And what an experience it was!

By some miracle, I managed to keep meticulous notes about each and every day of the experience, and so in the coming few days I’ll be converting my scribbled notes into full articles and posting them here, at Ubi, and at the wedding website. For the moment, it will have to suffice when I say that on the whole, this was one of the most amazing experiences, and one of the most incredible journeys, I have ever had or undertaken.

And I’ve got 1726 photos to show for it. Now, admittedly, I won’t be keeping all of those…but still, that number ought to give the reader a decent idea as to the magnitude of the Jamboree. Failing that, there are a few statistics attached to the Jamboree’s Wikipedia entry that may prove enlightening.

I also made many good friends, and I would even venture to say that in working with the people of ICCS — the International Catholic Conference of Scouting — defined for me at long last just what my Scouting career means to me, and demonstrated just how I want to conduct myself as a Scout, and what I want to work toward as a member of that world-wide organization.

I made a number of new friends, met some incredible people, tasted great English bitters and IPAs, attended Mass and Taize prayer with what was, for me, a heightened frequency, and worked with between 50 and 100 kids a day doing little things to help them learn (or learn more) about the Catholic faith. And in the off hours, I had some memorable times with some or all of the members of the 59th Rover Crew that were in attendance at the Jamboree.

I have to say, though, that the best part of the Jamboree was coming through the doors out of the customs area at the Edmonton International Airport and seeing Grace there. I had missed her so much during the trip, and seeing her smiling face across the arrivals area was the first breath of fresh air for this man when he finally made it home again.

Home. It’s strange, but over the course of the last three weeks, the very meaning of that word seems to have changed so much for me. Home is not, for me, the place where I’m currently living, the place I rest my head at the end of the day, or the place where my family is. Seeing Grace again, I knew at once that the sneaking suspicion of a feeling I’d been having all Jamboree was true: home is where she is. Home is with her.

And so, O Reader, on that note I will leave, and will tell you only that you ought to keep checking back — in the weeks to come, those 1726 photos (or as many of them as I decide to keep) will make their way onto the site, as will the day-by-day articles describing this incredible trip abroad.

| Category Ken, Travel

Well, I’m off to England, as of about 8:00 this evening (the flight’s scheduled departure time is 7:55 PM, but it’s also Air Canada, so we’ll see how close they come to hitting that mark). I leave England on August 11th, and I have honestly got no idea when and if I will be able to get near the internet long enough during that time to post anything to the site, or even to check my email.

Which means I’m going to have one very full inbox when I get back.

Anyhow, for the next three weeks or so, I’ll be spending most of my time in Hylands Park, which is north-east of London, participating in the 21st World Scout Jamboree — which, incidentally, also marks and commemorates the centenary of Scouting. I’ll be attending the camp as an IST, an ‘offer of service’ — basically, I’m going there to help run one of the events.

Currently, as far as I have heard, I am going to be working with the Faith and Beliefs component of the camp, and while I haven’t the first clue what that entails, I imagine that it will basically involve me spending a lot of my day talking with kids about Catholicism. Which should be a lot of fun, I expect. I will, of course, have the camera in tow, so hopefully I will be able to bring back lots of pictures for everyone to enjoy…although admittedly, most of them will probably be of the Jamboree, since I don’t expect there will be much time for sightseeing while I am there.

Now, with all that preamble out of the way, here’s the important stuff to be said.

Grace, I love you so very much, and I will try and find out what sort of options are open to me for phoning home as soon as I get to England. I’ll miss you so dearly each and every day I’m gone, and rest assured that I’ve printed a handful of pictures of you to adorn various day-to-day things I’ll be using — there’s even a small photo of you taped to the camera.

You’ve been the most special, wonderful person in my life since the day I met you, and I look forward to seeing you again when I land in Canada. Your smiling face and your dancing eyes can always lift my spirits, and I already want to hear your soft voice again.

Say a prayer for my safe travel, love, and I will figure out what the best way is to get in touch with you as soon as I land. I can’t wait for August (or, come to think of it, October)!

Mom, Dad, Megan, Katie, Carmen, and Simon, I miss all of you, and all I can ask is for your prayers for a safe trip. I look forward to seeing everyone when I get back (including you, Meg, if you do happen to visit in mid-to-late August).

Family and friends: I miss all of you as well, and I ask for your prayers for a safe trip as well. I look forward to seeing you all again when I get back as well.

And to everyone, I look forward to sharing stories and pictures when I return, and I hope that you all have a great middle-of-summer.

| Category Ken, Travel

As mentioned by Grace, we are changing the venue and location of the wedding, shifting it from Edmonton, Alberta, to Grace’s home town of Vermilion (also in Alberta). The Wedding Information page has been updated to reflect this.

We’ll post more later on the rationale behind the shift, but for now consider this to be your informal notice, O Reader, of the chance. We’re working hard to get invitations sent out by the end of the month!

| Category Wedding News

I have been thinking a lot lately about what marriage means to me and how I see myself as a contributer in this vocation. Recently, I have been working on self image, and after much prayer tonight and reflection, I have come to a conclusion about the kind of wife that I am going to strive for in my marriage to Ken.

For me, marriage is not only about spending the my life with someone I am attracted to and connected to, it is hard work and a series of interactions and decisions that Ken and I will make together to create a cohesive life of two becoming one flesh. This vocation is a great challenge to any person entering into marriage and I thought I should share with you, o reader, what I will bring to this marriage.

I am not perfect and perfection will not be my goal; my goal is to strive to be as excellent as I can be in everything.

God comes first and then my marriage to Ken as priority.

Love of myself, that I will learn to love and continue to love Ken with the same respect and dignity I want for myself.

Sacrificing some of my needs to meet Kens’.

Comforting him in tears and times of distress

Taking time everyday to do something that builds up my marriage with Ken.

I will do my best to balance distance and connectedness in a relationship.

Living my life in faith and trying to walk the path of God with Ken beside me.

Prayer.

Church.

That I will keep the motto “Lord make me an instrument of thy peace”, in the foreground of my mind.

I will do what is in our best interest.

I will love unconditionally.

I will learn to let go any hurts that may occur and show mercy.

I will be thoughtful in my speech and actions.

I will love like everyday is our last.

I will do my best to follow the word of God.

I will create a mission statement with Ken, that we may be fruitful members of Gods family.

I will listen.

I will make statements. ( inside joke ).

I will do my best not to be critical.

I will laugh.

I will cry.

I will have joy and pain, but know that it is all part of God’s plan.

This is just the start. It is the night shift so I am a little tired but I will continue the list as time goes on.
May God bless this marriage.

Grace

| Category Grace

Hi there! Thank you to Ken for the elaborate story of our trip to camrose. Ken, you wrote eloquently, what a beautiful story! And the pictures are amazing…it brings up fond memories for me. I just thought I should let the readers know that our Wedding is now in Vermilion and I am very excited about it! Thanks to my parents for helping with preparations and to Ken for his hard work as well.

| Category Grace

Ugh…I swear, the ol’ desktop PC is just hidebound and determined to choke and die. I’m going to make one last attempt to get Windows running somewhat stably on it.

If that fails (as I expect it eventually will), I am going to save up and get me one of these…and then dual-boot the thing. And hey, the Apple computers use the T-series Core 2 chips…can’t fault that.

| Category Ken

This site is not just going to be the hub for the planning of our wedding; it’s been built from the ground up to be an ongoing portal through which we can share bits and pieces of our lives (and life together) with friends and family. Personally, I think this is given its most poignant example in the presence of our gallery. Given that we’re both no slouch with a camera, and given that we both enjoy photography to a certain degree (myself to an abnormally large degree), there are a lot of great pictures that we already have to share with the world, and more to come.

But enough of my blathering on about unrelated details. The title suggests that some camping took place, and so it did.

Grace’s sister Michel was playing in a soccer tournament in Camrose, AB, last weekend (June 8 – 11), and Grace wanted to catch a couple of the games. So we packed up some camping gear (most of it borrowed either from my parents or from the 59th Edmonton Scout Group) on Friday afternoon and made the not-quite-hour-length drive down to Camrose. Just before we left Edmonton, we stopped for a quick ‘road’ dinner and then picked up the last few supplies we needed at Canadian Tire…and then headed out, and attempted to find a place to stay.

Which you’d have thought would be easy, but this weekend was…special. In addition to the massive soccer tournament that was taking place that weekend, this tiny city was also going to be playing host to the people participating in the bike-a-thon for MS (multiple sclerosis, not the software company) research, which meant that the municipal campground was full and that the hotels were booked.

Not a problem — we had intended to camp, and were going to camp. We asked around and were told about a little campground just outside of Camrose, near the Battle River. As it turns out, it was actually right next to the Battle River, and while one site was in…less than optimal condition…for the most part it was a pretty little campground. We stopped at the Camrose Safeway just before we left to find this little spot, and bought a few light snacks and some food for breakfast.

Actually, the west-facing view was quite spectacular, and the sun was just beginning to really set as we were pitching the tent. I’m a big sucker for photos of a nice sunset, so I of course didn’t pass up the opportunity.

The tent that we had borrowed was one of the ‘old’ tents from the stores of the 59th Edmonton Scout Group, a big blue Eureaka! tent that was, for the most part, in decent shape. I hadn’t pitched one of these things in a few years, however, and so had forgotten that they have a few…quirks in their setup. That and the set of poles was a bit on the ‘thrown together’ side (seriously, I don’t want to know who was the last one to pack up this tent before I used it that weekend). And there were no pegs…why do people take the pegs out of the tent bag?

Fortunately, I was able to improvise some decent substitutes for pegs, and fortunately the various poles and pieces of pole that were in the tent bag could indeed be combined into something that would support the tent. It just…took a little longer than I thought it might (and by the end, I was very thankful for the Muskol insect repellent that we had brought with us)!

We unloaded the sleeping bags into the tent, and were officially ‘finished’ with the setup at about 8:50 PM. That still left us the better part of 40 minutes to get to Michel’s game, so we drove in to Camrose and stopped at the Safeway before heading on to Michel’s first game, which was being played at 9:30 PM that evening. If you think that’s late, well…yeah, it probably is. But then, this tournament had some of the teams in it playing until almost 3 AM, so…

Michel’s team (Vermilion) won the first game handily, scoring a 2-0 shutout over Stettler. The team played really well overall. Grace had asked if I wouldn’t mind taking some pictures (like anyone has to ask that!), and that proved to be a bit of a challenge, especially as the sun finished setting and things got progressively darker).

After the game, Grace and I hung out with Michel for a few minutes, and Grace presented her sister with a bag full of (healthy!) snacks and drinks. That would be the girl I love in a nutshell — she really cares about people, and goes out of her way for them.

We made our way back to the campsite, stopping for a late-night snack of our own along the way, and then attempted to sleep. I say ‘attempted’ because, due to things like two or three hours of rain pounding down, a slight slope in the ground on which the tent was situated (useful in light of the fact of rain, but not the easiest thing to sleep on), and some twit with a diesel engine and a massive trailer trying to fit himself into the campground at 1 AM, we only managed a couple of hours of sleep.

That’s not a complaint, mind you, although we were certainly both a little bleary-eyed the next morning.

[thumb:14:r:s=1:l=p]The other reason we only got a couple of hours of sleep is that we awoke rather early (think: 5 AM). Grace didn’t feel well, so we set a new speed record packing down the camp and headed into Camrose again. After driving around for a bit, we headed to the (still packed!) municipal campground, which at least had coin-operated showers. We caught another half-hour of rest there before moving on to yet another park in Camrose, where we decided to cook breakfast.

Although we did hit up the 7-11 for coffee before that point. Which means there’s a new group I can join on Facebook, apparently.

[thumb:17:l:s=1:l=p]Breakfast was great — there’s always something about cooking food on a camp stove that just makes it that much better. The park — I think it was called Mirror Lake Park — was just beautiful, with a little playground, some picnic tables, and wonderful view of a little municipal lake.

[thumb:18:r:s=1:l=p]So we cooked and ate breakfast (bacon, eggs, jalapeno havarti, apricots, and All Bran bars) and just took in some of the scenery. Grace was thankfully feeling much better both after her shower and a good meal, so we cleaned up and packed up our stuff and then drove off to where Michel would be playing her next game.

Unfortunately, Vermilion didn’t win the second game, against Rocky Mountain House. Rocky seemed like a pretty good team, and though this seemed to take Vermilion by surprise, Michel’s team quickly rallied and soon the two teams were, basically, playing at the same level. It was, toward the end, a pretty even match…except for the referee. In addition to calling one particularly stunning save a goal (the Vermilion goalie was just inside the goal line, but the ball — when she deflected it — was not), he ended the game about seven minutes early…blowing the whistle not two seconds after Vermilion won the kickoff after the aforementioned ‘goal’.

It wouldn’t have been quite as bad if the referee had made the call on the goal right away, but he didn’t — he made the call a couple minutes later, after one girl on the Rocky team complained to him. Now, I don’t remember much from my days as an umpire, but the general rule that I was taught was that if I didn’t see it, it didn’t happen…and I should be more watchful the next time I see a similar situation emerging. It was just a bad call on this referee’s part, plain and simple.

That and his timepiece was evidently malfunctioning.

Still, despite the poor officiating, Vermilion did play a solid game, and the whole team went out to Boston Pizza afterward to share lunch. Grace and I went along, spending a last couple of hours with Michel before we had to head back to Edmonton. We had both taken a number of pictures at the second game, and some video as well, and would have liked to stick around for the finals later that evening. But alas, Grace had a night shift, and I also had made plans, so we had to leave Camrose on Saturday afternoon.

Overall, it was a good trip (despite the lack of sleep), and we both had a lot of fun. It’s nice sometimes to just get out and camp, especially for people like us who don’t get many opportunities to do so given the busy tempo of our lives these days.

| Category Family, Photos, Travel

I would like to officially say hello to all of you reading visiting this website! My wonderful Fiance Ken took time and energy to build this website and write an article about how we met.

Speaking for myself, this journey of our relationship thus far has been one of the best experiences of my life. I am very fortunate to walk beside someone like Ken, sharing many great experiences.

This is just a short note but there will be more to come. Until then, take care, God bless, and Peace.

Grace

| Category Grace

I’ve changed the site face a fair bit, as you can see, because I wanted to finally be able to achieve a consistent feel (in terms of site template) between WordPress and Coppermine (the photo gallery we use on the site here). That and there were a few issues I was having with formatting on the other template.

So I’ve switched. A little bit of Photoshop Elements got the two pictures in the upper right firmly in place, and a little bit of custom HTML and PHP work got everything else more or less into place. Apologies to anyone viewing this site at a resolution less than 1024×768 — you should really turn up the resolution on your monitor anyhow.

So enjoy the redesign, and yes, don’t worry, I’ll be populating the gallery with images soon enough. We both will be, in fact.

If I could ask one favour of the reader, please watch for any German you see on the site. I know it sounds weird, but just trust me…if you notice anything on the site that appears to be written in German, let me know and I’ll fix it. If possible, try and remember to grab a hyperlink you can send me so I can see an example. The site template looks great, but it’s…er…not written entirely in English, and I’m still trying to translate where it’s needed.

| Category Site News

Well, the new site is up and running. That’s not to say that it’s complete just yet — there is still more to add. But for the moment, it is functional, and all the editing that needed to be done to either the site formatting or the inline images is complete.

So…what’s here to check out thus far? Well, you can start, if you like, by having a quick read of an article that gives a bit of information about us, our courtship, and our engagement. Or, alternatively, you can ask us questions directly, or just drop us a line to wish us well.

Or you can just scroll down on the right-hand sidebar and browse some of the links there; both Grace and I maintain our own personal blogs, and we have other things that occupy our time as well.

Most importantly, though: keep checking back. As we finalize details about the wedding, we’ll post news about that, and in short order here I’m going to put up a page of details about the wedding itself, where and when it is, and where and when the reception will be…as well as a bit of information about the various people that are helping us out with making it a success.

| Category Site News