Hi guys, thought you might like to know that we have updated a load of photos from the following categories:

• Saskatoon
• San Antonio

We have also added photo galleries for these games:

• Saskatoon Blades Vs Lethbridge Hurricanes
• Prince Albert Raiders Vs Lethbridge Hurricanes

More photos will be added tomorrow.

We knew today was going to be a long one, so sleep was of utmost importance.  Sadly, between late night packing and over-worked minds, we only got between 4 and 5hrs before our alarm rudely woke us up at 4am.  Because Bel and Terry were both sick, we caught a cab to the airport after a quick but sad goodbye with Bel.  It was rather cold outside at that time of the morning, so the heat of the cab was most welcomed.

We got the shock upon arriving at the airport… it started snowing!  Yes folks, after 12 days in Saskatoon, it actually snowed.  Not enough to do anything with, but we saw the flakes, so there ya go.  Apparently the next day it was snowing and cold… go figure.

We had a quick Breakfast of Timmy Ho’s (a final hurrah) and then went through customs and to our gate.   The flight itself was smooth and uneventful, and pretty short.  It took only 1hr and 18 minutes (approx) to get to our stop at Minneapolis Minnesota. We had to go through border patrol here of course, and Wendy stepped up her game, yet again proving that no custom official in the world can stay serious when she’s around.  We got asked the regular question “Did you bring any food, drinks or animal products in with you”, to which she replied in a heartbeat, “We did bring a Koala with us.  It’s stuffed though, not a real one”.  The guy tried not to smile but couldn’t help but laugh.  Yes, Wendy 6, Customs 0.  After going through, we re-checked our luggage back in for our next flight to Dallas.

The stayover in Minnesota was only 2hrs, so we found this great little place that did eggs, toast, bacon etc and had a coffee before yet again getting back on another plane and heading to one of our most fave places in the world… Dallas.  This flight wasn’t as smooth as the first, mainly due to rain all over the DFW area.  The majority of the flight was bumpy, with the final 30 minutes as we descended through the rain providing a few gasps from the passengers.  We did land safely though, so all’s good.

Our next stop was Enterprise Rental Cars, which was at the Rental car area of the DFW airport.  To get there you jump on the rental car shutting and go for about a 10min bus ride.  All part of the service at DFW   We had booked an economy car, such as a Hyundai Accent or similar, but it seems that they were all out when we picked up our car, so guess what… free upgrade people!  Oh hell yes!  We had a choice of a Focus… and others.  The others were irrelevant, because the Red 2008 Ford Focus was also the sports model, so the choice was pretty much made for us.  We do love the Ford Focus car.

Now, we got up at 4am, traveled from Saskatoon to Dallas, Tx and now had to drive to San Antonio… that’s about a 5hr drive!  As it was not only night time, but raining, the driving was all down to me, and i should point out… holy crap, drivers over here are mad as batshit!  Cars were doing 75MPH in torrential rain… and unfortunately, it meant a very fast, and very scary drive, especially for someone who was already tired.  We did make it though, with only 1 small problem.  About half way there we came across a car on fire that was being put out by the authorities.  The toxic smoke from the fire got into the car, putting Wendy into a semi-scary asthma attack.  About 6 puffs on the Ventolin, some calm breathing and a blast of fresh air from the fans and she slowly came better.  The coughing though lasted all the way to San Antonio, and through the night.  She’s good now though.

We finally arrived in Boerne, Texas where our friend Amber and her family live about 9pm.  Boerne is just north of San Antonio.  It is so great seeing Amber and meeting her husband, Grady (spelling could be wrong, I apologise if it is). We talked until late at night before finally heading to bed.

It’s our last day.  Our last day in Canada, our last day in Saskatoon, and our last day with our friends Bella, Terry and the 2 munchkins, Tom and Bob.

We’ve had a fantastic time here in Saskatoon, and it’s been awesome catching up with friends and seeing some fantastic hockey.  If not for Bella and Terry we would never have seen Dane Cook live, or seen the Blades take on Lethbridge, or see snow in Regina while seeing the Moose Jaw Warriors play Scott Glennie (Stars draft pick), Brayden Schenn and the Brandon Wheat Kings, or take a pilgrimage to Prince Albert to see where Mike Modano played his junior hockey.  We want to send a shout-out to Kirk, Kelly and the kids.  While we never got a chance to catch up with Kelly, we had a great time with Kirk and promise to do it again at some point in time!

Canada has been pretty fantastic, and while we may be leaving early tomorrow morning, we will never forget the great times we had up here.

Tomorrow we head down to Dallas, and then drive to San Antonio where our extended family, “The Shorts” live.

To Bella and Terry, thank you for putting up with us for the last 12 days.  Thank you for accepting us into your house and the amazing time we had.  You guys are the best.

Did you watch the Grey Cup game tonight?  We did… and will get onto that a bit later in the post.

The day was a quiet one.  After a late night reading after we got home from the PA Raiders game, we finally got out of bed at 9:45am.  Well, I did.  Wendy stayed in bed and slept in til 11am as she wasn’t feeling all that good.

We decided to shoot up to the Starbucks and get a coffee and maybe a goodie or 2.  The local Starbucks here do a killer Oatmeal and Candy cookie.  It’s actually an Oatmeal and M&M cookie, but i’ll let them call it candy.  So I got one of those and Wendy got a double chocolate chunk cookie… what in Australia we’d call a double-choc cookie.  Being bold I tried the Gingernut Latte… a double-shot coffee with ginger syrup.  Not bad, but really not all it’s cracked up to be.  Wendy went for the Peppermint Mocha, which is one off the nicest drinks i’ve ever had.  Upon getting home though, it seems the peppermint latte and Terry’s Caramel Latte got mixed up.  Wendy had a couple of sips of hers before going to catch some sleep.  Terry was wondering what happened to his latte as it tasted weird.  It turns out Wendy had the latte and Terry had the mocha.  Bit of a mix up there.

After lunch (coffee & cookies) we decided to head back out to the Market Mall as we wanted to pick up a few more hockey cards.  We shot through to the shop and found it full off people playing “Magic The Gathering”.  Think of a small shop, full of geeky people playing roll playing dice games (similar to the old Dungeons and Dragons).  An interesting sight, i assure you.  We didn’t go there for the MTG though, we went for the bin of hockey cards they have at the front of the store.  The cards are all random packs of about 20 – 30 cards per pack, which sell at 4 packs for $5.  The cards themselves range from 2009 edition cards, to special edition rookie cards, to vintage cards, to WHL prospect cards… quite literally a bit of everything.  We ended up picking up 24 packs off them, for a total of $30 (+ tax).  After a short stop at Safeway we headed home again to prepare for the Grey Cup.

The Grey Cup is the Canadian Football League (CFL) equivalent of the NHL’s Superbowl.  It’s the penultimate prize for CFL players, and the chalice for which they sleep, eat and play the game.  If you think i’m hyping this up, you’re right; but for a very good reason.

Here in Saskatchewan, the Roughriders are like a religion.  You’re born with “Rider Pride”, and when it comes to the team, normal everyday people transform into bloodcurdling, slightly psychotic green machines.  Seriously, i don’t think i’ve ever met more passionate sports fans than those of the Saskatchewan Roughriders.  Last weekend the Riders won the Western Conference final, earning their place in the Grey Cup, where they battled it out today against the “Als”, or as they’re formerly known the Montreal Alouettes.  The Als had beaten the Riders in both their meetings this season, so the Riders had a thing to prove going into this game.

And so they did… at least, for 59 minutes and 55 seconds.

The Riders were solid and actually outplayed the Als across the vast majority of the game.  Going into the 4th quarter of the game the Riders had 20-10 lead and looked to continue their strong play in the final 15 minutes of the game.  The Als however had a thing or 2 to say about that, and erased a 16pt deficit in the final 10 minutes of the game.  With less than 10 seconds left in the game, and 2pts down the Als had a shot at a field goal to win the game but Damon Duval (Als punter) missed!  That’s it, game over… right?  No!  All of a sudden there are flags on the field and a penalty called against the Riders for too many men on the field.  The Als now had a second chance at the field goal, and this time Duval didn’t miss, putting the Als ahead and guaranteeing an Alouette’s a victory by a 28-27 scoreline.

If Obi Wan Kenobi were here we would have sat down in shock and felt like he heards thousands of voices call out and were suddenly cut off.  That’s how it felt for Riders fans, so see their team throw an amateurish stupid penalty in that point of the game, to cost them not just a game, but THE most important game of the year.   We’re not even fans of the game, but we felt the massive letdown, like a punch to the gut.

After the game we were all kinda quiet, which I think was partly due to the game and partly due to most people in the house not feeling too good.  The rest of the night was spent relaxing, catching up on reading and watching the hockey on TV.

Tomorrow is our last full day here in Saskatoon, and we’re planning on heading to the second hand bookstore again to pick up some good hockey books.

It seems our blog post yesterday caused quite a stir.  Today, in order to make things much easier, we offer you this  spoon… its curve will provide maximum movement and you will find the handle nicely shaped  for fast and efficient stirring.

Now, on to the events of today.

We decided to sleep in a little today so finally got out of bed at 8:45am, dressed and headed out for our morning walk up to the local Starbucks.  The walk was, as usual, uneventful.  We decided to repeat yesterdays longer walk so we could take a look at the houses along the tree lines streets.  I picked up a Venti non-fat latte, while Wendy had the tall peppermint mocha (a Christmas special drink that is absolutely amazing).

After walking home we checked the internet, and wow, what a shock we were in for.  It seems that within 5hrs of yesterdays blog going live we had comments from Hutterites pretty much verbally crucifying us about a segment of yesterdays blog update.  Oh well, life goes on.   I am curious as to how the blog was found so quickly after it was posted.  Hell, most people don’t even think the Hutterites have the Internet!  Anyway, you’ll notice that the blog post from yesterday has since been edited.  See, we are respectful

Right, back on track we go… after our experience with the angry Christians we decided to head out to Market Mall, which is a shopping mall here in Saskatoon.  Many of the locals call it the “Gerry Mall” due to its close proximity to the nursing homes, and the fact that the vast majority of the people who shop there are elderly.  To any elderly people reading this we mean no offense, please don’t stone us.

Lunch was a quick stop at A&W for a burger and fries.  Not our first option for lunch as we usually prefer to avoid the greasy food, but the rest of the places in the mall looked incredibly dodgy so A&W won out.  The burgers were actually pretty nice.  Wendy had the “mama burger” and I had the “Uncle sirloin burger”.  Clearly A&W like to keep it “in the family”

After lunch we went down to this great little sports memorabilia store.  It’s actually a fantasy gaming type store (Magic the Gathering) that has a load of hockey and other sports memorabilia.  We picked up 4 packs of random hockey cards, a mini Dallas Stars Zamboni and a replacement collectors puck/card holder for Wendy’s Modano card which broke a few years back.  The store is incredible and has some absolutely awesome stuff, including a full McFarlaine hockey rink which you can use to set your hockey figurines in a game-like manner.  The rink and players would cost a load though, so it stayed there.

A few stops through Zellers and Safeway, before we headed over to McNalleys books where we ended up drooling over all the hockey books… there are a LOT of them.  We’re going 2nd hand book shopping again before we leave and have a list of books we want to keep an eye out for.

When we opened the hockey cards at home we found a fantastic card for a guy who plays for the Saskatoon Blades; Jyri Niemi, an Islanders draft pick.  We’re hoping to get the card signed by Niemi before we leave here.

We ended up having a quiet afternoon and evening catching up on email.  Bella cooked a fantastic Shepherds Pie for supper that was simply scrumptious.  Right now we have NHL hockey on TV (Blue Jackets @ Senators), so it’s another good night for TV.

Tomorrow we have a treat that Terry arranged for us… but you’ll have to wait for tomorrow’s update to find out.

ETA: We were just watching the NHL and heard that Brayden Schenn has been signed by the LA Kings, and will be playing in his first ever NHL game tonight Vs the Canucks.

According to the official Kings website:

LOS ANGELES – The Los Angeles Kings have signed center Brayden Schenn to a One-Day NHL Regular Season Amateur Tryout Agreement and he is expected to join the Kings today in Vancouver, Kings President/General Manager Dean Lombardi announced today.

This means that Wendy and I possibly had the pleasure of watching Brayden Schenn in his last ever WHL game last weekend down in Moose Jaw!   Wendy and I wish Brayden Schenn the best and hope he does incredibly well in the big leagues!

We went for a walk… and survived.

After yesterdays semi-frozen adventure to Starbucks, today we decided to repeat the process with a few small changes to our attire.  I had thermal pants and jeans, a thermal shirt, hoodie, beanie and gloves.  Wendy had thermal pants, trackpants, thermal top, long-sleeve shirt, t-shirt, hoodie, beanie and gloves.  We bought these thermal clothes back in Brisbane at Kathmandu, and they’re designed to handle arctic temperatures.  We were incredibly warm for the walk, which was especially impressive considering it was -6 degrees Celsius when we left at 8:45am this morning!

Yesterday morning we took photos of the South Saskatchewan River which flows through Saskatoon.  Today that same river was covered in patches of ice!  That gives you an idea how cold it was overnight.  Needless to say, it was really amazing to see that.  We’d heard that the river freezes over during winter… heck, it gets down to -60 celsius in winter, so you’d expect it to, but seeing it actually with ice on it was just amazing.

We decided to be different at Starbucks today, and instead of going the non-fat latte route like usual  we got this drink they call the “espresso chocolate truffle”.  It’s essentially a signature hot chocolate with 2 shots of coffee added to it.  Super-strong, super-tasty… with one helluva kick!  One could argue that it’s a perfect winters day drink.

After getting back home, showering and having breakfast we headed out to Midtown Plaza, a shopping mall in downtown Saskatoon.  This mall has some fantastic stores, but the 2 main ones we were interested in were “the jersey shop” (i think that’s what it’s called) which sells sports (see: hockey) merchandise and jerseys and “Sportchek”, which is like the biggest sports store franchise across Canada.  Sportchek is where i bought my Team Canada Olympic jersey while we were in Vancouver.  Anyway, we ended up not buying anything (shocking eh) at those 2 stores, but did pick up the latest Tragically Hip CD from the music store there.

*hops on soap box*
I want to just say… holy crap are we ripped off for CDs in Australia!  Standard CD prices here are like $15!  DVDs are about the same price, and Blue Ray discs are only like $25!
*hops off soap box*

We then visited the “build A Bear” store, where Bella purchased, built and dressed 2 amazing bears in Ottawa Senators gear.  This store is absolutely incredible.. you literally choose every aspect of your teddy bear and build it from the stuffing out!  They even come with their own birth certificate and are registered to you, so if they get lost or stolen and handed in to a store they can track down the owner.  It’s just phenomenal!  The 2 bears Bella got were adorable.  One of them is this gorgeous black bear who she dressed in an Ottawa Senators hockey outfit including helmet and black skates.  the other is a fluffy tan bear who she dressed in blue jeans, a senators hoodie and converse sneakers.  Just amazing!

On the way home we stopped by Timmy Ho’s again to get some lunch.  You guessed it, Ham and Swiss sandwich combo… seriously, you have no idea how nice these things are!  Today however we branched out and instead of getting the regular Timmy Ho’s coffee I got the English Toffee and Wendy got the French Vanilla.  I guess in Australia they would be considered flavoured lattes.

The afternoon and evening was spent relaxing again, although both Tommy and Bobby were sick, which added a bit of drama to the evening.  They both seem a bit better now, so we’re all hoping it was just a little tummy bug.  It’s that time of year after all, and the bug is going around.  Our fingers are crossed that they’re both ok.

A quiet night for us, just been watching a bit of “As time goes by” on TV and caught the end of the Blue Jackets Vs Canadiens game on TSN, and now we’re going to settle down and read for a bit before bed.

Tomorrow itinerary is open, so we don’t yet know what we’re going to be doing.  We’re really enjoying he downtime after being on the go non-stop since arriving in Vancouver, so it’s been nice just relaxing and catching up with Bella, Terry and the kids.

Wendy and I had this fantastic idea about going for a walk this morning, as we’ve not been walking a lot since arriving in Saskatoon.  So at 8:30am today we get up and decide to walk up to the local Starbucks to buy a coffee and a bite to eat.

10 minutes into the walk, we start wishing we’d wrapped up in a few more clothes.  I had jeans, a long sleeve shirt, my hoodie and a cap on, Wendy, who’s normally dressed in 5 layers of clothing went in Thermal Pants, Trackpants, a long-sleeve shirt, a t-shirt, a thin v-neck synthetic jumper and a beanie… a LOT less than she would normally wear.  Neither of us were smart enough to wear gloves either.  Needless to say, it was an hours walk that consisted of step-shiver-step-shiver-step… rinse and repeat.  The Starbucks was hot and for a while warmed the hands, the heat did not last long as the cold turned our hot drinks into luke-warm lattes.  We found out upon getting back to the house that it was -3 degrees celcius outside!  Hell, no wonder it was slightly cold.  Anyway, we did survive, and breakfast and hot showers got us all back on track.   Well, almost… as Wendy picked up a nasty cough and potential chest infection. We’ll monitor that and see how it goes.

Terry came home from work early with the flu, so after Bella put the kids down we left the kids with Terry and we headed down town to “Olympia”, a sports/hockey store to see if we could pick up some memorabilia for ourselves and Dianne.  You would not believe who we found working in Olympia… Kirk!  Those who know us will also know Kirk (Raven), former Blue Tongue, employee at Skatebiz and all round great guy.  Well Kirk we found out works in Olympia here!  We knew he was in Saskatoon, and was actually planning to call him tonight anyway, but fate pointed us his way apparently.  Turns out, we think he heard us talking in the store and probably thought to himself “Wendy and Sam, Sam & Wendy”.  It was fantastic catching up with Kirk again, and we’re going to arrange to meet up for wings and beer one night, possibly after the Blades game this Friday.  He gave us a killer deal on a couple of awesome stretch caps.  Thanks Kirk, you’re a legend!

After shopping we headed back home after a stop at Timmy Ho’s for lunch, where we tried the Ham and Swiss sandwich combo.  I’m not sure if we’ve mentioned this before, but the Timmy Ho’s combos are pretty much legendary.  For less than $6.00 you get a Ham and Swiss roll (white or wheat with Ham, swiss cheese, lettuce, tomato and mayo), extra-large coffee and a donut.   We’ve had more of these combos than we’d like to admit… but sheesh, they’re fantabulous!

The afternoon and evening was a quiet one.  We didn’t really do that much, and spent the night catching up on reading and chatting with Bella and Terry.

Tomorrow morning we’re going to go for another walk… wrapped up a LOT warmer!

Last night we got a look at snow, and it was awesome!  By the time we went to bed the snow had stopped falling though so we figured by the time morning came there would not be much left.  It turns out, it started to snow again through the night and when we awoke, outside was a winter wonderland.

We got a few great photos of the snow outside and spent an hour or 2 chatting with our guests before packing up the mini-van and heading back home to Saskatoon.  The snow started to thin out pretty fast and then disappeared altogether within about 30 minutes of leaving Regina.  Terry explained that it’s not uncommon for Regina and Saskatoon to have quite different weather patterns.

Regina was in full “crazy mode” today, as the Saskatchewan Roughriders faced the Calgary Stampeders in the Canadian Football League (CFL) Western Conference Final.  It was the first time in years that Regina has hosted a finals game with the Roughriders in it (i believe that’s the case).  Needless to say, the entire province was awash in green and crazed Riders fans!  All the way home we saw cars heading towards Regina with Riders flags blowing proudly in the wind.

By the time we got home, there was an hour or so before the game started, so we got ourselves comfy in front of the TV to witness what to many locals is a historic event.

CFL is a bit like NFL, but it probably a little closer to it’s rugby origins than the American variation.  The game flows faster than the NFL, and is played on a field that is slightly wider and longer.  The game itself was interesting to watch, and thankfully the Roughriders pulled off a victory, meaning they now take on Montreal in the Grey Cup final held in Calgary (next week i think).

Bella cooked “pulled pork” and pierogies for dinner, which was really nice.  Pulled Pork is like a spiced pork that is slow cooked.  It’s really hard to say, but trust me, it’s phenomenal!  The evening is now just relaxing a little before bed.

Tomorrow we’re going to visit the CUC and watch the crew put down the Ice for this weeks Saskatoon Blades games.  We’re really looking forward to seeing how they do that first-hand.  Apparently we might even be able to help, but we’ll see how that goes.

We’re heading down to Regina and Moose Jaw soon and wont be back to Saskatoon til tomorrow afternoon.  We are unreachable til we return and won’t have the internet down there.  Photos will be updated upon returning home to ‘Toon.

Today was always going to be good, if for no other reason than we were going to see Dane Cook live tonight at the C.U.C.  Before we could get there however, we had a whole day to get through.

Our actual day started at 9:30am when the alarm went off.  Getting almost 9hrs sleep was huge for us, as over the last 2 weeks we’ve averaged less than 5hrs a night.  After getting up and doing the breakfast-shower-internet thing all loaded up into the mini-van and headed down to the local mall to get some lunch and hopefully find a new pair of jeans for me.

You would think that Saskatoon, being a cold city known for it’s long snowy winters would have undercover parking, right?  Apparently not.  The mall itself was like most malls, although the food court was pretty cool as it had loads of places to eat we’ve never seen before.  We ended up going on Bella’s suggestion and getting “Extreme Pita”, which i guess could best be described as a pita bread version of subway.  Incredibly nice, and like many places over here, incredibly well priced.

After lunch we headed into the mall and found this great sports memorabilia store where we picked up 5 packs of hockey cards for only $1 each!  All of them had Mike Modano cards on top, so we couldn’t say no.  Everything is green here right now thanks to the Saskatchewan Roughriders (Riders) making the playoffs!  I can’t remember the full details of where they are in the standings, but it’s the first time in years that the team has been this good, so everything is “Riders” right now.

After the sports store we went to Zellers where we found a great pair of Wrangler jeans for only $30.  They were on special, so the final price we paid was only $21!  Never have i found a pair of jeans so well priced.  With me underway we headed out and to Chapters-Indigo to look at books and pick up a Latte from Starbucks.  It turns out Latte’s don’t exist at Timmy Ho’s over here in Saskatchewan either… disappointing people, very disappointing.  Anyway, Starbucks was awesome, one of the best SB coffee’s i’ve had thus far.

All coffee’d up, we headed home for a few hours before heading out to Dane Cook.

Dane Cook… wow.  He had 2 opening comedy acts (Al Del Bene & Robert Kelly) who were both incredibly funny.  Thanks to Robert Kelly, I will never watch True Blood or read about Sookie Stackhouse the same!  Dane did over an hour and left people in stitches as he visited every un-PC joke you could think of, and then added some more just for good measure.  Like most Dane Cook shows, he pushed and pushed that line between OMG and OMFG, and did it incredibly well.  Needless to say, it was a show worth seeing, so if you get a chance, go see him!

After the show we hung in Terry’s office for a bit before heading back home, stopping first for a quick detour to Timmy Ho’s for a Hot Chocolate (liquid crack!).

Tomorrow we’re heading down to Regina and then on to Moose Jaw to see the Moose Jaw Warriors (WHL team) play.