Nish family reunion and Sushi

Last weekend was the ever talked about annual Nish reunion in Cardston. Now I had already been warned that these were full of crazy people and crazy happenings and that I might not want to be a Nish afterward. Sometimes I think everyone forgets how crazy my family is too...in a loud-in-your-face-tell-all-your-secrets kind of way. Despite all the warnings, I'm still married to a Nish and had fun at the reunion (I'm not sure if I'm supposed to have fun or if I'm supposed to regret being in the family afterward). It was great to meet more of Gordon's family (well the ones he knew anyway), and I even met people who knew my grandparents (they are pretty famous after all) and told me things I didn't even know about them. It was also gracious of the rain clouds to leave us alone for the better part of the day. My personal favourite part (besides stuffing my face full of junk food...which I try and avoid on a regular basis), was the karaoke. Watching family members get up and sing the golden oldies was great, watching them to dance the singing was even better. Gordon convinced me to go up but regretted it on the condition that we sang disney. And of course we had to sing from my FAVORITE movie of all time: The Lion King. I figured he already sang Can You Feel the Love Tonight to me at our wedding in front of 200 strangers, so how hard could it be to sing in front of 50, especially when it was all in good fun? In the end I ended up convincing Gordon to get up with me and we sang "I just can't wait to be king". Luckily years of listening to Lion King to fall asleep and to make roadtrips paid off and I even did all the speaking parts. Haha bet Gordon won't ask me to do that again...
Now to this weekend. Gordon and I made a goal to have a date night every Sat that was PLANNED and not just G:"what do you want to watch?" M:"I don't know what do you want to watch?" G: "[insert 80's sci fi movie or any high action movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger]" M: "No I don't like Arnold." G: "Terminator is SO cool. Well what do you want to watch then?" M: "I don't know. Not Arnold." And the conversation continues while we search IMDB and rotten tomatoes until we find a movie that we can somewhat agree on but no one's really excited about and that's meets Nish (e.g. Morgan) family standards for cleanliness. Yeah "date night" (if you can even call it that) really sucked. So we decided to step it up a notch and I took the first week to plan. Gordon loves sushi but going out to all you can eat for $50 a pop doesn't really make the pocket book happy. Instead I decided to surprise him by looking up some recipes and by trying to make it ourselves. I drew three clues out for him to open throughout the day (a fish, the Japanese flag, and seaweed). the light bulb went off after the first, but only about 3 hours after he opened it. I'm not gonna lie, I thought he would need at least the second clue to get it. Now if you ever wanna make sushi, let me say this loud and clear. Save yourself the hassle of finding an asian supermarket and just go to Safeway. It's cheaper and you can read everything on the packages. It also has everything you'll need. And no Superstore doesn't cut it. They have sushi mats but NO seaweed and NO sushi rice. And people wonder why I call it stupid store. Anyway after the hassle of driving all over the place to get the stuff, we finally got it together and tested out our sushi making skills. To our surprise, it's actually not that difficult, and doesn't taste too far off restaurant style. It's also half the price of all you can eat sushi which earns it's place in my books as great date idea.

Canada Day Weekend

This weekend was BRILLIANT. Not only did Gordon and I only work 3 days this week, but we got to spend time with both of our families. Thursday we had a Canada Day breakfast with our ward, and us thinking that everyone would be running on Mormon standard time showed up 15 min late. Well we were pretty shocked when we drove up to the church and they were already singing O Canada and raising the flag...oops.They were tons of people there to our surprise, and Gordon and I even volunteered to serve pancakes and sausages...although Gordon ate more than he served haha. Afterward we headed down to Calgary to spend the day with my family before white water rafting. Gordon and I decided to go see the fireworks but we didn't want to go downtown so we just drove to a hill by my house to see them. Well that was lame. There were a ton of cars blocking our view and the fireworks didn't even shoot high enough for us to see them. It was a pretty poor display and not worth staying up for...especially since we had to by 5:30 in the morning to get to Golden by 8:30 am the next day. Luckily we left early cause Google maps was very misleading to poor Gordon (who was probably suffering from lack of sleep as well) and he thought we needed to go through Lake Louise to get there... which we didn't by the way. After about three wrong turns, 20 min down the wrong highways, and driving through three national parks asking the people which way to go we finally made it. I'm not gonna lie I wasn't excited to be going rafting in glacial water when it was already cold and damp out, but I couldn't really stay behind so I just had to hope that the water gear they gave us would keep us warm. And it probably would have...if it wouldn't have been damp as well. Somehow rafting in water that's 5 degrees Celsius with wet clothes on didn't seem to raise my excitement level, but none the less I was excited to spend the time with Gordon's family (since we don't see them very much) and to do something I've never done before. The first trip we did was just to get us used to the boat and our guide, the paddling and commands. It was pretty uneventful, kind of like being on a bumpy river. Anytime we'd get a little rapids we thought it was the most exciting thing. My hands and feet were numb from the cold, but I'm sure everyone else's were too. We finally made it to the lunch spot just waiting to get our hands on some hot chocolate (literally). I was starting to get excited since we were going to be doing the more challenging rapids next and we were sure to get tossed around. I just hoped Gordon's sisters wouldn't fall out of the boat and pull me in with them. Contracting hypothermia was not on my agenda for the day. Finally we were off, and silently praying that we wouldn't fall in, we started to get into some of the bigger rapids. IT WAS AMAMAMAMMAAZIIING!!! So much fun. You'd see a big wave come and the guide would yell "GET DOWN!", so we all hunkered in the raft and rode down a wave only to see another one come crashing down on us. As much as it was freezing I loved it. Half the time we'd end up hitting a big wave sideways, so my side of the raft would dip down into the wave and get swallowed by the next one. I managed to avoid a lot of the water head on, since I hid behind my father-in-law haha. Although my body got spared, my face sure didn't. I had to keep crinkling my nose to keep my face from going numb, and Gordon was in rougher shape than me since he was in the front of the boat with his dad. At the end of the trip I could barely walk with everything being so numb from the cold, but I would do it again in a heartbeat. It's a lot scarier watching other people go through the waves than rafting them yourself because you're too concentrated on paddling to really notice how big the mounds of water are coming towards you. It doesn't look as bad when you're actually in it, and there really is nothing to be afraid of. I would definitely recommend that everyone try it at least once, and this from the girl who hates extreme sports.
We stayed in a great condo overnight then spent the next day going to see the Grizzly bear Boo, and riding up in the Gondola. It still wasn't the nicest weather but it was such a fantastic view from the top. The mountains we gorgeous...to look at anyway. We saw some brave souls mountain biking down them, and that was a little too extreme for me. I prefer life.
The trip home was uneventful, other than Gordon and I stopping to look up a lake that we wanted to hike to in Lake Louise. I had a great time with my in-laws and am so grateful that they make me feel like part of the family. The fabulousness (yes I just made that up) of the weekend really made us dread going back to work Monday, but we gotta eat during the school year...living off KD and PB and J doesn't do the trick for me.