I'm in love.

I, Amy Lynne B, am completely and utterly infatuated with Banff.  There, I said it.  Glad to get that off of my chest.  I know I've been a posting machine lately, but what can I say - when you fall in love you can't wait to share it with the world.

I've spent the last few months feeling a tad frazzled with all of the pressure of work, wedding planning and just the general rat race that is life as a twenty something.  There's nothing like the majesty of Mother Nature to put you back in your place and encourage you to realign your perspective.  I can think of no greater symbol than a mountain to remind you 1) that there are far greater things in this world than you and 2) that quite simply - life goes on.  If you weather the winters, it only makes the summers that much sweeter.  In short, today was EXACTLY what I needed, but then again life has a funny way of doing that.  (That was a lot of waxing philosophical for me, wasn't it?  A sharp contrast to my usual celebrity gossip and reality tv discussion, eh? ;c) )

Being from Texas where we consider the upside of a ditch a significant "peak", I have always been captivated by mountains but haven't seen too terribly many in my lifetime.  Today I got to fully immerse myself in "mountain," and I'm only that much more obsessed with them.  My coworkers, Sam and Liz, and I piled into our super rental Impala and took a mini road trip to Banff.  Please enjoy my photojournalistic attempt at a timeline of our day knowing that the pictures don't begin to do it justice.  (Ryan, please familiarize yourself because we are coming here for an anniversary in the very near furutre).  I apologize for the overflow of pictures - it's just too impossible to pick favorites.

Continuing to try and take pictures of the mountains from parking lots.  This time it was a gas station rather than our work parking lot.  Variety is the spice of life, right?

Entrance to Banff National Park

Our first stop of the day was the Banff Gondola.  It's been in operation since 1959 and it takes you up to the top of Sulphur Mountain, a rougly 7500 ft elevation.  You can get out and walk around and take in the most unbelieveable 360 views of the mountains surrounding Banff as well as the Banff Hot Springs.

View of the Gondolas from the base of the mountain

Liz & Sam

Going up...

View of the trees on the way up

View from the top

More view from the top

Proof that I was indeed on this trip and I did not pull all of these pics from Google images

Even more view from the top.  The Banff hot springs are in the middle.

Sam & Liz on the boardwalk

View from the top walking across the boardwalk.

Go team, go!

Sam & Liz at the top of the boardwalk

I wasn't joking about the 360 part.

The Fairmont Banff Springs from the top of Sulphur Mountain - we ate lunch here

After taking as many pictures as we believed humanly possible, we reluctantly got on the gondola and headed back down.  We decided to head over to the Banff Springs Hotel (The Fairmont, pictured above) for lunch.  We had an incredible brunch buffet (Julie, you'd have been in paradise) in the Grill overlooking the lawn and the mountains.  This place was pretty fancy, so I refrained from taking pictures of my food, but TRUST ME - it was gooooood stuff.  Nothing like a mimosa and a table with a view after a long morning of gondola-ing.

The Banff Springs Hotel- from closer than 7500 feet

The view out the window from our table.  Mom, Dad, Ryan - want to scrap the Bell Tower and move the wedding here?

After our fantastic lunch we piled into the Impala and headed over to Mount Royal to catch our tour bus.  We signed up for a tour that took us to Lake Louise and Lake Moraine.  On a bus of 24 people representing 4 different continents, we found a fellow Houstonian.  Small world.

Taking pictures of mountains from the bus on the way to Lake Louise.  Also pictured: either my thumb or the top of the bus.

Aspen trees and one spruce or pine.  Pardon the bluriness- taking pictures from a moving vehicle is not my forte.

Morants Curve

Team pic at Morant's curve

Our first stop on the tour bus was Lake Louise.  Lake Louise is a glacial lake named for Princess Louise, the daughter of Queen Victoria.  That is about the extent of the history I gleaned from our tour guide regarding it, but once you've seen the pictures you won't really care about the history either. 

This doesn't even begin to convey how gorgeous this was in real life.  The water was green.  Not like Galveston green - but the most beautiful emerald color you've ever seen in your life.

The whole lake was this color.  I wouldn't believe it was real if I hadn't seen it myself.

Lake Louise.  With sunflares.

Slightly more impressed than we are with our work parking lot.

Potential new home?

After not nearly enough time (primarily because it was less than the rest of my life), we piled back on to the bus to head to Lake Moraine.  Our Driver kept insisting that we would find it prettier than Lake Louise.  Obviously, I thought she was on drugs.  Did you look at the pictures above?  

View after getting off the bus at Lake Moraine.  Literally.  You can actually see the bus in the bottom corner.

Hiking up the rock pile to see the best view.  Here our guide is telling us how this lake is prettier than Lake Louise.  I'm still thinking she's on drugs...

...and then I saw this.  Are. You. Kidding. Me?  Most beautiful place I've ever seen.  Lake Moraine is nestled in the Valley of Ten Peaks in the middle of ten (witty naming those mountainers!) snow capped peaks.

Unfortunately the position of the sun when we were there wasn't the greatest for capturing the color of the water and all of the surrounding awesomeness.  Imagine the color you see above framed by the peaks you see here.

Oh hey, there I am!  It was a little windy so pardon the hair situation.

I love it so much.

I could tell my pictures weren't doing it justice, so I took a video.

After this, we got back on the bus and headed back into Banff.  I may or may not have fallen asleep on the bus.  Those of you who have been fortunate enough to see me fall asleep upright know that the bobbling head maneveur and blatant open mouthed pose that go along with me sleeping upright rival the beauty in the pictures above.  Thankfully Liz either didn't notice or chose not to tease me about it.  After we got back to Banff, the three of us piled into the car and headed home.  Aside  from the fact fam and friends (other than Sam and Liz) weren't here to share it, this has been an absolutely perfect day.  If I don't return to Houston on October 15th, please don't send a search party. 

Oh, Canada, eh?

Is Oh, Canada their national anthem?  Why does that pop into my head?  Not sure, but "Canada, eh" seems to be a favorite amongst all of you.  For my title I decided- why choose?  So I didn't. 

Yes, they really do say "eh".  It's funny to be someone from a region known for a word visiting another region known for a word.  It's like you instantly bond.  The kind HR lady across from our audit headquarters (read: conference room with no windows) here likes to come by often and ask "how are YA'LL doing?"  She's pretty adept with the ya'll because it took me a while to realize what she was doing.  I just thought she was smiling that broadly because being nice to the auditors is a good deed.

So I successfully made it to Canada.  I don't have much in the way of pictures to share, but this weekend we are going to Banff so I'm sure that will change soon.  However, for posterity purposes (and so my mother knows I'm still alive) I feel I should post the few pictures I do have, share a few stories and enlighten you all (insert sarcasm tone) with my insightful observations.  For everyone who's not my mother, stay tuned for my post-Banff post.

Observations:
- Trees.  Canada's Trees > Houston's Trees.  My logic here is two fold.  First, they have trees that look like Christmas trees everywhere.  If I lived here, I would mentally be in Christmas mode ALL. YEAR. ROUND.  Secondly, their trees change colors.  Our trees could learn a thing or two.  Canada gets vibrantly colored leaves to roll around and we get pine cones?  I think the winner in that scenario is apparent.
- Thanksgiving.  Their's is earlier.  Monday to be exact.  You know what that means?  This chick is getting 2 Thanksgivings in 2010.  It's hard to say whether I will remember 2010 as the year I got engaged or the year I gorged on turkey 2 times.
- Roads.  Not a fan.  Please add more clear signs for those of us driving rental cars.  If you could add blinking lights and arrows that spell out "Amy turn here" - that would be a bonus.  Also, stop naming everything like I'm on a nature hike.  It makes them all sound the same.  I'm just trying to get to work in the mornings, not trying to pretend that I live in a game of Oregon Trails.  (Fording the river not an option)
- People.  The people here are SO NICE.  Plus twenty to you parents of Calgary!  You have done well. 
- Mental Math.  I would appreciate a conversion chart in my hotel room for celsius to farenheit.  It's very mentally taxing to try and convert the outside temperature to farenheit so I know what to wear for the day.  Expecting that I can do this before my morning cup of coffee is just silly.  Please go ahead and tack this onto blinking signs for my open letter to the Country of Canada. 

I believe that concludes our observations segment.  I had more observations than I realized and so I'll only share one story with you all and then get right to the pictures.  It's a harrowing tale, really (light sarcasm font).  I think I was probably supposed to print a letter from the company before I came to Canada but I was busy the week before my trip and it quite honestly slipped my mind.  Fast forward to going through customs.  My customs man asked what I was here for and I cheerfully responded "to perform an audit."  I find that if you pepper conversation with that term, people generally glaze over and/or are not interested in hearing any more.  Wrong answer!  I got ushered into the immigration department where I (and my other co worker) were blasted with questions and told that our company is irresponsible and yada yada.  Finally we answered enough questions that they realized we were here employed by a US company rather than a Canadian company (which would require a work permit) but for a while I was near tears in the middle of immigration.  So I suppose my last observation would be that I would not be upset by being greeted by friendlier customs/immigration officials.  Perhaps getting some coffee and biscuits while being given the Spanish Inquisition?  (Authors Note:  I'm kidding.  I understand customs is serious business)

Okay.  And now to the pictures.

Obligatory hotel room picture.

I wish I had a cookie and a bottle of water when I came home every night in Houston.  (hint, hint)  Also, it may not look very special - but that cookie is a bite of HEAVEN.  White chocolate with regular chocolate on the inside.  It's magical.

Trying unsuccessfully to take pictures of the very distant mountains from our parking lot while my co-workers wait on me in the car.  No biggie.

Christmas trees!  Also pictured: some kind of factory that routinely produces something very odor-ific.  It's across the fence from where we're working.

Calgary Tower.  We ate dinner at the top of this last night. 

My co-worker Liz and I.  Oh, and a Candian Mounty Beaver.

Sunset from Calgary Tower

View from dinner.  The colors here aren't nearly as beautiful as they were in real life.

See the mountains?  Yes, I know it looks like I just took pictures.  I did eat though.

View from the observation deck.  It's night time, so this didn't work as well as I hoped.

My fab co-workers, Sam and Liz

Pretty sunset tonight (again from our work parking lot - hot tourist attraction).  Jen - SUNFLARES!

The Day I Changed the World

Oh man, when you read that you thought I had done something spectacular, didn't you? Like maybe inventing the interweb?  No such luck- I was just referring to the day I was born.  I think I really only changed my Mother's world... and I like to believe it was for the better considering my screaming fits kept her from going to Wal-Mart for at least the first 6 months of my life.  Bundle. Of. Joy. 

So this year was the first October 4th in 28 (it's actually 29 isn't it?) that I spent 1) out of the country, 2) away from friends or family and 3) in a climate below about 80 degrees.  I am in Canada at the moment for work.  Thus far we were nearly turned away at the border.  I have been lost about 30 times.  I've tried to do a lot of mental math unsuccessfully- did you know that they use kilometers and celsius up here?  What is that all about?  (Jen and Ryan, you guys would KILL me when it comes to the thermostat up here.  I have no idea what 80 degrees equates to in celsius - but let's just say I err on the side of caution).  Also, I have trapsed around a manufacturing floor and warehouse in a skirt, heels, hard hat and safety glasses. 

In spite of how crazy that all sounds, it has turned out to be a pretty perfect birthday.  My b-day has been stretched out over nearly a week now.  On Wednesday Ryan gave me the following amazing present:

iTouch

I think my Dad can officially re-instate me as his daughter since I now own an Apple product.  You all may consider that a music player.  I consider it a game player.  It is also a forum for me to display my "prowess" (read: suckage) at Words with Friends (AmyLynneB).  I freaking love this thing.  My addiction list now reads: Starbucks, pumps, puppies, iTouch.

Friday after work I came home to a sweet card and an industrial sized bag of Twizzlers from my amazing roomie.  Then that night my friends were nice enough to take time out of their busy weekends/lives to have an extended HH.  It was so fantastic to see everyone and to catch up.  Thank you to everyone who came (and those of you who sent sweet messages even though you couldn't make it).  Because they're too gorgeous not to get commemorated...

Pretty flowers from Sara & Matt

Beautiful flowers from Melanie and Jonathan

Saturday I did Race for the Cure with the family.  Afterwards we had brunch at Katzs.  I got some fun gift cards that I can't wait to put to good use.  Then that night Ryan took me to dinner at Raku.  For those of you who don't know (or couldn't guess based on his limited interest in any type of healthy-ish food)- Ryan does not like sushi.  So it's a special treat when he agrees to sit through a meal of it with me without complaining about it being overpriced or how hungry he is afterwards. 

Thanks for dinner, Mr. Ryan. 

Then today for the Canadian leg of my birthday I started the day with the (second) love of my life- a skinny hazelnut latte.  Also, my co-workers were super kind and agreed to try to find a sushi place for dinner.  It turned into a serious adventure.  In this case "driving aimlessly down unrecognizable highways" and "adventure" are synonymous.  All in all, I had an incredible birthday and I thank each and every one of you who played a part in that.  I'm so very fortunate.  Thank you for spoiling me to pieces.