20th April, Perth, WA

Last night we turned up at the Sheraton Hotel without the following - wallet, purse, credit cards and both of our phones. It was a rookie error!

Rich picked us up and we headed to the Bluewater Grill to pick up our pressies and flowers.

That afternoon, we had a BBQ. All of my family was over from Victoria at the one time, it was pretty sweet. Tim did a great job on the tongs.

Tan was quite wrapped with all the lovely presents.

19th April, Heathcoate, Western Australia

The biggest and best adventure of them all. Our wedding. The day was everything that we wanted it to be with those that we wanted to share it with us. Perfect!

12th April, Perth, Western Australia

We are back writing. It has taken some time to get the momentum back up. We have been busy!
The 12th of April was our Bucks / Hen's night...

From my side Azza picked up Kinga and I and then grabbed Will and Timbo and we hit the Swan River with tins and fishing rods. We dropped our lines in and we got a call from Renae. The girls were already on the way up the river on their lunch/wine cruise when Renae found out they weren't going to float past where we were fishing.

We quickly packed up and hit Bassendean under the Tonkin Highway Bridge. We had a solid plan!! We had just arrived and hadn't got our fishing lines in the water when the girls boat approached. Us fellas dropped our strides, stood proudly there fishing in our jocks!

The girls were impressed and the captain gave us a blast on the horn! A solid plan executed well. Anyway we waited for about 45 minutes in our jocks fishing and prepared for the next passing of the boat. The boat come past, we stood proudly in jocks and got plenty of shouts and another toot of the horn from the boat. Well, Kinga and I just had a stubby holder covering our private parts and our jocks around our ankles.

We thought the girls were a bit quite, so we got kit back on and walked back to the car park. As we got to the car park, another Swan River wine cruise went past. I took my chance and dropped my strides this time to the right boat!

We all got in the car and took off to Azza's and we could not believe we spent all this time preparing for the girls and we ended up stripping off for the wrong boat!!

Back Azza's we played cards, drank beer, had a barbie and had some entertainment. A good night in all.

From the girls perspective, we boarded onto a boat up the Swan River for lunch and wine tasting and then onto the 'Lucky Shag' for a few drinks and then into Northbridge. I was dressed in two wedding veils, a checklist of items I had to complete for the evening and various umm, items, pinned on me or around my neck, and a number of games to participate in. The girls had a rollicking great night, ending up in a kebab bar in the early hours of the morning in Northbridge providing a fascinating demonstration to the staff. Without going into too much detail, a good night was had by all.

9th April, Perth, Western Australia

At some point well before your wedding you are meant to have what is referred to as 'engagement photo's' with your photographer. As we had been out of the country for so long we only had the opportunity to do ours ten days before our wedding.

These photo's are meant to be an opportunity to for us to get familiar with the photographer and having our photo taken. We felt slightly awkward hanging around Hyde Park pretending to look very natural. We were however, happy with the results. A plug to the photographer http://www.ericaserena.com/

5th April, Perth, Western Australia

We have been really lucky as Rebekah, one of our friends in an excellent organiser and she has helped so much in our abscence overseas in getting everything ready. She has been awesome! Needless to say, my involvement from Canada has been minimal, just more so in confirming if I like what has been picked. I'm pretty casual.

This week was a rush of getting stuff done. Tan and I visited the wedding planner and venue (twice), went to the table setting place (below), bought cake bags and cards, went to the Bluewater Grill for tasting of the wedding menu (yum - check out the dukkah crust lamb below), discussed the song list with the DJ, and had an engagement photo shoot and meeting with the photographer.

So it was a pretty hectic week but once it was done all we had to do was prepare for the bucks/hen's night, write our vows and meet the celebrant.

We got the chance to go out for dinner with Tan's mum and partner, Richard, and her Aunty Bren from England. En Rico was the place to be.

I got to go skateboarding with my brother a few times and busted some great moves. We had a lot of fun.

We also did a spot of fishing in the sun catching some toadfish. Mel loves her toadies!

2nd - 4th April, Vancouver - LA - Sydney (delayed)-Perth, Australia

Well, my Canada trip had to come to an end. The work I was doing turned out well and now I can focus coming back to Australia to finalise our wedding. Vancouver again was unusually sun drenched and flying out with the mountains loaded with snow was again a great sight.

I passed over one of the US volcanoes, don't know which one though.

LAX was the usual shit hole and I am trying my best to avoid it future. Needless to say, our flight was delayed in taking off from there even though they boarded us nearly an hour earlier.

I did see an Air India jumbo with the wierdest window frame design.

On arrival in Sydney, I had views of the harbour bridge and CBD. Sydney is on the cards for one of Tan and my future trips.

I had to hang out in Sydney for an extra four hours but did bump into an old work mate from Kalgoorlie there. The world is very small.

Tan was waiting for me at the airport and amazingly so were my bags! It was great to be back with her again!!

29-30th March, Vancouver, BC

Back in Vancouver, snow was falling, ironic as it is supposed to be spring conditions. Sitting in the office on Saturday watching the snow fall and fall as large clumps sliding off the building was quite nice.

By the following the day the snow had all melted. Here is a shot from my apartment window.

After a big half day at work on Sunday, Leo called up and asked if I would like to come fly his kite at Jericho Beach. Why not? It was a beautiful spring day in Vancouver, a balmy 8 degrees Celsius. We caught a taxi and the driver spoke loudly to his mate on his mobile phone in pahsskwami or some language like that for the whole trip which we thought was quite rude. The wind was gusty and awesome to fly a kite with. The sun poked it’s head from the clouds for most of the afternoon while Hornado and I got the kite in the air. Leo was getting in some practice before heading to Mexico for some kite surfing. Leo dominated and I went better than the last time. Towards the end I swooped some kids walking along the beach unintentionally and landed the kite numerous times like a John Denver plane ride. Ooops! It was a great way to spend an afternoon. Vancouverites love seeing the sun and if it isn’t raining they embrace the fine(-ish) weather.

A few beers at the local sailing club and then back into town. Leo and I caught up with Belly, the guy that pushed me around the slopes of Whistler months previous, We were lucky as the Loose Moose did $6.95 surf and turf. We washed that down with a few tins with another bloke and his missus, who we have snowboarded with, Jason.

28th March, Points North - Shea Creek SK - Vancouver, BC

The highlight of the trip was that a group of us were visiting Shea Creek, half owned by the company I work for. This is a huge uranium deposit, though quite deep.

The sunrise over Raven Lake on this cool morning wasn't too bad.

It was still a bit fresh on the way to the airport, only -25C.
The airstrip at Points North was it's wintery white self. To the left of the snow banks is where Wes used to park his A-star helicopter in summer.
We had a charter plane which flew us across to the western side of the Athabasca Basin.
Leo and I - footy photo at the Cluff Lake international airport.
On arrival at the Cluff Lake offices, we saw that they had it well decked out with two story permanent accomodation and large core farm of historical core.

We had a presentation to set the scene of where the project was at and we were amazed at how much uranium was in the ground on the deposit. Cluff Lake is now closed but they had a long history of mining. We saw this photo of a team of hockey players from the 80's. Check out the second from the left. This guy had the grooviest moustache. Maybe I could get one like that?

Afterwards, we visited the core shack and saw some quite high grade core. The 60% uranium by weight is probably the heaviest and highest value core sample Leo and I have ever laid our hands on. At $100/lb, this rock at this grade is worth $132,000 a tonne!!!

After a great visit we all boarded the plane and took off to Saskatoon. As we left it started snowing. The snow is awesome!