Family Bowling Night

We did a family bowling night as a church event last weekend and had a really fun time. This is our friend Paul. Ashley caught him at the perfect moment for this shot.

These are a few of the people that were there. The gentleman sitting in the background on the bench is Merv, my bowling buddy. He and I pretty much stayed side by side in scores the whole night as you'll see in the picture below of the scoreboard. Notice our final scores.

Aysia, Jessica, Laura, Stephanie & Rayna (not shown) made up the "girlpower" team.

Final scoreboard for my team. Broden's score is pretty good considering he's only 5!

Yup, That's My Son!

It seems to me that I've posted in the past pictures of Andrew and referred to them as "a face only a mother could love". It seems to be a reoccuring theme in our house!

Minot, North Dakota

We took a couple of days to get away this Thanksgiving weekend and headed to Minot, North Dakota. It was the first time we had crossed the border since all the new rules & regulations were implemented and this is how part of Ashley's conversation with the Border Guard went...

BG: "Sir, what do you do for a living"
Ashley: "I'm a pastor"
BG: "Where are headed today?"
Ashley: "Minot, North Dakota"
BG: "What's the reason for your visit?"
Ashley: "Just to get away for a couple of days - tourism"
BG: "Terrorism?"
Ashley: "Huh? Terrorism? No....TOURISM!!!"
BG: "Oh, I thought terrorism was a strange answer for a pastor!"

Thank goodness he had a good sense of humour!

We stayed at the Sleep Inn which is attached to a mall - all we had to do was walk through the hotel lobby and into the mall! How convenient! Also in this hotel is this awesome waterpark! We spent hours and hours here and it was definitely worth the trip. These waterslides kept Ashley and the kids entertained for hours - I only went down 4 times! The purple slide in the middle goes through to the outside of the building before coming back in.

This is the "kiddie" pool which was a lot of fun even for the big kids in our family! Over to the right of this pool is a huge clover leafed shaped hot tub which seats about 48 people.

This is the "regular" swimming pool.

We were on the 4th floor so there was always a big discussion as to who was going to press all the buttons!

For those of you who know Ashley well, you'll understand these pictures. If you don't understand...don't ask!

Corner Gas

If you're a fan of Corner Gas then you'll recognize these next couple of pictures. We knew that the tv show was filmed somewhere near us, and we passed it on our way to North Dakota this weekend. The set is closed for the winter and all the signage is down and the windows boarded up, but this will give you a glimpse of what the set looks like.

I wasn't a big fan of this show until we moved out here. Having lived here for a few months, now when I watch this show I say "Oh, now I get it!".

The town where the show is filmed is Rouleau, but the sign on the grain elevator has been changed to reflect the name of the town they use in the show - Dog River.

Volleyball!

Laura has entered the world of school sports for the first time and she's starting with volleyball. Tonight was her first game and she did really good for the first time!