Happy Anniversary!

Amanda and Paul celebrate their wedding Anniversary this weekend!!!


Congrats and best wishes for another exciting year together.


Wish we were out East to help you celebrate!

Say Hello Sgt. Boyd!

What some of you may or may not know is that in addition to snowboarding in Montana last weekend, we were also celebrating!!! Being as modest as he always is, Scott didn't mention that he was promoted to Sgt. last week! I'm really proud of you Scott – the hard work's paying off!!!

Congratulations Sgt. Boyd!!!!!

Unfortunately I don't have any photos of Scott in his uniform (I know, I know…it awful that I have the privilege of being married to a man in uniform and never get to see him in it…but maybe that will change now??!!!!) so I've had to settle on a different kind of photo…maybe after Brett sees this photo of you showing off your moped skills you will end up as one of the traffic guys?

America's Big Secret!

We found out about America's Big Secret this weekend! It's called Big Sky Resort and let us tell you - it is amazing!!!

The Snow/Weather
If you want powder, you've come to the right place. Near the top of the mountains we were boarding in almost knee deep snow - wicked! It was snowing when we arrived @ the resort on Friday night. We awoke to a clear blue sky and sunshine on Saturday morning and it made for an epic day of boarding. Sunday was a little more cloud covered - but our sun/wind burned faces were thankful!

The People
First, the staff @ the resort and on the mountain were great - very friendly. Second, the crowds were non-existent. Seriously -- people at the resort were talking about how busy the Easter Weekend was and everyone was sorry for the 'long line-ups' for the chair lifts. Crazy! The second ride of the day we had about a 4 minute lift wait. EVERY other ride we skied up and got on the chair.

The Resort
They are still developing the village type feel of the resort -- new stores were just opening -- but you can see the potential. We stayed in a Studio room with kitchenette (although we didn't use it) and the suites were just built last year - so everything was modern -- slate/stone, log-cabin type feel. It was right at the base of the hill and we were able to board right up to the 2nd floor entrance on our last run of the day! The big surprise was the prices -- you expect to get hosed for lunch on the hill -- but we found great hot dog/sandwich/pizza places that all offered lunch - sandwich, drink, chocolate bar or chips for $7. Very impressed!

The Boarding
It was Scott's first time on a mountain - so he was a little worried about the long runs. But Katie can be quoted as saying, "heck no-techno, he did wicked!" Scott was equally impressed with Katie's show-stopping skills on the hills as she spent some time bombing through the trees and shredding through the powder like a pro!

The hill had a great variety of runs for experts to beginners. And the mountain was so massive that we didn't see it all during our two-days of boarding. Although we did board all the way down from the second-highest chair! We didn't dare brave the gondola ride up to the peak where you actually had to register/log-in/log-out and ski with 3 other people for safety. Yikes!

What else can we say -- we had a great Easter Weekend in Montana! We don't know why more people aren't exploring this great area?! It is a little longer of a drive from Calgary (8hrs) than most ski resorts we are fortunate to be surrounded by. But take it from us - it's worth the drive and with the lack of crowds on the hill....you'll thank us!

p.s. -- On the way home, Katie was almost eaten by a dinosaur!

Outdoors -- Hill Training

We said good-bye to the indoor trainers tonight (we hope for the rest of the season!) And we did our workout outside. It was a beautiful evening and we were on the road by 6pm to make the most of the daylight savings - and made it home at 8pm as it was getting dark.

Tonight was our hill course (we did some route scouting last weekend and have a few different rides planned to help us with our climbs, endurance and speed workouts.) We rode 37kms and climbed just shy of 2000 feet (600m) of elevation. We saw a variety of hill grades - but nothing over 10%

We are both feeling good and can feel the winter training paying off on some of the longer climbs (10+ minutes of climbing at a time)

We have to take our camera with us - because the area has some fantasitc views of the rolling hills, farm land and Calgary Skyline in the far, far distance. For those of you looking to ride - the roads were in great shape - we were on our mountain bikes - but there wasn't a lot of gravel and they made some major improvements on paving some of the secondary roads in the area. Ok, enough scouting reports, we know! Here's our graphs for the evening:

Until next time...

Bad Timing!

The past few weekends we've been spoiled -- amazing weather that enabled us to get outside on the bikes for our rides. It tricked us into a false sense of Spring! And today, the weather reminded us that Calgary weather changes every 5 minutes.

We awoke to more snow and chilly temps that are going to keep us inside on our bike trainers for today's ride. The irony is that next weekend - we'd like lots of fresh snow because we'll be snow boarding in Montana! Ahhh, such is life.

But to help keep us motivated (like a week-long race wasn't scary enough!) We found some photos that are wicked and remind us of the fun of biking. Enjoy!

Gimmia "A"…"V"…"R"…"I"…"L"…What Does That Spell? Avril!!!!

Any of you who keep up to date on the blog know that "I" wanted to go see Avril Lavigne more than anything…and last night I got my wish!!! Scott picked me up at my office after work and we went for dinner and then headed to the concert. Even driving to the concert we could tell we were going to be a LITTLE out of place – every car around us had 8-12 year old girls clad in striped stockings, unusual neck ties, and steaks of pink in there hair.

Upon getting to the entrance I thought I would be a good wife and let as many people as I could, know that my loving husband was the greatest for sacrificing "HIS" macho image and bringing "ME" to the Avril concert. As the nice young man scanned out tickets I said "Isn't my husband the best for bringing me to the Avril concert?!!!" He didn't hesitate for a moment before saying "Yes, he is the best husband in the world" - in the most sympathetic voice I might add…you could tell that he had offered to work just to get out of taking his girlfriend!

Let the mass hysteria begin…we walked through the door to find thousands of 8-12 year old girls (and their parents of course) all lined up to get t-shirts, posters and just about anything else "Avril" they could. It was crazy – they were about 30 deep AND 30 wide, all trying to get their little hands on some pink t-shirt or another! Fortunately, it wasn't too difficult to navigate since not one of them made it past our shoulders!!!

Once we made it past the chaos we ran into a couple of friends we hadn't seen in ages…who were of course their with their 8-12 year old children. We said our hello's which was promptly followed by "we didn't know you two had kids?"…we told them we didn't have kids and following the awkward silence, we made our way to our seats.

Boys Like Girls put on a great, high energy show and both Scott and I are really looking forward to seeing them again when they come back this summer – they would be fantastic in a smaller venue! It was during this part of the show that we saw the first of many father-daughter bonding moments as they danced together and had a great time – it almost made me want to have some kids of our own…until Avril hit the stage and the ear piercing screaming of 8-12 year old girls nearly deafened us!!! Don't worry Mom, that was enough to set me straight again!!! One other noticeable thing was the seizure inducing blinking glow sticks that everyone had (and when I say everyone I mean the 8-12 year old girls). It was actually a pretty amazing sight when the lights were down.

I think most of you have figured out that we didn't go to see Avril because "I" wanted to go…and it only took about three songs before all the 8-12 year old girls figured that out too. I was literally the ONLY person in the crowd that didn't know EVERY word to EVERY song. Scott did a little better then me and managed to keep his side of our little covert operation under wraps until about song six, when he just couldn't contain himself any longer (Hey, Hey, You, You, I Don't Like Your Girlfriend!!!), but whatever, we have nothing to prove to 8-12 year old girls, right Scott!!!

I do have to admit that she does have one of the most amazing voices I have heard…there aren't too many artists who sound better on stage than they do on their albums – with the exception of Ashley Simpson who miraculously sounds identical??? We did have a great night, with a LOT of laughs.

Scott - any time "I" want to go see Avril again…count me in!!!!

P.S. I also learned to use some cool new features on my phone...Like the one below when taking picures!!!!

Katie Go Bang!

We had an amazing day in Calgary with +11 and the sun bright and warm. Too nice of a day to be inside and since today was our long ride - we hit the road on our mountain bikes (still too much gravel on the sides of the road for our road bikes yet!)

We did an out & back to downtown (65km) to enjoy the Bow River. But the day was not without incident. Katie had a tumble that had my heart racing. She is fine, but will be sore for a few days, I'm sure. She just got distracted and accidentally grabbed her front brake - thus sending her over her handle bars!

She's eager to share her new scrapes and bruises -- so here's some photos for those of you that have grown tired of our graphs!

A good road rash on her chin!

And her knee took most of the skid - a bruise is sure to follow!

After the ride we were treated to dinner @ Adam and Roxcie's! Roxcie continues to impress with her cooking as we had wicked homemade Chicken Cordon Blu - yum. Thanks guys!

Random Thoughts On A Day Off

Sorry blog fans! We've been busy busy Boyds and haven't had a chance to blog lately. You'd think we'd have lots to blog about since we've been busy - but, sadly, it's mostly been work related and biking indoors (and we have tons of training blogs already!)


So since we can't blog about the details of me working 6-15hour night shifts in a row, I'm going to share some random thoughts (I'm unsupervised @ home!) Typically this is when my mother-in-law reads the blog and calls Katie and tells her that her husband is crazy : )




1. It shouldn't be so difficult to report your neighbour who is constructing an illegal basement suite! I called to report it and was met with lackluster support. She actually tried to talk me out of reporting it -- "Are you certain it's an illegal suite? How do you know? The construction has to be more than $1000 to require a permit - how do you know how much they are spending? In Calgary's rental market we really do need more options...Etc..." So I tell her I've done my spy homework and observed no building permit and there is everything including the kitchen sink sitting in the backyard. Plus, I don't want "rental options" in my neighbourhood! Building is almost complete - so we'll see who moves in. Arggh!



2. I woke up worrying about our trees in our backyard. We planted some great trees last Spring and had a nasty dump of snow the same weekend -- trees were uprooted and some of them didn't get leaves last year as a result. I dread the thought of having to dig them up and replant. So if you can hear me - grow trees, grow!

The good news is that we have some cool things coming up to blog about for the rest of March and that will spare you further random thoughts of the day! Next week we are going to a concert @ the Saddledome: Boys Like Girls are opening for some solo female artist so we want to check them out. (OK - the female artist is Avril!) Don't judge. And then for Spring Break we are hitting the slopes @ Big Sky, Montana and should have some wicked video and photos of us shredding the slopes on our boards.

Thanks for stopping by for some random thoughts. We hope you've had a laugh and you'll come back soon.