Not being back at work...

What a wonderful feeling!

These are really the first few days of our extended 'leave of absence' from work - it's been amazing so far. Gavin and I are currently in Calgary, enjoying the comforts of home (including good food, great wine, and family time...mostly with finnigan, my parent's new dalmation puppy). Driving to MEC to pick up some hiking boots and related camping gear on Monday, we realized that it was the first Monday in a long time that we weren't thinking about getting travel planned / heading to the airport, or pushing to create a slide deck/ figure out some piece of analysis...such a relief!! Surprisingly, as we walked Finn at 4pm later that day, we still wondered where the day had gone and how we managed to fill an entire day ....wonderful :)

Our first week off is shaping up to look pretty good;
- Went skiing on Sunday at Louise...although cold (high of -19??) gorgeous sunny day and no one on the hill!
- Slowly getting ready for our trip (errands to MEC, finding all our camping gear)
- Solar prep! business planning has started...
- Finalizing our move-out details (never move out of london, it's a hassle and a half!!)
- Calgary Flames hockey game on Thursday with Derek and Tracy (Derek's brother is playing for the New York Islanders, so we'll be there to cheer him on!)
- Chris comes in to Calgary on Thursday, skiing on Friday through to next tuesday, again at Louise!! So excited

So that's the beginning of our trip...the overall itinerary looks a bit like this, although likely to change:

Jan 5-17th - Calgary (and Lake Louise)
Jan 17th - 24th - Skiing at Whistler (with Chris, Laura, Alain, Jess, Natalie, and Michael Brown)
Jan 24th - Jan 31st - Vancouver (meetings and research for Solar business prep, visiting friends and family)
Feb 1st - Off to New Zealand!!
May 1st - Off to Australia
June 1st - Home!

We're keeping this blog as a journal of our trip, and will try and update as much as possible - would love to get your e-mails and comments - we will also set up a site where we will have some pictures available as we take them. Will post details to the site on here as soon as we have it set up!

Huge hugs,

Andrea and Gavin