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!

25th August, Points North, SK (Dan) - Perth-Sydney-Honolulu-Vancouver-Toronto - (Tan)

Tan is in Canada!! Hooray!!! She made it to Toronto which is awesome. - More to follow from Tan's perspective shortly.

Tonight I went to Raven to say “C’ya later” to Duzza and Dan. They are going back to Uni soon. After some good tucker, Derek, Horn and myself went for a skate session. After all these years and me talking up skating Leo had never seen me skate. Before I even started I grabbed a few sheets of ply and stuck them behind the quarter pipe. Leo was a bit confused with this. I grabbed his old school deck with big wide trucks and starting tearing it up. One of my first tricks was a perfect frontside 50-50, 270 out to fakie followed by a couple of blunt tricks and a front side rock. Well then I was on fire. Backside 180 off the busted quarter pipe, followed by a fully tweaked Japan air. Next up, I pulled a belter of a melanchollie, ollie to sad air. To finish off my little spell a perfect one footer air followed by a gap ollie from one row of core boxes to another. That’s all I needed to do 1) because it took it out of me and 2) because I was bleeding from a gash to my hand from a spill. We skated hard with Derek pulling out massive finger flip tricks, big grinds and frontside 5-0 to tail, revert out. Leo was getting his 50-50’s and a few feebs. It was a great session and good way to finish my first swing in Saskatchewan.

On the drive back the moon was up but there was some weakly developed northern lights. They will be better when we return!

9th August, Raven, SK

What is there to do in northern Saskatchewan? Build a skate park of course. The team while I was a Points made a temporary skate park out of ply and core boxes. Derek was keen for me to give it a go so here we were having an afternoon skate. A few tricks in I decided to do a half cab heel flip, too easy, but I ended up pole axing myself like an icy pole stick. No blood but sore. Brad came down from Points and we nailed a few more tricks like a no footer and a 180 backside air off the smaller quarter pipe. Something I didn’t imagine I would be doing at work. I keep on pinching myself that I am getting paid to this as well.