... I think?
- By the way, thanks for everyone looking at the blog! It's nice that people are so interested. I wasn't expecting to get 50 views in a year.. never mind close to 1300 in 4.5 months. I don't know who's looking because I didn't give this out to THAT many people. Kind of weird to think random people are viewing it!
-In other quick, random Smith related news:
-The mayor called me today at work! To tell me to call one of my good girl friend's up here, even though she didn't know we were friends. Very nice of her! (It was work related).
-In the grocery store there was a lady with the baby in the ice cream aisle. I was having a staring contest with her baby while she picked out ice cream and when she picked it out she thought that I wanted that one (it was the last one) and she felt bad. I told her any ice cream makes me happy and that what I really wanted was to steal her cute little baby (in the nicest, most non-creepy way possible). We had a nice chat after that because she recognized that I was new. I told her how long I've been here for and she's like, "Oh! You're not THAT new". Anyways, point of the story is I made a friend picking out ice cream. Sweet!
-My finger looks to be getting better :)! I pulled a sliver out from under my nail and it's calmed down. Unfortunately my mouth is now infected HAHA! Went to the doctor today, I have 10 days worth of meds now. I just want it to not bleed when I eat... is that too much to ask? Gross, eh? :).
-Alex was down in Reno this weekend! Thankfully, they arrived into town after the crash took place. Sucks that the main thing they were going to see was cancelled but at least they are still alive :)!
-Ok I think that's it for now :)!
-Have a wonderful sleep (whoever you are)!
-xoxo
(Sorry for all the points.. the formatting is being weird)

GloBall!

Went golfing last night... well I walked around. Didn't want to have my arm broken again for playing golf. Anyways it was a blast. It's night time golfing... no lights however you get balls that glow in the dark. Much harder than you'd think. Definitely took us over 4 hours to play 9 holes LOL. I lost my camera too but it's ok because it was broken.

This annual event in Smith is one of a kind. It's a keeper for sure!

We were all getting ready to start and Alex texted and told us about what happened in Reno. So sad but I'm so happy that he got there after it happened. It sucks that he took lots of time off to go to Reno and didn't get to see the air races. Too many plane crashes this summer!

I'm going to do a few posts about different topics. If I do one post I just ramble. So first topic is:

What do I miss most about living south (I will add more when I think of them, if there are anymore):

1. Shopping... yep I miss it. My friend up here loveeesss shopping too so were thinking we might plan a holiday south to Edmonton to go shopping sometime lol. And YES Edmonton is like a sweet southern holiday for us. I haven't got into the online shopping because it would suck to have send clothes back that don't fit often.
2. More selection with produce. We've got a decent selection but sometimes you'll go in and there will be something and then the next day they will be out and not have any for awhile.
3. Free shipping. I got quoted $350 for shipping from Costco in Edmonton... by a private company because Costco won't ship anything big. Also it would have to be delivered to the shipping company before they would ship it up. I got a quote from Ikea but it was actually cheaper to buy the merchandise then it was for shipping... and I wasn't thinking of buying something that was $50 either. Shipping was over a grand.
4. Coffee shops/places to study at.
5. Unlimited internet.

That's pretty much it!

Well this weekend we went camping and it was a blast. We went to Little Buffalo Falls which are probably 30 minutes outside of Smith. The northern lights were dancing around as we drank and played Crazy 8 Countdown. Great times with great people. Although my camera doesn't really capture the northern lights I do have a few that captured the vivid green colour. Here are some pics from our Friday night adventure:

These are the northern lights. Unfortunately for you, this doesn't really capture them for your viewing pleasure. If you want to see them I guess you'll have to come visit:

The beautiful sunset on the way out to camping:

Alex, Luke and Jeff:

My soon-to-be roomie Meagan, Paul (who lives upstairs) and Vina who works at Northwestern with most of the boys and the Legion:

The river that flows from the waterfall:

That is all for pictures! My new roomie told me tonight that her boss wants to run a story in the newspaper on how I'm the only rehab person left in town at the end of this month. We can't really talk to the media so she'll have to go through the higher up people in the authority. I asked her if they really had to do it and she said that her boss wanted to because were having an election and one of the issues being brought up is bringing up train people to work. Oh well I'll let you know how this one works out.

So happy that little Kienan was returned home. So nice to have a happy ending to a child being abducted! I was following that story like a hawk.

Now that my roomie is leaving I have lots of stuff to gather/buy.

- couches since I sold mine
- table + chairs
- my new roomie needs a bed
- I need a boxspring and frame but I think I'll just lay my mattress on the floor.
- shelving for the kitchen because we have very few cupboards
- I need to order the internet and cable (yay I'm getting cable)

Unfortunately you can't really just go out and buy what you need. Apparently someone said you can order from Leon's but on the website it says it doesn't ship here but some guy on our community Facebook page says it does. I can order from Sears but will have to pay extra shipping. We also have a Brick in Yellowknife (which is really far away) but there is a lady who is ordering stuff for herself and if she can get people to buy enough stuff to fill the delivery truck they will do it for free/cheap. Oh the options.. all three of them.

Finally, I hate to say it but I THINK my finger is getting reinfected. I can't see anything yet but I'm losing feeling in the tip of my finger and my finger is starting to peel a bit. Not a good sign. When my parents were here I ended up getting a sliver under the nail of the same finger and I can see a little bit still in there but I can't tell whether it is a piece of wood or just a spot that was bleeding a bit. The saga continues. On a happy note if it does get infected I'll be flying to Edmonton or Yellowknife to see someone who might be able to figure out what it is. Hopefully not osteomylelitis which they could not rule out last time.

On another happy note, it's bed time :)! Night everyone. I'll try and post some more this week. I have more pictures/stories!

xoxox