Goodsoil

The past 5 days I have been in goodsoil saskatchewan. For those of you who are not my family (however limited that may be) you may be asking where the heck is goodsoil saskatchewan. Well :

It's pretty much a very small farming town up in northern saskatchewan... and it is a long ways from calgary. You may ask why the heck we go to such a place in the middle of now where? well because:

there is an amazing lake there... and because when my great grandfather immigrated from germany, he was given land there and was one of the founding fathers of this small piece of paradise Canada. We have been going there since I can remember, and my mom has been going there since she can remember.

We had a great time, but, sadly, I had to leave Ben behind. Since he is working and it is a 7 hour drive he couldn't even come up for just the weekend. So I got to be the 7th wheel all weekend with my mom and murray, my sister and her boyfriend, and my brother and his girlfriend. Actually we had a great time. I went for a longish run on saturday morning. The day day started out promising with not a cloud in the sky which lead to a very hot run. But, by the end of my 2 hour (22 km) run, the sky had started to cloud over and it proceeded to be a cloudy/windy day. So we set up the campsite, made pie irons for lunch on the fire and just relaxed. That night we had a couple of surprise visitors in the middle of the night, as a mama black bear and her two cubs decided to visit our campsite. It was quite the excitement at 6 am, but murray managed to scare them off before my siblings in the tents had a heart attack.

Sunday we were going to head to church, but after the bear excitement we wound up sleeping in. I was planning on going for a long bike, but I had forgotten about how TERRIBLE the roads are in saskatchewan. Like seriously, there are parts of the highway that are just gravel. In fact, 2 years ago I broke the suspension on my old car when I crossed from Alberta to Saskatchewan. SO, the bike stayed parked all weekend. It was a beautiful day, and we maneged to get a few hours down at the beach. However, the drama did not end with the bears. When we launched my mom's old boat it died in the middle of the lake. Like seriously its completely dead. Paul had to paddle the boat ashore. I was planning on swimming the 3 miles across the lake, but I needed a boat to follow me, so thankfully some relatives (thank you to chelsea, cassidy, feron, lisa, and michelle) followed me in their pontoon boat with my mom and murray tagging along for the ride. I have swam the lake before 10 years ago when I in grade 9 and it took me over 2 hours. However, that was kind of a sput of the moment thing. I thought, I could swim across there... so I did. Then we tired 2 years ago, because ben and my brother wanted to try but the water was tooo cold. This year I came prepared. I brought my wetsuit, and after squeeezing into it I was ready to rock. I made it in 1 hour and 25 minutes! I guess this ironman training thing is paying off. I spent the rest of the day lounging on the beach. Monday morning we woke up to pouring rain. But by the time we finished breakfast it had cleared up and turned into another hot beautiful day. I got a quick 10k run in then headed down to the beach to enjoy our last full day at the lake. My brother, his girlfriend, and I had to leave the hot weather and started the long trip home on tuesday.

Since Ben couldn't come to goodsoil, he headed to fernie for some training and a visit with his mom. He biked 160 kms on saturday! I was so impressed. The furthest we had gone previously was 140 kms. Then Ben had a chance to go over and see the lodge where we are getting married and it is beautiful!

Despite some of the drama that happened, it is going to be beautiful and perfect.

In other news, I have a final interview with scotia bank today. This could be an amazing opportunity for me so hopefully everything works out. Actually, I have already turned down one job just because I really want this one. So with me luck!