Dinosaur Park

About an hour's drive from our home in Ralston is a place called Dinosaur Provinicial Park. We hadn't really realised but it's quite a big deal if you are into fossils, as it's where the most fossils and dinosaurs have ever been found. They've uncovered the remains of something like 6 different species of Dinosaur alone.

Driving up to the park is fascinating as you watch the landscape change first from the flat grasses of the prairie, to green wooded pastures like the UK and then eventually without much warning to something resembling the Grand Canyon!

Unfortunately unless you are into trekking across barren terrain, Dinosaur Park doesn't have much to offer other than a couple of impressive views and one large dinosaur skeleton. They didn't even have a place to get a drink and a sandwich! So it was a little bit of a disappointment, but we did get some good photos which we thought we'd share with you!

Skate School

Every night this week I'm attending the Ralston Devils skate school. Ice hockey is a massive sport in Canada and there are several teams who play every seaeson at BATUS. The Ralston Devils isthe ladies team.

Anyone can have a go at joining the team and most of us who took to the ice on Monday were complete novices. This week is all about learning how to skate, which for a lot of people means just learning how to stay upright! Fortunately you wear so much padding, falling over doesn't hurt!

Talking of which, I've got so much kit on you'd be forgiven for not recognising me in these photos! I'm the one with the stripey socks on!

Skate school starts tonight!

Although we are still enjoying a hot Canadian summer, this week sees the start of the ice hockey season. I've signed up to join the Ralston Devils and having spent much of last week buying and borrowing the necessary equipment, tonight we'll be hitting the ice for the first time.

Every evening this week we'll be attending skate school, then at the end of the month (once we've stopped falling over!) we'll all be going to hockey school.

It's fair to say that ice hockey gear is not the most attractive of outfits and I feel obliged to point out I have not put on 6 stone since I arrived, there is a normal size me under all that padding!

We're on the move!

This week we're moving house. We've been in our current 5 bedroom town house for 6 weeks. It has every gadget you could want (dishwasher, electric garage door etc.) but it's 50km from the base and as I start work at 6am, that means a long drive early in the morning and a total of 200km driving between us each day.

So on Wednesday, we'll be trading 165/403 South Ridge Drive...


For this, 7 Valcartier Avenue....

The biggest difference, other than the size of the house, is the amount of outside space we'll now have. All we currently have in Medicine Hat is the small yard you can see in the photo, in Ralston we'll have a huge garden.

Our new home has 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms (cheaper to heat, quicker to clean!) and most significantly is only a 5 minute bike ride from work.

Due to a very fortunate piece of timing, our removals aren't due to arrive until the week after we move, so what we do have to shift can be moved in one load in a small van. It's also timed very well for the start of the hockey season. The week after next I start skate school every evening at the Ralston Arena which is round the corner from our new home.

Getting ready for hockey!

The ice is going down at the arena in Ralston in a couple of weeks, so we've got ourselves kitted out for the ice hockey season. In the photo I'm wearing a rather sexy pair of "Jill shorts" which have padding to errr... protect your girlie bits!

Jim has an equally attractive pair of "Jack shorts" which make an excellent prop for Darth Vader impressions.

Our sticks were about $24 - a complete steal! Apparently wrapping tape around the head makes for better contact with the puck, I was sold on the idea when I saw that they had pink tape!

After spending all that money on scrapbooking stuff, I've also got round to doing my first page. It's not glued yet (which is why it's not straight!) but here's the result...

Scrap booking

Many people have asked me what the wives do to keep themselves occupied in Canada and here is a big part of the answer! Scrap booking is huge in Canada and an entire industry has built up around it selling wallpaper, embelishments, albums and special storage boxes. You may want to laugh, I certainly did, but I've seen the results and the albums look stunning.

Scrap booking here is absolutely nothing like anything we have in the UK. It's a hobby which is taken quite seriously. At BATUS there is a scrap booking club and much discussion amongst the girls about the various styles people use (North American being apparently very different from Canadian!)

With Jim at work on Saturday, I went for lunch with the girls followed by a shopping trip to a couple of scrap booking stores in Medicine Hat. The selection was bewildering but I came away with a range of items to help me put together my first few pages! All I need now is to get some prints of the photos I have taken.

Ralston Rodeo

Another day of fantastic weather and it was our first Ralston Rodeo. It was a far bigger event than I was expecting with a full crowd turning out to the little village on the base to see calf roping, bull riding and several horse events.

A lot of the crowd had driven up from Medicine Hat, but there were also Rodeo groupies (taking notes on the timings the men achieved!) and competitors from far and wide keen to win some of the prize money that was up for grabs.

The professionals kicked off the day with some very slick performances. It's amazing watching the guys leap the fence when a very angry bull gets too close!

There were also some military events and Jim was volunteered for wild cow milking. Here he is with the other two team members trying to catch the cow! Just in case you are in any doubt, wild cows do NOT like being milked... or tied up... or chased!

If you're wondering which one he is in the second photo, you can just about make out his yellow gloves in the dust! The gloves were pretty essential, otherwise the rope goes through your hands and takes the skin off!


The wild cow milking was over in a couple of minutes. they didn't win and nor did they manage to get any milk out of the cow! Jim may not have got the coveted Ralston Rodeo belt buckle, but he does have some impressive war wounds to show off!

In the meantime I kept myself busy playing with the MODs expensive toys which were on display . This is a warrior armoured vehicle. It carries 10 and is really really small inside.