Catching Up!

It's been awhile so this post will be a little of this and a little of that.

After the week in Granada, my sisters and I headed to Brussels for my next round of meetings. Since we had already been away for a week, I didn't extend the trip so there wasn't a lot of time for me to play tourist. We arrived in Brussels on Sunday morning, once we got settled into our hotel we walked down to Grand Place and over to see little Mannekin Pis.   There was a folk festival on in Grand Place with bands and these giant puppet characters. Mannekin Pis was dressed in one of his little costumes.

We ate out one evening at the Hard Rock Cafe Brussels.  Now I've been to the Hard Rock in Rome, Berlin and Brussels and will probably add London and Orlando to that list early next year.

Once my meetings ended on Friday morning, we did have the afternoon and went to visit the Atomium, which was part of the World's Fair held in Brussels in 1958.  For me, it was the first time I had been out of the downtown core of Brussels.  We walked through a park and to another wonderful old church.

Once home from this work trip, I wasn't in the office for long before I headed off to western Canada for my nephew's wedding. My brother and one of my sisters flew through Ottawa from Moncton NB so that we would be on the same flight to Calgary. We met in the Ottawa airport where we had lunch together.

There had been a lot of snow already in Airdrie, Alberta but by the time we got there, thankfully, most of it had gone.  The wedding was on Saturday and we arrived Thursday night so on Friday we went to the Calgary Zoo to see the pandas that are currently there on loan. The pandas were resting which I hear they do quite a lot.  We did see many other animals including the lions who had just be returned to their exhibit after meat had been hidden around for them to find.

The wedding on Saturday was a small but fun affair. My nephew and his new wife did a lot of the arrangements themselves with help from family and friends.

One of my nieces with her partner 

One of my sisters, with her daughter and son-in-law

The bride and groom with the groom's sister and mother.

Me, my brother and sisters (less one)

We weren't flying out until Tuesday so we decided to drive to Banff for the day on Sunday.  You can see the mountains from Airdrie but you need to go a bit further west to really see them. It was quite a scenic drive; only takes about an hour and half to get there.  Once we arrived we got a quick lunch at MacDonalds and then walked around and did a bit of shopping. We even went to the Fairmount Banff hotel as they have the best views of the Bow River off the back terrace.

Downtown Banff

View from the hotel

Since getting back from that quick trip, I've been back doing agility. We had a trial the past three weekends.  Keltic is still looking for that first Masters qualifying score; I know it will happen but I hope it doesn't take another year. Beckett has been whittling away at the number of qualifying scores he needs for his Silver Expert Snooker and Silver Expert Jumpers. Well, last weekend we got the last two qualifying scores we needed for the Snooker title.  And now we only need one more qualifying score for Expert Jumpers; once we get that final qualifying score, it will also give Beckett his Silver Versatility title for having achieved Silver Expert in four events.  A Silver Expert title means that you have 25 qualifying scores in that event except in Steeplechase which requires 50 qualifying scores.

That's it for agility for 2018, looking forward though to a good year in 2019.